You want to learn more about growing your business?
Follow these free series of podcast by Seth Godin. Okay, it is no secret that I am a fan of Seth Godin. There are plenty of his books in my room.

He has a unique and inspiring way of looking at marketing. When you are ready to learn some of his inspiring lessons you can follow his blog.

Or you can start with this course.

It was a 3 day session from August 20-22 and you had to pay $ 4,800. And now you can listen and learn from the audio recordings for free.

According to Seth, this is for you if:

• You're ready to think hard about creating a startup
• You're thinking of applying to Techstars or Y Combinator one day
• You're about to leave your job and start something new
• You already have a new business but you don't have a lot of revenue yet and you're open and able to change everything
• You're looking to join a startup at the very earliest stages and want to either find some partners or think harder about what works and what doesn't
• It's even useful for the leader of a team of an existing startup that has resources but needs a new path to success

The recording of these sessions are for you. I know they are. You will learn at least 5 points, I guarantee you that.

This one minute video is from the Linchpin session April 2012 to give you an idea of what he talks about:

Seth Godin – Linchpin Sessions Animation The video is designed/animated by Terry Rayment of Eskimo

You want to learn even more. Listen to the audio recording of this Linchpin presentation (download the mp3)

Warning
Because this series is free, it looks like these are less valuable. They are not. They are very valuable.

The one thing you need to understand is that you need to take action. I bet you that the people that were in the 3 day sessions did everything to get the maximum out of it.

It is a lot more difficult for you to do the same thing, just because this school is for free.

So I challenge you. Take action. Even though you can download and listen to these 15 + 1 audio files for free.

Share what was the most important point you learned from Seth Godin’s classes.

Credit foto Amber Rae – Tea with Seth Godin – more on the great Amber Rae.

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

School not for startups by Seth Godin

The first time I learned about manifestos was by Seth Godin’s The Bootstrapper’s Bible. The second time, when I really thought I can do this too, was with Chris Guillebau’s A Brief Guide to World Domination.

Of course there is also the manifesto by Holstee This is your life. Do what you love and do it often. And the Cluetrain manifesto by Davd Weinberger et al.

Finally I am ready to do this. I was all excited when I entered my proposal in ChangeThis.com. This is a site filled with manifesto’s.

BTW ChangeThis is just a platform to start this. Of course I will launch it on other platforms. I have already started writing the manifesto. It will not be depending on the approval of ChangeThis, or the number of votes this manifesto will receive. This manifesto will be published. Ha victory

I want to show you, no, I need to show men and women that it is possible to build a family and a business at the same time without shortchanging either or dying from exhaustion. This is my mission.

This is the proposal for my manifesto that I would love to get published on ChangeThis.com

Title of the manifesto: “How to grow your Family and your Business at the same time”

“The Family and Business Balance is about building a family and a business at the same time without shortchanging either or dying of exhaustion. A wealthy life with enough money and enough time.

This balance is based on 5 pillars.
- Supporting yourself,
- Supporting your family,
- Supporting your business,
- Supporting your community, and
- Creating a better world.

In this manifesto you will find tools and tips to create harmony in entrepreneurship and family. Your work is inspiring, good and meaningful, it does not need to be separated from your life. It does require a better integration. Clear goals for all aspects in your life so what you do in your business contributes to your goals in life.

You will go from restless, finding your next rush in business, to a life with meaning. A life that contributes to a better world.

We start with supporting yourself. When you don’t take care for yourself, you can’t support others. Make sure you are happy and understand what you are meant to do.

Support your family, your spouse and children. Make sure you spend enough time with them. It is important to build relationships with clients for your business, it is equally important to build relationships with the members of your family. When you have a setback, these are the people that will support you. Make sure you are there for them now.

You are an entrepreneur, of course your business is important to you. You will spend lots of time building your business. Make sure it contributes to your life goals. Use the tools available today to save time and energy. So you can use this for your other pillars.

Look around you. How can you support the community that you are part of, with your expertise. Using your experience you can easily help your community with your knowledge and with little effort.

I believe that we, you and I, want to leave this world a better place than when we came here. Make your business and your life count.

Create a balance in your life for your family and your business and you will create a better world.”

