Business Coaching

J.D. Salinger died yesterday in his home in . The famous author of “Catcher in the Rye” and several short stories and novellas like “Franny and Zooey” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” had lots of fans. Salinger’s fans particularly liked his character Holden Caulfield in “Catcher in the Rye,” who moved young readers with his loss of innocence and inner thoughts.

Because of Holden, Salinger was regularly being asked to sell the rights to “Catcher in the Rye” it seemed. But he never ever sold them…and this letter shooting down yet another director’s request explains why.

Salinger, an incredibly private person, will be remembered through his stories…just like other people who are successful and do great work in their fields  will be remembered for those accomplishments, too.

What will you be remembered for in your business? How can you work now to better your legacy, so to speak?

Even though the “hot” sites today for networking and business marketing are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, there are a few niche sites out there that might serve you well.

People can be blinded by the “big three” named above because the goal of marketing is getting your message in front of as many people as possible. However, it’s more important to get your message in front of as many people as possible who are interested in what you’re selling. That tactic will get you closer to a sale.

From niche European business networking sites to websites linking small business owners and entrepreneurs, Sitepointe.com gathered 20 smaller networking sites that specifically benefit business owners and entrepreneurs. Check them out and see who could become potential clients and who could benefit from a business coach.

At least, that’s according to a blog post on Fast Company’s blog. Amazingly, scientists have found that brain size is related to a real-world skill…yes, playing video games and winning is a skill…right?

Depends on the video game. Scientists asked study participants who weren’t avid gamers to play a game called Space Fortress, and scanned two parts of the brain. The first region deals with the pleasure the brain feels at achieving a specific goal.

People who showed lots of activity in that region did better in early stages of the game, when they were still learning. Those that had lots of activity in both regions did best at both learning the game, and adapting to its changing complexity.

What does this mean? Just by looking at a brain scan, you could tell who’s going to better at learning certain skills and adapting those skills over time.

This information would be useful not only for ourselves, but in hiring decisions, too. Maybe video games aren’t such a bad idea.

Business owners already go through an unbelievable amount of hard work to get their businesses up and running, much less grow it to a successful business.

Imagine if in addition to all the “normal” challenges to being a business owner, you had another challenge thrown at you from left field? A challenge that could not only affect your business, but also your life?

That’s exactly what happened to Michele Alexander, a top business coach, when one morning, she woke up completely deaf. Alexander isn’t a business owner herself, but a certified business coach. Not being able to hear her clients, business owners, who needed to work through business issues, could have proved detrimental, but she managed to get through the day. She didn’t let any of her clients down, despite the fact that she couldn’t hear them!

Michele’s experience going through what seems like an impossible challenge — business coaching clients while deaf — just goes to show the lengths certified business coaches go to to make sure their clients succeed and reach their utmost potential. Find out more about what a business coach and business coaching session can do for any business here.

To read more about Michele’s amazing story here.

All you need is a distinct market, an idea that’s feasible and detailed planning or a marketing strategy to pull it all off. That’s all it takes to build a small business – those three little things.

Well, they might not actually be little. They take a lot of work, but with hard work — lots of it — and possibly small business coaching, those things become three big things, which lead to a successful small business. Read the full article here.

To see how your small business fares against the competition, click here.

Hopefully you get it by now: social media is the way to go, and it’s here to stay…for a while, at least, as a marketing tool for businesses.

Are you caught up on social media sites? Do you utilize each site you joined to its fullest potential, so you can get the most marketing usage out of that site?

Look at our checklist and hopefully, you’re already doing the following to benefit marketing your business on social media sites:

Networking: What good are your 789 friends if you don’t talk to them? Just like in real life, networking is key. The more people you know, the better; everyone you network with starts off as a lead or someone who can refer you to a client. Get to know people at BNIs and networking events, and add them as friends on Facebook, connect with them on LinkedIn and follow them on Twitter.

Don’t Be a Spammer: Just like you’re turned off at a live networking event when someone pushes his product or service on you right away, on social media sites, you’ve got to build a rapport. Your first conversation with anyone on social media sites should be anything but “Do business with me.” On Facebook or LinkedIn, a good icebreaker is to join several groups and become a fan of pages and connect with members of the same group/page. Start up a discussion about an issue pertinent to the group or post in their forums. On Twitter, engage in conversations and reply to other users’ tweets.

Post Interesting Info: If you post useful, relevant and interesting info, people will be more likely to pay attention to you. Check out what your friends or followers are posting, and try to post news and info that are in a similar vein to connect over those topics.

Link to your Blog: Again, no one likes someone who only talks about their services, but you are on these sites to promote your business. Do it the smart way by linking to blog posts you’ve written, which will send traffic to your blog, or articles you find about the benefits of business coaching or articles about companies that have done better after getting a business coach. Avoid anything that is a blatant advertisement of yourself. Don’t have a blog yet? Start one, or link to blogs you like and read a lot. Like this one (okay, that was a shameless plug…but still, not a bad idea).

