Mei Qi Tan

Recapping January – March 2012 guest posts 1

 in Guest Post / site news  tagged Amber Fogarty / Angus MacLennan / beliefs / blue monday / business / change / Cindy Hillsey / clients / coaches / coaching / content / counselling / goals / guest post / habit / ideal client / Karen Williams / Karen Wise / knowledge / Lenny Deverill-West / Liz Scott / Lorraine Hurst / Marie Yates / marketing / Mei Qi Tan / mindset / networking / new year / niching / Nicky Kriel / Parallel conversations / plans / Relationship / relationships / Richard Nugent / success / Toni Knights / websites

Over the next few days I’m going to briefly recap the last years worth of guest posts that appear here each Friday.

Today we start by looking at the first three months of this year.

Image showing first January on a diary with pen on isolated color background with fine clipping path.

January

In the first post of 2012 Amber Fogarty shared how she is in the “habit change business” discussing something she talks about a lot with clients in “Developing Better Habits”.

Coach and trainer Lorraine Hurst then followed with a post that could be of use to both yourself and your clients. “Blue Monday – what colour will yours be?” was published just prior to the third Monday of the year – read the post to see the significance of that date!

Coach and author of “Secrets of Successful Coaches”, Karen Williams, shared her expertise and knowledge in the third guest post of the year: “How does your mindset affect your business?” Read how Karen believes mindset, marketing and business knowledge will affect a successful coaching business.

The final post in January saw Karen Wise sharing a personal experience in the post “Relationship drama.” How familiar is this incident in either your own life or with what your clients tell you?

Image showing 14th February a Valentine day with heart symbol & message.

February

As we started the second month of the year, coach Marie Yates turned her attention to the action taken to the goals and plans made at the start of the New Year. This post contains a series of questions to assist you to make progress. Read “The warm up is complete… It is time for the main event.” 11 months since this was first published – what would your answers to these questions be today?

Liz Scott loves bringing coaches together to share experiences and knowledge. Her post focused upon “Parallel conversations and coaching”, using her personal experience as a lesson to be used in coaching sessions.

Lenny Deverill-West shared how he has been practically incorporating other teachings into his own work with clients. Read more about what he is doing in “The Coaching Aha!”

Social Media coach Nicky Kriel discussed errors she’s seen coaches make attempting one particular marketing approach. Are you making any of the blunders featured in “5 Big Mistakes that Life Coaches make Networking”?

March

March

Coach Richard Nugent invited you to “Explore Some Half Truths Of Coaching” with the aim of getting you to think about your own professional beliefs that could help you be more successful.

A coaching website is on many new coaches to do list, in the second guest post in March Mei Qi Tan shared her expertise and knowledge about what to focus upon. Read her post “Websites: It’s not just about content – it’s about users.”

Coach Angus MacLennan, who delivers practical Business Support to Business Owners, turned his attention to the subject that can have many new coaching business owners scratching their heads in the post “Niching Has Failed”

How to market your coaching is an often requested topic, in our next guest post coach Cindy Hillsey shared her expertise and knowledge in “Marketing and your Ideal Client”

In the final guest post in March Coach Toni Knights discussed what she considers to decide if it is necessary to refer clients for additional help, in her post “Identifying When Clients Need Counselling”

Visit tomorrow

Come back tomorrow for a post recapping April – June, or if you can’t wait, clicking here will bring a list of every post that has been published on this site labelled as a guest post.

January & Febuary image © Indianeye | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos
Visit tomorrow image © Renata2k | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Three things to improve the experience of your website

 in Guest Post  tagged business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / electronic publishing / executive coach / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / Mei Qi Tan / mobile / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / websites

One of the things that is on many to-do lists when a coach sets up a coaching business is “create a website.” In this week’s guest post Mei Qi Tan, shares her expertise and knowledge in how to develop your website so your readers find using it easy rather than confusing!

Three things to improve the experience of your website, A guest post by Mei Qi Tan

Three things to improve the experience of your website

by Mei Qi Tan

Once you’ve created a website, it is not enough to let it mature by simply adding content to it as time progresses. Just as your business matures in real-life, so does its digital presence.

Content needs to be updated regularly in terms of adding new content, and existing content should also be reorganised and refreshed regularly.

Another important factor is to understand how people are using and experiencing your site, in order for you to create and enhance its user experience. A good experience will emotionally satisfy and delight users, and is one of the best ways of ensuring their return. But in order to do this, you must set the right foundations in order to build consistency not just in your site, but in your brand as well as maintain the emotional satisfaction of users.

There are three elements of experience that you can start working on immediately in order to enhance your site, the first of which is –

Make navigation flow

In order to create smooth navigation through your site, try constructing some simple user journeys based on a few primary tasks you know visitors will conduct when using your site.

Understanding the journeys through your site content can help you plan and design pages to guide and support users. For example, chart the steps users will have to take when wanting to purchase something, or find your contact information.

Most users arriving at your website will have some clear goals they want to achieve. First, do some research on the types of people who use or frequent your site. Once you have an idea of who these people are, you can start to understand the types of goals they might have for using your site. One could be from the perspective of a potential customer who was referred to your services, but has never been to your site before.

Talk to some people you know, and ask them about the journey to information they take when visiting a new website. The first step might be clicking on the “about” page to find out about the business, or perhaps they’d like to take a look at “testimonials” (if they’re able to find it, that is!).

