Yesterday I had the great pleasure to interview Paul Bailey and Gina Baksa from www.ActionPodcast.com, about the huge impact that blogging and podcasting has had on their coaching careers.

www.ActionPodcast.com

Paul and Gina are two of a group of four life coaches that regularly contribute to the blog and podcast at ActionPodcast.com. Although they only started their new podcast in December 2008, they've just celebrated their 5000th download this week, some four months or so later. Furthermore, their audience is actually growing at the fantastic rate of 100% every 2/3 weeks!

During our interview they revealed just how the use of technology has helped transform their businesses as coaches, both in the way they are able to attract new clients, as well as actually carry out their coaching sessions in a relxed and flexible way – to the benefit of both coach and client.

Paul also shares some great tips for any coach who is interested in starting either their own blog or podcast, and Gina talks about how easy it was for someone with a non-technical background to be able to publish her own articles on her blog site – all absolutely free!

Towards the end of the call Gina and Paul actually reveal how blogging and podcasting has changed their perspective on many things, even going so far as to say that the experience has 'changed their lives'.

If you'd like to learn more about Paul and Gina's experiences, this podcast episode contains the full 30-minute interview with them both – so enjoy!

If you'd like to check out the ActionPodcast.com blog and podcast you can do so at www.actionpodcast.com

If you're a coach or therapist with an already established, successful business, then you've probably already asked yourself this question whenever you hear the word 'website'.

Let's face it, if you've already got more clients or patients than you have time for, what possible reason could there be for adding more work and expense to your already busy schedule?

Are you already successful in attracting new bookings? Does word-of-mouth from your existing clients bring you plenty of new referrals? Perhaps you have an effective strategy for leafleting local homes or businesses, and that brings you enough new business as it is?

I recently listened to a podcast interview between Yaro Starak and Leigh Peel about Leigh's successful 'Fat Loss Troubleshooter' blog.  Despite (or I would suggest perhaps thanks to) Leigh's busy schedule as a personal trainer during the day, she has also built up an even more successful blog and internet business, including her popular ebook on weight loss and dieting.

There are many lessons to learn from Leigh's experience about how to grow a successful blog and web business in addition to a successful 'day job', which I won't go into here, but you can listen to the interview and read the transcript at Yaro's blog.

So, if you're already a successful coach of therapist, with a busy day-to-day working life, then I've written this post just for you.

6 Reasons Why Successful Coaches or Therapists Should Have Their Own Websites

1. Its easier to be successful online if you're already successful offline

This should be obvious but is worth emphasizing. If you already have clients, patients and a network of contacts and influencers who help refer new business to you, then a website will only make it quicker and more convenient for people to get in touch with you. A website will allow you to communicate with people collectively rather than purely on a 1:1 basis or via small groups.

2. You've already got lots of useful knowledge and advice to tap into

You've already proven that you have valuable expertise and knowledge. Yes, despite what you might think that is absolutely true. If it wasn't true, would you have any clients at all? In Leigh's case, she is able to publish useful tips and advice to her entire web audience in one go, rather than just repeating the same thing to people individually face-to-face.

3. You've got a ready-made audience from your existing clients and contact network

If you already have clients and patients, then its easy to mention your new website when you see them. A simple "I've started a new website with lots of special tips and advice,  feel free to go and check it out at …." will instantly start to build your audience. And if your content is as good online as it is offline, then your audience is only likely to build up and up.

4. Your perceived authority and expertise will only increase

If you haven't yet published your own book, then a website – and especially a blog – is almost as good. People who write books are perceived as experts, period. So, if you have a blog for the whole world to come and read, with lots of useful content, then in some ways that is even better than being a published author.

Why? Because unless your book is free not everyone will buy it, and of even those who buy the book, only a minority will read it. With a free website however, its much easier for people to consume your content as its free and in bite-size chunks. If they like what they read, they'll devour the rest of your information and will return for more as soon as you have some. Therefore, the more people that read your content on your website, the higher you will be perceived as an expert in your field.

