Social Media Marketing for Business Coaches

The Basics of Blogging for Business Coaches: Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 01:21:00 +0000

Writing a Business Coaching Blog: Personal Branding and Getting Results from your Blog

In my previous two blogs we went through the basic steps of why it is important to have a blog to create your personal brand, how you can get your blog set up, and the first steps you can take to get started. Everyone has to start somewhere and hopefully you are now up and running!

In this blog I want to take you through some ideas to help you create some killer content that can catapult you to personal branding and blog excellence! The set up is what will drive people to your blog, the content is what will keep your audience coming back for more and how they will start to build a picture of you as an expert and mini-celebrity in your niche.

Before I go on I want to tell you one vital thing- in fact if you take away nothing from this blog but this one thing I am about to say you can’t go too far wrong….

Content is not about how well you can write (though it helps if you can a little), you don’t have to be witty…all you have to do is DELIVER VALUE, and lots of it!...especially you, business coaches!

Deliver Value

When writing blog posts you need to make sure that your content is focussed solely on delivering relevant value to your target market. This is the single most important aspect of blog writing and the level of value you deliver will determine your subscription levels and the level of results you will achieve as a result of blogging. With this is mind you can continue through the various stages of writing your blog….

1. Headline

It is very important that you take some time to consider your headlines. You should look at the headline as the advertisement for the post. You need something that is relevant, interesting and as captivating as possible. Importantly it must also be in tune with the personal brand you are looking to create; how does your topic enforce the image you want to portray as a professional in your niche?

The headline will define whether or not the post is read and the copy will define whether the prospect subscribes.

The headline should either promise a benefit, arouse a curiosity or offer a reward to those that take the time to read the post. The opening paragraph or two should then concretely illustrate the benefit your headline promises.

This will dramatically increase your read rate of your posts and once you have built up a strategic network and are driving consistent traffic to your blog, you will see your subscription numbers increase considerably.

Just be sure to deliver on your headline!

2. Content

You want to try and make your blog posts as targeted as possible. By this I mean instead of talking to Business owners through your blog, instead talk to, for example, Chicago Business Owners (if you are a Chicago based Business Coach), or insurance business owners if you target that market specifically.

Like it or not very many prospects have an inert ethnocentrism where they can relate to and are therefore more open to conversation with others from the same culture, background or geography. By talking directly to prospects of, for example, Chicago your blogs will obviously become more relevant to your target market.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to discuss a local relevant event in your blog, either leading up to the event or post event. The bonus of doing this leading up to an event is that you can ask if anyone reading your blog is attending and to those that respond you can arrange to meet for a coffee at the event.....and provide yourself with an opportunity to build the relationship further with a prospect or group of prospects.

You want to ensure that your layout is clear but skimable. Bullet points are great for this and enable you to deliver some punchy value.

Communicate your personal brand in a cohesive manner- your audience will always appreciate consistency in your views, your writing and in all aspects of what you are communicating- this will also find them identifying with you on a longer term basis and feeling a desire to come back to your blog time and time again, or even better subscribe!

For further information on how to write effective blogs click this link http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/07/10/nine-signs-of-an-effective-blog-post/

3. Good mix of video, audio and copy

As coaches you know that people learn in different ways and where someone learns better by reading, someone else will learn better by seeing. It is for this reason that you should mix up your content as much as possible. Don’t go crazy but at least every third post put in a video or audio.

Ensure your video is consistent with your personal brand. If you are in the video be conscious of how you dress, they manner in which you speak etc. Everyone will be different (hopefully!) but just ensure you reflect the brand you are trying to communicate.

You should also try to incorporate 1, 2 or 3 relevant pictures in your posts.

This is particularly important with longer blogs. When a reader sees an upcoming picture in a post the reader will subconsciously be looking forward to finding out how the picture links with the copy, this keeps the reader interested and they will get more out of the post.

4. Links

Another way to break up your post is to link to other relevant content...you can actually create an alliance with a non-competing supplier agreeing to link to a particular post on each others blogs, this can be a great way to cross fertilize traffic and finding a relevant partner is relatively easy.

How you can do this is to touch on a section you are not a particular expert on and state that you are not a particular expert in this area (eg finance) but John Doe is and he has a great blog on xxxxxx here so please click the link if you want to find out more about this area. John Doe does the same on an area you are a particular expert on and Bingo you have some new traffic!

Ensure that the people you are linking to are complimentary to your message and do not contradict your message or personal brand.

5. Interactivity – reply to comments, ask questions

With each of your posts you should invite and welcome comments from your readers.

You can ask them to give their opinions, share their experiences, ask if they agree or disagree with what you have written. You simply need to lead the readers into conversation by closing each of your blogs with a question, a controversial (but professional) statement, a call to action or simply a request to share their thoughts. The interactivity will build a community of readers which will increase readership and subscription levels.

When you come to answering comments instead of simply answering the question or replying to the comment, initiate a continued dialogue with the prospect. You can easily do this by simply asking a question, but don't ask something that will take too long to answer otherwise the prospect will not reply.

This will then be read by other readers and if you can identify an area of pain through your dialogue with the prospect you can then provide the remedy within the comments. This will then be read by other subscribers and passers by and will make them more likely to subscribe. On top of this, those that have experienced the same pain that you have provided a remedy for will be increasingly likely to submit an inquiry.

6. Blog scheduling

I would suggest setting up a schedule of blog posts once per week/fortnight/month. Ideally these will also be sent at the same time each time you send them, so for example Monday Mornings or Sunday Evenings. This will give you a higher open and read rate from your subscribers as the posts will more likely enter into the prospects routine.

With the posting schedule ideally you will ideally set about writing 3 or 4 posts at the same time to create a backlog, this way you can refer to the posts saying for example "over the next 3 weeks we will be going through the 3 most important areas of managing cashflow for small businesses, so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out". This can drive up subscriber levels.

7. Asking For Action

This is probably the most overlooked part of writing an effective post. When you are writing your posts you should always have an action in mind, even if you’re not making it explicit. You want your reader to subscribe through RSS or by email, to come back and read the next chapter in your blog, to share your story with their Twitter pals, to digg or Stumble or bookmark it or link to it on their blog.

Whatever action it is you want the reader to do, don’t be afraid to ask. If you have written your blog correctly and are simply delivering value your readers will be happy to take you up on the action you request.

8. DON’T SELL

This is one of the most important points to make. Your blog is not meant as a selling tool, it is simply meant to act as a hub for your marketing activity. You can use your blog to drive traffic to your website, to webinars etc. But you should not be directly selling in your posts. This will turn off readers and if they feel by subscribing they will end up simply being sent a heap of sales messages they will unlikely sign up. You should include contact details in your blog as eventually once you will have delivered consistent value your subscribers will start thinking about taking the next step and potentially hiring you, but this should be subtly incorporated. We will go into this specifically as we go through the course. At this stage though all you need to be focussed on is delivering value to your network.

THE BASICS OF BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS COACHES: PART 2

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 02:31:00 +0000

Writing a Business Coaching Blog:

Five Steps to Getting Set Up and Raring to Go

Before I went on vacation I took you through the big reasons why Business Coaches NEED a blog. In this post I will take you through the 5 steps you as a coach should take to ensure you have everything set to get your started in delivering your blog.

Yes, writing a blog is not just as simple as writing something nice or even writing something clever- you’ve got to get people TO your blog AND get them to stay there.

Before you get going… (For the real newbies!)

