kO′ch VA adj. 1. a highly specialized and niched virtual
assistant who is in tune with their coaching clients and customizes solutions based upon their individual needs and goals 2. differs from a general virtual assistant as they only partner with members of the coaching industry [syn: 
Archive for Business
Creating and Generating Article Topics
Posted by: | Comments
One of the biggest challenges for new article writers is coming up with topics to write about. The key to developing great article topics is to ask yourself the right questions. Using the topic of “Coaching”, pull out a sheet of paper and a pen, set aside 15 minutes to brainstorm, and jot down answers to the following questions:
1. What are the five most common questions people ask you about being a coach?
2. What are the top five things you wish all your new clients knew about working with a coach?
3. What are the five biggest lessons you’ve learned about working with your clients?
4. What are the top five things you can help your clients with?
5. What are the five biggest benefits of working with a coach?
6. What are the five biggest challenges to working with a coach?
7. What are five things every new coach needs to know?
8. What five things will make it easier for a business owner to work with a coach?
9. What five tools does every coach need to have?
10. What five questions should every business owner ask when interviewing a coach?
11. What five questions should every coach ask before taking on a new client?
12. What are the five biggest mistakes business owners make when hiring a coach?
At the end of 15 minutes, you should have a list of at least a dozen article ideas. But don’t stop there! Remember, articles for submission to article directories typically average around 300-500 words, so each one of the five answers in each question above can be turned into an article, digging a little deeper.
Another easy way to generate article ideas is to keep a notebook by your computer, and every time someone asks you a question, write it down. At the end of the week or month, look through your list for additional article topics.
By keeping your eyes open in your everyday life as you go through your own coaching responsibilities and tasks, you’ll soon have an endless supply of fodder for your article marketing.
Google Search Engine Optimization Tips
Posted by: | Comments
Google is by far the largest search engine on the planet. Though Bing and Yahoo have merged, they still haven’t made a dent in Google’s market share. If you want to get free traffic, optimizing your site for Google is the most important thing you can do.
By and large, what you do that benefits your Google ranking will also help you improve your rankings with other search engines.
Here are a few tips for optimizing your website for Google SEO.
Start with High Quality Content
The content in your website is like the engine of a sports car. It’s what truly matters. Having great artwork on a sports car is a nice touch, but without a good engine, it doesn’t matter.
Marketers who focus on things like link building or SEO tactics at the expense of content will inevitably lose out. Google is constantly updating their algorithm to separate the high quality content from the chaff.
Design Does Matter
In addition to creating high quality content, aim to create a high quality website overall.
After Google’s “Panda Update,” the quality of your web design is starting to play an important part (learn more about how Google Panda has changed SEO). You can read more about Panda on Web Pro News here and here.
Google knows that great websites have great design. Without getting too much into the technical details, Google has essentially trained a complex artificial intelligence robot to spot the difference between good design and poor design and reward good sites accordingly.
Hire a professional designer to do your site. Or, if you’re doing the site yourself, at the very least hire a designer to do your header or look over your site.
Build a Variety of Backlinks
Build backlinks to your site using a variety of different tactics and methods.
There is no “golden method” when it comes to link building. Sometimes getting one PR 5 link is what it takes to get to #1, at other times you need 200 PR 0 to PR 1 links.
The best way to take your site to the top is to throw in a mix of all different kinds of tactics.
Use traditional press to get high quality backlinks. Do guest blogging on high PR related websites. Use low quality backlink tactics like social bookmarking or article marketing. Throw them all together and see what sticks.
When you get backlinks, optimize both your home page and subpages within your website.
Pay Attention to Internal Linking
Internal linking matters. It matters a great deal, in fact. Try to interlink all the pages on your website through a “related articles” section at the bottom of your post.
Silo your content so that different topics on your site are split into different “groups.” Grouping your articles is one of the proven methods of effectively passing link juice throughout a website.
These tips will help you get legitimately ranked in Google, which will help you rank in all the other search engines as well. Lay the groundwork and don’t take shortcuts with SEO. It’ll take a little while for your site to really get traction, but when it does, it’ll be unstoppable.
5 Tips to Make Your Press Release Brilliant
Posted by: | Comments
Press Releases can help your business gain publicity through the media. Having media attention gives your business credibility. Here are some tips to boost your press release’s appeal.
