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Archive for the ‘Promotion’ Category

I decided my blog needed a make-over, so I’ve spent the last day or so updating a number of things.  The first aspect you may notice is the new theme, courtesy of that wonderful package Artisteer.  I’ve also updated the Twitter Widget, which seemed to have stopped working, and changed a lot of things behind the scenes.

Well, that’s a start, now I shall see about creating some more videos for you to see on the subject of coaching marketing!

More soon…

It’s been a long time, but I have finally upgraded my Wordpress implementation.

Now to work through the lengthy list of checking images, videos and audios!

Then we’ll move to giving it a bit of a facelift with a new theme!

As a curtain raiser to my presentation at the Eurocoach Conference in September, I’m running a Video Masterclass.

I’ll be covering your most burning questions about using one of the most dynamic technologies around today.

Why has video become so important?  Why is every internet marketer worth his salt using it?

You can find out on Tuesday 18th August at 7pm BST (2pm EST, 11am PST).

Just go here: http://www.AskAlunAboutVideo.com

Hope to see you there!

I’m conducting a quick survey to see what you most want to know about Twitter.  Both the poll and its current results are displayed below.

I wanted to let you know as soon as I heard.

I’m presenting at Dan Bradbury’s “Top Gun” SuperConference on 24th-26th April in London.

I’ll be talking on how to use social media to build your business.  And I’ll be focusing on how you can use Twitter more effectively.

It’s not just me, clearly.  There are a whole wealth of presenters that you can learn key internet marketing strategies from.

And for the first time there are two tracks – one for advanced internet marketers and one for beginners.

Dan’s allowed me to offer you some significant earlybird discounts.  These are worth checking out – and these prices are only available until Wednesday 23rd March.

So just click on this link to see what it’s all about.

http://www.dansuperconference.com

Note that I would suggest going for the Gold membership price – look, if you find you don’t like the Gold membership you can always cancel.

And remember, you get to bring a friend – so if you do, you’re effectively halving the amount you pay.

I’d love to meet you there.

Alun Richards

Sign in to your Ezine Articles account – http://www.ezinearticles.com and go to Create a Widget, which is under the Author Tools drop-down menu.

Select your choice of Widget Content from the tab of the same name, and click on Widget Theme, where you can change the colour, width, height and number of articles.

To fit my Kubrick theme, I needed a width of 195 and I selected the light blue theme.  You can also customise your theme’s colours by using the Custom Theme tab.

Then just click on the link to get your html code for your website.

If you’re using Wordpress, add a new Text widget in the Design/Widgets menu.  Paste in the html code, save, and your EzineArticles widget should appear!

If you, like me, use Wordpress, there’s a nice little widget that fits (just) into the standard Kubrick sidebar.  You can see an example on the right there.

It’s an official Twitter-produced piece of code, and works via Flash.

I had (in fact, still have) the Wordpress TwitterTools plugin, but after a while I found all the short Twitter messages cluttering up my blog was a pain.

But this widget is rather good, as it keeps all your Tweets in a sidebar widget.  So people can read them if they want, scroll down for more, or ignore them if they don’t.

You can get the code here: http://twitter.com/widgets .  Or just click on the link in my widget on the right there.

The same site allows you to create specific widgets for Facebook, MySpace, Blogger and Typepad, or even a normal webpage. 

If you’re using Wordpress, like me, you click on “Other“.  Then follow the menu, ensuring you actually click on “Flash Widget” and then click again on “Interactive Widget“.

Once you copy the code, you’ll need to use the Wordpress Widget editor on your Wordpress blog (easy to use) that’s under the “Design” menu, and paste the code into a “Text” widget that you need to add.  And I had to reduce the width parameters in the code to make it fit (196 pixels in my case).

But it works very well, I think.  Have a look at my recent Tweets over on the right.

Why do I believe that every coach should have an autoresponder package?

Here are some of the benefits coaches get from having an autoresponder like 1shoppingcart.

Note that the first two are concepts we discussed in recent posts.

Benefits of an Autoresponder

1. You Leverage your Time

You create a newsletter, an email or a whole email-delivered course once. Then it’s delivered to many people, on demand. So the modality is one to many, rather than one to one.

So your time is leveraged – you get to interact with many, many prospects for the time it would normally take to deal with one.