Start by registering at blogger.com or wordpress.com. If this is your first blog I recommend Blogger as it is very easy to set up. If you are looking to develop something more advanced then I would suggest using Wordpress.com but you can always export your blogger blog to Wordpress at a later date easily. If you want to set up a Wordpress blog this is a great simple step by step video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWYi4_COZMU

Now once you have set up an account and before you publish your first posts you want to first ensure that you have some specific infrastructure set up. Here’s the 5 steps to get you started!:

1. Blog title

When you set up your blog title use something that is exactly related to the market you are looking to target. You should design a blog for each of the segments you are looking to target. The more specific you can be, the better the response you will get and the more relevant your blog will be.

An example could be: Career Advice for young professionals in the banking profession in Chicago.

This is an important step and should be given due attention as this will also be indexed by Google.

Ensuring you have separate blogs for each of your niches/segments will also ensure that your personal brand is not diluted and therefore you remain an ‘expert’ in your field(s) rather than a generalist.

2. Design

To begin with you want to ensure you have a template that is branded. To learn how to do this easily, simply check this guide for blogger blogs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUIdl1xC5eA

This will help you insert a customised image at the top of your blog and is the most basic (and easy) way to brand your blog.

You can also use a pre-designed template and you can find lots of free ones here

http://btemplates.com/

I would however recommend that you use your own logo and branding as your blog will be a point of value delivery and you want your business to be associated with this value to build your personal brand as well as your company’s.

If you have some available budget you can also have a custom design built. If this is the case forward these dimensions to your designer

http://www.ourblogtemplates.com/2007/06/setting-template-size.html

Adding a photograph of yourself to your blog will help build your personal brand- if you are writing on behalf of a whole team include a picture of the whole team in there. For further information on building your personal brand through this and other methods you may wish to check out a previous blog post of mine entitled How to create a Personal Brand as a Business Coach and this can be found here http://businesscoachsocialmedia.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-create-personal-brand-as.html

3. Gadgets

Gadgets are simply added extras that are can be placed into your blog. They are easily added and make your blog more interactive and attractive and almost all are free to install.

A simple guide on how to install gadgets can be found here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OVRlXn9mAs

Some of them are very practical, others are for aesthetics and some are just for fun. They make your blog more attractive and interactive and will increase the stickiness of your blog (the amount of time people spend on your blog).

The most practical gadgets can be found here:

http://www.blogsolute.com/most-useful-gadget-for-blogger-blogspot-blogs/4482/

and some great widgets can be found here:

http://mashable.com/2009/01/26/blogger-widgets/.

4. Subscription options

You need to ensure that you offer a variety of methods for subscribing to your blog. You should ensure subscribers can:

- Sign up using RSS (this will be available by default to blogger users)

- Subscribe using Google (default in Blogger)

- Sign up using email (Step by step guide how to do this here

http://www.bloggertricks.com/2008/01/how-to-add-email-subscription-form-to.html)

If you follow the steps in this link you will also set up a Feedburner account which is great for monitoring your subscriber levels.

5. Comments

Make sure you enable comments for your blog. This is very important as it will allow your blog to become interactive.

A guide on how you can do this can be found here:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/enable_comments_on_blogspot_blogger_weblog.html

Some BONUS SHORT TIPS for your Blog!

Whilst the 5 steps mentioned in this post are by far the most crucial things that you as a business coach will want to have in place when delivering your blog you may also want to consider adding the following:

Let your readers know the purpose of your blog: Why are you writing what you’re writing, what are you looking to achieve? People are likely to be more inclined to want to read your blog and pass it on.

Newsletter Signup box: It’s a great idea to run a newsletter in conjunction with your blog (there’s great complementary value in doing so) explain what it offers and ensure the signup box is clearly visible.

Most commented posts: What has created most interest with your readers and inspired most comments? Your readers want to know!

Recent comments: You might want to show the last 5 or last 10- whatever you prefer- let people see who is commenting and on which posts. This function on your blog can double up as a small “thank you” to those who have taken the time to leave comments as well as inspire others to do so

Polls / Surveys: Conducting your own poll on a topic relevant to your blog will help increase the interactive element and should provide you with some useful information as well

Next post we will be looking at the ins and out of writing your blog to ensure that your content is focused solely on delivering relevant value to your target market and that you are obtaining and maintaining the subscription levels you as a coach need to get your business rocking online.

THE BASICS OF BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS COACHES: PART 1

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 23:01:00 +0000

What’s the point?

(Next post we will get started with the first steps you can take for getting started with blogging)

What’s a blog?

I have heard blogs described by some as a businesses ‘online home’ and this is a great analogy that reflects how a Business Coach should view this part of their online media in relation to the entire social media spectrum. You want to ensure that your social media ‘friends ‘and prospects are frequently coming to visit you, that when they visit they gain value whilst they are there and that they want to come back again for your great advice. Your other social media should all point to your blog and you can use your blog to point to your website and back to your other social media sites (where appropriate).

I find that those business coaches who start blogging often find their enthusiasm dwindles after the first few weeks because they either lack a true desire to want to do it or they don’t know why they are doing it in the first place (or both). It’s easy for all of us to lose focus when we’re suspicious, skeptical or ill informed about something and social media’s no exception.

GREAT reasons for a Business Coach to have a blog

It’s not wise to just start blogging because I tell you to or because your friends or competitors are, or because you want to increase your SEO rankings. Make your reasons count and ensure they will propel your business forward in the long-run. A successful business coach blogger usually has a lot of information they want to share with their readers and a genuine desire to help others succeed in their businesses…and most importantly they understand the benefits of having a blog.

You need to be aware that provided you have already created/are continuing to create an effective personal brand, a blog is a fantastic way of becoming a ‘thought leader’ in your field and you can easily become the ‘go to’ for information relating to your niche. Your blog effectively turns you into a ‘mini celebrity’ in your niche and if executed correctly, prospects are dying to hear what you are going to say/do next. They might not want to buy from you then and there (in fact they might not even know you’re selling anything at all to begin with) but when they are ready to buy YOU will be at the foremost of their thoughts, they will trust you and they are likely to want to buy from you. At the very least they will be more receptive to your more obvious marketing tactics once they know you really do know what you’re talking about.

Blog preparation for Business Coaches

Since you now know the benefits of blogging you will need to ensure a couple of things are in place before you get going:

· Ensure you know what your personal brand looks like/says about you (a previous blog of mine goes over this in some detail if this is not something you are familiar with

· Be aware of what the allocated time you have allowed yourself is for blogging and schedule your blogging activities accordingly

Conclusion

It is likely that your business plan includes some form of marketing plan as part of the overall document; as part of this, your blogging and other social media activities should be included, not as a sole marketing strategy but as part of your wider marketing plans such as direct mail, email marketing, tele-marketing and so on. Blogging and social media is available to compliment these other vital aspects of marketing and when undertaken using defined marketing strategies and tactics will undoubtedly (we’ve tried and tested it!) mean an ongoing flow of leads coming into your business.

As with all well thought-out social media tactics blogging is a hugely leveraged and cost effective way of generating leads for your coaching business so you will find that the initial preparation is well worth the time-investment. As a business coach you will already know that once you have systemized it, the process will be a breeze!

Next week I will go over the actual practical steps to get you started with blogging! (Make sure you are subscribed!)……

PS. Registrations have opened for the Charity Webinar Series on Lead generation Strategies for Business Coaches Using Social Media. Visit www.businesscoachleads.com to register!

How to Create a Personal Brand as a Business Coach

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:07:00 +0000

As Business coaching is a professional service and service industries rely heavily on their reputation in order to gain more clients, creating a well defined personal brand is vital.