Brief bio of the author:

“Erno is the Family and Business Balance Finder for coaches. He published 3 books in the Netherlands and writes on ErnoHannink.nl (Dutch) and ErnoHannink.com (English). His goal in life is to show entrepreneurs that it is possible to build a business and build a family at the same time, without dying from exhaustion.

I want to help entrepreneurs to live a well-rounded life, to find inspiration, financial independence and meaning.

Since 2005 I write on ErnoHannink.nl and today this site has over 45,000 visitors per month.”

Update March 28, 2013:
The proposal has been approved by the Change This staff!! Woohoo

Can you please vote for this proposal so it gets published on ChangeThis.com

http://bit.ly/ErnoChangeThis

Your manifesto

Let me know what you think about this manifesto. Also I would love to know if you have a manifesto in you. Is there something that you just need to share with the world.

Share your ideas below in the comments.

Credit photo KellyB

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Proposal for a manifesto

Tan Lam (@tantlam) is the Social Media Manager at airbnb.

Airbnb was founded in August 2008, a global community marketplace for unique spaces located in over 182 countries. Connecting with a global audience of both travellers and hosts in real-time.

Founded by Joe Gebbia, Brian Chesky, and Nathan Blecharczyk, it all begins in the living room of Joe and Brian’s San Francisco loft in 2007. There was a design conference coming to town, and all the nearby hotel rooms had been booked solid. They decided to offer up their place, along with good breakfast, to a few strangers attending the event.

Joe and Brian saw potential in the air bed. Something nobody else saw, potential. And that has grown in 2012 from 120,000 listings to over 300,000. In 2012 airbnb opened offices in Hamburg, Paris, London, Milan, Barcelona, Copenhagen, and more cities.

Airbnb is 3 times a win, according to Tan. Global Growth, through Local Growth:

• win for guest, get to know the local culture
• win for host, additional income
• win for local economy

Sharp BS detectors

Tan shared fun stories of airbnb, but he also said, “Just because its fun it doesn’t mean that it is valuable”. Tip: write your obituary to find the core of who you are as a company. The things that really matter.

People’s BS detectors are really sharp today. So make sure that your product does actually do what you say it does.

The tools airbnb uses are, Hootsuite and Zendesk to back it up. A dedicated team for customers service enter things from hootsuite into Zendesk.

The Tools for this customer service

Here is a video of Hootsuite on how why airbnb uses Hootsuite

airbnb uses social media around the globe for:

• Educate and spread the word of what Airbnb is: People need to know what they are offering, why they’re good and what’s different.
• Generate relationships and strengthen community.
• Communicate with global networks and manage customer sentiment.

This is an example of how Tan is doing this:
When somebody mentions airbnb going to Berlin or Tokyo – Tan is giving great tips of reastaurants or retweets to give them great tips for the city by other connections. Cost time but gives great results, lots of retweets, happy customers. Aniversaries, birthdays, send flowers for example.

To me it sounds like the customer service of Airbnb looks similar to what Zappos is doing. Giving the customer the best experience.

Word of Mouth – 50% of the orders

Tan shared another great story of a host. The host mentioned that the last guests stole his pizza cutter. And airbnb send him a new one. You can see what effect this experience has on the host. He wrote a post about it Reason Seven-Hundred and Something for why I remain Loyal to AirBNB

This is of course the reason that 50% of airbnb’s orders come from Word of Mouth.

Great examples on how airbnb changes lives on this beautiful airbnb annual 2012. Host sharing how renting their room changed their lives:

Tessa in London, England:

“Struck by a chronic illness, Tessa used Airbnb as a way to meet travelers from around the world and become a bona fide expert on London’s neighborhoods.”

Evandro & Leo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil:

“Recovering from an accident that left him unable to work, Evandro put his beautiful Rio home on Airbnb. He and his partner Leo pride themselves on providing a superlative experience for guests.”

Shell, Brooklyn, NY

“When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, host Shell opened her home to stranded travelers and locals, providing free housing and food for the community.”

After Shell opened her home right after Sandy helping the community, airbnb saw this and supported this initiative. Normally the hosts can not list their room for free.

In 5 hours airbnb reprogrammed the site to make this possible. After one tweet from a host that offered her room for free for people that were effected by Sandy. It resulted in 1440 listings for free in the huricane area.