If you’ve been utilizing social media marketing strategies, comment below and let us know your success stories! To find out if you need to improve your marketing strategies, or other business issues, click here.

If you’ve been following this business coach blog, you know blogs are gaining more and more traction as a legitimate marketing tool in the business world, as well as a legitimate news source for journalists. They are far-reaching and cheap to produce and to maintain. They’re not a substitute for traditional marketing materials like press releases and direct mail, but they do provide a way to reach a mass amount of people in a short amount of time that can be well worth your investment.

Blogging or being a guest blogger on a reputable website will increase business visibility, increase leads and add revenue. All you have to do is write a blog every few days.

If you want to set up your own blog, here are a few quick tips to get you started:

Choose a Blogging Platform: Choose an easy to use blogging platform to start writing for. WordPress and Clearspace are some good ones that are clear and easy to figure out.

Figure out Blog Ideas: Some content ideas for your blog might include industry trends, hot topic news, interviews with other industry leaders, your position on industry issues or innovations, book and article reviews, and lessons learned related to subjects that might be important to your readers. Think about what lessons you’ve learned along the way, and shed light on the complexities of running a small business.

Be a Credible Source: Remember that as soon as you put something in writing on the Internet, it’s out there for all to see. So be careful about what you write and make sure you’ve done adequate research and covered all your bases.

Learn How to Engage your Readers: Your blog’s success will depend on the number of readers you have. Increasing readers is all about motivating them to come back time and again. Make sure your blog is structured in a way that’s easy to navigate on your site. Besides useful information, a little humor never hurts. Think about linking to other blogs you enjoy reading that relate to what you’re blogging about, and establish links to monthly archives.

Happy blogging!

With the recent disaster in Haiti, many people and charities are reaching out via social media networks to raise funds.

But before the Haiti disaster, charities were increasing their social media efforts to attain potential donors…and it seems to have been working.

The Detroit News recently published an article about how charities are joining Twitter and Facebook in an effort to spread the word about charity events and recruit volunteers and donors, something that’s been a more urgent need in the down economy. An example they cite with Forgotten Harvest, a charity that supports impoverished areas that need food, is they had 100 volunteers for an event to help package 11,000 meals. And about a fifth of those volunteers were recruited online.

Even though charitable donations took a hit with the recession – in 2008, donations slid 2 percent from 2007, the first decline in donations since 1987 – E-philanthropy, giving donations online and recruiting volunteers, increased 4 percent that same year.

Charities are getting so savvy with social media marketing, that some have added their own apps for iPhones and Facebook. For example, the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle campaign has a facebook widget with a game that collects real donations.

ActionCOACH is making waves by marketing its own charitable campaign, Coaching for a Cause, on Twitter and Facebook. The end goal for the pro-bono business coaching campaign is raising $2.5 million and so far, with successful business coaching, $859,294 has been raised.

If it’s working for non-profits, social media marketing can work for small businesses and big businesses, too. Fine-tune your social media marketing skills and figure out what you can do to leverage your business this way.

On the other side of things, if you’re a social media whiz, you might consider how you can help charities with your expertise. Coaching charities — and businesses — does wonders in this economy.

In this day and age, with social media marketing taking off like wildfire, social media consultants and gurus are popping up just about everywhere, ensuring that if you hire them, they’ll make your social media presence well-known faster than you could do it yourself.

But how credible are these “gurus”?

If you’re considering hiring one of these consultants to help you out, a piece of advice: check out their experience and make sure they have evidence that they helped increase sales for a company with their social media expertise. Because the trend of people branding themselves as “social media gurus” is not slowing down; The WhatsNextBlog first examined Twitter bios in May 2009 and found 4,487 people claiming to be social media experts. This month they examined Twitter bios again, and found 16,000 claiming expertise.

It’s true that social media marketing will help with business coaching, and also with business coaching clients. But with 16,000 experts online, be careful who you trust – and more importantly, who you pay to market your company.

Think no one will read your blog? Think again, because that’s probably what most of these bloggers thought when they started blogging. Now they’re on ProBlogger’s Top 30 Bloggers to Watch list.

Even if you don’t have your own blog set up, it’s easy to blog with ActionCOACH’s ActionBLOG, our own blogging platform. The ActionBLOG has traction in search engines from the ActionCOACH brand, and networking and connecting with other business-minded potential clients and other business coaches is easy.

With the ActionBLOG, any posts you write have  a larger reach – reach not only business coaches, but also coaches’ clients. Clients visit the ActionCOACH site for information and tools, and the ActionBLOG is a tool they could use.

Who knows…if you blog enough, maybe you’ll make ProBlogger’s list next year.