This week in the Client Spotlight is Ann Levine, Esq., Law School Admissions Consulting Expert and author of The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert. Ann is the former director of admissions for two ABA law schools, and more than 100,000 law school applicants have relied upon her Law School Expert blog to guide them through the application process.

What do you wish you’d known about creating an online presence before you started?

I wish I’d understood the importance of branding. I started in 2004 with a free template website that looked TERRIBLE. I spent a lot of time teaching myself everything and thought that because I had a lot of credible information on my site that the site itself should appear credible. A year later I upgraded to a basic web design and paid about $700 for it – which felt like a lot at the time. It looked better, but was really still a template. It did the trick but didn’t brand me because it was fairly generic. Only when I (literally) sat down with someone who understood my brand and what my online presence needed to project did I feel like I was projecting credibility and deserving of charging higher prices to my clients as a result.

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

To employ experts. People hire me to have an expert at their side through the law school application process, and I hire others because I don’t have time to become an expert on web marketing, SEO, PPC, etc. So, I hired people to help me who already know this stuff better than I ever could learning it on my own. It’s not as expensive as you might imagine, but it only works if you work with people who “get” what you’re all about. I flailed using big companies that I found online and only thrived once I found that one person who understood what I meant in a sentence long email or 2 second phone call and didn’t need me to coach her to get what I wanted.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

Use a blog to provide quality information and form relationships with others in your field and related fields. If you are good with people, Twitter and Facebook. Network constantly, and help others in their quests because good acts come back around.

This week in the Client Spotlight is Laurie Richter, author of Put Me In, Coach! A Parent’s Guide to Winning the Game of College Recruiting. Laurie’s book is an essential guidebook for parents and their student-athletes who want to be recruited to compete in athletics at the college level.

What do you wish you’d known about creating an online presence before you started?

I wish I’d had a better understanding of how search engines work to drive people to your site, and how to develop language and content based on that. I still don’t know enough about it and it’s not what I want to spend my time thinking about. My instincts were to just write good content without regard to how it shows up in search engines.

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

The most important thing I’ve learned is that if you want to be successful at selling something on the web, FIRST you need to build a relationship with people who come to your site and you need to provide them with something real whether it’s content, product or something else. You need to give a little before you can take. I’ve also learned that it’s a constant process of fine tuning – your site is always a work in progress.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

Try to look at your site from the point of view of someone coming to it and what their needs are – vs. just focusing on what you want to get out there and say about yourself and your product or service. If you misjudge what people need and want because you’re focused on you and not them, your site won’t be relevant.

This week in the Client Spotlight is Diane Marie Pinkard, author of Just Treat Me Like I Matter: The Heart of Sales. Diane’s passion lies in the business of human relations. Her love for teaching, training, and selling ultimately evolved into her own personal study about human dynamics and what makes people tick. Her book offers inspiring tools and techniques for developing strong interpersonal relationship with clients.

There is a saying: “The reason the world is round is so people will not be able to see what is coming or lies ahead.” Well, I can really relate to that. For a long time I have had a passion to write a book. And I did write a book. But my belief was that writing the book was the majority of the work; that everything would just fall into place and everybody would want to buy my book. Wow, was I in for a HUGE RUDE awakening. Writing the the book was just a tip of the iceburg! The work truly starts after the book is written – that is my lesson learned! So the advice I have for anyone wishing to follow your dreams – be sure you also are EXTREMELY passionate and tenacious about fulfilling your dreams. And that you have the positive mindset to travel the journey and weather the storms to accomplish your dreams and goals. Also, you must have the unbending commitment, belief, and faith to enjoy the ride (up and down), learn the lessons (many) and tackle the challenges (also, many) that present themselves along the way. Most important: Come from a place of what you have to offer to the universe – not what you expect (or hope) the universe is going to give you (i.e. notoreity, money). These lovely gifts will naturally come when you properly align your forces with what you have to give – not with your expectations of what you want to get! And when you are committed this special place – from your heart and soul – you naturally open up to the universe and the right people come to help you.

This week in the Client Spotlight is Bill Trimble, author of Screw It! I’ll Be My Own Contractor. Bill provides expert experience-based advice to the home owner who wants to tackle large home improvements themself. Bill’s website highlights his current book, but is built to be able to highlight future projects moving forward.

What do you wish you’d known about creating an online presence before you started?

Honestly – that it was relatively simple. I anticipated much more time and effort than it actually took to get up and running.

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

I have discovered that having an on-line presence means very little until you can create traffic to your site. There are hundreds of millions of people on the internet every day, but they have to know how to find you.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

Have a concept in mind before you go to a professional. Think about what you want the home page to look like and what you want to say there. How many pages or tabs are essential? What are the color schemes you want to use? Keep it simple, you can add on after you’re live and see what kind of feedback you get. Then give it to Kate. She will have you on the internet before you can say Kate McMillan. I’ve received many positive comments on my website, so I am really proud of it.

