New Coach Connection

This post was originally published on Kenn’s blog Coaching Sites That Work.

If you’re networking on LinkedIn often, then this signature move outlined below can bring more qualified traffic to your site – leading to new subscribers, clients, and product sales.

If you’ve noticed, LinkedIn has no signature feature – that is, they do not automatically put your signature when you make comments.

As a result, in order for people to discover your coaching website, they need to click into your profile first and then find your website link.

Hoping for traffic from curious passersbys doesn’t work well.

A better approach is to append your own sig directly to your comments.

Simply, put your own signature line after your comments or discussions.

Doing so puts your message right in front of those who are reading your comments. It reminds them briefly what you’re about and how to get to your website.

Here’s how mine looks:

Important notes

1. Your link. Be sure to include “http://” before your link or else it won’t be clickable.

2. Give a reason to click to your site. You may have a blog, articles, free audio or video, special report, assessment, or top-10 list.

Use an enticer to drive traffic. As you can see in my signature, I invite people to get my free report.

If you don’t have a site or handy article, then …

… simply put a juicy summary of what you do.

It could be as simple as “Learn how I help you free up 10 hours a week while getting more done” or “Helping busy professionals eat well, lose weight, and feel great!”

Be sure to highlight the benefits you bring!

One thing that sucks is that you have to type it in each time.

If you’re posting often, then writing your signature in each time could be a bit of a pain in the butt.

What you can do is write out your signature and save it as a text file on your desktop and then copy and paste it in when needed.

Another option, if you use Firefox, is to use this trick for quickly entering in your signature: http://lifehacker.com/text-substitution.

Also, don’t be annoying!

Don’t make your signature very long and your comments very short. This screams unprofessional. You’d be acting like a spa-mmer.

Also, if you’re making many comments within a single discussion, you don’t need your signature on every single comment. Go for the bigger comments – the more meaningful ones.

In summary …

If you’re actively seeking clients and growing your coaching business and hoping to make LinkedIn a viable source, then take advantage of your efforts and include a solid signature to drive traffic to your site.

This post was originally published on Kenn’s blog Coaching Sites That Work.

While having a gorgeously designed email template gives eye appeal, the harsh reality is that trying to implement a visually stunning email newsletter often causes more problems than its worth for new coaches starting a business.

Here are five common problems with designed newsletters:

1. Accessibility is poorer.

When you send a designed email, it requires coding to properly position the graphics.

The email program that people use to read email (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, etc.) needs to interpret that code to make the graphics show as intended.

Since there are a wide range of email programs (again, Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, etc.)  out there and a wide range of browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) that these programs run on and a range of machines and devices to consider (PCs, Macs, Iphones, etc.), the interpretation of the code is almost never consistent.

Thus, graphical newsletters end up looking like a mess.

People avoid messes.

2. It takes a lot of time.

A newsletter is traditionally seen as a small pamphlet containing many different writing pieces: welcome letter, article, tips, events, news, etc. It’s quite a beefy publishing to make.

This can be very time consuming for a new coach who may not be the best writer, may not have a lot of time to compile all of those elements.

Even on a monthly basis, many coaches have struggled to be consistent.

3. Costs are higher.

Designing a visual layout for your newsletter can take a lot of time to create. Or it can cost you money to hire a designer.

Even the designer might not be testing out that design on every browser, device, and email program out there to ensure a consistent display.

4. You’ll get blocked more.

Email filters review each piece of incoming email to determine if it’s junk or not. The filters look at the words used in the message.

In an attempt to avoid those filters, S.P.A.Mers will embed the words of their offending message into an image.

Thus, emails with images tend to get blocked more by filters.

Just think, how many emails do you send in a day that have images in them? Almost none. People use email primarily for sending text.

When you send a designed email, you are sending images and are at a higher risk of getting blocked by email programs.

Incidentally, you’re also sending code with those images, another common flag that can get your email message blocked.

5. Images are frequently turned off anyhow.

To move information faster, to preserve bandwidth, and to save on space, the often defaulted setting for many email programs is to NOT show images.

This makes sense because most email is simply text based. Think about emails you send to friends and colleagues.

Also, for people who have slow internet speeds, they often browse the web with images turned off.

These could be people in hills or mountains where high-speed data lines aren’t available. Or, they could be people using PDAs that don’t come with high speed access.

As internet access reaches more areas of the world on more kinds of devices the speeds will, at first, be slow.

I suggest starting out simply with blogging.

Just to clarify, when you blog, you don’t have to write about your Smurf collection or how you like Goji berries in your oatmeal.

A blog doesn’t have to be that personal and in your case, as a new coach growing his or her business, you shouldn’t.

Instead, focus your blog content on serving your market. Simply send out a helpful article to your email list on a weekly basis. This will ensure that your subscribers are more than happy.

When you blog, simply send a copy of that blog article to your email list as a text (as opposed to a designed newsletter).

If you do want a graphically enhanced newsletter …

If you do create a visual for your email newsletter, keep it ultra simple and just have a header followed by body text.

Keep the layout to a one column layout with your welcome message first, then main article, followed by promotional content, and then contact information at the end.

In summary, for new coaches with limited resources, go for a text-only newsletter (or blog article that you send to your list). You’ll avoid a lot of red-tape in your efforts to market to your list subscribers.

This post was originally published on Kenn’s blog Coaching Sites That Work.

In the past, you were required to get 25 likes for your Facebook page in order to get a custom URL. That’s no longer the case since September 2011. There are no requirements other than simply creating a page.

Just go here to get your custom URL. http://www.facebook.com/username/

Why do this?

