WebDesign & Biz Coaching v5

Howdy and welcome.

This will be our repository for all calls, notes, resources, open Q&A and just about anything else you’d like during our 12 weeks together (okay, actually it’s a little longer than that with the bonus call after we launch your sites). So think of this as your support page where you can listen to and download each week’s calls as well as find the resources we discuss.

Listening to the Recordings:

To listen to the recordings, simply click the blue text for the audio or the arrow to the left of it. Pretty simple, I think.

Download the Recordings:

To download the recordings, begin by ‘playing’ the recording. Once you do you’ll see a small ‘download’ link show up just under the title. Click it and the audio file (mp3) should download. If not use right+click (PC) or control+click (Mac) to call up a window that should provide you with a ‘save files as’ or ‘download link’ or similar option.

Call-in Details:

Date/Time: Thursdays at 12pm eastern / 9am pacific – NOTE: NEW CALL-IN NUMBER (YET AGAIN)!!
Call-in Number:  218/548-6753
Conference Code:  137304#

Week 1: Why You Don’t Need a Website (& What You Actually Need)

Week 1 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

You want to think of your website as being a business platform – a central point – for your business activities, marketing and sales. Yet, as service providers, your website doesn’t usually close the sale with new clients. It may allow you to sell products, promote courses, etc. But ultimately the people that will work with you will want to be in a relationship with you. This is why it’s so vital to think of your website as a hub for creating conversations that lead to relationships and that those relationships should develop offline as well as online. So you want to be thinking of your website not as a brochure or an information source or even a promotional tool so much. You want to be thinking of you website as being the hub for engaging conversation and developing relationships. This should drive all your content, your design, and every feature you add to your site.

Resources:

  • The Questions from My Survey:
    1. If I were to create a FREE product (just for you) related to using your website or the internet as a whole to get more clients, what would that product be and what issues would it address?
    2. What is your biggest frustration when it comes to using your website and/or the internet to build a following and get more clients or sales?
    3. What is your ideal, *perfect* outcome when you’ve solved this problem with using the internet to get more clients or sales?
    4. What sort of topics would you love to see covered in a weekly newsletter? List all you like.
    5. Leave me your contact info below and I’d be happy to chat further about your needs.

Week 2: How to Position Your Services to Actually Get Clients

Week 2 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

The most effective way to market yourself online is not to attach yourself to and promote the methods or modalities you use in your practice (unless you’re already well-known in your community and draw tons of clients from it). Rather, you want to establish yourself as an expert problem solver by communicating your ability to solve your client’s problems. Prospective clients are looking for answer, solutions and resolution to situations in their lives or businesses. So they’re much more likely to respond to your web materials if you meet them in what they’re looking for – answers…solutions…and resolutions. Being a problem solver rather than a healer or coach will allow you to meet them where they are and discuss how you can help them. The goal is to keep all your marketing, all your promotions, all your sales conversations about them – as much as possible. Find ways to phrase things so that it’s about them. And listen to how they talk about their situation and the solutions they’re looking for – and use it for your website copy.

Week 3: Beyond the basics – what your website needs

Week 3 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

As a business platform, your website gives you immense opportunity to reach and engage your audience. The primary goal of our website isn’t, such, to sell our services. Rather we want our website to encourage people to contact us. Once they contact us, then we can begin the sales process. As I mention, marketing and sales are different. Marketing is the process of getting our site in front of people and getting them to engage you in some manner. Sales is the process of converting contacts into clients.

When we talk about the content of your website remember one of the core goals is to write in a manner where it feels to your audience that you’re having a conversation with you them. You want them to feel as though you understand their situation and that you can help them resolve it. When you write in this conversational manner people will begin to feel like they know you, can trust you and get a sense of how you can help them – which is the primary goal of your site. When they trust you and see you as someone who can help them, it moves them closer to a point of conversion.

Resources:

  • Possible pages for your website
    • Homepage
    • About
    • Contact
    • Blog/Articles
    • Services
    • “The Myth” page
    • Client Stories/Case Studies
    • Any others you feel you need – don’t limit yourself and remember that you can add as many pages to your site as you feel you need.
    • Also, remember the importance of clear, enticing calls-to-action are on every single page of your site

Week 4: One-on-One Coaching Calls

Synopsis:

This is a one-on-one coaching call week where there is no group content.

Week 5: Blogging and Entering Into Social Media

Week 5 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

Let’s start with a fact – you want to blog and you want to blog with some regularity. While there’s many reasons for this, the two most important can literally alter your business. One, display your expertise and build a following. By creating and publishing content on topics that you have knowledge about, passion for and that your audience finds useful you can generate leads and convert clients. Two, refine your marketing message  - that is how you communicate with your audience about what you can do for them. Few people consider using their blog in this way yet it gives you a powerful feedback tool for learning what sort of message, tone and information people respond to. For today’s business online, a blog is indispensable. And please, don’t get hung up on what you ‘should be’ doing with your blog. Write content that’s valuable to people, distribute that content around the web (social media, article publishing, enewsletters, etc) and use the comment box to engage your readers.