2. You Automate your Business

Instead of manually subscribing and unsubscribing people, and manually sending out emails, your autoresponder does this for you automatically. And the more you can do to cut down on repetitive administration, the better.

This has progressively more benefit the larger your list grows.

3. You Grow your List

Assuming you’re delivering content of value to your subscribers, they will stay with you. And your list will grow.

The larger your list, the more people will buy from you when you make them an offer.

4. You Develop a Relationship with your List

As you are marketing to your list over time, you have the opportunity to get your list to know, like and trust you.

If you consistently deliver value to them, over time they will trust you. And then you’re in a much better position to sell to them.

Next Steps

I do hope this posting has been of use to you, and has illustrated what an autoresponder can do for you.

If you’d like to know how to set up and configure an autoresponder, I guide you through this process in detail with Alun’s Squeeze Paqe Builder.

So many people have trouble with this, and yet with Alun’s Squeeze Page Builder it’s so easy.

I provide two videos, easy to follow manuals a FAQ and a glossary as well as a menu-driven utility that builds the page for you.

It couldn’t be easier.

Click here for more information:
http://www.brandingyou.org/aspb.html

marketing, internet marketing, autoresponder, alun richards, coaching

I’m grateful to Mark Forster, founder of the Euro Coach List and the Time Freedom Coach for permission to cross-post this entry.   Mark sent it to the Euro Coach List, and I thought it so well summed up my philosophy about coaching and business, I wanted you to see it.

Mark said:

“I think the events of the few weeks since the Eurocoach Conference have only gone to emphasize even more the points which I made in my opening remarks to the conference. I’ll repeat them, slightly updated, as a reminder to those who were there and for the benefit of those who weren’t.

“However good our ability as coaches is, it isn’t that ability that will make the difference between having a successful coaching business or an unsuccessful one.  As Chris Barrow once said “The difference between a dentist earning £40,000 a year and one earning £400,000 a year has nothing to do with how well they fill teeth.” I might say that the difference between a coach whose business will survive the current crisis and one whose business will go under doesn’t have much to do with how good a coach they are.

“I’m not saying that our coaching skills aren’t important  – just that our business demands some additional skills and it’s on these we need to focus in order to survive as coaches.

“The three skills I identified at the conference were:

1. Marketing. My message was if you don’t like marketing, get over it. Your business can’t survive without it. You must have this skill. If you don’t have it already, learn it.
2. Public speaking. You’re not really going to go anywhere without the ability to speak in public.  Some people would die rather than stand up in public.  Well, we’ve all got to die sometime – might as well get it over with!
3. Writing. The ability to write is not an optional extra.  It’s an essential.  You have got to establish credibility as a coach and as an expert in your field.  Writing is the best way to do this.

“In addition to these skills you also need to be able to trust your own ability to get things done. If your personal organisation isn’t up to scratch, then you are not going to be able to trust yourself to carry out your ideas.

“This will have the result of either stopping you from launching projects in the first place or preventing you from following through on them properly. The one essential resource we need to survive the recession is our own ability to deal with whatever life throws at us.”

Mark Forster
The Time Freedom Coach
www.markforster.net

And if you don’t already have Mark’s book “How to Make Your Dreams Come True”, can I suggest you buy it?  The Goal Achievement Method described in the book has the power to transform your life.  If you use it.  And do you think it might work for your coaching clients too?  Hmmmm…..?

This Friday I will be announcing a brand new product that can significantly aid coaches in gaining new customers.

Regular readers of this blog will recall me presenting The Seven Coaching MegaTrends – the major trends that are now affecting the coaching market. One of these was the rise in coaches offering coaching products, including reports, ebooks, CDs and downloadable mp3s.

Another was the rise in enabling online technologies that are allowing coaches to automate many of their key processes – including their marketing.

My new product – Alun’s Squeeze Page Builder – allows coaches to exploit these two MegaTrends by making the process of building direct response websites fast, easy and cheap.

So there is no excuse any more for not being able to collect your prospects’ names and emails into an autoresponder package.

With Alun’s Squeeze Page Builder, once set up, you can build squeeze pages (sometimes called landing pages or signup pages) in around four minutes. And you can build unlimited numbers of them, without paying webmasters anything for the pleasure!

Have a look at this video, and see how easy it is to build a direct response website!

Technorati Tags: alun’s squeeze page builder, direct response websites for coaches, internet marketing