Your coaching brand should be visible across all aspects of your business- from how you are dressed when you meet your clients, to the look of your website, to the tone of your blog or other social media page, and even in the way you talk! With so much more interaction happening online communicating your personal brand online has never been so important…

Here are 4 practical steps you can take that will help you to create and/or develop your personal brand:

1. SET GOALS

What are you about?

As a business coach you’ll already know the value of setting goals however, ensure that you apply this to your Personal Branding because as you are probably aware if you don’t set goals you don’t know where you’re going!

Ask yourself the following questions: What do you want your prospects and clients to think about you? What ideas will they associate with you? What are you ‘about’?

What is your expertise?

Every good brand involves the notion of being an expert in their field. Take Oprah for example, she (amongst other things) is well known as an expertise in giving useful advice to people, that is what she does. You need to communicate that you are an expert in business coaching, in knowing what business owners need to be successful, in time management, in increasing profits, whatever it is that you are good at make sure your audience know about it.

What is your style?

Your style is not the ‘what’ of who you are, it’s the ‘how.’ When deciding on what style you would like to take on you need to consider how you sound, how you look, even how you think. It all makes a difference and plays a part in developing your coaching style within your brand. Try not to imitate your favourite or most respected business coach, that’s their style, not yours. You need to differentiate yourself from the competition. One way of doing this is by being aware of the way your copy is written. For example; are you friendly? Full of energy? Do you have certain phrases you say a lot that people associate with you? Do you take the funny/witty approach? Are you unusually enthusiastic?

2. HAVE ONLINE PAGES ALL ABOUT YOU; Granted there are things you need to be doing in your business other than writing about yourself on the internet but if you can do this, even just occasionally it will go a long way in developing your brand.

Having a webpage that is directly about you will help business owners/CEOs/Presidents etc to develop a closer relationship with you and therefore develop their trust in you. Aspects of social media such as the About Me sections of the website are a perfect opportunity to paint a picture of your ideal brand. Your personal stories on social media sites are perfect for use as the basis for your expertise.

Whilst over-exposure can prove ineffective in marketing it’s ok to personally ubiquitous. If people hear your name enough they will check you out at some point, even if it’s not the first time round. Social media is great for directing traffic to and from various pages on the internet, so make sure you know what you’re doing in these areas

Going viral could help you immensely in promoting yourself as a brand as can commenting as a guest writer on others blogs/in groups etc.

3. KEEP YOUR BRAND ALIVE; Maintain your brand. Even if you have fantastic content your brand could come across as stale and dull if not updated regularly. You cannot ride off the back of one idea forever.

Ensure you are updating your knowledge regularly because if you’re not, another business coach out there is. Whilst it is likely that you already know the value of learning, ensure you remain aware of this as even if you are an expert right know, it doesn’t entitle you to be an expert in 2 years time when you haven’t bothered to continue learning what’s new

Agreeing with other experts in your industry merely builds their brand and not yours. Yes support them but no do not just agree with them. Focus on areas in which you have something new to say or have some value to add.

4. GET PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT YOU. What do people think when you interact with them or don’t interact with them? What impression will they have of you in behaving that way? Make a decision to respond to tweets, comments etc, or not…either way the decision you make is all part of your personal brand. People only want to know where they stand with you, they do not expect the world, but likewise they do not want to be disappointed.

Build relationship with as many people as possible, network and know their real names. Social media can be a useful tool for this and is a perfect opportunity for you to show people that you care. Listen to what they say and comment, remember details about them. It can be fun and it’s likely to reap it’s rewards in terms of people talking about you and making referrals to you amongst other things. You’ll find yourself creating raving fans of you and the best thing is the more people talk about you the more your personal brand grows stronger.

Build recognition with people who are influential for you. An influencer can be any person with an audience that you want to reach. Comment on what they do but make it your best material, you’ll learn tons from them but they may also be the person who gives you that killer testimonial when you launch your product, they can tweet your link to thousands of followers and share opportunities with you. Provided you are useful for them they will remember you- don’t pester them or ask for more favours than you can give but do develop a relationship with them. View this aspect of relationship building as long-term. It will take time but the results will be hugely beneficial.

Hope you find this useful team...keep an eye out for our upcoming charity webinar on Lead generation Strategies for Business Coaches Using Social Media...rave reviews from those that have attended so far

Ben

Could this be the end of Business Coaches using Telemarketing?

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:17:00 +0000

Although I focus on social media marketing, those that know me and have worked with me know that I am still a strong advocate of other more traditional forms of marketing. Included in this is obviously telemarketing. It would be wrong and inaccurate of me to turn to my prospects and clients and say "drop all your other marketing, social media is the Holy Grail now". The truth is that the most effective marketing is when marketing communications are integrated in a cohesive manor to form marketing synergy.

From my experience of working with coaches from across the world I would say at least 70% use telemarketing as one of their marketing weapons and for some coaches this is the sole source of leads. I have a client that has built up a 7 figure business coaching business and to begin with a lot of his leads came from telemarketing now less than 5% of his leads now come from this source.

What may be alarming to the 70% of business coaches that use telemarketing is that a new technology has just been introduced that claims to block 99.4% of unwanted telemarketing calls. The product uses a proprietary system to accurately identify and subsequently block annoying telemarketing calls to advertisers tracking phone numbers. The tool by Marchex Call Analytics is receiving fantastic reviews and it will likely become mainstream as the time saved by companies would far outweigh the minimal investment for small business owners.

The result of this could be more numbers needing to be dialed to get through to the decision maker/business owner, which means that your cost per lead will be going up, for an already expensive marketing strategy.

Don't jump the telemarketing ship quite yet, but certainly keep an eye on your key numbers.

Let me know if your getting value from these posts either comment below or drop me a line ben@modernmethodsmarketing.com

We are moving home from the UK to NYC in 2 weeks time, so if you don't hear from me for a little while you'll know why! All the NYC business coaches shoot me an email and we can meet for a coffee!

Ben

Business Coaches: You can use Twitter effectively for just 15 minutes per week!

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:18:00 +0000

For most of the coaches I start working with the idea of Twitter really turns them off. They see it as a time drag, a waste of resource and yielding inconclusive results.

Those who look at the fact I now have almost 10,000 followers and post every 1-2 hours will likely think I spend my life on Twitter...HOWEVER, the truth is that I only actually spend approximately 15 minutes per WEEK in total max (sometimes less)!

One of the biggest contributing factors to this is that I have a tweetplan.

A tweetplan is simply a way through which to organize your tweets so that you are sending out a good variety of tweets that add value to your target market whilst simultaneously driving them to areas where you can build relationships with them (such as a blog like this or your own group or forum).

It is very important that you get a good mix of tweets and you can actually set up your tweets in a schedule using a service such as Hootsuite/socialoomph/objective marketer etc.

By doing it this way you can schedule the next months worth of tweets and this can save you hours of tweet writing.

Your Tweetplan will be a series of scheduled tweets used in conjunction with your real-time tweeting. The tweets in your tweet plan should be carefully crafted around the personal brand that you want to communicate to your target audience.

The result of this is that everyday you consistently brand your Twitter presence and attract the attention of the people you want to reach, providing them useful information. And because the tweets you schedule will be evergreen, they can be scheduled in advance. This means you only spend a couple of hours writing and scheduling up to 4 weeks’ worth of tweets at a time.

