As a solo entrepreneur, you lack the resources to market your consultancy the right way. You neither have the time, money or staff to research your market, analyze your market, plan how you’re going to reach your market and implement that plan. Your needs are more immediate; you need to find clients NOW. Long term marketing isn’t in your field of vision.

What would you say to a marketing plan that combines the immediate with the future? What would you say to a marketing plan that allows you to choose from among a variety of marketing methods? Would you give it a shot? The Easy As 1-2-3 Marketing Plan allows you to meet your immediate need for clients while laying the foundation for long-term marketing that meets future needs. Download your Easy As 1-2-3 Marketing Plan for HR Consultants here.

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A website markets your consultancy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When you’re sleeping, eating or partying your website is providing potential customers with information about you and your consultancy. I, personally, can attest to midnight madness. I’m one of those people whose body clock runs from 12:00 p.m. – 1 a.m. I do my best work during these hours, and I prefer to roam the Web during the hours when most folks are sleeping.

A website gives you another source of Web exposure/visibility. The more ways you have of exposing yourself on the Web, the better your chances of being found by potential customers. Limiting your Web exposure to social media, limits your chances of being found by potential customers. It’s not that potential customers won’t find you via social media; it’s that you limit the number of potential customers that find you.

A website provides a foundation for all your Web activities. A website not only provides 24×7 Web visibility, it also provides you with a Web base for your consultancy. A website contains information about you and your consultancy. A website also contains links to your social media activities, blog posts, your email newsletter, reports/whitepapers, educational materials, etc.

People use the Web to check out a product or service before making a purchase. Personally, I go to the Web to check out the menu of a restaurant, my competitors and even apartment reviews. The last was especially helpful to me after I sold my home. A first-time renter, I didn’t know if what looked like a nice apartment was really a nice apartment. A website that included reviews of local apartment complexes told me that the apartments that looked lovely and had a lovely price tag to match were, in actuality, rodent-infested. Thanks but no thanks.

A website establishes your credibility and expertise. Your website is your platform for showcasing your human resource expertise. Whether your HR niche is compensation, training, or compliance your website is the platform from which you tell the world that you know your stuff.

Your competitors have a website. I happen to know this for a fact. Several months ago, I embarked on a series of telephone interviews with a number of independent HR consultants. Each and every one of these HR consultants had a website, and each of them knew the value of that website presence.

Your clients have a website. More often than not, this is the case. Everything from solo enterprises to McDonalds has a website.

Your potential clients use the Web to find the services you offer. If you rely only on social media to market your consultancy, a potential client may find you by typing your name into a search engine such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., but if a potential client is looking for an “independent human resource consultant,” chances are good that your name won’t come up in the organic search engine listings. Why? Because you don’t have a website. In order for a potential client looking for a HR consultant to find you, the client must know your name, which is how search engines pick up people using social media, or you must have a website that uses the keywords (HR consultant, HR consulting and a slew of others) that clients would use in looking for HR consultants. If you don’t have a website, you’re limiting your opportunities to reach potential clients.

Businesses are expected to have a website. Decades ago it was expected that a business have a listing in the yellow pages of their local telephone directory. In the 21st century, it is expected that business have a website.

A website provides you with inexpensive advertising. Where else can you advertise your consultancy, in multiple categories, 24×7, for less than 55 cents a day? That figure includes web hosting, a domain name, unlimited email addresses and a blog that you can easily update yourself. Heck, a cup of coffee will cost you more than that.

Your website can provide your clients with value-added services. You can add a “clients only” area to your website where your clients get together in a website forum or bulletin board and talk among themselves and share information. A “clients only” area can contain HR updates and other news just for your clients. What you can do with your website is limited only by your imagination and budget.

A website is environmentally friendly. No trees are felled when a website is created. It’s all bits and bytes and a small way you can get on the “green” bandwagon because every little bit and byte helps .

FastCompany has launched the Influence Project. You can go to http://fcinf.com/v/dlew/welcome to register yourself as an influencer or to vote for someone who’s already registered as an influencer. Everyone who registers gets their picture in the November 2010 issue of FastCompany.

Of course, you want to thank me for telling you about this hot, hot, hot opportunity . Go to http://fcinf.com/v/dlew and when my caricature pops up on the screen, click the big blue button that says “spread Donna’s influence further.”

What do you think of FastCompany’s Influence Project? Did you register? Did you vote for me ? How can you leverage your registration as an influencer in your marketing efforts? Leave a comment and let me know!

Why: do you use social media or why do you want to use social media? Is your social media participation geared to staying in touch with friends? Is it to enhance client relationships? Is it to gain new clients?