This week in the Client Spotlight is Diana Raab, author of the award-winning memoir Regina’s Closet & other great works. Diana’s comprehensive website highlights her appearances, her current projects, her future projects, her press mentions and reviews, and lots of information about her published works. She updates it frequently to keep the content fresh, and is always exploring new ways to reach her audience online.

You must think of all the ways you can to drive traffic to your site.

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

I learned that whenever possible you need to link back to your website, whether you are answering emails or responding on someone’s blog or sending snail mail. It also helps to join as many social organizations as possible.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

Keep your website up-to-date. Instead of bombarding Kate with one or two updates more frequently, what I do is keeping a running list and wait until I have at least 5-10 items which need updating before sending to her.

This week in the Client Spotlight is Linda Allan, author of I Quit! Cigarettes, Candy Bars & Booze. Linda has been slowly growing her web presence to serve her book marketing through web articles, Tip of the Week subscriptions, press releases, and blogging.

What do you wish you’d known about creating an online presence before you started?

How easy it actually is to write a blog both for yourself and on other sites, and to write articles. Also, how important it is to dialogue with people who share your interest. And these things are all free!

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

How important it is to spend the time to get your name “out there” for search engine recognition. The more you write, the more the search engines will keep your name right up top.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

It can be overwhelming in the beginning to try and figure out the best way to get your name and business known. So start slow & get help – with your own blog, then maybe articles, then internet radio shows… There is so much out there to do!

This week in the Client Spotlight is Web Marketing Therapist, Lorrie Thomas. Lorrie and her team of Wild Web Women (myself included) offer their clients “a full-service marketing agency – a team of ‘wild web woman’ marketing specialists with web, business, and creative expertise. [They] serve organizations and professionals as a virtual, ‘Think-Tank,’ bridging the art and science of the web with strategic expertise and execution.”

Lorrie is a true wealth of knowledge when it comes to web marketing, and along with her team bring huge success to their clients.

I wish I would have known (and I hired my first web designer in 2004) that there were SO MANY shapes and sizes of skill sets when it came to “web designers.” I learned very quickly that many graphic artists are simply “artists” (not web marketing talented) and that does not mean that their artistic abilities translate into web marketing best practices. Now that I know that, I ONLY hire web designer/developers that can take my web marketing direction for my sites or my client sites (like Kate!). My ideas are only as good as the people that execute. I will not work with amateur web professionals, it wastes my time and my client’s time.

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

Just ONE THING?? Come on! I run an online marketing agency, I learn something new EVERY DAY!

Seriously though, the one thing I learned about online marketing (years ago) is that online marketing work always requires WORK! I know, buzzkill… but it’s true. Web marketing requires management. Online Marketing is an ongoing process, web marketing rules change, the need to make optimizations, test, evolve, tweak and adapt is always there, and new channels (like social media, online PR, etc) will require education, testing and staying current with trends.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

Educate yourself! Read blogs, ask questions, start small and snowball. If you do not understand a piece of online marketing, DO NOT DO IT until you understand if it makes sense for you and your company. Online marketing is still the wild, wild west… there are a lot of options, self-educating helps you make smart choices. Our rule at Web Marketing Therapy is STRATEGY FIRST, EXECUTION SECOND.

This post is the first in a series of weekly interviews with clients where I pose questions that I’m hoping will help people as they embark on their own projects.

This week I’ve asked three questions of Gail Kearns (Book Shepherd, Project Editor & Production Coordinator) and Lucy Levenson (Online & Offline Marketing Specialist) at To Press & Beyond, a full service book shepherding agency.

1. What do you wish you’d known about creating an online presence before you started?

You must be prepared to work on your website regularly each week. You need to be constantly finding new content to keep it fresh and interesting. Blogging, posting articles, keeping up to date with endorsements, finding opportunities to link to other sites in your niche, it is much more of a commitment that I had understood.

Visitors will stay on a website for only a few seconds if they cannot immediately find what they want. Make sure critical content and information is quickly available at the top of the page and it loads quickly.

2. What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

What is “IN” is constantly changing. When we started it was Google ad words and per click sales – now it is all about social media, like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. You have to be constantly educating yourself.

3. What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

For authors with one book and no other products, it is best to direct visitors to Amazon to purchase a title, rather than setting up e-commerce on the author’s site. A large percentage of buyers will go to Amazon anyway. As Amazon provides free exposure worldwide, authors need to optimize their Amazon author page. Having a title properly listed on Amazon can create demand for it everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re a famous author or an unknown.