Cindy King from the social media examiner has come up with a suggested process for doing this which we use and have found very effective

The first step is to decide on who you will be targeting with each of your tweets. This will include:
• Prospects Find out more about what people want and connect with them early in your sales cycle
• Clients
• Referral sources: Those who can help your business find more clients
• Or Joint venture partners

Following this you need to decide how many tweets you are going to be sending out daily. A suggested number is 5. Now the tweets you schedule into your twitter plan will not necessarily be the total number of tweets you send out they will however provide a base point so that you are sure that you are communicating a desired image and a specified number of posts that cover key areas that will appeal to your target market (we actually only send out the tweets in our tweet plan).

Following deciding on this number, you should decide how long the plan will be scheduled for. A good time is 4 weeks/8 weeks (don't forget you can have the same tweetplan repeating over and over. We have had ours rolling for 4 months and are getting fantastic results so have had no need to change it).

You then need to find the Keywords that you will use in your tweets. These keywords in your tweets will help you to send a consistent signal to tell others who you are, how you want to connect with them and what you want to talk about. You may well have these already, but if not you need to give this area some serious thought you simply need to ensure when choosing the keywords to use in your tweet plan you remember your preferred audience, the people you most want to connect with on Twitter. You want to use the keywords they use and search for.

Your keywords may be New york Small Business, cashflow management, small business marketing, New York business networking, small business time management, New York business advice, etc.

If you have for example 5 keywords that you want to tweet you can then set up tweets so that you are tweeting once per day using each of these keywords

This means your scheduled tweets will provide your preferred Twitter audience with useful information every day using each of these 5 keywords.
It is advisable when choosing your keywords that you keep Twitter’s 140 character limitation in mind so try to Use short words or word strings.

If you are planning on tweeting 5 times per day 7 days per week you will need 35 tweets per week.

You can split these into 7 categories that we have identified as types of tweets to post as a business coach they include:

1. Tweeting about 3rd party articles that are relevant to the small business industry.

2. Tweeting about the content you have produced content, Blogs, forum postings etc. With links directing traffic through to your value add areas

3. Directing prospects through to webinars and other offers that you have

4. Tweets about personal events, personal achievements, client achievements and testimonials etc.

5. Bite size business tips

6. Asking quaifying questions to your followers for engagement

7. Quotes

Now you can use twitterfeed to deliver one or two of these through setting up feeds in google alerts (message me if you are unsure how to do this). These would be best to use for Tweeting about 3rd party articles that are relevant to the small business industry. And also Bite size business tips but this will leave 21-28 per week left (3-4 per day) that you will need to source and produce.

So for example taking the keyword as New york small business.

You would want to tweet about content you have produced such as your blog

So for example the tweet might be: "Fantasitc tips for New York small business owners" and then a link to your blogpost on this area

In terms of tweeting about your offers an example tweet could be "If you are a New York Small Business Owner looking to grow your business attend our free event on 15th July details here:" and then post the link

For a tweet relating to a problem or a qualifying question you could tweet for example What’s your biggest challenge you are facing running your New York small business in New york?

One presenting a solution could be for example 7 ways to improve the retention of key staff in your New york small business

You won’t be able to always fit in or apply the keywords and this isn’t a huge problem but you should try to do this when possible

As a business coach you should aim to have all of your tweets falling into three main categories they should be either entertaining, educational or inspiring. But to really bond with your prospects and get massive action from them you should aim for revelations.

By this I mean that If you can deliver something to your prospect that they have not come across before that really helps them with their business and changes their paradigm for the better you will find that your relationship grows considerably with them.

Following this you should then set up the times for these tweets to be sent out. It is advisable that if you are doing 5 tweets per day that these are spread out over the working day 8-5 and at the weekends spread out throughout the whole day

To schedule your tweets you can use a service such as Social oomph or alternatively you can use a service such as hootsuite or objective marketer.

This should set you up with a good schedule of tweets. To reiterate though the focus of your tweets should be to deliver consistent high value relevant information to your prospects whilst simultaneously driving prospects to your areas where you can deliver additional value and begin to nurture the relationship such as your forums and your blogs etc.

This whole process will save you hours of work and will mean that you will be a lot more organized in your approach.

You can easily monitor the effectiveness of your posts and how much traction they are getting by using a click tracker such as http://bit.ly and then you can adjust your posts to increase the amount of response you are receiving until you have a fantastic, continuous traffic stream, with your blog subscribers building, your opt ins growing and your forums building resulting in a continuous flow of new enquiries about your services.

Hope this helps team!

Ben
http://www.modernmethodsmarketing.com/courseforbusinesscoaches

Business coach lead generation using social media - the truth

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:59:00 +0000

One of the questions I get asked more often than any other by the business coaches I work with is “how can I use social media to generate leads?”

It is likely as a coach you will have a number of marketing tactics you use already to generate leads and likely the majority of your leads will come from either referrals/networking, seminars, strategic alliances, telemarketing, direct mail, PR, direct advertising and various methods of online marketing.

Now, in terms of these sources….

Referrals will ALWAYS be the best source of high quality leads, nothing beats a recommendation from someone you trust.

Strategic alliances will continue to be awesome at providing a leveraged way to access existing groups and communities of prospects through just one relationship

Seminars/webinars/teleconferences will continue to be great ways in which to deliver value to a large number of prospects in one hit and give yourself a platform to pitch from.

PR will continue to be a great way to position yourself as a local thought leader and go-to for help, guidance and assistance on how to grow a business

Telemarketing/Direct Mail/Direct Advertising on the other hand….

…are dying. They are expensive, unleveraged and untargeted and most importantly they involve interrupting your audience which means they burn your databases, therefore making the tactics unsustainable. Great direct mail campaigns can work well to target a specific audience, but this requires a high quality database and overall this is an expensive way to generate coaching leads.

The biggest reason though why these mediums are dying, is simply that they don’t involve the most important element that high quality marketing in 2010 needs if it is to achieve outstanding results and that is to add value.

Referrals, strategic alliances, seminars, webinars and teleconferences when executed correctly all add value and this is a large contributing factor to why they are sustainable as a marketing tactic.

Social media is also excellent at adding value to your prospects. It shouldn’t however be considered as an OR tactic, rather as an AND tactic. Social media marketing compliments each of these marketing tactics extremely well and combined together these tactics are not just sustainable they are “rocket powered”.

More referrals are being passed through social media now then any other medium, strategic alliances are easier to form than ever using social media as an initiator and relationship builder and finally filling events, seminars, workshops, webinars and teleconferences has never been easier using social media.

For a very recent case study on this last area, I made a one paragraph post in a social media forum last month offering to run a webinar for prospects and within one week had over 40 replies stating that they would like to attend. Sure I have spent time building the forum, but no more then 30 minutes per week. Following this paragraph and just one message to this group I will be looking to have over 100 coaches on the webinar.

Now all around you, you will have noticed business coaches increasingly using social media to build their businesses. Some are getting outstanding results and I know they are because I work with many of them. Many other business coaches are spending heaps of time on social sites, but not seeing the results and worse still a considerable proportion of business coaches are sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that social media will just “go away”.

In terms of using social media, as a coach you have the choice of these three options:

Get great results

Get poor results

Get no results

If you opt for no results the good news is you have nothing further to do in this area.

If you opt for poor results then you can carry on with your current activity

If on the other hand you want to learn how to achieve great results and that’s in terms of generating high quality targeted coaching leads, then you may want to consider investing 2 hours and $77 into one of the webinars we are holding next month to learn how to generate targeted coaching leads using social media.

As we have a global audience we will be running three webinars (each will have the same content, tactics etc).

You will have noticed a growing trend towards free webinars that give you a taster of what’s being offered and don’t actually provide you with anything you can practically implement UNLESS you sign up to the big pitch at the end. This webinar is different and will actually give you a system for generating targeted leads using social media without the BS. Hence, why we are having it as a paid webinar.