Tan:

“Yes, we are in business. Looking for more hosts. Looking for more customers. But we want to go above and beyond. Winning hearts and minds.”

airbnb is sending People to the hosts. The core of social.

What Tan thinks will be interesting for the future:
Now, people are sharing stories after the event. They want to start sharing stories before and during the experience. That will be interesting for companies to get closer to their potential clients.

Engaging your clients

Two things I really like of what Tan and airbnb are doing to engage hosts and guest:

• Airbnb hosts making photos of their neighborhood. Great content it shows the guests what is good in the neighborhood, fantastic for SEO.
• The wish list on the site for guest. When you save a dream place on your wish list, it is also saved on one of your Pinterest boards. Great idea of spreading the content. Again good for SEO.

Video of the presentation

Like most of the presentations I attend I recorded this one. It is done with a small camera, the sound is OK, but you will have to turn up the volume a bit. Tan Lam is a bit in the dark, and that had to do with the settings of the room.

Watch the video of the presentation by Tan Lam on relationships with your customers:

The slides of this presentation have not been made available. Just watch the video above for the slides

Personal Note from Tan

A personal note from Tan Lam for you in this video that I recorded after his presentation:

More on Tan Lam

You can find more of Tan Lam via:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/tantlam
@tantlam

Airbnb Annual: Global Growth, Local Love

Via 5 Questions for Tan Lam – AirBnb – these 2 questions and answers:

What do you think are the biggest challenges companies are facing today in the field of social business?

Most companies STILL have no idea what to do with social media. They think it’s something they “have to do.” They’ve heard stuff like “have a conversation,” but I speculate they wonder what the heck that’s good for.

What is your biggest social media success and what was your biggest #fail (what did you learn)?

During last year, I was most proud to have helped with Airbnb’s Wish Lists and Neighborhoods launches. Both products highlight our share-worthy content, enrich the travelers’ experience, all while building trust in us as a travel authority. Although I’m early enough in my career to have dodged an epic #fail so far, I’ve had my fair share of missed opportunities and shortcomings around sub-par copy writing and underutilizing analytics in social.

Book a home, castle, couch, treehouse, igloo, room or even a private island for your next vacation via airbnb and experience it. Myself, I experienced it during next12 in Berlin, Wow.

Credit photo: Bibi Veth Visual Storytelling

Your customer experience

How do you enchant your customers. How do you make the experience with your company, products and services special?
What tool do you use to monitor what customers are saying about your company?

Please share below in the comments so we can learn and earn more sales via Word of Mouth.

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Connection Hyperinflation – where’s the value? – Tan Lam #TSC13

You can think of, neuroscience, behavioral economics, human-computer interaction, cognitive psychology, cross-cultural psychology, user experience, social psychology, neuroaesthetics.

Nathalie Nahai shared insights and examples with the audience at The Social Conference. One of the most interesting presentations that day in Amsterdam.

Why Social Media?

Our psychological needs:

• Satisfies our deep-seated desire for connection & communication
• Helps us measure the intimacy and influence index of our relationships
• For many it has become key to self-esteem

From global studies (students and young employees) it is clear that 56% would refuse to work for a company that banned access to social media. For 24% access to social media would actually be a deciding factor in accepting a job.

Social Media in organisations:

• Can engender a sense of belonging.
• It’s use (or lack thereof) can reflect and change an organanisation’s culture.

But there are also risks for social media in organisations:

1. Lack of controllability – difficult to monitor and manage
2. Transparency & accountability – it’s a two-way conversation
3. Flatter structure – can result in power shifts

Nathalie shares an example of the American Red Cross that things can go wrong. A personal tweet on the company account in Hootsuite. The American Red Cross responded in a good way, with humor. It is important to have a strategy in place when something goes wrong.

More sales with social media: Dell

Then Nathalie shows the example of Dell, on how social media can contribute on the sales. In 2009 they already generated $ 7 million in revenue through Twitter (USA).

Since 2006 Dell’s online community has grown to 3.5 million people world wide.

The social media strategy of Dell is very straight forward and easy to understand:
 
Connect –> Converse –> Convert.

Activate new fans: Corona

The Corona case Nathalie shared, shows how easy it is to get more people engaging with your brand. By Liking the page and uploading a photo, your photo was shown on a giant billboard in Times Square.