User journeys are critical to understanding the flow of information and the different pathways users might take on your site. But you can’t start to chart the journeys without doing your research, so talk to some people about the typical ways they approach and use new websites for information, and you can start designing your information flows and user journeys through your site from there.

Make information findable

Website owners tend to underestimate the importance of clear and concise labelling throughout the site. As a business owner, you’ll want to be able to include as much relevant content as possible, but the task of organising all existing content into a few ‘catch-all’ categories can be overwhelmingly difficult.

Exercise discipline in categorising your content regularly, and be ruthless in selecting the best and most concise labels for categories of content in your site. Don’t fall into the trap of jargon or wordplay – most of the time, your users won’t understand what those labels mean or refer to. Simplicity is key. Also, make sure to include a content search tool to enable users to quickly find what they’re looking for.

Make it for mobile

By 2014, it is estimated that mobile internet usage will overtake desktop internet usage. More people are accessing websites from mobile devices, and designing sites and services for a mobile use case is becoming impossible to ignore.

Don’t panic though, because designing for mobile can actually be a helpful exercise in improving the experience of your website, by stripping away a lot of unnecessary elements on a page that could distract the user from completing their tasks efficiently.

Designing for limited screen space can act as a ruthless enforcer of “getting to the point”- what does the user want from my site, and how can I give it to them with minimal efforts on their part?

If it’s services they want, perhaps you should think about creating a device-specific app. But if your site is content heavy, maybe you should think about making your site responsive. A responsively designed site automatically adapts content and layout on your site to different screen sizes.

If you’ve got a firm understanding on the types of information your user is looking for, you can prioritise that information within the site code for prime positioning and optimising presentation on different screen resolutions and devices.

About the author

Mei has recently arrived in London from Sydney and is embarking on a Masters Degree in Electronic Publishing. She is a Product Designer in Shoreditch

Websites: It’s not just about content – it’s about users. 1

 in Guest Post  tagged business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / content / executive coach / focus / Hubworking / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / Mei Qi Tan / mobile / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / related content / relevant content / seo / user / website

A coaching website is on many new coaches to do list, in today’s guest post Mei Qi Tan shares her expertise and knowledge about what to focus upon.

Websites: It’s not just about content – it’s about users.

By Mei Qi Tan from Hubworking

When it comes to websites, it seems like all everyone’s talking about these days, is content. SEO is a great tool for enhancing the findability of your website online, through making sure your individual pieces of website content like pages, and posts contain key words, phrases and concepts. This is what many SEO professionals call ‘optimised content’. ‘Content’ is the diesel that runs the proverbial search engine, but it’s ‘optimised content’ that makes it purr like a well-fed tabby cat.

However, we should try to distinguish the concept of content, from information. Information is vibrant, the creation and exchange of it, interactive. There is a human element to information – obtaining it helps us achieve our goals, whatever they may be. I don’t know what it is, but the idea of information online as a body of ‘optimised content’ just feels, well, rather dead.

Focus first on knowing what your clients want when they visit your website, not on what they think they might want. If I can find the information I want, and do the thing I wanted to do with little distraction and no fuss, then your website works (Hallelujah!) and I will return to use it again.

People visit websites to achieve specific goals. If their goal is to read articles and stories, then by all means, keep writing and keep linking. But if their goal is to buy a product, then you’re better off making sure your shopping cart is up-to-scratch, or that the information on where your business is located is easily findable and instructions clear as crystal. Websites are an extension of your business online – make sure they are purposeful, and designed to help your clients achieve their goals online, whatever that might be.

Don’t let the content storm distract you from designing your website specifically around the information needs and goals of their clients.

Here are the questions you need to answer before trying to design your website:

What do my clients want to achieve when they engage with my website? And how can I help them achieve those goals in as smooth and efficient manner as possible?

You will need to do some basic research into your website users. Don’t just find out why they use it, but how they use it. You could try setting someone a task to complete on your website and observing their actions while completing the task (i.e. Locate the address and store the telephone number in your phone)

It’s time to stop thinking about clients as visitors, and rather, as users.

When it comes to creating, or updating your website, here are some tips to get you thinking about it from a user’s point of view:

  • Be careful not to mistake relevant content for related content.

It’s important to remember that all content on a website needs to serve a function. If you’ve determined one of the primary goals of your users is to find your contact details, then a piece of relevant content that should be promoted on your site is a map of your office’s location, not a page on the history of your business – that would be related content. Save that for your company blog (if you have one)

  • Know who will be using your website, and what for

Let’s say Sarah, 25, is a big fan of your retail products and avid online shopper. Make sure your shopping cart can store her credit card details so she doesn’t have to enter it in every time she wants to buy something. Rather than using a generic ‘target audience’ to build a website for, why don’t you do some research into the people who most use your website, and create some personas for who you can specifically design an ‘experience’ for? You will pick up on situational and contextual details that influence how a person might use your website – details that you would otherwise have never discovered on your own.

  • Design for mobile

Ever noticed that mobile versions of websites seemingly scale back to the most basic of website versions? The future of the web is mobile: Businesses or organisations will never, ever, have control over what kind of device clients will be using (or what situation they may be in) trying to access your website. So once you’ve figured out what it is your clients really want from you online, invest in good web design that makes information findable, readable and accessible to your audiences – whether they’re on top of Mount Kinabalu at sunrise, relaxing at a desk, or crammed up against someone on the Tube during peak hour.

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.

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.