Correct Format: There is a format that press releases need to follow. Make sure your yours is written in the correct format, as you will want it to look as professional as possible. It is also a good idea to double-check the grammar, punctuation and spelling before you send it in for submission.
Keep it Clear and Concise: Your press release should be no longer than two pages. Media outlets receive lots of press releases and don’t have time to read a ten page report. Keeping your writing clear and concise allow you to fit in the important facts without going over the two page limit. As you decide what information to include, answer the following questions: who, what, why, where, when, and how.
What Is The Reader Going To Gain: Give your press releases a call to action. Include something that is going to inspire readers to go to your event, visit your website, attend your grand opening, etc. Writing a blatant ad will be obvious. Incorporate the features and benefits of what you are promoting, and give information on what it will do for your target market. If you are promoting a new in-person retreat, simply stating that it is new and improved isn’t enough. However, writing the information as “the new in-person retreat is relaxing and life changing, allowing you to create your own perfect day and make the most of it” lets the reader know how the new retreat will help them.
Make It Interesting: If your writing is boring, no one is going to want to read it. Try to find a balance between straight facts and excitement. Using the example of the in-person retreat above, announcing that “our new retreat will be available this spring” isn’t as catchy as “our new brand new in-person, personal intensive will be available this spring, just in time to help you “spring” into action and start anew.”
Remember Your Target Market: As you write and submit your press releases, keep your target market in mind at all times. By keeping your audience in mind, you will be able to focus on what information to include and where to submit your press releases. For instance, if you are promoting an event related to children’s health, submitting a press release to the travel editor of your local paper isn’t going to help you.
The media cannot run a story on every press release they receive, but implementing these tips will help you write press releases that grab, and keep, the media’s attention. The old saying “practice makes perfect” rings true for press releases; the more you write them, the better you will get.
Creating a WordPress Multiuser Blog
Posted by: | Comments
WordPress is a powerful infrastructure that can be used to make a variety of different types of sites. WordPress is most often used to make blogs, of course, but it can also be used as the foundation for business websites, e-commerce websites and even educational websites. Another powerful, but lesser known, type of website that can be created with WordPress is a “multiuser blog.”
A multiuser blog isn’t simply a matter of allowing different individuals to play different roles (such as an author or an editor or an admin) in running a blog. Rather, a true multiuser WordPress blog is a website where multiple users can each have their own blog, and all of the individual blogs will run under a single WordPress installation and on a single domain. This can make it very easy to administer a large number of related blogs and to achieve a wide range of business objectives.
Creating this type of multiuser set-up used to require the use of a plug-in, but standard WordPress installs that are at least as recent as version 3.0 now support a multiuser set-up with just a little bit of effort to modify your underlying code.
The first step is to enable multisite on your WordPress installation. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to get multisite up and running solely from your administrative panel. You’ll need to go into your wp-config.php file and manually add this line:
define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);
immediately before the line that reads:
/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
Now save the updated wp-config.php file. You won’t be able to access that file from within WordPress. If you need help locating it on your server, then contact your web hosting provider or webmaster.
Once you’ve made that change, you’ll see a “Network” selection in the “Tools” portion of your administrative menu.
After you click the “Network” link you’ll be taken to the screen through which you’ll set up your multisite network. The first thing you’ll have to decide is how you want the domains for each user’s website. You can choose for the addresses of the sites to be structured as subdomains, like:
http://site1.website.com
http://site2.website.com
http://site3.website.com
You can also have each of the websites set up as subdirectories, as follows:
http://www.website.com/site1
http://www.website.com/site2
http://www.website.com/site3
After you make that choice, you’ll choose a title for your new network and the administrative email address you want to use. Then click the “Install” button and WordPress will help you make a new folder in your main blog folder, identify a number of new lines that you’ll need to add to your wp-config.php file, as well as new lines that you’ll need to add to your .htaccess file.
When you log back in to your blog (making changes to the wp-config.php and .htaccess files will likely have the effect of logging you out), you’ll see a new Super Admin menu. Click the “Sites” selection in this new Super Admin menu and you’ll be taken to a form that lets you create a new site that will have its own set of logins and its own administrative dashboard.