Simply because shorter is better for URLs

A URL (Universal Resource Locator) is set of characters (all that the http://, www, .com stuff) that points to a “resource” on the Web. That resource can be a file, image or other.

When speaking about your website address it we often use “link”, “website”, “address”, and “domain name” interchangeably to refer to the same thing – a URL.

A simple, branded, clean looking and short Facebook URL makes things look clean and professional.

A shorter URL is always better for use on the Web because it’s less likely to get cut off in email messages, text messages, forms or other uses where spacing is limited.

Default Facebook page URL (BEFORE)

Custom Facebook page URL (AFTER)

Don’t worry, you’re old Facebook URL will still continue to work.

Once you set up your custom Facebook URL, your old longer, uglier one will still continue to work. Thus, you don’t need to go back and edit any places you have used your old link.

However, if your old longer link is used in emails messages (e.g. a newsletter), then you should go update them because email messages often get truncated which risks breaking up your long URLs into two links and messing them up.

Kenn Schroder helps coaches create client-attracting websites. Get your free copy of “5 WEBSITE STRATEGIES FOR ATTRACTING COACHING CLIENTS” at http://www.coachingsitesthatwork.com

This post was originally published on Kenn’s blog Coaching Sites That Work.

High rankings in search engines are better than gold.

It’s because the traffic you get are people who want what you have. They are actively seeking help. They are qualified – often highly qualified.

However, getting those rankings can be tough. There are loads of strategies, ideas, theories and the lot. Many work. Many don’t. Figuring out which works is the trick.

So, how do you figure out what works and what doesn’t? Try this.

The golden rule I like to fall back on when I tell clients who are seeking quick trips to the top or who are wondering where to put keywords is this…

Realize that search engines don’t want to give their users bad results, otherwise the search engines will be less used. Therefore, if Strategy X (whatever you’re contemplating) WILL HELP search engines bring about better results for their users, then it’s probably a good move.

On the flip-side, if Strategy Y is one that DOES NOT HELP search engines give better results, then it’s probably a bad move. Be wary.

Example 1 – Writing an article about healthy eating for your dog.

Is this a good strategy for increasing rankings? You bet, because search engines will be able to give good value to their users who search for “healthy eating for dogs”.

Example 2 – Putting keywords all over a page with the phrase “healthy eating for dogs.”

It’s too easy to just litter your page with this phrase and such a page becomes annoying and unreadable. Therefore search engines do not like this – and more so will penalize your page or site as a spammer (or abuser, etc.).

Example 3 – Paying $100/month to get high rankings.

Unless the service you’re paying for is building search-friendly content and links that are of value to people, then it might be worth it. However, if you have no idea what they are doing and they are doing “tricks” or things that don’t intrinsically help search engines give their users good results, then you’d best avoid them.

So to summarize, realize that, in the eyes of search engines, the sites that are most relevant and useful are the ones that go to the top. Then make sure your strategy is in line with that.

Questions for you

Got a strategy you’re using that’s working like gold? About to try something you’re not sure about?

I’m curious, please post it below.

Kenn Schroder helps coaches create client-attracting websites. Get your free copy of “5 WEBSITE STRATEGIES FOR ATTRACTING COACHING CLIENTS” at http://www.coachingsitesthatwork.com

This post was originally published on Kenn’s blog Coaching Sites That Work.

When people surf, they’re on a smooth fun wave, and they like it like that. They like to ride that wave, feel the glide, fly through the wind and see the earth move under their feet. It’s exhilarating!

That’s how people want to surf when they are on your website.

So, don’t scatter your website with coral reefs, riptides, or men in grey suits (sharks)! Instead, make nice smooth fun waves of pages and let the sun shine warm with a friendly navigation on your website.

Here are three bitchin (great!) bits of advice for all you web usability kooks (beginners) out there.

1. Label things from the visitor’s point of view.

Don’t make a link labeled “Click here to discover who we are” then take them to a page that is labeled “The Team Mission”. Your visitor’s flow gets blown out (ruined) like a wave gone to mush.

Instead, connect the dots nicely and give your pages the same label as you give links. It’s nice when we click on a link that says “Learn About Us” and we go exactly to a page with the big words at the top that

say, “About Us.”

2. Add excitement where you can.

Instead of small waves, make big pumping swells (big waves)! They’re more fun.

Therefore, where possible, point out WHY someone should click a link or WHY someone should fill out a form or WHY someone should buy a product. Highlight the value.

For example, next to your newsletter list form, instead of saying, “add your name here to get on my email list” try “get life-changing tips and keys to overcoming obstacles when you get on my email list.”

3. Use conventions that people already know.

Boards have a front and back. Boards have a top and bottom. Boards have leashes that attach to your ankle. These are how boards were designed and they are what people are used to.

It would be gnarly (dangerous) to attach the board leash to your wrist. It would be nearly impossible to surf on your head. And, surfing with the board upside down won’t work.

Similarly, to keep your website cooking (good for surfing), you should use common website conventions that people are used to, such as:

• A consistent menu of links across the top or down the left
• Make buttons look like buttons: circular, shadow, colored, maybe some glossy shine
• Use underlining only for links and make links blue in color
• Have the name or logo of your website at the top

In summary, if you apply these simple smooth surfing suggestions to your site, you’re visitors be stoked (excited) to read your pages, fill out your forms, and buy your stuff.

Kenn Schroder helps coaches create client-attracting websites. Get your free copy of “5 WEBSITE STRATEGIES FOR ATTRACTING COACHING CLIENTS” at http://www.coachingsitesthatwork.com