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How do you network with a group of people who doesn't like going online?

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

It seems that just in the last two years, the entire business world took networking to the web. However, there are still pockets of people hanging out that don’t get on the Internet.

They are growing smaller and more far apart, but they are still large enough that it merits keeping privvy with networking skills we had before we got online.

One tactic you can use to network with people who are not web savvy, is to host events.

Hosting events is a wonderful way to build relationships with local business people. Just establish a location and start inviting people. Make sure to come up with a driving reason why they should be at the event.

People won’t come to an event they don’t see any benefit in attending. So be careful to craft a tempting offer and then let the games begin!

What have you done to network with the old school networkers who won’t bother to get online? Fire us your ideas in the comments below!

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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How do you work with LinkedIn Q&A

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

LinkedIn’s Q&A section is an AMAZING way to network.

Here is one strategy that you can use when working with LinkedIn Q&A. Answering questions which are relevent to your field. Be concise, and clear with your response. Then contact the question author directly and start to build a relationship with them.

Ask then questions like:

  • Why they posted up their question to LinkedIn.
  • What projects they are currently working on and how could you help them.
  • What they thought of your answer and if they need clarification on any of the given points.
  • Etc.

Ask them engaging questions and start to get to know them. Using this method, you will be able to build your network with people who are naturally interested in your field. Not bad, if I do say so myself :).

Another idea, if you want to meet people who are your prospects. Ask yourself what questions you think they are good at answering. Then seach for those kinds of questions and contact the other people answering the questions. Instant prospecting :).

What are some strategies that you have used for LinkedIn’s Q&A section?

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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How do you use blogging to drive business?

June 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Blogging is one of the most powerful ways to build an audience, a following, and ultimatelty, a society and culture. This means that it is also one of the most powerful ways to drive business.

Why? Because a popular blog will allow you to bring in gobs of cash by simply suggesting that people purchase something.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

Well, unfortunately, it isn’t all flowers and butterflies.

Building a blog to popularity takes a LOT of time and effort. It is a constant devotion that will suck up hours of your time. By the time you arrive at a point where you can say “try purchasing this item” and people flock to your store, you have earned the right to do that!

With that said, in my humble opinion, the best way to drive business with your blog, is to ensure that you build a following.

Grab a copy of Tribes By Seth Godin and then start applying his principles to your blog.

You’ll be rocking along in no time.

But, enough of me. What are ways that you have discovered to drive business with your blog? Fire us a comment in the discussion below! :).

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Kolansky

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How effective is facebook for business networking?

June 14, 2009 by 10 Comments

There are many people out there you view facebook as “for personal use only.” They avoid facebook for business use like the plague. The interesting thing, though, is that facebook has many tools for fabulous networking on the social networking website.

So when I am prompted with the question: “how effective is facebook for business networking?” My response is, very effective.

The trick is to first actually start using it for business.

It is important to understand where facebook came from in order to understand where it is going.

Facebook began as a social site for a few people at Harvard university to post up pictures of themselves to participate in “hot or not” style quizzes. It moved from its humble beginnings to become quite impressive as a college only social networking website.

Only two years ago, the site opened up its doors to the general public and allowed others to participate on the site.

Since then, the people at Facebook have been adding all kinds of new features and enhancements to the site in order to better accomodate a larger population of people hanging out at facebook.com.

With this in mind, you can see that Facebook is ever expanding into new areas, and one of these areas is business. The site now supports a wide variety of ways to advertise your business and yourself on facebook. So take advantage of it, its there for the taking!

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Post your thoughts in the comments below. I know I have quite the opinion, but I understand that there are other opinions out there. What do you think?

Keeping your success in focus,
-Coach Powell

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How effective is facebook?

June 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Facebook.com is one of the biggest phenomenon’s to hit the web since google. From a networking standpoint, though, how good is facebook, really?

I’ll tell you, from my perspective, facebook is amazing as a way to keep consistent communication going with all of my networks. Of course, I’m one of those people who is willing to tie together their business contacts with their personal contacts — not everyone wants to be that way.

But if you are not willing to share your facebook account with your business contacts, then they won’t be participating in your brand as much as you might like.

