Resume Writing in the Summer Months

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Summer is right around the corner and that means summer vacation. Children are home from school. Vacation plans are pending, and resume clients begin to alter their schedules too. Some jobseekers take the summer off from looking for a job. Here are some thoughts on preparing your resume writing business for the summer months.

Step #1:  Take a Look at Your History
What happened last summer? Did sales go up? Did profits decline? Did you have trouble relying on subcontract writers? Did you have way too much free time on your hands? History often repeats itself. If you can document what occurred last year by looking at the data and your analytics, then you may be able to use that information to plan ahead.

Most resume writers report that the summer months are slow for them. After the push of Spring graduations, there's usually a lull until late August. Some of that is due to the resume writer taking some time off, but it's true that many jobseekers (especially those with children) cut back on their job searches during the summer.

Knowing this information, you can plan ahead. You might launch a special offer during the slow months, or use that downtime to take a vacation. You can also use slow periods to build your mailing list, update your website, or create an information product to generate passive income.

Step #2: Schedule Ahead and Automate
If you’re busy during the summer months, then scheduling ahead is extremely important. And there are many things you can do right now so your summer is relaxed and easy. For example, you can write your blog posts now and schedule them for the summer. You can do the same for your email messages and social media communications (using a service like Hootsuite). You don’t have to lift a finger.

Step #3: Get Help
You can also simply schedule downtime. Many solo resume writers simply take a hiatus or time away from their career service business. You can also bring on a subcontract resume writer to help with the workload while you take a break, instead of taking an extended vacation. You run the risk of losing clients if you’re gone too long.

Summer will be here before you know it. Taking steps now will help you enjoy the warmer months while still growing and managing your resume writing business. It’s smart business and it’ll save you future stress and anxiety.

How to Use Evernote In Your Resume Writing Business

I was inspired to write today's blog post by a thread on the Career Thought Leaders Consortium LinkedIn Group.

The more I use Evernote, the more I grow to love it. If you're not familiar with Evernote, it's a system that enables users to capture information and store it in one place. I use Evernote on my laptop and on my iPhone, and when I enter information in the app on one device, it syncs and is available on *all* my devices. (There is also an Evernote website that you can sign into, so you can access your information anywhere you have a web connection, too.)

According to the developers, “Our goal at Evernote is to give everyone the ability to easily capture any moment, idea, inspiration, or experience whenever they want using whichever device or platform they find most convenient, and then to make all of that information easy to find.”

You can capture web pages, photos, handwritten notes, old resumes – just about anything you can imagine, you can collect in Evernote. 

One thing I use Evernote for is content planning. When I'm putting together information for future blog posts, public speaking opportunities, teleseminars, special reports, and Pass-Along Materials, I start an Evernote "Note" for each project. 

You can also use Evernote to create a monthly content plan for marketing your resume writing business. A content plan is an organized list of the articles, blog posts, newsletters, emails and other business content you’re going to publish each month. It includes keywords, publication date, purpose/goal, and audience information.  You can do an Evernote "note" for each month.

Using Evernote
Evernote allows you to create Notebooks and to tag each note with searchable keywords. This makes content planning, creation, and research extremely efficient. With Evernote you can:

• Store content ideas – blog posts and headlines that you read online can be stored. You can also take notes on each idea and store them with the link. For example, maybe you’re planning a series of blog posts on using LinkedIn in your job search. You might add various articles and tips to your notepad labeled “LinkedIn blog content” or “July 2012 blog post content.” You can also add your notes to each article.
• Store keyword research – you can also add your keyword research to each month’s content plan. All your relevant ideas and keywords in one key location.
• Content – have you ever been out and about and had an idea for a blog post or article? You sit right down, grab your notebook or smartphone, and start writing. Then what? With Evernote you can add it to your content file and you’re good to go. 
• Content research – in addition to content ideas, you can store your content research, including sources and references in the same location you store your content. It makes it very easy to find everything you need. When I'm researching a new topic, I copy-and-paste links to articles I'm using as research, screen shots, PDFs, and my own notes and thoughts.

Evernote also lets you store images. If you’re collecting images for your blog posts, then you can keep them in the same folder with your content. (I recommend Fotolia for inexpensive graphics to illustrate your blog posts.)

Another unique use of Evernote (not business-related) is to store health notes for family members. I know I'm not the only resume writer who is part of the "sandwich generation" -- taking care of our parents and our kids. I use Evernote to keep track of my dad's doctor's visits, my mother-in-law's cancer treatment, and my aunt's health information. I can take notes on my laptop at doctor visits, and then reference the information anytime on my iPhone. (Note: Evernote does require a password for access, but it is not an encrypted site, so don't include sensitive information like social security numbers, passwords, or insurance information.)

Getting Started on Evernote
Evernote is free. They also offer a premium version that allows users to add others to their account. It also provides more storage space, the ability to use your info offline and many other beneficial features. It’s just $45 a year or $5/month. If you struggle to consistently plan your content or you haven’t found a good organization system, consider Evernote. It also works on mobile devices so you can always have it with you.

I'm just starting to use Evernote Hello ... I may blog about it later. If you're using Evernote, I'd love to know how you're using it in your resume writing business! Leave a comment below!

