The Website of Dr. Mark Goulston

If you build this, people will come.

I’d like to share with you what I have been learning about using a website to develop and/or promote a business especially if you are planning to sell products or services (including talks, consulting, training, etc.).

One of the most precious assets you can have are names, emails, companies, titles and zip codes (the zillions of people on facebook, myspace, etc. are those sites’ greatest assets). The fact that people have taken the time to sign up indicates they already have some interest in what you are offering. Obtaining their names, emails, etc. gives you a way to contact them to offer additional products or services. Knowing their titles can tell you how close they are to being a decision maker in which case they may want to purchase your products or services for their company. Knowing their zip code tells you where they are located in case you happen to be giving a talk or doing a book tour in their area and want to invite them.

The challenge is how to attract them in a way that would cause them to give you that information. People can sign up for your blogs through an RSS feed or other feeds that won’t give you a way to contact them. What people on my “Usable Insight” mailing list have been receiving lately are an invitation/suggestion to sign up for my FREE RESOURCES.

To receive these articles, mp3 files, video clips (that are either not available elsewhere or difficult to find), I ask that people sign up and give me the information indicated above.

A feature I have been adding recently to the FREE RESOURCES are a “Two Question…” series  (my latest one being: “Two Questions to Get Closer to Your Partner”). These are pdf’s of articles that will help you “earn respect,” “stand out from others,” “become closer to your partner,” etc. that people can immediately use to achieve those goals and that are not available elsewhere.

Every week, the person who manages my site sends me an excel spread sheet of the people who have signed up and that is a list I am now building. When my next book, “Just Listen” launches on Sept. 15, that list will be people I can reach out to who might be interested, since they have been interested in my ideas before. As part of my promise to people who give me their information, I have guaranteed them that I do not and will not share their names with anyone else.

A word about content. I receive many unsolicited newsletters and solicitations that like most of you, I delete without looking at. They may be helpful if I am in the market for specifically what they’re offering, but the fact that I didn’t ask them to send me their material already is a strike against them. Sometimes the “buy from me” in “here are some interesting facts you might like to know’s clothing” is painfully transparent.

Many people tell me that I am one of the few mailings that they don’t delete and actually read. I think that is because neither they nor I know what I am going to write about in any given week. My passion about making sense out of my fellow human beings and myself is the driver behind that. What my Usable Insights have in common is some observation and insight hopefully wrapped in a practical and usable lesson that people can implement immediately to make their lives better.

FREE LIVE WEBCAST – 8/26/09, 12- 1 PM EST, American Management Association present Dr. Mark Goulston: “The Simple Way to Get Through to Difficult People”

ALSO sign up to receive my latest FREE RESOURCE: “Two Questions to Get Through to Your Partner”

AND finally check out the Publishers Weekly and Library Journal reviews of “Just Listen.”

Tags: mark goulston, marketing, promotion, web 2.0, website

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 7:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.