Are you Blogging Yet?

No. Well, you're missing out, especially if your interest is in generating clients for your mediation or ADR practice.

My blog-buddy and dear friend, Diane J. Levin, publisher of The Online Guide to Mediation, recently wrote an article about the benefits of blogging for the ADR community.

She posits that bloggers and ADR professionals share an interest in building relationships and community. I want to riff on that for a moment. I see emotional engagement as one of the most crucial concepts for our community to master if we are ever going to create sustainable ADR businesses primed for growth.

Buying decisions are emotional. The decision to select a mediator is emotionally-driven. Seventy percent of sales are based on positive interaction with a human. Stop and think about that. 70% What are you doing now to create emotional engagement? What are potential clients learning about you as a person, and how?

Lisa T. Davis of Persuasion Architect calls this personality-rich communication. I call it common sense. My website, WorkWellTogether.com, is definitely a personality-rich communication. Reading it you can get a sense of who I am as a person and professional, which is what a caller told me just this week.

Writing a blog is an easy, low-risk way to enable clients to 'get to know you' as John Lovitz used to say on Saturday Night Live.

What about neutrality, you say? What about it. Blogging on general topics of interest to your target market is no more challenging to your neutrality than inviting clients into your office, where they can draw conclusions based on what's visible there. If you disagree, don't hesitate to post a comment.

Ciao, Dina