This summary walks you through the process of setting up a multiuser blog, but for more details you can consult the underlying WordPress resources at: http://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network
WordPress Widgets
Posted by: | Comments
One of WordPress’s most innovative capabilities is “widgets.” Widgets allow you to customize your WordPress sidebar layout with a number of different pre-programmed options.
You can also expand your widgets to include all kinds of other features. Everything works through drag and drop and is extremely easy to design.
To get started, go to “Widgets” under “Appearance” in your WordPress set up. Here are a few of the most common options.
Archives
The archives shows a backlog of all the posts you’ve made this month, as well as provides direct links to the archives of previous months.
This is extremely useful for helping people find older content.
Calendar
The calendar is similar to the archive, except it lists your posts on a calendar. This can be useful for more visual people who are looking for content on your site.
Links and Blogroll
Are there other resources people in your industry should know about? The links and blogroll section makes it easy to link to other sites.
Links that go into your blogroll are site wide links, meaning every page from your site will point to that link through your widget. For other webmasters, it’s extremely valuable as it passes a lot of link juice.
Categories
If you have clearly defined categories, you can put them in the sidebar to make your site easier to navigate.
Tag Cloud
The tag cloud is one of the most visually stunning widgets you can choose from. It takes all your tags, which are like keywords you use to describe posts, and creates a “cloud,” a formation of different sized words. The more often you’ve used a tag, the larger the word.
This creates a very Web 2.0 kind of look, while giving people an easy way to find posts they’re looking for.
RSS and Social Media
By default, WordPress comes loaded with an RSS widget. The RSS widget makes it easy for people with RSS readers to subscribe to your blog.
WordPress doesn’t come out of the box with social media widgets, such as Like buttons or Follow buttons. However, there are plenty of plug-ins out there that can add this capability.
Raw HTML for Everything Else
Finally, you have the raw HTML option. This option gives you complete flexibility for what you want to put in your sidebar.
If you wanted to put a large banner image in the sidebar, how would you do it? One easy way would be to just use straight HTML code.
What if you wanted a subscription box? All you’d need to do is edit the boxes to be small enough to fit and put the HTML code in the side.
These are some of the most common WordPress widgets you can choose from. By mixing and matching widgets, you can create a highly unique and personal design that’s also very easy to use.
CONTEST: Blog More, While Stressing Less
Posted by: | Comments
Is the thought of blogging for business stressing you out?
Is your blog neglected and in dire need of refreshment?
Do you want to attract the right type of client to your website?
If you answered YES to any of these questions have I got a treat for you! Janet Slack of Solopreneur.biz giving away ONE seat to Laurie Foley’s class “Blog More, Stress Less: Six Steps to a Sustainable Blog” valued at $497. You can find out more about the program here but now for the best part…how YOU can WIN!
There’s going to be a contest and here’s how it’s going to go:
#1 – To enter, simply create a post on your blog about why you would like to be in the class “Blog More, Stress Less”. You’ll even get bonus points in the contest if you link to Solopreneur.biz and the “Blog More, Stress Less” websites here:
http://blogmorestressless.com/
#2 – After you post to your blog, simply go to our contest page on Solopreneur.biz on Facebook and post a live link to your blog post.
That’s it! You’ll be entered into the contest. They’ll be reading your posts everyday and promoting them on the Solpreneur.biz on Facebook Wall and they’ll pick the final winner on Friday, March 2nd.
You’ve got nothing to lose (except perhaps STRESS) and everything to gain. Have fun and be creative, which relieves stress too! 
About Laurie Foley:
Laurie Foley is an online business coach with a thriving practice that specializes in branding. She got off to a rough start with her blog – Laurie wanted it to work but felt clueless and unsatisfied for months and months. Then she read in the New York Times that 95% of blogs are abandoned within 4 months, and she knew she wasn’t the only one who had been struggling to sustain a creative and helpful blog.
Laurie then spent a solid year (and a lot of money!) studying blogging to learn how to create a blog that is easy to sustain and helps you achieve more in your business as a coach or consultant. She put what she learned into practice and was awarded one of the “Top Ten Coaching Blogs” from the School of Coaching Mastery in 2009 and 2010 for her blog at lauriefoley.com
About Janet Slack and Solopreneur.biz:
Janet is a Professional Certified Coach, well-known author, speaker and blogger on topics related to running a successful small business. She has mentored, coached and supported hundreds of others as they started or grew their own small businesses. Her passion is coaching people to succeed in life through seeking fun, challenges and rewards whether they are small business owners, women in transition or even those conquering fear and learning to find joy. Her first book, Mind Your Own Biz, is a guide to starting and developing a coaching business. Janet is a coauthor of How the Fierce Handle Fear.