What do you think about facebook? Does it stand up to the heat of networking? Hit us up in the comments below.

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Using social media to build your brand

June 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I have done a lot of teaching recently on social media and more specifically, Internet marketing. Social media websites like Facebook and Twitter are fantastic for building a brand for yourself. Despite all the white noise that appears from people talking about their last bathroom trip or their cat, you can still stand out from the crowd if you take the time to craft your messages.

In a recent event that I did, the $1 weekend, I found that I built such a strong brand for the event that I couldn’t tell people about it anymore. They all already knew everything about it because they had been following me on social media websites! How cool is that?

All I did to make this happen was consistently update my status on social media websites with relevent information for the people on these sites.

So what defines relevant?

There is a fantastic video I watched a while back which I’m going to share with you called The Relevant Truth.

This video discusses finding that piece of your business that will really resonate with your clients.

Here is the link.

Now if you haven’t already, go register for facebook.com, Twitter.com, and linkedin.com.

Getting registered on these social media websites is the first step. Next you will want to flesh out your profile in as much detail as they will allow you to do. Take a day and really work hard on this, you won’t regret it.

After that, go register with ping.fm and tie that site together with all your social media profiles.

Then you’ll have the ULTIMATE brand management machine!

Go get started, and then let us know how this works for you :).

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How do you move from being a generalist in your field to being a specialist?

June 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

What a painful concept!

I know… not what you were expecting me to say based on the topic at hand, eh? ~_^.

Well, think about it. The real key to becoming a specialist means that you need to tell people no.

If you tell people you can do everything then you’ll never specialize. So based on my own personal experience, the best way to become a specalist (which I have been starting to do) is to tell people that you can’t help them when they have jobs which are outside of the range of your specialities.

What has been your experience on this topic? Have you been trying to become a specialist in any particular field? Have you found what I said above to be true, or have you had another experience?

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How do you market multiple businesses at the same time?

June 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Marketing more than one business is much more difficult than it first appears. I don’t know how many of you have tried this, but I’ll tell you right now, if you are into networking and you have more than one thing going on, you are going to have issues.

The funny thing about it is that it seems easy at first. You see a need. So you start to offer a product to fill that need, but then you slowly begin to realize that you are having more difficulty selling on the whole.

This has been my experience at least. I have found that I just need to slim down, sometimes, and stick to what I’m good at. What has been your experience in this area?

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What do you do when a competitor has tainted your entire industry?

May 28, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I deal with this one on a daily basis. I don’t know about all of you, but people have computer techs squared away in a box. And because of these large franchises (not to name any names) I end up taking flack for things other companies have done.

Things like, keeping someone’s computer in their shop for 8 months!! Or taking someone’s hard drive (with all of their family photos) and then disapearing off of the planet. How crazy is that? But I end up taking some of the blame because these companies are giving my industry a bad name.

So I am forced to really push through some resistence when it comes to selling my own services to my target audience (who has lost faith in my industry.)

I have been going through the book Tribes by Seth Godin recently, and he has a pretty interesting method for dealing with resistence in a market. That is quite simply summed up as “change”. When you present yourself as opposed to the status quo, you tend to shield yourself somewhat from what people think of your industry.

What do you think? Are you in an industry that has made a bad name for itself and you find that you are battling against that all the time?

If you are, what are some things that you have done to overcome that? Hit us up in the comments below :).

“Keeping your success in focus”
-Coach Kolansky

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Managing your brand when you are already known in a market

May 26, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Here we go, with a strong start, here is the first of the second half of the 30 days of Coffee Tea You and Me.

The community question for today is: “How do you manage your brand when you are already known in a market?”

This has actually been something which I have been working very hard on. I made the personal mistake of becoming part of too many things and so I confused my audience as to what I actually do. Big mistake. So now I am faced with the monsterous effort of trying to revamp the public’s expectations of who I am. I am just now starting to see things turn around as I slowly put out consistent messages as to what I can do for people. My brand is starting to get a shape again! :).

Brand management is a slow and tedious process which requires quite a bit of dedication.

What are your thoughts on how someone who has already made a name for themselves (good or bad) can work to change or manage their brand?

God Bless,
-Coach Kolansky

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