How did they use applied psychology to create such a successful campaign?

1. Social validation: develop meaningful social relationships, and retain a favourable self-concept.
2. Reciprocity: The fan (5 minutes of fame, or more like 3 sec.), Corona Light (new fans, viral promotions, WOM buzz, demographic information, long-term advocacy). Not very equal sharing, but smart.
3. Social Proof: Global reach: millions of Facebook users, 6000% increase in number of Likes in 30 days, and access to over 300,000 Likes.

The key takeaways

• We (humans) are hard wired to be social
• We rely on our relationships to helps us make decisions
• You can use psychological principles to engage with and influence your audience (see also the books and research of Cialdini).

Psychology that works in sales and helps you to sell more
Scarcity principle – have a limites quantity or a limited time for the sale for example.

Nathalie also explains the loss aversion and endowment effect at the end of the video. See how this can help you to sell more or make people pay more for your product.

Video of the presentation

Like most of the presentations I try to record it. It is done with a small camera, the sound is OK, but you will have to turn up the volume a bit. Sometimes the image shakes a bit, that is me writing the blog post while Nathalie speaks.

Watch the video of the presentation by Nathalie Nahai on Web psychology:

Slides of the presentation

Find below the slides of the TSC13- Nathalie Nahai – The Web Psycologist – Web Psychology Your roadmap to online succes:

Personal Note from Nathalie

A personal note from Nathalie for you in this video:

Read more of The Web Psychologist

@thewebpsych

http://www.thewebpsychologist.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/nathalienahai

Get her book that has three interesting parts:

1. Know who you’re targeting
2. Communicate Persuasively
3. Sell with Integrity

Her book Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion (aff)

Credit photo: Bibi Veth Visual Storytelling

Your online success

Can you see how you can use web psychology for your online success?

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Web Psychology your Roadmap to Online Success – Nathalie Nahai #TSC13

The title should have triggered me upfront, but it didn’t. However, the presentation on building successful communities touches your business and mine.

As a business owner we want to build a community of potential clients and clients around our business. Keeping our clients connected and active with what we do. Persuading potential clients to buy something from us so they become clients.

With his business, Richard (@RichMillington) is focussing on successful communities. Feverbee helps companies to build or revive a community in a way that people become connected, involved and active.

What we need to feel in a Community

What members need to feel to become a successful community:

1. Membership – action points: raise the boundary to become a member target audience, encourage more personal investments, Rituals/traditions, common symbols thoughout the community.
2. Influence – Action points: Provide opportunities for members to have influence, Amplify the influence members do have
3. Fulfilment of Needs – we want some reward (deep psychological reward) for particiapation
4. Emotional Connection – right type of discussion, give people the opportunity to meet and connect. Action points: Initiate and highlight the most ‘hardcore’ discussions, Encourage self-disclosure discussions, Allow non-essential/off-topic discussions. Share the things that are very difficult to talk about and highlight these discussions. Show off what you have done.

Make the community small. For example: Not for doctors. Not for doctors that just graduated. For doctors that just graduated in the UK, people have more in common (doc2doc.bmj.com).

Motivation for a community

Motivation – Maslov 70 year old content does no longer fit today’s online communities.

People join a community for one reason, but they participate for another. People join a community to satisfy their information need. People participate in a community for social needs.

Our social Needs:

• Ego
• Validation
• Efficacy
• Self-Esteem
• Making Friends.

For example, look at the following sites:

• HR Business Network – designed to get information.
• HR.com is designed to get people attracted to the community, to get them involved.

Social Identity Theory – People participate more in groups that appear successful.

If your community isn’t successful , try to make it look successful. Close things that are not active, make peope shine. Make sure that is doesn’t look like it is struggling, aim at small mile stones. Break it up in really small steps.

People tend to spend more money when they participate in the community.

element14.com great example of a community. Other examples:  ”Giffgaff the company run by you”, is a great example of a company that created a community of their customers. Another great example is airbnb that has a community of hosts and guests.

Rate the best comments instead of most comments – make members of the community think about their contributions instead of doing a lot.

Benchmark your Community

First thing you do when you start as a community manager, you need to benchmark where you are now.