Like with all our products and services we offer full money back guarantees with no small print. If you aren’t at least 100% satisfied we will refund your investment in full. If though on the other hand you feel you have gained massive value which we trust you will be, you can tip us with a great testimonial!

The details to register are here:

For Webinar 1 on 21st June at (7am PDT) (10am EST) (3pm BST) (12am EST Sydney 22nd June)
http://coachleadgeneration-linkedin.eventbrite.com

For Webinar 2 on 22nd June (11pm PDT 21st June) (2am EST) (7am BST) (4pm EST Sydney)
http://coachleadgeneration2-linkedin.eventbrite.com

For Webinar 3 on 23rd June (5pm PDT) (8pm EST) (1am BST 24th June) (9am EST Sydney 24th June).
http://coachleadgeneration3-linkedin.eventbrite.com

Looking forward to having you join us

Kind regards,

Ben

As a Business Coach, where do I start with Social Media Marketing?

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:23:00 +0000

This is probably the most common question I get asked. WHERE DO I START?

Now if you are like most coaches you will have jumped in at the deep end with social media, by joining the main social networks of Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter, begun building up your network and then started making tweets, updating your status, maybe posting the odd piece of rich content such as a blog or video and possibly invited some of your network to an upcoming event, seminar, workshop or complimentary coaching session. You may have even started a group and it is probable that you have a fan page.

You are likely spending between 15 minutes to 1 hour each day on social media sites and are not really seeing a great return for your efforts. Maybe the odd lead here and there. You are on Social sites because everyone else is, but you CAN see the value…...somewhere.

Now although its great to get your feet wet with Social Media and when using sites such as Facebook and Twitter as an entertainment tool and for connecting with old buddies, you can’t really go wrong. But when you start using social sites as a marketing channel there is certainly a right way and a wrong way.

The right way is simple and something that you as a business coach will coach clients on frequently and that is to PLAN PLAN PLAN!

Now I’m not talking about planning for planning sake, I am talking about strategically planning your social media activites so that you can be sure that you are focusing on the areas that will yield you the highest return for the time you invest.

So what does a Social Media Marketing Plan look like?

The plan that we have developed exclusively for business coaches is made up of 11 distinct stages:

Stage 1 Situation analysis

It is crucial that you first get an idea of where you are now so that over time you will be able to see not only how much progress has been made, but more importantly, whether this progress is in the right direction.

Stage 2 Product and service description
As a coach you will likely have a range of productys and services. Not all of these will be applicable to market through Social Media sites and by concentrating on 1 or 2 you will find that you will sign considerably more clients overall.

Stage 3 Defining your target markets
By marketing irrelevant products and services to prospects you will put them off so that when you come to market relevant products and services they don't even take the time to find out whether what you are offering is relevent to them. Each product/service that you offer will have a distinct target market so for example a $2000 monthly 121 coaching program will have a different target market to a $300 one day planning workshop. So by defining the target markets for each you can build up a network of relevant prospects for each.

Stage 4 Social Media marketing objective setting

Not going to teach you to suck eggs on this one as I know you appreciate the importance of goal setting. Like you would set marketing objectives, you shoulkd also be setting clear SMART social media marketing objectives.

Stage 5 Defining a Social Media purpose statement

This is a small but very important step that involves you defining your core purpose of using the social sites. You would simply produce a statement such as "My defining purpose is to engage and add value to my local small business community, in order to increase my client leads and work opportunities". You would then need to ensure that you consistently refer back to this. As many of you will have experienced it is easy to get sidetracked on Social sites, hence, you need to remain focused to maximise your return on time invested. Getting into the habit of reading your purpose statement and ensuring you are aligned to it really does save you hours of wasted time.

Stage 6 Strategic network building

This is the first stage in our implementation strategy and simply involves using specific tactical measures to build up a network with prospects that fit the characteristics of your target market

Stage 7 Leveraged value delivery
This stage is concerned with delivering value to your network in a leveraged way through blog posts, articles, video clips, podcasts etc. This doesn't need to be your own content you simply need to ensure this is high value and relevant, ideally though it will be your own. This will build your credibility and the perception of you as a thought leader in the eyes of your prospects.

Stage 8 Relationship nurturing

The focus of this stage is to identify specific needs of individual prospects and deliver customised value based on these, therefore building up the relationship and associated trust.

Stage 9 Making an offer

This stage is only initiated once you have taken the prospect through the first three stages of the strategy Strategically adding them to your network, delivering leveraged value to them and nurturing the relationship. You will then use the issue that you identified in the relationship nurturing stage to make a customized and therefore considerably more relevant offer to the prospect.

Stage 10 Contact details collection
This is a critical yet often overlooked area. Internet marketers are very good at this, as they understand the power of the list and the importance of high value landing pages and associated offers. Business coaches are beginning to grasp the importance. With the system we use, the names on your list will be fully qualified and tick all the boxes relating to the types of prospects you are looking to attract therefore enabling you to focus your sales processes on prospects that are likely to convert to clients.

Stage 11 Sales process initiation

The final stage is to initiate your sales process, be it through a webinar, seminar, complimentary coaching session or other. Critical is that you are filling seminars/webinars with high value targeted prospects and you have regular complimentary coaching sessions with high value prospects so that the propensity for these prospects to convert to client is maximized and you are not wasting your time on "tyre kickers'.

So in answer to the question of where do I start. The answer is simple. Start with a plan...now the above should give you a good starting point but if you are serious about using social media to build relationships with your prospects and easily generate high value targeted leads, please take the time to look at our course that can be found here: http://www.modernmethodsmarketing.com/courseforbusinesscoaches.html

I hope you found this post valuable team, apologies for not posting for some time. We have been quite simply overwhelmed by the interest in the course which although is obviously a good thing has mean't that we have neglected our blog and Forum. We're back now though!

Drop me an email if you have any questions on Social Media and i'll be happy to help ben@modernmethodsmarketing.com

Until next time,

Ben

Useful for every Business Coach using Social Media: Save heaps of time using this awesome free program

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:22:00 +0000

Hey Team, I posted a link on Facebook to a program I have been testing that's been saving me heaps of time. Those coaches that picked up on the post and are now using it have given me some awesome feedback about it, so I thought I would send it through to my readers so you can all make use of it too.

The program is called Nutshellmail and you can set it up in about 3 minutes. I have it set up so that I get one email at the end of each day that summarizes:

- My Linkedin personal messages
- My Facebook personal messages
- My Twitter Mentions
- Activity of my "hot prospects" and clients on Facebook (through lists)
- Tweets from my Twitter "hot prospects" and clients on Twitter (through lists)

You can set it up to your own specs but it means you can turn off all the alerts from Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin and just get one email each day with everything you need to know, so definitely a useful tool!

You can find the tool here http://nutshellmail.com/

Let me know if you find this useful, just add a comment below. Also, please comment for any specific requests and I'll see what me and my team can do

Ben

P.S. Last check for any further coaches joining me in London for the World Social Media Forum on the 15-16th March. It is set to be a huge event, as I said I will be going through a strategy session with some business coaches there so email me once you have registered if you would like to join us ben@modernmethodsmarketing.com

You can find out more about the event here http://www.socialmedia-forum.com

P.P.S. If you are not a fan already you can join on the right hand side, I look after fans and subscribers as you know ;)

Business Cards in Twenty Ten - New development for live Networking Business Coaches

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:26:00 +0000

Hey team, just a quick post to let you know about an interesting development for those of you with iphones.