5. You can replace manual labour with automated systems for generating new and repeat bookings.

This is probably the most important reason for having a website if you are already in a successful business. The chances are that your business works thanks to lots of manual processes e.g. answering the phone, making bookings, answering queries about pricing etc, perhaps even chasing payments. Well, if so, then a website can start to automate as many of these processes as you wish.

To start with,  it certainly should capture people's details via an enquiry form. It can automatically send out a reply to that person immediately thanking them for their enquiry. Your website could also offer a page of information in the form of 'frequently asked questions', thereby reducing the number of phone calls with the same questions time after time. Finally, you can even make special offers to people and take orders at the same time. Are you offering a special course of treatments, or a new seminar on a hot topic of likely interest to your existing customers?

6. Google is the new Yellow Pages.

Its a fact that more and more people, especially when they are looking for local services, are turning to Google before going anywhere near the Yellow Pages or other offline directories. So, if you are ranked highly for the following search term 'physical trainer + the name of your town", your details will be the first that they see. no longer do you have to change your business name to be 'AAAA_Your_Name' just to get first in the Directoty listings!

Instead, people will potentially be seeing your name first in the list! And providing your website is of a suitable professional standard, how positive a first impression do you think you'll make? Chances are they'll be contacting you straight away, either by phone or perhaps more likely, that very convenient, simple contact form on your web site. Indeed, they're also likely to sign-up for your e-newsletter or blog at the same time…

A quick search on Google reveals that in July 2008 "142 million, or 75%, of internet users watched online videos in July. The average number of videos watched per viewer is 80."

In 2009, online advertising is set to overtake advertising spent on TV for the first time ever. One possible factor influencing this shift in advertising spend is that online video viewers are more active and engaged in their viewing compared to those watching television more 'passively'.

Consequently more and more savvy internet marketers are using video as their primary means of communicating messages. Frank Kern's InfoMillionaire Product during the pre-launch and actual launch basically only uses large-sized videos on a squeeze page in order to capture new leads and customers.

Even some of the very best direct marketers – who've built their reputations over the years with successful offline marketing – are now turning to video sales letters and video landing-pages for their online marketing. Bill Glazer from Glazer-Kennedy Marketing made it clear in the GKIC 2008 Info Summit Conference that video sales letters are the way they are going from now on – although often in conjunction with a normal long-copy sales letter as well.

Successful bloggers are also really starting to catch on to the increase in viral traffic and reader/viewer engagement they can get using online video. Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick have even pioneered a how-to-start-a-blog membership site thanks to the massive viral traffic they got because of the high-quality videos they give away for free.

But here's the good news…

Even if you're just starting out on the road to building your business online, perhaps with a new brochure website or blog, then here are 5 ways you can use online video to get more viral traffic to your site and build your business.

1) Create your own 30-second 'talking-head' video commercial

This is a 30-second spot I recorded for a local Osteopath client of mine. It took about 5 minutes to prepare for and record, and about 10 minutes to upload to my Mac and quickly add a professional title graphic in iMovie. Uploading to the Viddler video-sharing site took about 2 minutes. Its then childs-play to take the embed code the video site produces for you and embed it into this post.

Note that this is not a 'professional-quality' production. It doesn't need to be and there are even a few advantages to having a clearly 'home-made' look and feel. For one, it is more authentic and genuine than a traditional tv-commercial. Its unpretentious and non-salesy, which helps to establish rapport and trust, both vital in getting new patients to get in contact and book a treatment session.

2) Create a video testimonial from one of your clients

The best way to explain how you can help people is with the words of your current customers. And without doubt the video testimonial is the strongest form of endorsement you can get. The next time you're in a coaching session with a client, or in a treatment session with a patient, keep a video camera handy, or even one of the new amazing-quality flip video cameras.

I created this before doing the 'spot' above for my client. If you're afraid of asking for a testimonial (why??) then why not offer to make a quick commercial for your client in return? That seems like a great 'win-win' as they can then use it on their own website.

How grateful for this would your client be? How likely are they to refer new customers to you afterwards? Considering the extra 10 minutes it takes how much value will there be for you in return?