SEO vs. Social Media
Posted by: | Comments
Two of the most important factors for any growing online business are SEO and social media marketing. But is one more important than the other? Should you put more time and energy into one and not the other? Which can make a bigger difference on your bottom line?
Let’s explore some of these questions.
SEO Is More Important for Raw Traffic
SEO will get you more traffic up front than social media will. Though social media is gaining more and more traction every day, they still don’t come close to what a number one ranking can do for your site in terms of raw traffic.
On the other hand, top search rankings are hard to achieve. They can often take months, even years. They take a lot of time investment and often a lot of monetary investment as well.
SEO is a longer-term strategy than social media. You might get more traffic overall than social media, but it takes more effort and has a randomness factor as well. You don’t know if it’ll actually work.
Social Media is More Important for Reputation
On the other hand, social media is free. It’s easy to manage and doesn’t take months before you see results. That said, you won’t see the same kind of traffic that you’d get from a number one ranking search listing.
Social media has a lot of side benefits that go beyond the raw traffic stats. Prominent social media figures build a strong reputation in a space, which often increases their conversion rates because of their reputation. Likewise, they’re more likely to get invited to speaking engagements, where many profitable business deals can be made.
The key to good social media marketing is to provide something your users want, consistently. If that’s a weekly how-to video, then make sure you provide that video every week, without fail.
The Two Are Merging
Most SEO experts agree that search engines are taking many social media factors into account when ranking pages. In other words, instead of just looking at backlinks and PageRank, the search engines now look at your Facebook likes and reposts as well to help determine rankings.
When it comes down to it, the secret to successful SEO and social media are really the same. Provide good content, consistently. It’s what people tend to pass on and it’s what the search engines are looking for.
One may be more or less effective for specific businesses, but if you focus 90% of your efforts on creating a great user experience and 10% on marketing techniques, you’ll have a great chance of succeeding with both.
Is one more important than the other? “Yes,” in the sense that one may work better than the other for your business in the short term. “No,” in the sense that in the long run, they’re more or less the same.
Create an Outline for Your Info Products
Posted by: | Comments
Creating an outline is an important step when writing an information product. If you just start writing without direction it can be difficult to format everything you want to say into one clear structure.
Here are a few steps to creating your information product outline:
You may want to take a legal pad or notebook and on one page just start jotting down ideas you would like to include in your product as they come to you. Don’t worry too much about structure at this point, you just want to get all your ideas out on paper. Anything you can think off which may be a good fit for your product, write it down.
You can also write questions down such as “who needs this product?” “why this product is necessary”, etc.
Once you’ve written all your thoughts, take a second sheet of paper and create an outline. You want to write things down in the actual order they will appear in the book. Your outline may include some of the following things:
- Introduction
- Copyright page
- Disclaimer page
- Body of the book
- Closing
- Recommended Resources
Now you want to take the body of the book and break that into main sections. For example one section may be called “Getting Started” while another may be called “Marketing your Business”. Of course, it will depend on your subject but this should give you a general structure idea.
Now for each section such as “Getting Started” write down each sub section that corresponds to “Getting Started”. Lets say you’re product is about starting a website design business then under getting started you may include – “Who Needs Web Design Services?” – “How Much Can a Web designer Expect to Earn?” and so on.
By the time you finish going through each section you have a rough outline. Now read through it. Does it all flow nicely? Would some of the information fit better in another section of the book? Did you leave something out or should you add something else? Edit and tweak it a little then leave it for at least 24 hours.
After a nice rest go back to it and look it over again with a fresh and open mind and make any necessary changes. Once you’re happy with your structure it’s time to start writing!
Recruiting Affiliates for Your Business
Posted by: | Comments
There’s no doubt about it, having a team of affiliates working for you is a sure-fire way to grow your business. However, finding the right affiliates could mean the difference in profits and performance. Here’s how to recruit affiliates:
Market to your list. Your list is made up of people who are interested in you and your products or services already. They may be the ideal people to work as affiliates because they’re already familiar with your business. And presumably they like you – that helps. You can send out occasional “Promote our Products” type of email message and you can include an affiliate sign-up link in the footer of your email.