Bump technologies have released an app that now enables you to swap contact information with contacts by simply touching phones. Not only this, you can also send friend requests for Facebook and they are shortly going to release the ability to add Linkedin and also Twitter friending by simply touching phones.

This is likely to become increasingly mainstream as it will save networker's time entering details into databases and keeping track of contacts as they can be easily organized.

Downsides are that you will need the app in order to be able to swap details. However, for those coaches that organise networking meetings you can simply send a link to the app http://bu.mp/ to new and current members so they can have it uploaded ready for the following meetings.Let me know how you get on with it

Our new website is LIVE! If you have a spare 20 seconds I would love your feedback on it. The course launch date has been announced for the 19th March. Pre-orders are being taken now, with the first 15 coaches (2 places left) receiving 2 personal 1 to 1 consultations with me as part of the awesome package.

www.modernmethodsmarketing.com

Kind regards,

Ben

If you are using Social Media to market your coaching business you should be signing clients...

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:57:00 +0000

Yes, Social Media Marketing is about creating and building relationships with prospects, but you are after all in business, so if you are investing time and other resources into this area of marketing it should lead to an increase in sales. That is the bottom line.

I am a social media marketer that specialises in the business coach industry. Most of my subscribers know who I am and those of you that know how I work know that I judge good marketing based solely on the hard results it achieves. What this translates into is simply the number of targeted, high quality leads that have a high propensity to convert into a client your marketing produces.

Each week, for most coaches this number is fairly minimal. Yet for each and every business coach there is in the world, there are literally hundreds of business owners that need coaching. So where is the gap? Why do the numbers not add up? If there are all these business owners that need coaching and all these coaches that need clients what is going on?

We all know the answer.

Yes, marketing.

Marketing is what brings a question and an answer together. The question is how can I grow my business? or how can I manage my team better? or how can I work less hours? The answer to all these questions and more, as you know, is a Business Coach.

Instead of thinking of marketing as part of the selling process, you should instead look at it as simply educating prospects on how what you do can answer your prospects questions. That's it. That is all marketing is.

Now why is it that Social Media is such a great marketing tool?

Because Social Media provides the environment to connect you with your prospects, bringing their questions and your answers together.

Previously, to get this connection you would have had to attend a live networking event. If you were lucky your city would have one or two every day. But to attend all of these would be simply impractical with the associated time burden.

Now with Social media you have 24/7 access to be able to connect directly with prospects and answer lots of questions very easily. And we know what answering prospects questions leads to?

You guessed it, CLIENT SALES. So this fortnight focus on answering prospect questions and you can be sure you are doing great marketing.

In upcoming posts I will be going through some great tactics and strategies on how to find prospects that are asking questions and how you can answer them easily through Social Media, so keep an eye out for them.

Ben

I would appreciate your comments on this post as they are always always welcome! Positive, negative, neutral...let me know your thoughts...just click where it says "Comments" under the post.

The Ultimate Social Media Marketing System for Business Coaches
The level of interest in the course has been quite overwhelming, we couldn't have hoped for a better reaction and I am happy to let you know that it is on track to launch at the end of this month. Details will be released in the next blog on how you can catch the early bird price with a massive 40% discount from the full course price (for a very limited time). To hear first, register at my temp holding page www.modernmethodsmarketing.com New website launching next week!

Social Media World Forum
I have been asked to be an official blogger for the Social Media World Forum in London this year and for those coaches that will be attending I will be meeting a number of coaches for lunch on both days to discuss Social Media Marketing for Business Coaches, if you would like more info on the event click the link here http://www.socialmedia-forum.com/ and drop me a mail ben@modernmethodsmarketing.com if you get a ticket and i'll give you the details of the lunch!

Thanks for reading and make sure you subscribe if you haven't already

Hot off the press: Google Social Search. Awesome development for Business Coaches

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:10:00 +0000

For all my business coach blog subscribers please check out the short 1:34 video below.

This is an awesome development for business coaches as the settings can be set so that you only have your prospects coming up in the search results. What this means is that when they do come up, relating to something you are searching about, you will be instantly given a conversation piece that will enable you to engage with them and build your relationship.

For example, say you are attending a local business event and you "Google" the event to find out the address. When you do so, two posts come up along with the organic results, telling you that one of your Facebook friends "John" has posted a status update about the event (that he is attending it) and one of your Twitter friends "Sarah" has posted a tweet asking if anyone in her network is going.

Both are prospects that you have strategically added to your network, based on their location and job function (Managing Directors) and both you are yet to speak to, other then with a brief intro when you added John and a brief direct message when Sarah followed you back.

Now with this tool and information you can use it to easily engage in conversation regarding the event and arrange to meet at the event where you will have the chance to get to know each other and build the relationship, warming up the prospect considerably.

This is just a brief example, but what the major ramifications of this are, are that you can become more relevant to your target market, which is one of the critical success factors for any social media marketing plan. The more relevant you are, the more likely the prospect will turn into a lead and turn into a client.

7 Proven Strategies for Filling Business Coaching Seminars and Workshops using Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:02:00 +0000

This blog is as an extract from the module in my new course “Filling seminars and workshops using social media”. When producing this, I first summarized the strategies I have used in the past and know to work well at filling seminars for business coaches. I then spoke with a considerable number of successful business coaches who are using Social Media to get awesome results filling seminars. Below I have outlined 7 of these strategies, with the full compliment of 21 being covered in detail in the specific module in the upcoming course.

Lets begin….

First and foremost, before you begin marketing your event online through social media you need to ensure that you have put in place all the relevant infrastructure. This will include:

- Defining your target market and objectives
- Setting up a Facebook event with relevant content, incentives, multimedia
- Researching/locating strategic partners
- Writing all relevant copy for the events
- Deciding on a hashtag for the event
- Writing an event specific blog, this should include a summary of the content of the event
- Producing an intro video of the seminar/workshop
- Loading the slides (or taster slides) of the seminar into slideshare
- Obtaining copy/pictures and video to list the event on Eventbrite/ Meetup.com/ Anyvite/Upcoming etc
- Set appropriate Google alerts

It is best to get all this leg work done upfront so that you can then focus on building and harvesting the enquiries that you receive regarding the event, as you receive them.

The Strategies

Strategy 1- Invite leading (local) business bloggers to cover the event

Within each catchment area there will be a blogger(s) that has a high number of subscribers within your target market. The best of these to target are high value internet marketers. Not the internet marketers that bombard their databases with product offers/event invitations etc. The internet marketers you want to connect with are those that deliver high value to their audience and gain business through inbound/pull marketing (customer coming to them). The reason for this is twofold: 1. Their audience reads the messages they send out and 2. They tend to have large databases.

You can find such bloggers fairly easily by asking around your local networking friends (online and offline) if they can recommend a local business blog that they read. When a name comes up a few times, that’s your man/woman.

How you get them on board is simple; flattery gets you everywhere. You simply need to contact them directly, compliment them on their blog and inform them that you would like to invite them to attend your event as a journalist and say you will even pay for dinner and a hotel for them.

This works well on two levels... firstly, bloggers never get this treatment, so they take you seriously. Secondly, the dinner will allow you to investigate the opportunity for joint ventures and also the possibility of being introduced to other contacts the influential blogger will likely have that you can form strategic alliances with.

Strategy 2. Linking 121 conversations with Social Media

The vast majority, if not all business coaches will have an element of 121 interaction as part of their marketing processes, whether it be attending a networking event, telemarketing a prospect or attending a seminar.

