by Guest Blogger, Lena West, Chief Social Media Strategist at xynoMedia Technology

I got an email from a colleague today and she's seriously hurting for cash right now. She's got a good business and a professionally designed website - she just can't seem to turn all that goodwill and collateral into cold, hard dollars for her business. What she needs is full-on marketing of the grassroots kind.

Step 1: Be OK with it -- for the moment.

Your situation isn't going to change overnight so you need to do what you need to do to get things done.  If that means a night job at Wal-Mart, that's what that means. It is what it is. The main thing is for you to realize two important things:

• This is a temporary set back and;
• You can get yourself out of this.

Step 2: Accept that you're going to have to use time instead of money.

When you're cash poor, you need to use your time -- and use it wisely.  So, any place that you would normally spend money - you're going to have to do it yourself. That said, use your brain with this one. There are certain skill sets - graphic design comes to mind - that you just can't learn but, aside from those types of skill sets, you're going to have to do a lot of work on your own.

You can't be cash poor AND time poor.

Step 3: Make a list.

These are all of the things that you could do to get cash flowing in - not just right now but for the long term.

When you're doing marketing yourself, there's a ton of things you can do:

• blogging
• guest blogging
• blog commenting
• lead generation tools
• cold-calling (yuk!)
• referral harvesting
• keep-in-touch marketing
• power networking
• speaking
• writing articles
• teleclasses
• webinars
• newsletters
• ezines

Step 4: Prioritize your options. 

Some tactics, like referral harvesting, will net results faster than say, ezines. Put all the short-term result-generating activities at the top and long-term activities at the bottom of your list - literally not metaphorically.

Step 5: Pick 3.

As you can see from Step 3, there are loads of activities. Where most people get tripped up is trying to do it all. Wroooooong move. Select three and then do those WELL and CONSISTENTLY.

Step 5a. Be consistent.

If you're going to blog, blog daily at the same time every day.

If you're going to harvest referrals, make a set number of calls per day every day.

Don't think about it. JUST DO IT.

Bottomline: I'd be interested in having any of you, who are currently cash strapped, to go through these steps. I mean REALLY do them - give it your all. And, if in 90 days time, you don't have any more money or clients than today, I'll eat my shorts.