3) Create a video slideshow for your readers and viewers

This is an extremely powerful and increasingly widespread approach to online video. It's very flexible as the audio file can be recorded by itself and then later matched to the images you'd like it to go with.

Possibly the simplest way of doing this is by using an online service called Animoto. This amazing software has been created by former TV and Film producers, the concept is very simple.

You upload some digital images and an audio mp3 file and the software automatically combines them together into a video. And that's it – you literally do nothing else. If its not important how the images and audio go together, the results can be fantastic.

You can make under 30 second video clips completely free, or pay $3 for each unlimited length video you'd like to make. Finally, $30 per year allows you to make as many videos as you'd like and of whatever length. Here is an example clip I made for our Italian deli in Bath.

If you want to be able to adjust the order and duration of each image with the audio backing, then you can use a very simple and popular free program from Microsoft called Photo Story 3. This allows you to sequence the images precisely with the audio but without either the complexity or more advanced features of video editing software like Windows Movie Maker.

Windows Movie Maker is the free video-editing software that comes with your PC, but you might want to see the professional-looking results the more advanced editing functionality. The Mac alternative is the even easier-to-use iMovie, which makes basic video-editing very easy to pick-up.

Another way of making slideshow videos is by preparing some slides in something like Powerpoint and recording your computer's screen as you talk through the slideshow. See Tip 5 for how to do this.

4) Start your own YouTube-style video blog

Tip 1 was to create a short 'talking-head' video recording with a video camera, 'You-Tube' style. But you could develop this concept much further by producing a series of video recordings of you talking to camera about subjects that would be of interest to your potential clients.

Don't talk about what you had for breakfast, unless its relevant to your business, and keep the theme of the video on topic, as you should with any good blog or website. If you search for 'life coach' in YouTube you'll find many examples, such as life-coach Alkistis Agiorgiti, who has even created her own YouTube TV Channel, called AlkistisTV, to demonstrate her coaching skills and thus promote her business.

Fortunately you don't have to use a video camera to achieve this, however. A simple webcam would be enough to be able to record your headshot while you talk. You can use a higher-quality webcam if you want to record a bigger area or just have a higher quality recording.

Its easier if you're Tony Robbins, of course, when someone can do the video-work for you, but the principal is the same. However, I suggest that, unlike Tony, you make sure you publish your video to a video-publishing service that people can then embed onto their blogs and websites.

You're much more likely to watch embedded videos like the ones elsewhere on this post, rather than click on a link to watch Tony's videos on his own site. Remember, you want your videos to get the widest possible audience.

5) Create a screen-capture video of your computer desktop.

This final tip for creating a screen-capture video is a great way of either recording an audio and video slideshow in one take, or else just a recording of you demonstrating how to do something on your computer or on the internet.

For example, I created a video slideshow and recorded my computer screen as I went through and discussed each slide, as well as quickly showing a couple of example webpages. The only preparation for this was to make the slides themselves in a great new online presentation tool called SlideRocket. The preparation of the slides took about 30m maximum.

I then used special screen recording software called Camtasia Studio. This software isn't cheap but you can get a 30 day trial to at least try it out. It is probably only worth investing in, however, if you think you are going to use it fairly frequently to get good value. For Mac users, Screenflow is an excellent but cheaper alternative to Camtasia Studio that also comes recommended.

There are a number of free alternatives for screen-capture software if you're on a budget. CamStudio is the most well-known free open-source screen-capture tool. If you're needs are basic then check this out before buying Camtasia, it might do all you need to do perfectly well.

Another free alternative I've used is Jing by Techsmith, who are the same people that make Camtasia Studio. Jing is a very easy-to-use free tool that allows you to make up to 5 minute-long screen recordings and upload them either to your own website or else to your own hosting account that Techsmith will give you at screencast.com. The free account gives you up to 2GB of storage and bandwidth which is plenty!

One disadvantage with Jing is that the recordings can only be made in full-screen, which makes it difficult to play it on your blog. But you can certainly point people to the link for the full-screen version quite easily. All-in-all, Jing is a great tool which I recommend. I use it a lot when I want to make a very quick video to share with a client or partner.