As we all know, generally at these live events, a mutual exchange of business cards takes place between those that meet. However, a more personable way to get to know a prospect is to swap Facebook addresses. In the past, this may have been seen by some as slightly unprofessional, but now the value of social media as an effective business communication tool is agreed and this practice will soon become common place.

The advantage of doing this is that it enables you to learn so much more about a prospect than a business card ever did. Before, when all you got was a business card, the best you could hope for was that the company had an "about us" page to help you get to know more about the prospect and their business. Now you can get large amounts of information that you can use to open conversations, use as a reason for contact and a means through which to build relationships and promote relevant events. Those savvy Business Coaches will have their Facebook address on their cards, for two birds with one stone.

Strategy 3. Strategic partners (admins /owners of groups)

A very easy way to find a strategic partner for an event or seminar is to follow these steps:

1. Do a Facebook and/or Linkedin group search for your local area

2. Join the groups that have relevant members that fall into your target market. When applying to join be sure to include a message to the group owner introducing yourself.

3. Participate in the group, don’t promote yourself (2 or 3 posts are sufficient)

4. Connect with the group owner (see admins for Facebook/Group owner for Linked:in). Ask about the objectives for the group from the perspective of the owner/admin as well as their own business objectives.

5. Identify ways in which you can help in the accomplishing these objectives

6. Explain your objectives of filling your event and find a middle ground for you to mutually assist in the achievement of objectives

7. Ideally you will find common ground and gain agreement for the partner to promote your event in return for an agreed return (commission/service/favor)

8. If no agreement can be reached plan B is simply to begin systematically inviting those who fall into your target market in the group. I use a VA for this and costs me about $5 for about 75.

9. Limit this to 25 per day (175 per week) or you will get in Facebook’s bad books!
Ensure that with each invite you are acknowledge fellow members of the group and ask an open question about the prospects business that can lead to ongoing dialogue.

10. You then can continue to engage these new prospects (using strategies discussed in the course) before receiving requests to attend your events

Strategy 4. Event management sites and networks

There are now a number of event management tools on the internet, some of you will already be familiar with, that more and more business owners are using to find local business events. Over the couple of years these have grown consistently in numbers and can now be used effectively as an event lead generation tool. Sites include:

Eventbrite - http://www.eventbrite.com Eventbrite is focused towards businesses and enterprises. It is becoming increasingly popular with entrepreneurs that host events and has sold over 10,000,000 tickets so far. It has a payment function incorporated that enables you to take credit card, as well as Paypal payments and provides an attendee list. Reports from business coaches I know who are using it to generate leads are very positive. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Anyvite - http://anyvite.com/home Allows you to set up personalized invitations to events. It also enables you to use photos and videos. and hold public and private events. It enables you to export your guest lists and to upload and distribute post event videos, photos and slides.

Meetup - http://www.meetup.com Great site for registering your events and accessing information on other local business events that you can attend and network. Meetup groups also commonly rank highly with Google with 50,000,000 RSVPs to events in 2009!

Upcoming - http://upcoming.yahoo.com Growing in popularity and linked to Yahoo groups which many business coaches are now using to generate leads. Does however require you to have a Yahoo account.

Strategy 5. Linkedin Q and A

For those unfamiliar with Linkedin Q and A, it is a section of Linkedin which gives you the opportunity to ask questions on pretty much any business related subject. This is very useful for many areas of business and you can even pick up direct leads from prospective clients asking for example if someone knows of a great business coach they can recommend in your area.

Using this area of Linkedin though, there is a very easy and effective strategy to implement, that involves teaming up with a strategic partner or friend. They simply ask a question such as “Does anybody know of any seminar or workshops in Seattle for Small Business Owners who are looking to grow their business?”

You then post an answer outlining the details of the course and send the link to clients and prospects of yours who have attended in the past and ask them if they would write a sentence or brief paragraph on their opinions of the event. This works particularly well and the traffic stats for Linkedin answers is also growing rapidly, as more users realize the value.

Using this strategy you must ensure that you use keywords in the title such as your location and “business owners” as this is how business owners in your area will come across the question .

Strategy 6. Using photos and video to get an awesome viral effect

A very effective way to gain a viral effect from your events and generate instant referrals is to use this strategy.

1. At your next event collect the Facebook address of everyone that attends, you can do this on a feedback form and offer one of your free ebooks (or something else of value) to those that do.

2. Simply take pictures of the events as well as video and ensure that you get pictures of everyone that attends.

3. Upload the pictures and video to your business page and enter in all the event information, together with a landing page address and a phone number for registering for the next event under each picture.

4. Tag all the attendees that turned up in the videos and pictures.

5. These pictures and videos will then come up in their friend’s news feeds.

6. Watch as the referrals roll in from the friends of the attendees, who will view the pictures and videos and then ask their friends about the event or use the event information under each picture/video to sign up.

You can even add "bring a friend next time for half price" to the descriptions under the photos to increase the numbers of leads.

Strategy 7. Facebook/Linkedin Social Ads

This is possibly one of the most underutilized marketing resources on the internet for business coaches and also one of the most effective. I have used it to get incredible results for my clients at very low cost.

The reason why it can be so effective, is because it enables you to target specifically only prospects that have certain keywords in their descriptions, so, for example, “business owner” “proprietor” “CEO”. You can also combine this with geo-targeting so that the ads only come up within a specific catchment area, eg 25 miles radius of London. This makes these types of ads so much more targeted then Google Adwords.

You can also opt to only pay when the ad is clicked, so with a compelling offer and landing page you can achieve awesome results. I have spoke to some coaches who have used this method but have missed out some important points. Rather than go into the mechanics of how to do this properly and the exact step by steps needed to achieve outstanding results using Social Ads, I am offering exclusively to those that register at my site the opportunity to get a video tutorial on this including advanced strategies.

Simply enter your name and email into the box at: www.modernmethodsmarketing.com and the video will be sent through to you. As always with Modern Methods you won’t receive any spam, you will just receive the tutorial video as well as details on how you can sign up for the course.

All the above strategies are covered in more detail in the module (which can be taken on it' sown or part of the course) as well as an additional 14 strategies outlined below:

8. Using blogs to fill events

9. Facebook events feature how to use this without annoying people

10. Post event Social Media communications

11. Using testimonials effectively to generate leads

12. Invite a friend features (how to do this effectively)

13. Facebook fan/business pages

14. How to build a referral community using Ning groups

15. Using Google alerts to gain leads

16. How to gain sponsors for events

17. Using affiliates to fill events

18. How to use Hashtags effectively to generate leads

19. Using Video intros/slideshare tasters to increase attendee rates

20. Provide recordings and downloads post/during even a live feed to convert additional leads

21. Tracking success. What worked well, what added value, what annoyed people. How to efficiently collect this information and use it to generate further leads.

Thanks for reading, I trust you have gained value from this post, if you haven’t subscribed already make sure you do :) as there's lots more great stuff to come, exclusively for business coaches.

Ben

PS Don’t forget to register to be the first to be notified about the new course.... www.modernmethodsmarketing.com register and you will also receive the bonus video on how to use Facebook Social Ads and Linkedin Direct Ads

The 6 Critical Stages of Social Media Marketing for Business Coaches

noreply@blogger.com (Modern Methods) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:55:00 +0000

For the past 4 months I have been developing a niche course for Business Coaches on Social Media marketing. As I understand it is the only one of it’s kind and has been developed specifically to give you the business coach an action plan and structure for effectively using Social Media such as Facebook, Linked:In and Twitter to generate high quality leads and build your profile.

Below I have summarized the 6 critical stages of social media marketing strategy development, that will help you the business coach to effectively manage time spent on Social Media marketing activities and gain a defined ROI.

