Emergence Business Coaching offers tips on social networking.

Birds do it. Bees do it. Most of us writing blogs do it.

Social networking as a business development tool now seems as ordinary as sending out press releases used to be. The question is: are the some social networking strategies and tactics that are more effective than others?

Charisse, owner of Emergence Business Coaching believes their are. In a blog post titled Get Social, she offers some of her best thinking about social networking.

Here are some of the tips she gives to her business clients:

• Limit your participation to just a few websites, highly targeted to your market.
• Spend the necessary time with your profile to create the brand you seek (People recognize a rushed profile)
• Decide the type of people you’d like to network with, and seek them out
• Make it personal – get to know people, and ask how you can help them with their business
• It’s not about the quantity of people in your network, it’s about the quality.  One or two powerful connections can make a huge impact on your business.  Focus on finding them.
• Allot yourself a certain amount of time each day for participation on these sites.  Set limits.

As you would expect, Charisse is personally sold on the value of social networks.

These social networking sites are helpful for people who see the value of connecting with people they would otherwise not meet.  They become a valuable platform to showcase your business.  They offer a cost effective (mostly free) way for people to brand their business, and potentially gain client relationships or joint venture partnerships.  Social networking presents powerful opportunities to enhance your business.

A certified business coach, Charrise founded Emergence Business Coaching in 2006. She is a published monthly feature writer for several magazine publications, and has written her first book called “14 Lessons on Power”.  Visit www.emergencebiz.com for a look at her blogging.  She is actively engaged in public speaking and training workshops, sharing her unique message with the world.

Is your coaching blog or web site really ready for visitors?

One of the pleasures of writing this blog is scouring other coaching blogs and web sites for marketing news and information that will be useful to you, my readers. Eager to find the “good stuff,” each week I end up reading dozens of blog posts and visit as many web sites.

Now and then I run into a coaching blog that tries to get it right but stumbles here and there. “Stumbling here and there” is what we humans do. To err is human, right?

Most of us with blogs have had this experience: we edit, proofread, spell check, read it again, and feeling we’ve covered all the bases push that “publish” button. Only then do we see the mistake, the name we didn’t get right, the link that isn’t working, etc. So, back we go, hoping we can correct our errors before anyone sees it.

Today I found a blog post that seemed perfect to discuss on CNE: “The Important Rules of Business Coaching.” We all want to know what the rules are, how they might complement whatever “rules” we currently follow, or if — as some might suggest — there are no rules.

Here’s the link– the actual blog post is useful. I don’t know if it is original material, but that’s not why I mention it. The problem is that the blog itself is not ready for prime time. In the header it reads, “Let us healp you Earn Some Wealth.” Beneath the blog name, “Earned Wealth,” we have those ubiquitous Latin fill-ins “Lorem/Ipsum/Dolorem.” Not exactly the way to build confidence in the author or the wisdom he/she is trying to share with us.

Certainly this is an egregious example of not being ready for one’s readers. However, it makes a point worth making: sometimes the most glaring mistakes are the ones we miss.

For several weeks I had a blog sidebar that was getting pushed down to the bottom of the page. I never saw it because I always used my main desktop computer to work on the blog. Only when I loaded the blog into my laptop did the error show up. Goodness knows how many readers also saw it. So now I review all my web sites and blogs on both computers, each with a different OS and web browser.

In the spirit of ”what are friends for,” perhaps it would be proper to drop a friend a carefully-worded note if we do see something out of kilter on their blog or web site. Besides being a good reason to touch base, your friend will appreciate your thoughtfulness — after the initial embarrassment wears off.

Business coaching thrives in bad economy.

According to the Spokane (WA) Journal of Business, business coaches are seeing increased demand for their services, especially from small-business owners who want to become more efficient so they can weather the difficult business climate.

Kevin Weir, a Spokane Valley franchisee of Australia-based ActionCOACH, says in a recently published profile that the tough economy has boosted his client load significantly, spurring revenue growth of 54 percent over the past year.

Rick Thorpe, a business adviser at the Small-Business Development Center (SBDC) in Spokane, which offers similar services for free to small businesses here, says he also has seen more clients in recent months.

“Because of the economy, more businesses are struggling,” Thorpe says. The SBDC offers what it calls business advising, including teaching business owners how to read their financial statements and doing other one-on-one consulting with them.

Personnel problems are among the top three problems local business coaches say business owners typically identify, along with time management and a desire to increase their business’s customer base.

Business consultants are also seeing the positive impact of a bad economy on the demand for their services.

The use of the term ”business coaches” instead of “consultants” is one side of the same coin, at least according to some consultants. Calling coaching a “buzzword,” Spokane consultant Bob Petet says “coaching differs from consulting simply in that coaching typically is tailored to smaller companies, while consulting generally is a term used to describe providing such services to larger companies.”

Although some might disagree with Petet’s definition, one fact is clear: more small business owners are reaching out for help and business coaches and consultants can benefit.

Weir says the cost for services from his ActionCOACH office range from $300 for a planning workshop to $4,000 a month for intense coaching. He says clients usually work with him for an average of a year and a half. Petet says that the cost of coaching services can vary widely depending on client needs. For example, setting up a health program for a client’s employees might cost between $1,000 and $3,000, he says.

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