Library of Professional Coaching

Social Media & Online Marketing (Faculty: Suzi Pomerantz, MT., MCC.)

Suzi Pomerantz

Welcome!

I’m Suzi Pomerantz, your instructor on this page.  I’m glad you’re here!  You can scroll down to find all sorts of goodies for your learning pleasure in the area of social media and online marketing, with a lot of multimedia content about Twitter, in particular.  There are two audio recordings for you to listen to, a video, an e-book you can download and a slide presentation you can download as well. Take your time and come back often to see if there is anything new posted on this page.

Building a Coaching Business in the Age of Social Media

Strategies for success with online networking:

Suzi Talks about Twitter on Coaches Console Thursdays at Three:

Why Social Media is Crucial for Coaches:

To grow your coaching business or practice, it is no longer acceptable NOT to be engaged in social media. That luxury has passed. If you were waiting for this “fad” to go away, it’s time for a mindset shift! Here’s why social media is ideal for coaches:

1. It’s networking at its best: across all time zones, from the comforts of your own home and aligned with the best coaching mindsets of service, connection and contribution.

2. It’s free: free marketing opportunities work in every budget, in every economy.

3. It’s a platform to do what you do best: engage in conversation, share wisdom, and be truly global.

So what is social media? It is a series of online platforms that utilize Web 2.0 technology, which is basically anything that lets you interact and participate rather than just read. Blogs and wikis are part of social media, but in this article we’ll just discuss social networks.

For coaches, the key uses of social media are to build your brand, increase your visibility and exposure, network internationally, share your wisdom, find service providers, have conversations with clients, prospective clients, and colleagues, and create opportunities for large-scale collaborations.

General Social Networking Strategies

The Big Three Social Networks

There are literally hundreds of online social networks you can join, but these are the Top Three:

LinkedIn: This one is primarily professional, although to the extent that you serve as a connector of others, you may wish to include your broader community as well. The power of LinkedIn for coaches is in the Groups function (search for “coaching” and you will find many potential groups to connect with) as well as the Questions and Answers sections (position yourself as an expert by answering questions in your specialty area). LinkedIn has nearly 50 million users from over 200 countries, and has been around long enough to rank very high on search engine rankings pages.

Facebook: This one is primarily social, although many businesses are using both profile pages and Fan Pages to engage in conversation with clients and stakeholders. As a coach, I definitely recommend having both a profile page for you and a Fan Page for your business. If you have any products, you can also create a Fan Page for each product. Facebook has over 300 million people on it, and while that’s an outrageous number of people to try to target, especially for coaches, you can’t beat that kind of free marketing exposure opportunity!

Twitter: The power of Twitter is the ability to network and be in an online streaming conversation with 44 million people all over the world. Unlike Linked In and Facebook, relationships are not reciprocal, which means you don’t have to approve invitations to connect. People become your “follower” and you can follow whomever you choose: thought leaders, authors, celebrities, politicians, other coaches, executives, etc. Sign up for a Twitter account and secure that “real estate” in your name, your company’s name, and any brands or products you carry. Tweets are short posts of 140 characters, usually with links embedded. This makes tweeting very speedy.

The Big Three Coaching Networks

Because social media is so ideal for coaches, there are now many coach-specific social networks. Here are three that you might begin with, and all are free to join: [READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE AT THE IAC SITE BY CLICKING HERE]

Facts and Figures of the Size and Scope of Social Media

The Reach and Scope of Social Media

Twitter’s website attracted a total of 44.5 million unique visitors worldwide in June, 2009, according to comScore.

Twitter’s worldwide audience grew a healthy 19 percent from May, 2009 (and an even healthier 1,460 percent from June, 2008, when its worldwide audience was just 2.9 million).

With 20 million of its visitors coming from the U.S., Twitter’s audience is now 55 percent international.

E-book for you!

Feel free to download your own copy of the new E-Book about networking in the age of social media, which I sell to the general public for $9.97.  If you wish to share it with others, please send them to purchase their own copy at the Coaches’ Store.

It’s called:  Seal the Deal Networking: How Coaches Connect with Leaders in the Age of Social Media and it’s yours to download free (just for being a member of the Clubhouse) by clicking this link:

Seal the Deal Networking in the Age of Social Media

Twitter Tips, Tools & Strategies

Here are a few of the common complaints or limiting beliefs I’ve heard from coaches with regard to Twitter.  I share them with you in case you find some of them to be familiar as to your reason why you haven’t yet fully embraced Twitter as THE social media tool for growing your coaching business:

As coaches, you know it’s always all about mindsets. So take a quick look for yourself. What are your assessments about Twitter? What are your limiting mindsets about Twitter?

I’ve been having fun and getting fast results on Twitter and wanted to share with you about the power of Twitter and why you’re missing out on the best networking vehicle out there if you’re not playing in this space!

When I first met Twitter, I thought it was really stupid.  Why would anyone care?  And who has time for this?

A few key mindsets to embrace for success on Twitter, and (really all social media), are:

It’s not just for celebrities, it’s actually ideal for coaches.

Twitter is best for coaches because:  it’s all about genuine human connections, adding value, sharing wisdom, sharing resources, and being in communication.  I’ts most like real life conversations, not like linked in or facebook or email where you put your thought out there and  have to wait a day or two until they check it and respond.  This is in real time, streaming conversation at any time of day or night from the comfort of your own home/computer/phone.

My vision for coaches:  all of us worldwide in one streaming twitter conversation of connectivity

Most like real life networking, works best when operating from successful Mindsets of networking (in Seal the Deal I talk about the Nine Mindsets of Networking)

Quickly moves to phone conversation, which is what you want anyway

Engage with people you’d never otherwise meet

Learning from free resources

Asking questions and getting immediate and GOOD answers

I had the opportunity to explore using Ustream TV for The Coach Exchange (tce.com), and this is a recording of what was at the time a live broadcast. Cool technology, really…you can broadcast a live “tv” show from your office. Anyway, this show was called Twitter for Solopreneurs, and I was interviewed by Coach Erwin from Spain, who you could see in picture-in-picture during the live broadcast, but for some reason you can only hear him on this recorded version if you turn up the volume. At any rate, if you are willing to look past the wrinkles given that this was our first time using this technology, I know you’ll find the content helpful!

Want more on Twitter?  Listen to the mp3 audio recording of the Twitter Teleclass I led. It’s for beginners, and I cover the basics of how to get going on Twitter. You just have to press the “play” triangle below and the teleclass recording will play. Enjoy!


Do you want the slides mentioned in the call above so you can follow along? You can download the pdf here!

And, if you still want more, I was interviewed by Kate Steinbacher of Coaches Console for their program called Thursdays at 3 where they bring in experts about various elements of having a successful coaching business. I spoke to them about Twitter and you can listen below by pushing the “play” triangle.

How To Sign Up For Twitter

There are some wonderful videos on YouTube as well about how to do Twitter.  For the uninitiated, who think it’s too hard to sign up for Twitter, I give you this fab video tutorial from YouTube:  A simple step by step tutorial on how to create your Twitter Account, Add friends and Tweet Posts!

 

Here are a few blog posts that may be helpful:

Twitter 101

Internet Marketing Rhythm

 

Networking Strategy: Twitter!

Twitter World

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