Who: directly relates to why. If you participate in social media to stay in touch with friends or to enhance client relationships, then you already know the who, but if you participate in social media to reach potential new clients, then who refers to your target market.

Who is your target market? You’re probably thinking “everyone.” Marketing to everyone, though, is like trying to hit a bullseye with a needle from several miles away. Although “everyone” may seem like a large target that’s impossible to miss, it’s for exactly that reason that you don’t want to market to everyone — everyone is too large a target market. There are too many variables in the “everyone” target market. You need to narrow down your target market from everyone to a more manageable niche, and there are lots of niches to choose from.

Sit down right now and think about your strengths. What areas of human resources (HR) do you excel in or prefer? Maybe you should focus your effort on compensation or maybe training or maybe leadership development. Maybe you should remain a generalist but focus your marketing efforts on heavy industry, or small business, or new and emerging businesses. By narrowing your marketing focus away from everyone, you’ll save yourself time and effort and produce better marketing results.

Where: relates to where does your target market gather and hang out? What forms of connecting does your target market use? This is where the “birds of a feather” element comes into play. Chances are pretty good that your target market doesn’t hang out at meetings, forums, email lists and websites that HR consultants hang out in. The desire to hang out with others in your industry is primal, but hanging out and following other HR consultants won’t gain you clients unless HR consultants are your target market.

You need to invest the time and effort in finding out where the members of your target market hangs out, and then you need to hang out in those places yourself. LinkedIn and Twitter are very popular social media hangouts for HR consultants, but unless other HR professionals are your potential clients, you don’t want to follow other HR professionals. Utilize LinkedIn to find groups of people in your target market and join them. Utilize search engines to find your target market on the Internet. Spend 95% of your social media activity with your target market and only 5% of your social media activity with your specific industry (other HR professionals).

What: refers to what social media activities are you going to engage in to reach your target market? Will you join the same social media sites they join and lurk until someone asks a question you can answer? Will you go to in-person conferences, training and networking meetings that they attend? Of course, your best bet is a combination of the two, but you shouldn’t spend all your online social media activity time just listening.

Start by listening and after you’ve gotten comfortable with the flow, do some postings yourself. On online social media sites, don’t use in-your-face marketing. Instead, use information marketing. Post the url to an interesting blog post, preferably yours. Post the url for the Department of Labor (DOL) announcement about a new employment law/regulation; include a comment that you’re willing to explain the announcement to those who don’t understand government-speak. Tweet from an HR conference you’re attending.

When: actually refers to how often. How often should you participate in social media? If you’re using social media for keeping up with friends, how often is dictated by how much online time you want to spend with your friends. If you use social media for enhancing client relationships or to gain clients, how often translates to as often as possible. Because that can sound daunting, I recommend a minimum of once a week to three times a week. If you choose once a week, plan to spend at least an hour total time on social media sites. If you choose three times a week or more, plan to spend a total of 30 minutes on social media sites.

Summary: There you go; the who, what, when, where and why of a successful social media marketing plan for your HR consultancy with the emphasis on plan. Everything you do in your consultancy should have a plan, including social media marketing.

What is your social media marketing plan? Does it include the five elements of who, what, when, where and why, or does it include different elements? Please share your social media marketing know-how with everyone by leaving a comment.

Although this post has nothing to do with human resource virtual assisting, it does concern one of the administrative assistant’s responsibilities — covering the boss’ butt, otherwise known as making sure the boss is aware of everything.

When I first became aware of the FTC’s new ruling governing the use of endoresments, testimonials, etc., I thought that everyone must be aware of the ruling, but during my travels around the Net, I found that many were not aware of the ruling so here goes.

In December 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the U.S.A. established a set of guidelines regarding the use of endoresments, testimonials, opinions, reviews, etc. on the Internet. Although the FTC’s intentions are good, the ruling is vague and overly broad. Take for example the ruling’s title, “Guidelines Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” gives the impression that the new ruling covers only advertisers, but as you read through it, you’ll find that the ruling covers bloggers, review writers, opinion web sites, etc. As a result, different readers of the ruling have different interpretations. Some say the ruling doesn’t apply to them, others say it applies to everyone and the FTC itself says it will enforce the ruling as it sees fit which begs the question:

How do you know if you’re in violation of the rule? Do you wait for the FTC to hit you with a fine?

The best, plain english explanation I found was on ClickNewz, and I invite you to go over there and read their blog posting about the new FTC ruling, “The FTC Update — In Plain English” (http://www.clicknewz.com/2061/ftc-update/) and then decide for yourself if the ruling applies to you.

After you’ve read about the FTC’s new ruling, please hop on back here and tell me what you think.