I have worked with hundreds of business coaches across the world and fully understand the specific needs of the industry, including time and other resource constraints as well as the need to quantify and measure (therefore justify) investments in marketing….this is hence the reason why I have produced this specialist course.

Please subscribe to this blog (LINK TO THE RIGHT>>>>>) as I will be going through each of the stages in greater detail in the coming weeks and will also explain how you can sign up to take the course. The release date will be early 2010 and the course will contain the most up-to-date cutting edge strategies, tactics as well as tools available that will enable you to gain maximum return on investment from the time and money you invest in social media marketing for your small business.

THE 6 STAGES

1. Conduct an assessment of your Social Media Marketing Efforts

2. Establish measurable goals

3. Brainstorm Social Media options

4. Select Social Media Activities

5. Build an Action Plan

6. Evaluate and track results using ROI tools

1. Conduct an assessment of your Social Media Marketing Efforts

This will help you to identify the appropriate starting point and direction for your social marketing efforts. At this stage you will need to define:

Who your specific target audience is
What your goals for each target group are
What your current social media activities are
What Social Media channels are you currently using (linked:in, Digg, Facebook, Stumble Upon, Twitter etc etc)
What the needs and interests of your target market are (where do they hang out?)
What specific results or impact should your social media efforts have on your target audience?
What your allocated budget for social media marketing activities is.

2. Establish measurable Goals

As with any effective marketing strategy, clear SMART objectives will need to be set. For those unfamiliar with the acronym it refers to:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time Specific

An example SMART Social Media objective would be:

“To increase web traffic using Social Media Marketing strategies that results in 300 new targeted coaching leads over the next 6 months”

It is crucial that objectives are not only set but that they are continually revisited to ensure the strategies employed are on track to be achieved. There are a number of tools now available to do this for you that automate the process and provide you with a daily/weekly/monthly report. This will save you countless hours of time-consuming analysis and will enable you to focus on the activities that are providing you with the greatest ROI. These tools will be covered in detail in the course.

3. Brainstorm Social Media options

The next stage is to brainstorm all the possible social media options/channels and get them down on paper. I find the easiest way to do this is through mind-mapping. A great example of this that I have produced for business coaches can be found here:
http://www.mindomo.com/view.htm?m=fdc7dcddd2c64148ac0bf45f5b911101
Please click the picture to expand the mind map

4. Select Social Media Activities

Once all the possible options have been put down on paper you will then need to look at selecting the correct Social Media marketing mix using appropriate options selected from the mind map that has been produced. This will be defined solely by which tools will help you achieve your objectives most effectively with the least resources employed.

For the business coaching industry the big three of Linked:In, Facebook and Twitter are critical. If resources only permit for limited Social Media Marketing, these three channels should certainly be utilised. Using the correct strategy and tools, financial investments will be minimal and time investments required can be a small as 30 minutes per day, 2.5 hours per week, and if the system is followed, will yield fantastic results.

Depending on the additional resources available, further channels can be engaged such as video submission sites (eg. Youtube) Blog posting, content creation, podcasting and a host of other channels (as time & finance permit).

5. Build an Action Plan

Once the channels are selected you will then need to look at putting together an Action Plan.

The Action Plan should consist of:

Specific product and service description that yo plan to promote (seminar/121 Coaching etc)
A defined target audience (Prospects/clients/strategic partners)
Your purpose statement
Your SMART objectives
The social media activities you will be undertaken with assigned responsibilities
Your evaluation processes/ROI measurements

For each of the Social Media methods (such as Twitter marketing) you will be employing, you should break them down into an individual Action-plan.

The elements for Twitter should include:

1. – What the purpose/motivation for building the Twitter network
2. – What the market that you plan to strategically target using Twitter
3. - Where you will find and target the specific Twitter audience? There are some awesome tools now available for this that automate the building of your twitter network so that you can, for example, follow those who have business owner in their profile bio and who are located within a 50km radius of Sydney. This often results in them following you back and therefore the ability to directly contact them. By using a customised Twitter background the rate of follow back increases. This will save you countless hours of adding and following prospects and can build you a very healthy sized targeted twitter following). Again this will be addressed on the course.
4. - How you will engage and build relationships with the targeted audience
5. - What you will be tweeting about
6. - What you will avoid “Twittering” about?
7. - How you will convert your network into qualified leads?
8. - How you will measure ROI from your “Twittering”?(this and each of the 7 elements will be covered in the course)

For Facebook the elements of the Action-plan should include:

1 - How you will manage your Profile/Status updates
2 - How you will Strategically build your Network
3 - How you will build and manage your Business/fan pages
4 - How you will create, participate and moderate groups
5 - How you will manage your Facebook events (offline and online)
6 - How you will share content (News feeds and Mini feeds)
7 - What Facebook Social Ads you will utilise
8 - How you will use the above to generate solid sales leads and build relationships
9 - How you will truly measure Facebook ROI

Linked:in as well as other social networks all again have their own separate elements that should be covered in the Action-plan. These as well as the elements listed above for Facebook/Twitter are, once again, covered in detail in the course.

6. Evaluate and track results using ROI tools

The final stage for creating a successful social media marketing strategy is to put in place tools and techniques to measure the exact ROI of your efforts. As business coaches you understand the importance of these measures, but like the vast majority of those using social media to market their businesses you are unlikely to know how to effectively and efficiently establish the true return from your investment of time and money.

It can be seen that there are two measures of ROI in the Social media realm: Return on Investment and Return on Influence.

Return On Influence refers to brand authority and growing levels of engagement, influence and popularity in the Social Media Channels. It can be seen, for example, as:

- 13000 Twitter followers
- 2500 participants in Linked in Group
- 9000 Fans of your Business Page
- Growth in conversations about your business on Twitter
- 2500 RSS Subscribers for your blog

More importantly though is Return On Investment, this will be specific, measurable and quantitative. For example:
- 300 new subscribers
- 10 New joint venture/Strategic Alliance partners
- 5 New coaching clients
- $8500 in increased product sales (ebooks, books, DVDs, CDs etc.)

There are now some excellent low/no cost tools for tracking ROI and effectiveness of individual campaigns from each Social Media channel can now be defined. Many of these tools have only just been developed in the last half of 2009 but are included in the course and accompanying guide.

I have written this blog post to give you an idea of how your Social Media Marketing can be structured. My plan is to run the course online over a number of weeks (4-6) which will give you the knowledge and tools to be able to successfully use Social Media to build your business coaching business.

I will also be showing you how you can outsource to me and my expert team each of the areas required to get great results at very low-cost so you can reduce the time spent on laborious tasks and focus on your strengths.

As I said above, please subscribe to this blog (Scroll up to top right hand corner and click subscribe). If you have any immediate questions please feel free to email ben@modernmethodsmarketing.com.

Finally, please comment below to tell me what you thought of my first blog post. My primary intention from these blogs is to deliver value to you, but also simultaneously give you an idea of the value you can receive if you sign up for the course. I hope that’s fair enough!

To find out first about the course click the below link and fill out your details http://www.modernmethodsmarketing.com/

Looking forward to hearing from you

Ben Croft
Modern Methods Marketing

P.S. Ask me about the Social Media Marketing technique that resulted in 112 seminar attendees for a total cost of just $262. This resulted in over $80,000 worth of client signings.

PPS My Facebook is www.facebook.com/marketingcoach Add Me!

PPPS Testimonials and references from my work with Business Coaches around the world can be found here http://uk.linkedin.com/in/modernmethods