I’ll admit it. I’m a child of the 80′s rock band era. Other than avoiding Disco, my musical taste has always lead me towards anything energetic and/or motivational. If I couldn’t cut the grass faster or do more homework with a particular song as mental fuel, then I would keep searching until I found one that worked.
That’s why you’ll still hear me cranking out my daily marketing and blogging chores to the beat of The Police, Metallica or my favorite, VanHalen / Sammy Haggar’s Song “Right Now“. It’s not often that I get to write about business and rock music in the same sentence, but if you listen to the lyrics of Right Now, you’ll quickly discover how it reflects today’s entrepreneurial spirit. It’s all about doing it RIGHT NOW.
“Right Now! It’s your tomorrow…it means everything…tell me, what are you waiting for?…right here and now!”
Right now means everything. It’s also the defining moment in why you HAVE or HAVE NOT decided to start marketing your coaching or consulting practice online. If you know that you need to get started online then NOW is your chance to do it. Whatever music or lyrics you use to get yourself motivated, doing at least one of these 9 actions right now will immediately help develop your online presence:
Update your Fan Page on FACEBOOK
If I had to chose only one action, getting a Facebook account would be it. You could theoretically start, run and maintain a coaching or consulting business from this one social media platform. If you’re in it for the long-haul however, you may want to hedge your bets with other resources to maximize your online leverage and exposure.
Tweet on TWITTER
Tweet up-to-the-second messages to your followers in 140 characters or less. Despite its limitations, Twitter rivals many other social media sites by its simple, effective communication and number of educated users. Keep in mind that there is a right way and a wrong way to use Twitter. If you start off trying to follow EVERYONE, you end up losing the best part of it’s usefulness. I call it the “signal to noise ratio”. Can you understand 1000 people talking at the same time? Don’t try it on Twitter either.
Post videos to YOUTUBE
If you haven’t at least experimented with video on YouTube, you’re missing out on some major online leverage. Not only is video more engaging to your potential coaching or consulting clients, but search engines such as Google are including it in its search results. Think about it. Where else can you generate a perpetual commercial that is always retrievable via the world’s largest search engine? You don’t have to be in front of the camera either. You can create slideshows with applications such as PowerPoint or Keynote to get your message seen and heard.
Write EZINE ARTICLES
Writing a single article about your coaching or consulting business is easy enough. Writing 10 articles on EzineArticles.com about specific details of your business using keywords that get people to discover your online brilliance is another. Do it anyway (right now!) and the search engines will give you link juice from your backlinks in the process. Make sure you’re using keywords that people are Googling to find coaches like you. Otherwise you’ll miss the mark.
Get an AWEBER account
In short, Aweber takes care of your email lists. You’ll want to grow, manage and send relative emails to your list of fans and followers, and maybe even set up an auto-responder to let people know you’re organized and on top of all of your consulting or coaching efforts. Make sure you have your lists approval to send to them and keep it simple. You don’t want to be confused for a spammer who’s email goes straight to the trash.
Have a website built with WORDPRESS
While blogging is important, the myth has been that WordPress is just for Blogs. The truth is that WordPress 3.0 is the most flexible, lightweight and speedy way to create websites for coaches and consultants… hands down. You really don’t need much training to start with WordPress. The administration control panel is very easy to use. What you do need is a well structured site that is aesthetic, marketable and SEO friendly. We know a few people over at TribeCoach who can tell you about the details.
Get GMAIL
You’ll want to sign up for a Free Google Mail account. The benefits aren’t obvious until you realize how many other online marketing launches, blogs, product offers and downloads you’ve signed up for that are clogging up your home computer’s email. Gmail doesn’t care how much mail you get and you never have to worry about clearing it. Google takes care of it for you. It’s also a great way to check up on your competition by signing up for your competitor’s offers without using your “business” email.
Read multiple Blogposts with GOOGLE READER
Take multiple RSS feeds from your favorite blogs and read them from one convenient web page. Google Reader has been a personal life saver of time and sanity for me. You will wonder how you lived without it once you make it your daily internet “newspaper” for blog posts that relate to you and your online marketing of your coaching business.
Track your site with GOOGLE ANALYTICS
How many people are visiting your web site? Which pages get the most visits? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you should. Google Analytics is free, and it will help you to define your success online. It’s a no-brainer thing to do just before your website goes live.
Do it CONSISTENTLY
Do any of the above actions right now and KEEP DOING IT. Consistency will get you noticed online above other coaches who only take a half-hearted approach. Start slowly. The key is to develop daily online habits that are streamlined so they don’t keep you chained to your computer.