Make sure you have a link on your website. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. A simple “Partner with us” link that redirects them to an information page will do the trick.
Get listed in an affiliate directory. That way affiliate marketers who are looking for your type of product or service can find you easily.
Advertise on relevant websites, forums and blogs.
Get noticed! Your blog and social networking interactions can drive traffic to your website. If you’re a force to be reckoned with, people will want to join you. They’ll want to become part of your success.
Network offline too. Attend seminars and workshops. Get out and make friends. Partnerships are often forged during the coffee breaks at seminars and conferences.
Make sure your affiliate offer is worth noticing. In addition to a nice chunk of the profits, make sure you’re giving your potential affiliates all the incentives they need to sign up. Bonus downloads, freebie marketing materials, and frequent pay outs are just a few perks.
Research your market. It’s often pretty easy to see what affiliate marketers are marketing to your industry. Once you’ve identified a few key affiliate marketers, contact them personally and make your pitch.
Be sure to promise a lot and then over-deliver. One of the best ways to recruit affiliates is to have other affiliates rave about you. Word of mouth is a great seller. The best way to accomplish that is to promise a lot and then to over-deliver.
Create the best products or services and deliver. One of the best ways to recruit great affiliates is to have a great product or service for them to promote. Good products and services are easy to promote and therefore easier to profit from. And they get to feel good about promoting you.
Affiliates can really take your business to the next level. If you’re ready to start an affiliate program, take the time to plan it well. Decide how you’re going to pay and reward your affiliates and then make it happen. Spread the word through all of your current marketing channels and don’t be afraid to try a few new ones.
How to Use Google Analytics
Posted by: | Comments
Google Analytics is a handy tool you can add to your website pages to learn valuable information. This information can help you fine tune your website and your business. Let’s take a look at some of the information Google Analytics offers and how you can use this information to your advantage.
What Google Analytics Provides
A Google analytics report breaks down the information into a list of sections. They include:
Site Usage which includes:
- Visits – Total number of visits to your site
- Page views – Total number of pages visitors looked at
- Pages/visit – Average number of pages viewed per visit
- Bounce rate – The percentage of users who left after viewing only one page on your site. Aim for under 50%.
- Average time on site – How long a visitor stayed on your website
- New visits – The percentage of people who haven’t visited your site before.
Visitor Overview – this section breaks down the visitor information into more detail including the number of pages viewed overall and the average page view per visit. This information can be invaluable. However, it takes a bit of analysis to find the noteworthy information.
For example, if you notice that there are only three page views per visit that might make you worry. People aren’t spending much time on your website. However, if the majority of your visits are not new visitors, meaning people are coming back to your website for information. Then the number of page views may not be so concerning. It’s likely that the visitors are just reading your new content.
Traffic Source overview – This section tells where your traffic comes from. It lists how many came from search engine traffic, for example Google Organic, but how many came from direct traffic and from referring sites. You can use this information to fine tune your traffic generation strategies.
For example, if you find that 60% of your visitors are coming from Google Organic, that’s good. However, if only 15% are coming from referring sites, you may want to increase your link building strategy. And vice versa, if you find you have low Google organic numbers, you would then know it’s time to work on your keyword placement and optimizing your content and your site.
The traffic source overview also tells you what top keywords people used to find your content. This is of course extremely helpful when creating your content plan and learning what keywords people use and what they’re looking for on your website.
Content Overview – This section of the report lists the top content and the page views for each piece. This is ideal information for building and creating your content strategy. It’s more beneficial however, if you compare the information over time and look for trends. Is your top article always a tips sheet? Is it always on the same basic topic? Google Analytics compares your present week to the prior week. However it’s more advantageous to look at your content overview information over a longer period of time.
Google analytics provides valuable information for you to fine tune your keyword strategy. It helps you learn what content people prefer on your site. And it helps you learn where your visitors are coming from so you can adjust your traffic generation strategies as needed. It’s not a crystal ball that can put you inside the minds of your prospects and visitors. However, the information Google Analytics provides is extremely useful to build your business and your business website.