So those are my five tips for introducing online video into your marketing plan.

Once you have produced your videos the next step is to promote them…

And if you would like to know more about how you can use online video to build your coaching or therapist business then enter your details below…

Finally… are you already using video well? Or do you have a question about any of these five tips?

If so, feel free to leave your comment or question below!

On Sunday I attended a meeting in London along with other members of Dan Bradbury's marketing mastermind group for coaches and NLPers.

Among the audience where a number of Master Coaches who work for the New Insights Life Coaching & NLP training organisation. The subject for the session was product creation, as that is such a great way to leverage your time and earn passive, recurring income in addition to more traditional coaching sessions.

Many of the questions from the group, however, focused on exactly how to get things done on the internet. This was clearly a subject where many people felt right out of their comfort zone as it is clear that many of the Master Coaches in particular are not currently using either websites or email newsletters to promote their coaching services.

So, for anyone who currently has no experience of using the internet for their business, here is the first of a 3 part series of articles about where to start…

Three Quick Ways You Can Start Using The Internet To Promote Your Coaching Business

Step 1) Creating a brochure website

This should be every coach's first step on the road to getting the internet really working for you. Unfortunately, its also the main area of difficulty that people often face and can even be such a frustrating enough experience to put people off the idea for good.

In my first business running a small cafe/deli, I also experienced pain, frustration and expense – without any sort of positive outcome – in getting our first website up and running. The problem was, after handsomely paying for a small website, I was unable to make any changes or additions to the website without either learning a lot of technical programming languages and software, or else paying someone every time to do so for me.

What I soon came to learn, however, is that there is a much, much easier and more cost-effective way to setup a perfectly good brochure website and still be able to edit it without going to night-school to learn tech-speak stuff. These simple, stylish and easily-editable websites are called 'blogs' and the one I created for our shop won us our 2008 Website of the Year Award.

There are three important things to know about blogs. They are:

a) Blogs are absolutely free (no wonder many web-designers don't want you to know this…)

b) Blogs can be installed incredibly quickly with just a couple of clicks if you have the right kind of web-site host.

b) Blogs allow you to easily create 'static' web pages like any normal website, but using a very simple interface that is just like writing an email. No html or other tech-language knowledge is required. This means you can easily update your website without having to ask and pay someone to do it for you!

So, if you want to create a professional-looking brochure website that you can easily update yourself then using a blog is without question the quickest, easiest and by far the most cost-effective way to do so.

Image credit 'Found the Internets'

You may not know the names of Seth Godin and Tom Peters, but they are two of the most influential marketers in the world. Both have produced seminal books such as Permission Marketing and In Search of Excellence, and both regularly speak in front of packed audiences all around the world.

Take it as read, therefore, that these are smart guys who's blogs are well worth reading if you have any interest in marketing yourself in the modern world. As solo entrepreneurs, whether in the coaching, consulting or any similar area where you are the main resource for hire, there is one strategy that above all else can help you craft your messages, reinforce your values and beliefs, and most importantly, communicate these to anyone who wants to know more about you.

This strategy is simple. It is to publish your very own blog.

For this post I originally intended to write a long list of reasons explaining just why this is so. But that will be for another time..

For the moment, just take the 90 seconds or so that is required to watch this video of Seth and Tom explaining far better than I ever could, just why blogging is the most powerful tool for personal development and self-promotion that exists in the internet era.

So, for the very first post in this blog about web marketing for coaches, I'd like to share with you the top three reasons why I think every coach, consultant, author, NLP professional, complementary therapist – in fact just about everyone – would benefit hugely from reading blogs in their specialist interest or business niche.

Let me be clear that I mean 'reading' blogs in this instance, not writing them. I'll address the many reasons why writing and maintaining your own blog is so advantageous in the next post after this.

