Business Coaching

As if you haven’t been inundated enough with tips on how to blog well and attract more and more readers, we’ve got yet another list for you. It’s a good one, and from Techipedia.

If you’ve wondered how seemingly anonymous bloggers have managed to become well-known in the blogosphere, read some of your favorite bloggers’ posts and see if they have some of these 11 things in their posts. Of the 11 — consistency, specific, personal and thought-provoking, for instance — many of these tips parlay into business coaching.

Business coaching can cover similar tips like these, but instead of getting readers to a blog, it covers how to get more customers to a business. Curious about what else you might learn from a business coaching session? Click here and find out.

Think you’re busy trying to constantly update your own Twitter page? Imagine handling more than a million Twitter followers.

Marla Erwin, Interactive Art Director for Whole Foods, is credited with Whole Foods’ social media success. In its first year on Twitter, Whole Foods gained a million followers. Since starting with Twitter, Whole Foods now has several separate accounts for users who have more specific questions about the store’s products — a Twitter account for cheese, one for Whole Foods recipes, etc.

How did Marla garner so many followers? She incorporated user-generated content onto Whole Foods’ Twitter and Facebook accounts. Recipes, product ratings and reviews and comments on the Whole Foods’ blog all went onto their Twitter feed.

Marla then went on to use Facebook and Twitter for different uses: Facebook she uses for more editorial content and to start discussions among fans and friends (since users can see others’ comments on Facebook, it’s easier to have a discussion), and Twitter she uses for Whole Foods promotions, information for customers, to answer customers’ questions and tweet out links to Whole Foods’ blog.

Read the whole article here,  and see if any of what Marla did for Whole Foods’ Twitter and Facebook can be used for your business.

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.

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!

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.

Everyone’s talking about how blogging can expand a business’ reach further. Most business owners over the age of 35 are skeptical.

Well, it won’t get you instant success, but truth is, a business that consistently updates its own blog with info about the company and issues in its industry are more well-known businesses because of it.

For example, Google has a blog where it writes from time to time about ideas and concepts the site is thinking about unveiling (the latest is something called “Living Stories“), updates to its browser, Google Chrome, complete with screen shots, warnings of scams using Google’s name…the list goes on and on. When you’re as big as Google and have a lot going on, there’s a lot to blog about. Not that they need the SEO rankings, but a blog does help with SEO, and make users’ experience better by providing how-tos and useful information.

Want a lesser known example than Google? Coudal Partners, an advertising agency in Chicago, has a blog on its home page. Some people might wonder why they’d have a blog linking to interesting yet random articles and discussing various issues on the company’s home page. But not only does it make them stand out, fresh content helps their SEO ranking and the variety of creative topics their employees blog about show they get creative inspiration from just about everywhere at any place in the world (a post of theirs links to “Subway Architecture“. Cool stuff. ).

If your business starts its own blog, not only is it a great social media tool that provides networking by way of commenting on other blogs, people commenting on yours and leaving links to your/their blogs, it can also spread the word about your company by doing the following:

Increasing your site’s SEO (if you don’t know what these three letters mean, they stand for “search engine optimization”): SEO is something that is hugely important to businesses. Whenever someone searches an online engine for a keyword relating to your business, you want your business to be at the top of the page. It can be used to gain search engine traffic for given keywords or search terms. Your blog offers the opportunity to promote your Web site for hundreds or even thousands of different keywords.

Search engines particularly like promoting blogs because they offer a large amount of content that is updated and added to on a regular basis.

Easy Access to Company News and Info: However, be careful you don’t blog in press release style – if a blog is all praise for the company, it doesn’t sound genuine. Blog about company news and info that is useful and interesting, just like Coudal Partners and Google. People would always rather read genuine, high-quality content instead of filler information, too.

Expanding your Reach: A blog is a great way to find new potential customers. Write about the niche your business caters to in the market, and anything interesting within that niche, and people looking for anything related to your business could find your blog in a search. Keep in mind that updating information on the blogs and blogging regularly can keep people coming back to your blog for information and could become customers, too. Regular content is imperative to the success of any blog. This content needs to be informative, accurate, and written in a way that will appeal to your visitors.

Creating Fun and Familiarity: Faceless corporate blogs aren’t that fun to read. Why? Besides being dry and boring, they also don’t feel very inviting. Going back to our point about high-quality content, familiarity is very important with content – if the reader can’t relate to it or feels it’s just a higher up writing from a press release, the reader won’t take it to heart. Keep this in mind, and make it work for your company by designating a person (not necessarily the CEO) or a team to do the blogging. If you read Google’s blog, you’ll see that even their posts have a bit of personality to them. It’s easy to do.

All in all, a blog on your company’s site might be worth looking in to – hey, it’s good enough for Google – and it may be the extra piece your company needs to separate it from the competition.

What they say about the Internet is true – you never know who’s reading, because the Internet is everywhere, forever (unless you delete a blog post) and unless you don’t care who you offend, watch what you say.

It’s easier said than done, especially for those who are the faces of a brand (CEOs or ambassadors of companies). There are certain topics that, if talked about, might cause more trouble than you’re looking for.

But hey – some people love controversy. If that’s you, check out the top 10 hot-button topics you should never discuss online.