• Levels of growth (Number of active members in the previous 30 days)
• Levels of activity (Number of discussions)
• Sense of community (Survey)
• Return of investment

Social Network Sites for your community?

Facebook Page is a great platform to build audience not a community. Followers of a Facebook page do not interact with each other. Personally (EH) I feel that you can build a community in Facebook groups.

Social media is great for people to remember about the community not building a community on social media/Facebook.

How do you start a community?

At the end of the presentation Richard gave a few tips that you can use when you want to start a community.

1. Find 50-150 people that are the core target audience (look in the social media channels and make a list of the people that might be interested in your topic)
2. Interview and contact them directly – find out what they are most interested in, biggest challenges, their aspiration
3. Build a community around that concept – create not another community but a specific community
4. Invite them to become the founding member of the community
5. Give them more control, let them create content, give sub topics of the community to these members
6. Let them invite a friend as a member – if each invites 1 then you have a growth of 100%
7. Looking for critical mass – more than 50% of the community is generated by the community
8. Build a slow and steady growth

Video of the presentation

Like most of the presentations I try to record it. It is done with a small camera, the sound is OK, but you will have to turn up the volume a bit. Sometimes the image shakes a bit, that is me writing the blog post while Richard speaks. Watch the presentation in this video

Slides of the presentation

Find below the slides of the presentation How to use social science to increase activity – Richard Millington

Find more of Richard and communities

His book Buzzing Communities: How to Build Bigger, Better, and More Active Online Communities (aff)

http://www.slideshare.net/FeverBee

https://twitter.com/RichMillington

The Proven Path  – The most successful and reliable approach in the history of building online communities. (pdf)

Online Community Manifesto

http://www.hivestrategies.com/2011/09/read-this-e-book-the-proven-path-by-richard-millington/

Note: This was a presentation during The Social Conference on February 14, 2013 at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam. Krem and Emerce were kind enough to give me a ticket as a blogger, so I could write posts about the best presentations for you.

Credit photo: Bibi Veth Visual Storytelling

Your community

Do you have a community of clients? Do you have a space where your target audience, your niche meet each other? Please share in the comments below.

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

How to use social science to increase activity in a community – Richard Millington #TSC13

The tool is LikeAlyzer:

When you enter the URL of your Facebook business page in LikeAlyzer you will get a page with an analysis of your page, a grade and, tips and recommendations how to improve engagement on your Facebook fan page.

These are the result for my page Social Media for Independent Professionals

Recommendations

Let’s start with the recommendations:

• Ask business partners, customers and friends to become fans.
• Publish posts more often.
• Publish more photos.
• Write shorter posts.
• Encourage your fans to ask more questions for you to answer.

Analysis

Grade: 55
Fans: 414
Active fans: 2 (can be improved)
Engagement Rate: 0.5% (can be improved)

Posts per day: 0.4 (can be improved)
Average length in posts: 275 characters (can be shorter)

Curiosity: A good amount of questions (good)
Encourage to Like: Good

Posts by others
Facebook is an amazing network for dialogue with your clients and customers. You should encourage your fans to ask more questions.

Spread the love!
You like several other pages. Very good! We do hope that you interact with these pages on a regular basis.

This is how it looks for this Facebook page:

Let’s analyze your Facebook business page

1. Visit LikeAlyzer
2. Enter the URL of your Facebook business page
3. Review your recommendations and grade
4. Share your Facebook page URL and grade in the comments

Of course don’t forget to Like Social Media for Independent Professionals for more tips on Facebook.

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Tips and recommendations to improve your business Facebook page

We (80%) take matters in our own hands with some personal resolutions ‘I will make some personal resolutions to do some specific things for myself or others in 2013’.

What do we focus on to make things better? Money.

Half (55%) respond that in 2013 they most want to ‘improve my financial situation’. Only a small proportion of respondents indicate in 2013 they would rather ‘spend more time with friends and family’ (16%), ‘improve my health’ (14%) or ‘travel to other countries’ (12%).

This data comes from a poll conducted between October 2 – 16, 2012. An international sample of 18,000 adults in 24 countries, for more information see the Ipsos Online Panel system.

Happier in 2013

In order to be happy we need enough money to pay our bills and have a little room to purchase extras.

Improving our financial situation is important to feel happier. Especially if we are not sure if the global economy will improve in 2013 (51%).

