This Tuesday's Fit by Five is extraordinarily useful. Here are five ways to engage your women customers - with content, advice, insight, and a way to help the world.

Women don't just go online to shop, though I talk a lot about women and online shopping. We go online to communicate - to learn - and to connect. If you engage us by communicating with us, by teaching us something, and by connecting with us on a personal level - you'll win our favor. That's the first step to winning our business. The second step - is good customer service. We'll talk about that another time.

Today, I'm providing 5 ways to get women engaged. Think carefully about these ideas - specifically, about how they might relate to your business. How can you use them to show women you care; care about how we think, how we feel, and how we perceive you?

1. Rather than save the best for last, I'm going hog wild here - actually, I'm going BLOG WILD! My good friend and great coach, Andy Wibbels, has a book coming out in early April - called BLOG WILD. You should get it. Pre-order it. Visit this link for a preview. This book is the best introduction to blogging that I've seen to date. It covers all the basics...without getting too technical. Andy knows how to break the complicated down to just a few, easily understandable points. Blog Wild is small on presence, but HUGE on great advice. (it's small enough to carry in your purse, ladies - no excuse not to buy it, and bring it with you everywhere you go!)

2. Tomorrow is World Water Day. I hope you plan on donating to this so-worthwhile cause. Not because I'm asking you to, but because water is - well, it's one of the most important natural resources on the planet, and this great organization needs our help to provide good, clean water to women and children - in places that good, clean water is not as plentiful as it is here, or where you are. Susan Getgood was kind enough to post on this, as was Andy. Good people - like you. They're helping. Can you?

Note from Laurel Groth, Sr. Communications Manager at Water Partners, Intl: "Lack of access to safe drinking water has an incredible impact on women and girls.  Giving them access to safe water changes their lives and the lives of their families. It is a sad fact that while water and sanitation facilities are used by both women and men, it is, disproportionately, women and girls who are responsible for collecting the household’s water. In Ethiopia, where traditional water sources are drying up, women are often walking 2-3 hours just to find water, which they then painstakingly collect by the CUPFUL. 

Amazing things happen when access to safe water is brought to a community.  Time that was spent collecting water can now be used to pursue more productive pursuits, such as work and school.  Women often begin to use wastewater to irrigate household gardens, which significantly increases the amount of food available for families, while the surplus can be sold for income.  When you add these factors together and multiply them by many households, our projects have the power to transform entire communities."

3. This note is an update on my friend Lisa Delman's interview (and video) at Hallmark. Lisa is the author of Dear Mom...Everything I've Always Wanted You to Know, Daughters Share Letters from the Heart, and a former Lip-sticking Smart Woman Online. Her video is a tribute to her Mother. Heartfelt and emotional. Something worth watching. Visit Lisa's blog - which has been dormant lately because she is working on so many wonderful new projects, but which is worth your visit, nonetheless.

4. Andrea Learned, author of Don't Think Pink, and blogger at this blog, reminds us that this is Woman's History month. Her recent post on "We've come a long way baby" is worth reading, if you truly aspire to be succesful marketing to women - both online and off. Andrea has insight many of the rest of us lack - she comes from a different generation than I do, and than many of my contemporaries. I look to her for her thoughts on how life is working for women in this new millennium, where young women don't drag along the baggage of that old Dick and Jane world I grew up in. Reading Andrea should be on your daily schedule.

5. Good friend Toby Bloomberg, over at Diva Marketing Blog, penned a recent post on Targeting Ads to Biz Women. I'm including this here for two reasons; 1) She talks about PINK, a new women's magazine. Not one I'm fond of, as noted in this blog post. BUT...in the spirit of entrepreneurship and gals being pals - as my friend Mary would say...I wanted to 2) Show you that sometimes women disagree. It doesn't mean we stop being friends!  Toby's take on PINK is right on! I like her comments regarding the ads in the magazine, where she notes that the PriceWaterHouseCoopers' ad got to her... where it counts;

"It spoke to me. I thought it was lovely. It evoked emotion. I wanted to reach out and .. and .. and .. do what? Did PriceWaterhouseCooper want me to call them for a consulting job and they do what? Was I suppose to know what PriceWaterhouseCooper is doing these days after all the mergers and reorgs?  Or was this simply a feel-good branding ad that I could turn into a Hallmark card?"

I hope PriceWaterhouseCoopers was (is?) listening.

There you have it. A rounded out Fit by Five, today. Plenty of input on how to connect with (not TO - WITH) your women customers. Be advised - if you get us, the way the PWC ad got Toby, give us a hint on what you want us to do.