Resources:

Week 6: Using Social Media

Week 6 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

If I could sum up effective social media tactics is in one word: engagement. You want to use social media – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Biznik, etc – to engage the individuals that make up your target audience. Social media gives you a chance to not only engage those you know but also display your expertise and ability to solve problems to those who are listening as well. Remember, one of the powers of social media is in the fact that while you’re speaking publicly with one, two or seven people, there’s potentially dozens more that are listening in. So be aware of that. And remember to use social media not only as a way to make new connections, but to stay in touch with those you’ve already made – which will depend your relationships. Lastly, and again remember, that social media is more about listening then it is about ‘speaking.’

Resources:

Week 7: Email Marketing

Week 7 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

If I could sum up effective social media tactics is in one word: engagement. You want to use social media – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Biznik, etc – to engage the individuals that make up your target audience. Social media gives you a chance to not only engage those you know but also display your expertise and ability to solve problems to those who are listening as well. Remember, one of the powers of social media is in the fact that while you’re speaking publicly with one, two or seven people, there’s potentially dozens more that are listening in. So be aware of that. And remember to use social media not only as a way to make new connections, but to stay in touch with those you’ve already made – which will depend your relationships. Lastly, and again remember, that social media is more about listening then it is about ‘speaking.’

Resources:

Week 8: One-on-One Coaching Calls

Synopsis:

This is a one-on-one coaching call week where there is no group content.

Week 9: Bringing Content & Marketing Together

Week 9 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

Your website’s important, for sure. Yet, without a definitive understanding of how to use your website it’s nearly useless. Websites are not an ‘if you build it they will come’ venture. Not at all. People are not going to magically find your site. And those that do will only convert if your site meets them where they are and with what they want. So you need to know how you’re going to get traffic, how your visitors will use your website and what your visitors will want to do on your website through clear calls-to-action. The website is the foundation while marketing and sales are the how we build the walls and set the roof to your business online. So please remember the importance of marketing, conversion and sales through your website.

Resources:

  • 5 Pages I talked about:
    • Home – meeting your audience where they are and showing them their issues can be solved
    • About – a narrative on how you got to where you are and why you can help people from where they are
    • Contact – important to put as few barriers between your visitors and them contacting you.
    • Services – describing your services in a way that people can see the benefits, value and solutions.
    • Blog – a place to publish useful, interesting and excellent content whenever you like.
  • Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com)
  • A Listing of Google Services

WordPress Introductory Video – a tour of what WordPress Can Do for You:


(note: Click the 4 arrows at the bottom right to see the video in full-screen mode)

Week 10: An Interactive WordPress Experience

Week 10 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

WordPress is the engine that drives your website. You’ll use it to add, edit and change the pages of your website as well as use it for blogging, article publishing, sharing testimonials and creating an event calendar. Our focus with WordPress is not how to use, setup and change every bit of it. I’ll take care of all the techie stuff. Your only focus – and the focus of all our training – is helping you learn the few things you need to work with your website’s content. And remember, anything you need to learn how to do can be found in my WordPress Tutorial Videos. Theres’ a bunch more coming. And if there’s anything you don’t find, let me know and we’ll create a video for it.

Resources:

Week 11: So How Do You Get Traffic to Your Website?

Week 11 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

With everyone in a different place, we’re coming toward the completion of this program. Now, regardless of where you are, don’t worry – we will launch your site in the coming weeks. One of the main things we cover this week is how to get traffic to your site. Remember, we can build your site, write content, have an email signup and connect to social media sites and without traffic it all means nothing. So this week we focus a bit on how to get people to see your website. The list of resources below is the beginning of a list because there are hundreds of ways to drive traffic.

Resources:

Week 12: The Absolute Vital Importance of Metrics

Week 12 Audio Recording

Synopsis:

Every successful business measures how effective its efforts are. Yet so few – I mean so, so few – small business owners ever really do this. But the web makes most of it so simple. You can use, for instance, Google Analytics to know some very specific details about what’s happening when people visit your website.

But traffic stats aren’t enough. You want to think through how people get to you, how they convert into your business and then, ultimately, how they convert to becoming paying clients. Measure this along the way. And don’t think it has to be difficult or complex. We’re just talking about counting and keep a record. That’s it. Then, periodically – maybe monthly – go back over your records to see how you’re doing. If no one’s signing up for your list or contacting you, ask yourself why? Most often it’s because you haven’t engaged (there’s that word again) in marketing. Remember, the goal is to ‘get out there’ and promote yourself. If you don’t do it – likely you won’t get clients. But if you, at the very least, something and your make a record of your efforts you can at least find out whether what you’re doing is generating responses, contacts and conversions.

The bottom line is setup some basic metrics so you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing. That way you’re not wasting time doing the same things that aren’t working. And, you can take control over your business. Don’t be afraid of the numbers around your business. Simple math is all you need to know how to go from 3 clients per month to 25.

Resources:

  • The 4 Aspects of a Simple, Solid System of Metrics:
    1. Google Analytics – what’s going on with your website?
    2. Email List Subscriptions – how many people signup for your list?
    3. Contacts – how many people actually contact you?
    4. Clients – how many clients are you getting?
  • Coming Soon: Beginners Google Analytics