We need to take care of our own situation first. Paying all the bills, pay of the debt, and make the first steps to pay off the mortgage. Create a personal financial situation that creates a stress-free environment for you and your spouse.

If you want to be happier remember that drivers that matter less than you think include money, beauty, youth, intelligence and education. Drivers that matter more include, self-esteem, social skills, free time (as in you can control your time), volunteering and humor.

Are you optimistic about 2013?

Do you feel that 2013 will be a better year compared to 2012?
What will you focus on to make 2013 a better year?

Via: MarketingProfs Optimism Abounds for 2013; Finances Top of Mind
Credit photo: Philip Brewer Foreign Currency and Coins

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

In 2013 we want to improve our personal financial situation

Speaking is a great way to introduce your ideas as an expert to potential clients. Similar to publishing your thoughts, speaking is a great way to be seen as an expert in your field.

How do you get paid speaking gigs as a speaker? Our tips:

1. Speakers page

The first tip was, add a speaker page to the website.

Some examples of speaking pages for your inspiration:

• Becky McCray speaker
• Barry Moltz
• Tim Sanders
• Guy Kawasaki
• Steve Farber
• David Meerman Scott 30-40 gigs per year
• Nancy Duarte
• Michele Miller

2. Price range

Add a price range for speaking to your speaking page. This way you give event organizers an idea of your prices. When there is no price mentioned on your site the organizer will continue the search to other speakers that are clear on this point.

3. Photos

Photos of you speaking in the side bar. See for example the sidebar of Becky McCray’s speaking page

Make sure you include photos of engaged audience while you speak. So we can see that you can engage your audience and they interact with you.

4. Videos

Add videos of speaking gigs to the speaker page. This can be short 1-2 minutes videos with a sample of your workshop or keynote.

When you don’t have a recording of a gig, try to get one of your next presentation or workshop. For now you can record a video of you presenting without an audience.

You can add this video to your speaking page so event organizers get a better understanding of how you speak, your accent and moves.

You can also create a professional speaking demo reel of 5-20 minutes with snippits of various presentations. This will cost you some money but it gives event organizers a good overview of your speaking skills.

Here is for example the speaker reel of Nancy Duarte

5. Sell it

Make a list of events or companies where you want to speak and approach them.

Create a tailored pitch with slides and you in a video for an event on http://www.present.me. Start with a free account now (3 presentations / month).

6. Speaker sites

Register as a speaker on a speaker site. A great site where you can register is Speakerfile.com.

This is the speakersfile of Becky McCray

This is mine www.speakerfile.com/speakers/erno.hannink.

Speakersfile is not a speakers bureau.

7. Become a better speaker

Join a local chapter of toastmasters.org to practice your speaking.

Watch presentations of great speakers and learn from how they do it. Watch on a regular basis TED talks for example. You can also find great TED talks on YouTube.

Create great presentations, read this post and listen to the podcast in How to Create Great Presentations (tips from the CEO of the top presentation design firm) with Nancy Duarte and Derek Halpern.

Good point of Derek Halpern: It is not just about the content, it is about the delivery too.

Becky noticed that speakers are selling more interactive sessions like workshops and less keynotes in the last year or so. Add at least one example of a workshop you present.

8. Speakers organisation

Join a professional speakers organisation like the National Speakers Association (NSA) or PSA Holland. Find the local or national organisation for you.

These organisations have events where you can learn about speaking and connect with other speakers. This way you have more contacts in the speaking scene so people can refer you for speaking gigs.

9. Connect with organizers

Becky mentioned an example of a speaker that organized a series of podcasts with thought leaders that also organize events. A great way to make your self seen in your industry and become visible to event organizers.

10. Your tip

Do you have tip No. 10 for Pieter?
Please share your most important tip to get more speaking engagements below in the comments.

Photo credit: Tim Olson

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

How to get speaking engagements

She triggered me to write a post about how you can have a family and business balance as entrepreneur. Read my thoughts about this below.

It’s not a myth

Of course when you look at the word balance, like a scale that has to be balanced all the the time it will be pretty difficult. Sometimes a crisis situation with the kids require your full attention. Other moments there is a crisis with a client that requires your attention.

