As blog writers and online marketers, we face a variety of difficult professional issues. Organizing workflow, setting up future business leads, and honing skills are the usual concerns, but sometimes all of those are shelved when we aren’t 100% on board with what the client wants to do.

We walk a fine line of maintaining our expertise, and wanting to be cooperative with the client’s wishes. It can be a very subtle feeling, but generally when a client asks you to do something you don’t feel good about, it falls into one of these categories:

1. They aren’t willing to invest the time and money necessary to make a strategy succeed.
2. They are committed to a strategy you don’t think will accomplish the goal.
3. Ethically, you don’t feel good about their goals.

These are very distinct issues, but they touch on the same conundrum: When do you go with the flow and hope for the best, and when do you stand your ground?

In the case of the first point of conflict, it can be useful to point out similar campaigns by other companies that were successful, and examine the investment that was necessary to make it work. If you can’t achieve a greater buy-in from your client, it’s time to do your best, and hope that if it doesn’t accomplish all the goals you hoped, that they will remember your earlier cautions and devote more resources next time.

If your client chooses a course of action that you just don’t think will work for what they want to do, it can be a hard decision to go along with it. Each day, you feel a stronger uneasiness as you plod along on a course you don’t believe will work. If you’ve tried to educate your client about why you don’t feel their plan is ideal, perhaps you can try to take a detached view and think of the process as an educational experience. Take notes along the way about where the plan falls short, what you would have done differently, and maybe you can write a white paper about the endeavor later.

The last situation can be the most uncomfortable. If your client is trying to use your services in order to pull off a less-than-scrupulous business goal, or even just something that goes against your personal beliefs, it can be almost impossible to smile and nod, let alone perform at your highest level. Depending on your financial and professional situation, this is the time when you might need to cut and run. However, if you need to maintain a civil business relationship, this can require a little finesse. But then, you’ve over-committed with other work. You don’t feel you can give them the attention they deserve. You’re not the best fit for the job. It can’t be helped. (wink, wink)

Only you can decide if you’re able to work through the conflict when a client’s work is at odds with your ideas and personality. Have you ever been in this position, and what did you end up doing?

Finding time to do your own online marketing is difficult.

In Arabic countries, there’s a saying, “The carpenter’s house has a loose door.” Here, we say “The cobbler’s children have no shoes.” Basically, professionals all around the world, for hundreds of years, have been neglecting their own promotion.

We all have this problem. Once we have enough projects to keep us busy, the choice of disappointing a paying client and working on our own promotion is a no-brainer. Of course, there’s that nagging worry in the back of our minds, “What if this or that client drops off and I haven’t been building new leads in the meantime?” It is the thought that keeps us up at night, but never seems to get any of our time during the day.

Like most challenges in life, the answer lies in summoning some extra discipline. Still, there are ways to build promotion of your own business into your day without feeling like you are sacrificing time for your paying projects.

1. Three days a week, get up half an hour early and work only on your own promotion. Whether it is the weekend when you don’t have the usual morning commitments, or a few weekdays when you want to get a jump on the day, use that uncluttered time for your own business. Write a blog post. Find three articles and automate their postings for the week. Research speaking engagements or networking events you want to attend. 
2. Maximize guest appearances. Chances are, you have clients, colleagues, industry leaders, and others who would be willing to exchange promotional time with you. Once a month, we invite a guest to participate in our “Junk Trunk Challenge” and contribute a blog post. We also love Roundpeg’s “More Than a Few Words” feature, in which they interview someone of interest in their marketing world. This one isn’t a huge time-saver, since you will most likely want to reciprocate the contribution, but the amplification of addressing your audience and the audience of your collaborator will make it worth the effort.
3. Build reminders into your routine to spend time on your business’ image.Sometimes, it isn’t so much that we don’t have time to promote our business, we simply don’t realize how much time has passed by. You know that show your significant other loves to watch that you hate? While you’re sitting there on the couch, use that weekly reminder to set up ten tweets for the week. Every time you log into Klout, use it as a prompt to scan the “People You Might Know” section of other social networks. Just put your kid in time-out? Use that three minutes to set up a lunch date with someone you’d like to network with.

It’s never easy to set aside your paying business to focus on your own PR. It is an ongoing battle that will never be easy, but we’ve all got to find a way to use whatever tricks we can to get those shoes made for the kids. Good luck!

It can be confusing to know how social media would specifically benefit your business. It’s a lot of work, why go to all that trouble if it isn’t worth it? You have a vague feeling you “should” be doing blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and so on, but you don’t know exactly why.

For physicians, dentists, optometrists, and any other medical specialty, social media primarily does four things:

1. Improves your rank in a Google search for your services. Every time you are able to link your name, your website, and the keywords that relate to your business, Google sees you as a better match when someone does a search for your area of practice. There are specialists who can help you improve what is called “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO), but as long as you incorporate your city and words that someone might use to search for your services, you are on the right track.
2. Keeps you in the front of potential clients’ or referring doctors’ minds. There is a long-established theory of marketing that aims simply to be the first name that comes to a person’s mind when they need your service. Every time someone shares a photo that you have posted, or retweets an article you tweeted, your name is reinforced in the consciousness of others.
3. Establishes you as an authority on your subject matter. There are few better ways to gain the trust of a potential patient than to have a strong online presence. Studies show that people perceive businesses with up-to-date social media and websites are also more cutting-edge in their professional realm. Outside of front-of-mind marketing, you are creating concrete examples of knowledge in your field when you provide information your patients are seeking, in an accessible medium.
4. Humanizes you in your community. Those photos you post of your staff doing a benefit walk/run, the reaction to a Indianapolis Colts game, the interactions with a referral business, all serve to show that you and your employees are “real people” who are vested in the community.

The most important thing is to be consistent and patient with whatever social networks you choose. With regular attention and enough time, you will see your practice grow from your efforts in social media.

If you want to read a blog post about the absolute latest and greatest tool to track your social media metrics as a function of your click-through-rate versus your viral reach, this isn’t going to be the source for that. My goal for this blog is to tell you about Likewise Social, discuss interesting trends I see in marketing and business, and help you understand what social media will or won’t do for you.

My interest is in the people who own businesses. Why did they start the business? How did they get where they are? Where do they want to be in a year? My husband teases me because I often ask these questions of complete strangers. I can’t help it. I truly want to know the story behind a face. Now, I am fortunate enough to have a business that allows me to ask these questions and not just sound nosy. Better yet, I get to actually help people get to their next step and keep going.

No software in the world can show you that kind of personal investment.