Here's a great way to add value and help your clients or contacts that costs nothing and doesn't take much time: act as an informal Internet clipping service for your key contacts.
Unless you to devote a lot of time to this clipping activity, don't do it on a wholesale basis, that is, don't do it all the time for everyone. If you have 10-20 main clients, however, it doesn't take much time to search on their names or company names on Google and, if you notice anything, take it a step further and let them know about it.
Here's how you can inform your contacts about what you found:
• call with congratulations
• send an e-mail with the link (in case they missed it)
• mention it in your e-zine, newsletter, or blog (and then follow up with a phone call or e-mail for a double win).
I'd recommend running a search once a month for your "A" list clients, but you'll have to balance the time and effort spent with the results. If you find that you have a significant number of contacts who are often in the news or mentioned on the Internet, there are for pay online clipping services you can use. Contact clipping searches is also a great task for an admin or virtual assistant to perform - perhaps sending you search summaries so you can decide which to pass on to your clients.
