Do you Make this Mistake in Building Your Coaching Business Online?

You don’t make money on the phone (or in person) coaching.

Yeah – that’s collecting money.

You don’t actually make money unless you’re marketing your coaching business.

This was actually my second biggest mistake in building my coaching business -  not realizing:

• that my online activities – blogging, social networking, article publishing – were actually building my coaching business for me 24/7
• that I needed a daily/weekly plan for my activities to calculate and predict a response on my efforts – a Return on (time) Investment

We could probably argue about that all day long, but just think about this – Nobody knows who you are, or about your coaching message unless you’re publishing your coaching solution and making relationships. That’s where the real money is made.

If you don’t build brand awareness for you and your coaching business you probably won’t get hired – at least not often. Think about any client you’ve had until now. Did they know you on any level before they hired you? At the very least they knew you through a referral they trusted – but somehow your reputation preceded you. That’s what I am talking about.

You might be asking yourself – “What do I do to cultivate a business brand for my coaching business online?”

Here’s the short list with links to a few places that expand on the activity nicely:

• Post to your self-hosted blog daily
• Publish articles 3 – 5 times a week – daily if possible
• Build followers & friends on Twitter & Facebook
• Make connections on LinkedIn
• Selectively find other Social Networks to participate in depending on your nice
• Participate and read everything with in a specialty network where your ideal prospect

In fact, Chris Brogan put’s it this way:

If you’re looking to establish your online presence, and build relationships, it’s not the kind of project where you show up, build your profiles, friend a few people, and call it good. It’s a lot like tending the farm. Here are seven particular “chores” you could do every day that should prove beneficial to your online interests.

You can read his post “19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day”

Here are a few more basics to make sure your social networking profiles are set up for the best “farming” experience in cultivating relationships:

Personal Branding Tips for LinkedIn

Get More Business Show with LinkedIn Expert – Viveka von Rosen

6 Tips for Using Your Twitter Profile to Get New Followers

10 Ways to Use Facebook for Business

I cannot emphasize this enough – You must have a daily / weekly plan of these business building activities with a particular focused action of what you want to happen to establish a following and an internet presence so that you will have clients coming to you for coaching and your products.

Don’t make the mistake of not taking your online presence seriously enough – and not serioiusly enought to craft a plan to deliver results.  And if you don’t know how – hire a coach to walk you through the process.

I’d love to talk about it with you.

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Attracting Better Quality Connections by Making One Change on Twitter

I am sitting hear listening to Blog Talk Radio Host, Sandra Lee Schubert, interview with Rick Butts who just released his program Stardust Factor,  a social media workshop about how to create an authentic, attractive, persona for your and your business and I am reminded of something that I heard Rick Butts talk about last summer.

Here’s the idea as I understand it:

Everyday I “evesdrop” on Twitter conversations. I see one Twitter friend tweeting with someone I am unfamiliar with, but the conversation looks interesting so I click on their Twitter handle to open their profile, but it doesn’t end there. First thing I look at to decide whether or not I want to follow this person is if their Twitter background suggests that he or she fits the kind of person I want to follow. The very next thing I look at is whether or not this person has a url in their profile.

Here is one important thing – if he or she does not have a URL in his or her profile – I never, ever follow that person, but more about this at another time.

One of the things that Rick Butts suggested is to intentionally put a url that invites and encourages connection. So rather than just sending visitors to the home page of your blog why not create a landing page designed especially for those that discover you on Twitter?

I love this idea and I don’t know why it took me a year to decide to implement it. Okay, but realize I am not suggesting that I will, or should you create a landing page that is an email sign up – that is exactly the wrong approach, in my opinion.

I also just listened to The Fulcrum Effect by Rajesh Setty – where he defines your “personal brand” as the promise you make to the world and to the market. As Rick Butts so aptly put it on his interview with Sandra Lee Shubert, “a personal brand is a whole lot easier to pull off if it is authentic.

So with this interview and seminar processing in my brain, I am wondering how to present a friendlier invitation to connect and expand my circle of influence with Rick’s idea of a Twitter specific landing page. Here are some of my ideas:

• A video of me welcoming them as they arrive as a result of finding my Twitter profile.
• A short summary of some of the projects that I am involved in.
• A list of the books I am reading or listening too.
• A list of the different ways to connect with me including other social media & Get More Business Show

The only invitation is not to subscribe to my newsletter but rather to connect with me in my social setting if they believe I will add value to their circle of influence. What do you think? Do you have any other ideas?

Not sure exactly what I will do on this landing page for new Twitter friends but as you can see I have a couple of ideas. I will experiment with different things to see what will encourage quality connections. I need your help and would love to hear your ideas.

If you were to visit my, or someone elses Twitter profile, and click on the link in the URL – what would make you smile and encourage you to follow? What would encourage you to connect and not send you clicking on the back button like retreating from a snake pit?

