Monthly Archives: September 2011

Using social media to speak to your clients

 in Guest Post  tagged blog articles / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / content / Delicious bookmarks / executive coach / Facebook / forum postings / Hubworking / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / Mei Qi Tan / nlp coach / online communications / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / repostings / social media / status updates / Twitter

In today’s guest post Mei Qi Tan shares her expertise about how you can use social media to benefit your coaching business.

Using social media to speak to your clients

by Mei Qi Tan from Hubworking

‘I don’t get this Twitter thing. Why on EARTH would anyone want to know what I’m doing, if I’m sitting on a toilet or picking my nose?”.

Sound familiar? I’m sure we’ve all heard this exclamation before.

Well, that person is right. No one is interested in you, and no one is interested in what you say. Unless of course, you’re saying something of interest to them. Using social media at its basest level is providing an unfiltered, running commentary of your day in thoughts, experiences and happenings. People who know you personally will probably find this more interesting than people who do not. For your followers, it’s the lure of inner-circle access and the empowerment of being in-the-know.

In a business sense, followers are customers, or potential ones at that. If someone is following you, then they’re interested in what you have to say. Creating a link between a potential customer and your business is easy – just make sure the ‘submit’ button on your website enquiry form is clear enough. Maintaining and growing that initial contact into a long-standing relationship between client and company however, is a different story.

Historically speaking, only large companies could afford to make their voices heard in the marketplace. Large budgets = More marketing. The rise of social media has allowed small businesses to be more competitive, foster a community online, and be able to attend to their needs personally. Using social media to speak to your customers creates opportunities for creative expression, and is an ongoing exercise in genuine customer service and new discoveries.

But social media is not the ‘new’ marketing. Rather, its rising use across generations and demographics represents a new tactic of marketing, particularly for building your personal brand.

Using social media for small business is like building a house, then maintaining it. The bricks-and-mortar of any small business or freelancer is your relationships with clients. The overarching structure holding it all together, is you. The furniture and objects you place in your House include your tweets, status updates, blog articles, Delicious bookmarks, forum postings, repostings of interesting content that relates to the business; in a nutshell, it’s anything and everything you say online. You are responsible for what you place in your House – if it doesn’t look right or more importantly, feel right, then it shouldn’t be there in the first place. If your clients like what they see, they’ll move in. But it doesn’t stop there – you’ll need to keep maintaining your property, and performing upgrades where necessary to keep your tenants happy and from moving out.

Maintaining these relationships requires a plan that is structured and strategic. It involves having to create a brand persona that’s consistent – constructed from the tone of your interactions with others (followers and dissidents alike), and enriched from related content you’ve discovered online that applies to your business and its customers. Using social media for your small business isn’t just about telling others what you think, it’s about listening, responding and anticipating what your customers might want. And if they want to hear about you sitting on a toilet or picking your nose, best to stick to a description under 140 characters.

Using Social Media for small business at a snapshot

  • Adopt a consistent and positive tone for all online communication eg. When responding to a complaint made in a public space like Twitter, always address the feedback publicly “I’m sorry for your bad experience, we would like to offer you a complimentary meal to make up for it”
  • Post content that is relevant – Not only should you post interesting articles or videos that relate to your business and industry, but you should also make sure your content is optimised with metadata tags and key words, which make it relevant to the search engines
  • Make sure your website is user-friendly – This is the base that all the content you post online should direct your followers to. If it’s not up-to-scratch, the only figures that will be soaring will be your bounce rates
  • Measure, measure, measure! Use free tools like Google Analytics to find out how many incoming links to your website are generated through social media. Have a look at Facebook Insights to see demographic profiles of who’s viewing your business’ Facebook page, and sign up for a bit.ly account to track the number of clicks and re-tweets of your links on Twitter.

About the Author/Further Resources

Mei has recently arrived in London from Sydney and is embarking on a Masters Degree in Electronic Publishing. She is also working part time for Hubworking, contributing to their social media activity.

Note from Jen; the owner of Coaching Confidence, this coaching blog: For those who don’t already know Hubworking provides Ad hoc, pay as you go meeting space for businesses in central London. If you are looking for a coaching or meeting room in this area it’s a great resource.

How is your coaching practice?

 in Coaching  tagged business coach / business coaching / career coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching business / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching practice / coaching qualifications / coaching session / coaching skills / coaching techniques / executive coach / Free resource / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal development / practice / resource

Have you ever wondered about the choice of language that many coaches use? One of the ones I particularly like is the choice that many coaches (along with other practitioners) choose to use – having a coaching practice.