For me, balance is about building a business that gives me the opportunity to create a better world, and building my family at the same time.

Work and life balance is more about a well-rounded life. A life where you are happy with all the things you do. Saying Yes to the right things and No to the things that don’t support your well-rounded life. Or as Derek Sivers is saying, It’s Either HELL YEAH! or no.

Family and business balance is more like a rubber band. Normally it is in the relaxed state when things run according to the plan. Sometimes you have to stretch the rubber band to solve a crisis. After the crisis you bring it back to the relaxing state.

You can’t stretch the rubber band all the time, or the band will loose it’s flexibility. Make sure that after a stressful situation, days, or week, you bring things back to the normal state. This way you will be able to stretch the rubber band for your next crisis situation.

It’s about control of your time. About setting priorities.

It’s also very personal. The perfect balance means something different for you and me.

So there is no need to compare yourself to other people’s balance. Focus on your balance and the balance within your family and business.

From my programs and mentoring sessions I have learned that balance has two sides.
For some people it means that they need to free up more time from their business so they can spend more time with their family. For other people it is about freeing up time with the children and spending more time in their business.

Time away from kids

Many coaches with their own business, work from home. Or they work most of the time from home and have sessions with clients at other locations.

When you work at home it is good to have some clear boundaries. This time of the year my office door is closed for a pleasant temperature in my office. This doesn’t mean that our kids can’t come in.

Then there are times that I have a mentoring session with a client via Skype. Or I have a webinar for one of my programs. To make it clear that I can’t be disturbed at these moments I have a special sign that I can hang on my door handle.

Our daughter created this sign a few years at school for Father’s day and it says “Do not disturb, dad is busy.”

It’s really clear for our teenage kids. It also worked when they were younger because it is about the sign on the door handle.

Sometimes you just need to focus on the work for your client. These are do not disturb moments for your children.

How do you make this clear to your children?

Time away from your business

When there is someone in the house taking care of daily business and the children can take care of themselves you can work all day long, and at night and in the weekends.

The work you are doing for your own business is just wonderful. You are helping more clients. You are realizing your big dream.

The rest of your family is noticing this too. You spend so much time in your business that you have no time and energy left for your spouse and children.

Every relationship costs time and attention. The relationship with your clients, and also the relationships within your family.

To make sure that you can always fall back on your family, also in moments of stress, you want to spend time with your family.

Create structure in your day. Have a starting time when you go to your office, have a time when you have lunch. Use your lunch time to exercise and relax for example by taking a walk. Finish your working day around the same time everyday.

When the children are at home, work mainly when your kids are also working. When they are doing their home work you can work too. Work together at the desk in the living room. Relax from your work when your kids are playing.

Credit photo Don DeBold

Your balance

When you talk about family and business balance what does that mean for you?
What is the most important thing that you do to create your balance?

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Balance your business and family is not a myth

It is a great platform if you want potential clients to find you especially if you work in a business to business (B2B) environment. Maybe you are a career coach and work with employees, or you are a business coach and work with small business owners. Or you are a management team coach and work with teams and CEO’s.

LinkedIn connections are easier to grow than you think

Business cards – add people that you meet during network events or when you speak at an event. Ask for their business card. Back in the office you can add the contact in LinkedIn using their email address.

1. Go to their profile
2. Click ‘Connect’
3. Click ‘Other’
4. Enter the email address
5. Include a personal message.

After this action you can file their business card…. in the trash. Your new connection will keep their LinkedIn profile updated. A business card is on average outdated within 18 months.

LION – become an LinkedIn Open Networker (LION). According to the policies of LinkedIn you are not allowed to invite people to connect that you do not know.

There are people that call themselves LinkedIn Open Networkers and they are more open for connecting with people they don’t know.

You can use this to grow your network faster – you are just more open to connect with people you have not met before. See for example How to be a LinkedIn Open Networker – Some tops to do it the right way.

This doesn’t mean you have to connect with everyone that invites you. Look at their profile and see if you find it interesting to connect. If yes, connect. If no, just click ‘Ignore’.

Email address – add your email address to your LinkedIn profile, for example in the Summary. This way you make it easier for people to connect with you.

Premium account – order a premium account to get more access. With a business account (EUR 180 per year) you can get in contact with anyone via InMail (3 per month). You can see more profiles when you search and see full profiles of people that viewed your profile.