Top Three Reasons Why Every Coach Should Read Blogs:

1) Authentic information v corporate-speak

This is the number one reason why blogging has taken off, especially in the last 5 years or so. Blogs started out mainly as personal diaries that people updated in public via their own internet web site. Needless to say if there's one thing people want to know about, its other people's personal stories and experiences. That curiousity is seemingly hard-wired into the human mind and it drives the never-ending, global fascination with the lives of celebrities everywhere. However, we are equally fascinated by even quite mundane stories about ordinary people's experiences in their lives.

Part of the reason for that is the authenticity of blogs. We love to listen to people's stories especially when they may be instructive for us in our own lives. Blogs typically contain stories about people's personal experiences, either in general or about a specific topic or theme. These stories can range from the trivial, i.e. one person's experience of buying a new fridge, to matters of life and death e.g. the story of someone's recovery from a life-threatening disease such as cancer.

Increasingly though, blogs are essential tools for businesses, the media and even governmental officials to release timely information in a convenient and palatable way. The style of blogs is informal, even casual, much like a conversation between friends. This not only helps us to understand the information, but also enjoy the process.

Compare that to the typical experience of trying to find out useful information on business or 'official' web sites. How often is the dry and dull language of 'corporate-speak' either useful or entertaining? Things are starting to change, of course, but there is an increasing taste among the internet-using public for authentic information which, once experienced, makes the dull, traditional variety boring and unacceptable.

2) Identify and build relations with key thought-leaders in your niche

One of my favourite bloggers about blogging and internet marketing is an Australian called Yaro Starak. His blog Entrepreneurs-Journey.com contains a huge quantity of valuable information combined with Yaro's personal experience. In one of Yaro's posts he describes how bloggers are 'thought-leaders' because they need to know a lot about a particular subject in order to produce content for their blog on a sufficiently regular basis. These people are often seen as the 'authority figures' in a particular area, and just by reading their blogs you will learn from them and increase your own knowledge and expertise as a result.

Furthermore, blogs are interactive. This means not only do you get to read or listen to the personal thoughts of your favourite expert, but you also get a chance to ask them a question and even get a personal reply back in return. The interactive nature of commenting is another huge reason why blogs and other social networking tools are only becoming more and more popular, while readership of traditional mainstream media like print newspapers and TV is falling away fast.

3) Blogs are much easier to follow than normal websites

The last of my top three reasons why coaches should read blogs is that keeping up with blogs is infinitely easier than trying to track updates at traditional websites. The one reason why this is so  is thanks to the power of RSS feeds. So, what exactly is an RSS feed? Let me explain…

Every time a new 'post' (i.e. an article) gets published to a blog, it sends out an update to the internet via what is called an RSS feed. There are very clever and normally free types of software (I use and highly recommend Google Reader), that can not only recognise these updates, but also collect and organize them for you to browse in one convenient location, whenever you wish.

So in effect, if you subscribed to 100 blogs, you could collect and view the updates to all of the blogs in one place, at the same time, and for free! In a future post I will make and share a brief video with showing exactly how to subscribe to the RSS feed from this blog. If you're feeling a bit confused, however, don't worry, once you've seen this in action it all starts to make sense, I promise!

Now if you wanted to follow 100 normal websites what exactly would you do? You would have to visit all 100, one at a time, just to see if there was an even an update worth reading at all! The reality is that no-one has time to do this so we don't do it. Blogs, however, allow us the luxury for the first-time ever of being able to keep in touch with a huge number of different sources of information, without taking a huge chunk of our time away in the process.

Yaro's post I mentioned above also describes how successful bloggers are very good both at reporting on news items in their interest area as well as their own personal learning experiences. In order to keep learning and reporting back your views and experiences to others, it is useful to have a wide variety of informational inputs e.g. from other prominent people and companies in your niche. So in the age 'BB' (Before Blogging), this was a much harder and more time-consuming process.

Those are the three key reasons why every coach should read blogs in their niche. In future posts I will focus on why writing your own blogs can be so be beneficial for coaches, consultants and NLP professionals.

What are the key blogs in your niche? Go and find some today and start subscribing!

Image credit – 'Blogging Delivered'