Guest Blogging for PageRank

You may have heard of the term "PageRank" as a measure of the popularity of a particular website. PageRank is an algorithm (named after Larry Page) and used by Google to measure the "status" of a website based on links, especially links from other sites deemed to be "important."

The higher your PageRank, the more prominence given to your site in organic search engine results. Guest blogging (as outlined in last week's "Guest Blogging How-To" series) can be a great way to build your website or blog's PageRank.

You can check the PageRank of a blog or website using this tool:

Check Page Rank of your Web site pages instantly:

This page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

How do you get PageRank using guest blogging?

The Easiest Method To Boost Your Blog's PageRank
The easiest method to get PR 2 to PR 4 guest blogging backlinks is to use MyBlogGuest. (I talked about them on Day 2 of the series, in a post on "Finding Blogs Seeking Guest Bloggers.")

In short, MyBlogGuest is a free forum where webmasters who want guest bloggers go to look for guest bloggers. Guest bloggers who want to write for other people also use the site to find sites to blog on.

Check the PageRank of the sites seeking guest bloggers before contacting the webmaster. Also take a look at the number of other links the site is linking to. Assess the level of quality of the content. Is this a site you want to be associated with?

With PageRank-oriented guest blogging, you'll be playing a numbers game. Instead of always going for quality, sometimes you just want to get as many PR2 and PR3 links as possible.

Systematize It!
The bottleneck for generating medium PageRank links from guest blogging won't be a lack of webmasters who'll let you guest blog for them. Instead, the bottleneck will most likely be your production capacity -- how many blog posts you can produce.

It's not at all unlikely that you could get as many as 10 webmasters to agree to let you guest blog for them every week. That's 40 PR 2 to PR 4 links every month. Keep that up for a few months and your PageRank will skyrocket.

However, you'll have a tough time keeping up with that kind of volume unless you're dedicating yourself just to guest blogging.

It's not just the writing of articles. It's also continually browsing MyBlogGuest for new opportunities. It's pitching your site. It's keeping track of who's replied and who hasn't. It's writing the actual content. It's then tracking all your pieces of content to make sure the site owner actually put it up.

Instead of juggling all this work, systematize it. Create a list of all the active "connections" you have with the other site owners. Make notes about who you've contacted and where you are in the process of getting linked to.

Guest blogging for PageRank is all about systematizing the process of getting moderate and occasionally high PageRank links.

Guest Blogging Versus Other Methods For Getting Traffic To Your Resume Writing Business Website

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After writing last week's series about guest blogging, I got even MORE emails from resume writers wanting to know more about guest blogging. In today's blog post, I'll answer one common theme:

"How does guest blogging stack up against other methods to get visitors (traffic) to my resume writing business website?"

Guest Blogging versus Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Many resume writers are familiar with "paying" for traffic (visitors) to their website, using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising -- like using Google's AdWords or Facebook ads or similar services.

Guest blogging usually precedes PPC. They aren't mutually exclusive. Most resume writers use blogging to drive "free" traffic to their resume writing business website, while PPC ads are "paid" traffic.

In order to succeed in paid advertising, you need to have a very streamlined conversion funnel. (It needs to be clear how prospects can become resume clients; otherwise, you're driving visitors to your site, but not turning them into clients.) In other words, you need to know that for every $1 you spend on PPC, you're earning $1.20 or more back from the lifetime value of that customer -- even if you lose money for the first few weeks or months. Otherwise, paid advertising can quickly consume a lot of your money.

Most guest blog posts won't get you as much traffic as PPC. It won't be as consistent either. (You'll likely get an initial surge of traffic, and then it will fall off.) However, the traffic you'll get will be targeted and -- most important, it's free.

One great strategy is to use guest blog posting to fine-tune your funnel and make sure you can convert before you move onto paid traffic methods.

Guest Blogging versus Article Marketing
This is one of those rare cases where there's a clear winner. There's just no question about it: guest blogging beats article marketing, hands down.

Guest blogging can get you on some of the top blogs in the industry. It'll help build your reputation and send real people to your site. As I mentioned in my "Using Content to Capture New Career Clients," the advantage of guest blogging is "Go where the people are." If you guest post on a popular blog, you're going where the people are (and you know what kind of people they are!). Article directory sites can draw a lot of traffic, but it's not targeted traffic. (And even when your articles are reposted, they're not always on related sites. I've found my careers-oriented articles posted on all kinds of irrelevant blogs.)

Article marketing will get you into article directories and perhaps a few small, low-authority fringe sites.

Guest blogging will help you build massive PageRank, while article marketing won't do much for your PageRank at all.

If you're going to go through the trouble of writing articles, you might as well do it right and go the guest blogging route.

Guest Blogging versus SEO
Should you focus your attention on SEO or on guest blogging? The best answer is to make guest blogging part of your SEO strategy.

It's true that guest blogging may not be the fastest way to build backlinks. However, the guest blog post you write will bring in real traffic, while the links you generate purely for SEO probably won't bring you much traffic at all.

This real traffic could result in both sales and additional backlinks. Furthermore, people often underestimate Google's ability to figure out what a real backlink is.

In short, you don't have to make guest blog posting your exclusive tactic. Use it as part of your SEO strategy to bring in real visitors to your resume writing business website.