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Expanding Your Circle of Influence Increases Traffic

The key to building your coaching business online is being seen where your ideal client is looking, or at least hanging out, even if they don’t know they’re “looking” you can be seen – when the time is right.

So it started on a Monday, we both showed up and connected; then by Friday we both showed up and did a fabulously inspiring show.

What?

Two coaches showed up on each other’s Twitter stream on Monday. Actually we’ve probably been following each other for 6 months. I’m seeing her tweets but not really seeing her tweets. Not sure why. But then on Monday one of the tweets really get’s my attention and I reply. Back and forth we tweet.

Am I ready for the answer? Yes, I AM ready for the answer. She sends a tweet with a link to THE life changing video. Life Changing? Yes in 24 hours I had a major breakthrough because of this simple interaction.

I send her a thank you tweet and offer to write a testimonial in gratitude for her intuition and generosity to share. By Friday morning the blog post is prepared with the story (much more detailed than this) on her blog. We’ll all set to Tweet about it and share the power of Law of Attraction and Twitter.

On Friday, early in the morning another twist enters this story. My scheduled guest, Maritza Parra, emails me that her voice is gone and she needs to reschedule. The Get More Business Show will go live with no scheduled guest.

I email an invite to my new treasured Twitter friend but she never receives until much later in the day. Fourteen minutes before the show I announce I have no guest but I’ll open the lines for listeners to ask questions – guess who my first caller is?

If you guessed that it was my new Twitter friend who had so profoundly touched my life, you’d be right. We did an hour long show discussing how opportunity and the answers we seek are all around us but sometimes our thoughts and perspective do not allow us to see because there is no framework for reference.

The moral of this true story could be any or all of the following:

• Marketing can be much more effective with proper use of Law of Attraction
• It’s amazing what happens when you make your self available to opportunity
• Setting your intentions gives you the ability to see what you’ve been missing

Are you hanging out with your ideal prospect?

• Social Networks – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning groups
• On your own blog – how often do you post to be seen by those that are looking?
• YouTube – You have so much to show and say – Just do it!  You’ll get better.

Here’s the link to much more details to this story over on @AffirmingSpirit / Nancy Barry-Jansson’s blog. The story will make much more sense if you read her story and she even share’s the links to the life changing video’s that impacted me.

I am looking forward to hearing how you are learning to “see” opportunities all around you by expanding your awareness.

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Twitter Fun: Melody’s Day of Fame on TwitterBreak.com

Thank you @NixtheNews – Nick Hetcher for granting me “Tweeter of the Day” Status.

Follow me on Twitter for more outstanding fun!

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Article Marketing + Twitter = Endless Waves of Traffic – Visitors & Viewers (AM + T = ET)

By Jeff Herring

Article Marketing is one of the very best ways to bring endless waves of traffic and visitors to your websites and blogs. Add Twitter to the mix and you have an extremely powerful traffic generation system for free.

I could not stop the traffic and visitors coming to my websites and blogs even if I wanted to, and I sure don’t want to.

AM + T = ET

AM + T = ET stands for Article Marketing plus Twitter equals Endless waves of Traffic and viewers. Here’s how you do it:

1. Auto-Tweet Your EzineArticles Submissions – Set up your free account to automatically send a message to Twitter each time a new article is published. Each time you have a new article published an auto-tweet will go out to your followers announcing your new article.

This is great, but don’t stop there…

2. Follow up the Auto-Tweet – As in all areas of business, your fortune and future here is in the follow up. Don’t just rely on the auto-tweet to announce your articles. Direct your followers to your articles yourself. You can say something like this – “For 3 tips on how to… check out” and then give the URL of your article.

3. Other will “Re-Tweet” Your Article – Part of being social on Twitter is “re-tweeting” (RT) messages you like and want other people to see. Many people will do this for you without being asked. How do you get other people to RT for you? Ask them, and return the favor with their tweets.

4. Direct to Opt-In Page – You can also invite your Twitter followers to go directly to the opt-in page that you normally send people to from the Resource Box in your articles. What’s that you say? You don’t send people from your Resource Box to an opt-in page? We need to talk!

Here’s how you do it – “Get free instant access to…” whatever it is you are giving them in exchange for their email address.

And when you follow these tips you will drive endless waves of traffic and visitors your way with Article Marketing and Twitter.

And to learn so much more about how to create endless waves of traffic with your Article Marketing, you can check out The Article Marketing TeleSeminar Club at Article Marketing for Life Coaches

You’ll learn all about Content Creation – Traffic Generation – List Building – Repurposed Marketing – Product Creation with Article Marketing – From Jeff Herring – The Article Marketing Guy & the Great Article Marketing Network.

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