If there’s one thing I hear over and over again from the many professional coaches and trainers I work with, it’s how challenging they find social media and online entrepreneurship. They know that they “need” to do it, but have no clear idea where to invest their time, energy, or money.
In this article, I’m going to share with you 7 of my favorite resources for expanding an offline coaching or training business online. This list is based on the most important pillars of any successful online business:
Content Marketing
Traffic Generation
Social Marketing,
Community Building
& Digital Products
NOW, ON TO THOSE RESOURCES…
MyNAMS (link)
MyNAMS is an online business training platform designed to help just about anyone. It doesn’t matter if you don’t even have a website up and running or if you’ve got an email list of thousands, and several digital products in place already… MyNAMS can help take you to the next level in your online business.
The best place to start with MyNAMS, is their Insiders Club, where each month is focused around a single-topic 30 Day Challenge (topics include List Building, Video Marketing, Passive Income, and Product Creation). The idea is that, over the course of 12 months (and 12 challenges) you will have successfully incorporated most or all of the 12 topics into your business.
MyNAMS will help you with ☑ Content Marketing ☑ Traffic Generation ☑ Social Marketing ☑ Community Building ☑Digital Products
22SOCIAL (link)
22Social is community build around a powerful and robust (and pretty sexy) software all based inside Facebook. It’s an ideal tool for anyone whose audience is made up of Facebook users (and, lets face it, whose audience isn’t on Facebook?).
22Social’s software helps you quickly and easily build custom pages inside your Facebook Fan Page to help you build your email list, host live events, promote and sell your services, build digital products, create paid membership communities, and a lot more. To help you learn more about 22Social, I’ve created a free course for you (using 22Social, naturally).
22Social will help you with ☑ Content Marketing ☑ Traffic Generation ☑ Social Marketing ☑ Community Building ☑Digital Products
POST PLANNER (link)
What should you post to social media? How frequently, and… when will you EVER find the time to do it all? Those are questions I hear a LOT, and, while there are certainly plenty of tools, like Hootsuite or IFTTT out there to help, I’m really partial to a tool called Post Planner. Not only is it a posting scheduler for Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest (with more coming as of this writing), but they also show you EXACTLY WHAT TO POST, based on what has been proven most successful from other people and companies in your niche.
It’s a HUGE time saver… and will help you provide your followers with better quality, more engaging content, in far less time than you can imagine.
Post Planner will help you with ☑ Content Marketing ☑ Traffic Generation ☑ Social Marketing
IMAGE CREATION TOOLS
Great images get people to take notice. That goes for blog images, social media images, account profile images, infographics and more. But most of us aren’t graphic designers. Don’t worry… these two tools can help even the least artistically inclined person make great looking images.
Canva offers a huge library of free images, fonts, stickers, and a highly advanced editing interface – as well as comprehensive design training. They offer additional premium creatives for $1 a piece as well as a low-priced subscription option for teams and more design flexibility, but I’ve never needed to use them. Plus, you can also upload your own images – which allows you to do a ton more than might first meet the eye.
YouZign is a great alternative to Photoshop, and doesn’t require any technical skills. The biggest selling points for me is the wide range of templates and filters they’ve included, the ability to easily remove backgrounds from any image, and the ability to access nearly 2 million free images for use in your own designs.
One more thing about images: they can take up a lot of space on your hard drive and your website. So consider storing them online. For many of my images, I use the free service, IMGUR.
Canva & YouZign will help you with ☑ Content Marketing ☑ Social Marketing
CONTENT CREATION TOOLS
The internet is driven by content. When we do a search on Google, we are often looking for information about how to do something, which solutions or systems work best, recommendations or reviews, etc… all of which is delivered via “content.”
Understanding how to create and position your content on the web is really important. Because content is what helps establish your authority, connect you with the right audience, and gets people to take action on your offers.
The awesome Content Creation Wizard is from online pros Jim Edwards and my friend Jeff Herring, who is known as the King of Content Marketing. This is a tool that not only helps you churn out great content, designed to get people to take action, but it also makes you think hard and make important decisions about your audience and how your offer will help them. I use the Content Wizard weekly in my own business.
These content creation tools will help you with ☑ Content Marketing ☑ Traffic Generation ☑ Social Marketing
DONE-FOR-YOU MATERIALS
Very often, the thing that stands in our way of our way when it comes to producing online materials (articles, social posts, PDFs to give away, and even courses), is that it’s hard to get started. And even if you have started, producing these material can take forever – because you’re aiming for perfection.
That’s one reason I recommend starting with done-for-you materials, which grant you a license to use pre-written content for your own purposes. To understand how this works, and for a list of some of my favorite done-for-you content providers, check out my post, “A Coach’s Guide To Done For You Programs, Templates, and Content.”
Done-for-you materials will help you with ☑ Content Marketing ☑ Traffic Generation ☑ Social Marketing ☑Digital Products
YOUR ONLINE HUB
As a coach, mentor, or trainer, having an online hub to sell your own digital products and create a community will help immensely in enabling you to REACH & SERVE MORE PEOPLE and ADD PASSIVE INCOME to your business.
Many of my clients come to me at a point in their business when they want to create online programs, courses, or membership sites, but the one challenge most of them have in common is the technology.
That’s one reason I provide help creating custom digital products and membership sites based on the two platforms I like the most, 22Social and Smart Member, which both are hubs you can build outside of your own website.
If, however, you want to create something inside your existing website, look no further than Ameber (multiple integrations) and Zaxaa (WordPress only), which can both help you protect specific pages on your site and even incorporate affiliate programs in your business so you can get other people to help promote your stuff, and pay them commission when they do!
Creating your own online hub will help you with ☑ Community Building ☑Digital Products
Want to learn more about growing your business online with the right processes, the right resources, and the right tool? Then I've got a door prize for you right here…
