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Archive for the ‘Promotion’ Category

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

If you want to gain customers and you want them to come to you rather than having to chase them, then you need a specific set of strategies.

When you are recognised as an expert in your field, you will be sought out by prospects.

But what do you do to make this happen? Well, there are a number of tried and tested approaches for attaining expert status.

These include presenting material of relevance to your target market. Telling them what they can do to solve their most pressing problems. The best way to do this is via public speaking – but there are effective and ineffective ways to present to the public. How do you know who to present to, where and when?

Writing and publishing a book is high on the recommended list of strategies. It can serve as an effective business card that opens doors that were previously inaccessible to you. Many people see this as daunting, but it needn’t be.

Press coverage of what you’re doing, especially if you’re presenting in front of a relevant, high profile market can help bolster your image. As can editorial coverage via articles in relevant magazines.

But there are an equal number of online and technology-assisted strategies that have become available, or more accessible, or more cost-effective over the last few years. And these can accelerate your route to expert status.

I’ll be revealing more about these strategies over the next few weeks here, as blog postings, as audio downloads, as presentations, in teleclasses and via CD media.

I can show you how to attain expert status in 90 days. You can order my first overview of these routes to becoming an expert in your field by ordering my Achieve Expert Status in 90 Days CD by clicking here: http://Kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00ZSDMIP

And do watch my short Youtube video about it below.

Achieve Expert Status

If you’re reading this, you’re interested in the field of persuasion. I don’t know if you’re like me, but my bookshelf is full of persuasion and influence books – from Le Bon’s The Crowd to Cialdini’s Influence – Science and Practice.

And if you’re considering buying this book – Dave Lakhani’s Subliminal Persuasion – you might be wondering “Is this just a rehash of the Cialdini influence principles, or an overview of the fabled cinema subliminal advertising experiments (which never took place) in the 1950s?”

Well, rest easy, as it’s neither. And it has a wealth of information on how to persuade using techniques used by such diverse groups as mass-market advertising agencies to those running cults.

Now, let’s get one thing out of the way straight away – Lakhani uses the term subliminal persuasion in a significantly broader way than you might be imagining. This is not about flashing images at you at a rate that the conscious mind cannot detect. It’s not simply a re-presentation of priming, and it’s not just about embedded commands. It’s all together a great deal more subtle than that.

Lakhani examines the interplay between the medium, the message and how it’s presented. He looks at how the elements contribute to getting over a message that’s not stated explicitly.

The very different methods of subliminal persuasion are outlined and explained. Story-telling as subliminal persuasion is picked apart. How the media use persuasion is peppered with examples.

Chapter 3 – Position and Package your Legend and chapter 5 – Get a Real Endorsement – are essential reading for anyone seeking to attain expert status in their field and be recognised for it.

The book is laced with examples that make the points he makes more understandable and they act as a bridge to your implementation of the ideas.

And for that reason, this is probably a book you’ll come back to time and again – there is a great deal here.

You can get it here:

http://tinyurl.com/6rkmcu

http://tinyurl.com/57tbt4

Technorati Tags: Dave Lakhani, subliminal persuasion, persuasion book

This is the continuation of an interview where Peter Johnson grills Alun about how to be perceived as an expert by your target market, and hence bring in more clients.

Peter: So, you’ve been working with coaches specifically on this for quite some while by the sounds of things.

Alun: For quite a while. It also helps if you are member of a particular niche that you are serving. And for example, I’ve been a coach now probably for about 10 or 12 years, since coaching at least in the UK was in its infancy.

So, being a coach, I know what the typical problems and challenges that coaches come across. And that makes me much more able to deliver things of value to my target market, who are coaches.

Now, I am not saying that you have to be a member of a particular niche to deliver to them. Well, not necessarily, but goodness me, it helps because you have been there.

Then you have had practical experience in the problems and you can, for members of the target market, you can quickly sift the wheat from the chaff. You can give them stuff that is really relevant and valuable to them.

Peter: Yeah, so this being an expert in a field, that is the ‘why’ issue from the sound of things.

Alun: Absolutely. That’s the critical thing. You being an expert is absolutely critical because it gives you authority, because it gives you credibility. And when you put those two things together, that is like an attractive force, attracting clients into you, because they want to benefit from your knowledge and experience.

And let’s distinguish one thing here. When you are seeking out an expert, what you want is somebody who’s got practical experience of the field that you’re looking for. There are many people out there who are in academia who write books on things and the people within that who’ve done research can have some credibility.

But what you really want is people who have actually done what you are looking for. So, you actually want to follow practitioners who made the mistakes. They have seen what the problems are. They can share those and they can help you avoid those mistakes.

Peter: Right. So, they are really being bruised and battered a little bit on this journey of life.

Alun: Absolutely. They usually are. Yes.

Peter: Yes, and in some ways it is where we find that real value of people who actually have made mistakes that we can avoid by listening to them.

Alun: Indeed.

Peter: How do you know what your niche should be as an expert?

Alun: Well, in fact – I help people do this. I think there are two parts of it. One you need to look inside yourself as to what resources you bring to the party and you also need to look at what the market out there is demanding.

So, if we look at the “within yourself” part first, have at look at what your skills, knowledge, and expertise are.  And then, you go right back to your teenage years and find out, you know, what are you good at? What are you good at in your first job? What were your responsibilities in your first job, in your second job? What skills did you gain? What skills have you gained in work? What skills have you gained outside work?

A good test is to look at what people ask you about all the time. Other people who come to you because you have developed a particular skill in a particular area or particular knowledge or you are particularly experienced. They say, “How do you do this?”  If there is a pattern of people coming to you to ask you those particular things – that’s what you should specialise in.

Peter: Even though it might not be what you’re doing as a job?

Alun: Exactly. It may be parallel to that. What you might find is that you might have some transferable skills from your job to take to another domain. Now, maybe your job as well, but it might not be. But the key things are the skills, knowledge, and experience.

And look broadly with that. Don’t just write the obvious things down and you know, when in doubt, ask your friends. Ask your friends. Ask your colleagues. Ask your partner. They will know what you’re good at and what you are not good at.

Peter: I get a feeling that because you’ve been doing this for quite some while, you may well have some hidden material on this which you may wish to share with the listeners.

Alun: Indeed, I have. I’ve got a resource on the internet. If people go to http://www.nichecourse.co.uk, n-i-c-h-e-c-o-u-r-s-e-.c-o.u-k, and that’s an auto-responder-delivered course that is completely free that will allow you to discover what niche is right for you.

And it takes you through, in a bit more detail, what I have just covered in terms of your skills, knowledge, and experience. It also looks of what you are motivated by, what your passions are about, because you’ve got to have that to drive forward and stick to a particular area.

So, you need that and then it also looks at a part we haven’t covered yet and that is looking at where the demand in the marketplace is. So, that is where there is activity in the marketplace. You know, are there magazines covering the topic you are thinking of specializing in? Are there books published on it? Is there a lot of internet activity on it? It is that kind of thing. If you are going into a bookshop, is there a lot of book space in a large bookshop dedicated to your area? If there is, there is a demand. So, it’s looking at all of those things.

Peter: And yeah! That resource is free, you say?

Alun: That resource is free. Indeed.

And here’s that link again, a free course allowing you to discover your coaching niche: http://www.nichecourse.co.uk

The full 25 minute version of this interview on CD can be obtained here:
http://Kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00ZSDMIP

Technorati Tags: expert status, alun richards, coaching, marketing, expert