And there are more advantages when you have a premium account

Connect with your email contacts – find the people that are in your email address book and in LinkedIn. When you use an online email service like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo mail this is easy to do.

LinkedIn will find contacts in your address book that are also on LinkedIn and that you are not connect with at the moment.

Find email contacts in LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/fetch/importAndInviteEntry

Why are the number of your LinkedIn contacts growing so slowly

• You don’t actively invite new people to connect
• You only accept invitations from people you have met before
• You have an incomplete profile
• You forget to include a personal note with your invitations
• You don’t check the People you may know suggestions

5 improvements so clients will notice you

What can you do to get quality and quantity in your LinkedIn connections?
Let’s start with the potential clients that land on our profile in LinkedIn. Make sure your profile is clear to them. Some basic tips:

1. Photograph

People are more open when they meet and you smile. So, when you meet new people at networking events, smile.

Research has also shown that people remember the names better of people smiling in photographs.
5 important things for your profile photo:

1. Smile – preferably the Duchenne smile
2. Show your face
3. Large profile photo – high quality
4. Consistency – same photo in the online networking sites
5. Gravatar – use gravatar so your profile photo gets connected to comments in WordPress blogs

For more information see, The perfect profile photo for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and more – 5 tips

Change your profile photo here: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit-picture-info

2. Professional Headline

This is one of the first things people read when they land on your LinkedIn profile. It should give the reader a good idea of what you can do for them.

When your profile says, coach, owner, director, founder or something similar it does not help the reader.

Try to add your marketing message here. Answer 4 questions:

• Who do you help?
• What is their problem?
• How do you solve it?
• What is the result for the client?

Combine the answers to these four questions into one sentence, your marketing message.

You have 120 characters for your professional headline. Add a sentence that explains to the reader What’s In It For Me (WIIFM).

The professional headline in your LinkedIn profile is displayed in the search results. Here you see a LinkedIn profile in Google:

For most people their LinkedIn profile is listed on the first page when you search for their name in the search engines. That makes a clear professional headline even more important.

Create your perfect Professional Headline: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit-basic-info

3. Website

When you add the URL of your website, you can choose Company website or blog. Better is to select other. Now you add 30 characters to describe your website or a specific page in your website.

This tells the visitor of your profile more about your website than ‘Company website’.

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit-additional-info

4. Contact information

You have a profile on LinkedIn to connect professionally with other people on LinkedIn. Your potential clients is probable also listed here, this depends on who your ideal client is. You can also connect with partners and suppliers.

Make sure these people can contact you when they visit your profile on LinkedIn. Maybe they want to become your client.

Add your email address, maybe a special email address just for LinkedIn. It helps me to see when people add my LinkedIn email address to their subscriber list without asking for my approval.

Add your phone number and Instant Messenger (IM) like Skype or Google Talk.

Change or add your address, phone number and IM here http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit-personal-info

5. LinkedIn URL

When you become active with your LinkedIn profile, you want to share it with people. You can add it to the signature of your email for example.

This will be easier when you can remember the URL to your LinkedIn profile. This can be solved by customizing this URL to linkedin.com/in/yourname.

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/public-profile-settings?trk=prof-ovw-edit-public_profile (At the right side – in the box ‘Your public profile URL’)

Bonus: Complete profile

Make sure that you profile is 100% complete. People with a 100% complete profile are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities via LinkedIn.

What do you need to complete for a 100% complete profile?

• Your industry and location
• An up-to-date Current Position (with a description)
• Two past positions
• Your education
• Your skills (minimum of 3)
• A profile photo
• At least 50 connections

Supporting your Family & Business Balance

Working with LinkedIn makes it possible to connect with potential clients and clients online. It gives you the opportunity to continue the connection after an event where you talked with people.

Keeping professionally in touch with these new connections via the internet gives you the opportunity to do this when and where you want.

What have you done to get results in LinkedIn?

Share below your number one tip for an effective LinkedIn profile for coaches. Looking forward to see your tip.

You can also list your LinkedIn profile if you are open for new connections with other coaches. Mine is linkedin.com/in/ernohannink

Credit photo: connect.euranet

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

5 LinkedIn improvements for coaches your clients will notice immediately