This is not going to be a post about how not thinking of a coaching practice as a business can impact upon your business success. For now, I’ll let you consider those implications for yourself. (or you can read some previous posts such as this guest post by Nicky Kriel)

This is going to be a piece about that word practice. A dictionary definition gives more than one meaning for the word including “the professional work, business or place of business of a doctor, lawyer etc.”

I personally think that the one of the aspects that contributes to a professional work or business is being successful in using specific skills.

Looking at the origins and historical use of the word, in the early 15th century the word practice was used as meaning “to perform repeatedly to acquire skill.” It’s this part of a definition that I want to focus upon today.

I speak to many coaches who are at the start of their journey as a coach, some have had more training than others and all are passionate about coaching. Yet some have had more practice than others.

Some may place the “blame” for lack of practice on the structure of training courses or perhaps because of some sort of character flaw such as procrastination. Personally, I don’t think placing the blame is overly useful for the individual in that situation. I’m far more interested in finding a solution that will get that individual coaching more.

The same applies if you have “taken a break” for a while – perhaps you did lots of coaching whilst doing a course but then haven’t done any for a while. Maybe you have got further with your coaching and then you prioritised something else either by choice or necessity.

If you do find yourself in that situation rather than asking why, how about considering the following questions?

What would have to happen so I can practice my coaching more?

What is the very first thing that I could do?

The answers to those questions will very easily vary from person to person:

  • Perhaps it is as simple as identifying just one person who you think your services could assist – and then invite them to come and play.
  • Maybe for you it’s about putting a support system in place.
  • Or just spending some time to “script” out how you could actually invite someone to experience your coaching.
  • Possibly, it’s practicing inviting someone to experience your coaching that will allow you to practice your coaching more!

Sometimes what is actually stopping a coach from practicing more is the question of “When to start charging?” I’ve shared in a previous post various different approaches to this question and invited you to see which appealed to you.

Whatever you find your answers to those questions are, I invite you to consider taking action to make a difference for your coaching practice and for your clients, both present ones and your clients in the future.

Unfolding stories

 in General life improvement

This was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com in summer 2010

“Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.”
(Earl Nightingale)

For the last few weeks I have been watching an unfolding story of action and perseverance. At times it appeared that it was destined to end in failure but so far despite all appearances to the country it’s looking like a happy ending is on the cards.

I’m not referring to any TV show but a tale that has been taking place outside one of the windows by my desk. 2 wood pigeons have set up their home and have been raising a family.

Their initial attempts of “constructing” their nest looked like a single breeze would bring it down to the ground. Certainly in comparison to the blackbirds in a different part of the garden the term construction would be a generous description of their attempts to balance twigs on a branch.

Yet no one appears to have mentioned to them that they need to compare themselves to other birds. So they persevered with their building until they had a nest balanced precariously on the branch and took up residency. As an onlooker I was concerned as I had seen their attempts at bathing in the bottom of the garden which nearly always led to them knocking over nearby plant pots. Such apparent clumsiness and a balanced nest did not seem like the ideal match to me.

However, not being fluent in pigeon they were unaware of how I expected this story to unfold so they carried on creating a family home apparently unphased by it all.

So after a spell of sitting on her eggs we got a small family, who in recent weeks have been perfecting the art of flying. Sure the parents may not give the most accurate directions – judging by the rebound one of the youngsters had with a window. (Or maybe it’s just inherited it’s parents clumsiness). However, no-one had mentioned to it that if you failed then obviously that’s what it would mean every time because it was soon trying again altering it’s course so that there was no more bouncing of windows.

As I type one of them is currently sat in the tree apparently watching me through the window perhaps wondering what that strange creature is up to this time so that it can tell the rest of its family later the newest exploits!

So often we can get in our own ways by comparing ourselves either to someone else or an imagined perfection. On other occasions we may let someone-else’s concerns drown out our own inner knowledge. Not to mention how easy it can be to use a perceived failure as a reason not to attempt that again.

If you have a situation or project where you have found yourself stuck then this week I invite you to play with the following questions and see which will get you moving again.

1. If it didn’t matter how you completed this, as long as you got there, what would be your next step?
2. If you were invisible, so nobody could see how you completed this situation/project, what would be your very next step?
3. If it didn’t matter if you stumbled or failed, what would be your next step?

These questions are designed to give you new possibilities of action – you don’t have to “do” anything with any of your answers. They are here to give you a different way of approaching what you are stuck with. However, you may find that there is a gem of an idea of what to do next that you haven’t realised before. If there is any answer you want to do and like the consequences of, then by all means take action and get moving again.

Have a week full of taking flight with your next step

Love

Jen