As a new member of an online community of life coaches called CoachWeb, I am struck by the power of blogging. To date, I have not been a big-time blogger. Right now I primarily use it to post something that I find valuable to my own or my client’s journeys to living more authentic and fully self-expressed lives. I guess for me, I am allowing the need and value of blogging to organically unfold for me, not unlike the process of releasing my corporate career just a few short months ago to dedicate myself full-time to building a coaching practice. Organic, for me, is all about re-invention. Through the process of coaching, I re-invented myself. Today, my re-invention focus has shifted to how I show up in my professional realm or career as I build my coaching practice. So with that, I am asking myself questions about the value of blogging and stretching myself out of my technology comfort zone to do so.
I believe regular blogging can build connection, trust and credibility. It is also an effective and powerful way to utilize technology. Personally, blogging is another way for me to live outside my comfort zone by bringing forth what is within me knowing and trusting there are people waiting to read and soak up what I have to share.
So how did I bring myself forward this week with technology? I did some research and installed an email subscription to my coaching blog (run on blogger.com) and two RSS feeder links to both my coaching blog and my myspace blog. Are you asking yourself, “What did she just say?” Well, up until 24 hours ago, I had a vague understanding of what I know right now. I would like to share what I learned in order to support you in stepping out of your technology comfort zone. And if there is anyone out here who can clarify, I welcome it.
What I discovered in my research is there are folks out there that love to blog and read other people’s blogs. I, for one, could not understand how to keep up with all of these blogs until I found an aggregate service called Bloglines. Bloglines allows multiple blog subscriptions to show up in a single interface, making it really easy for me to stay on top of my favorite blogs. I found some very interesting blogs on eCommerce, Michael Port’s “Book Yourself Solid” Blog and Seth Godin’s (god of internet marketing) Blog plus many others on life coaching. I’m having fun now!
So if I am an author of a blog, how do I get my blog aggregate-ready? You may have heard the term RSS which, in very simplistic terms, is a universal computer language that converts your blog so that it can be feed into a blog aggregation service. The RSS converter I use is called Feedburner. Feedburner allows me to plop in the URL of my blog and then gives me code to display a subscribe button on my blog. Once the “subscribe” button or link code is cut and pasted into my blog, viewers simply click the add button and my blog begins appearing in their aggregation service. Pretty cool huh?
Next I found FeedBlitz which allows my blog readers to be emailed when I post anything new to my blog. It is a free service and is supposed to boost readership of my blog. How? Not all blog readers subscribe to an aggregation service. Therefore, FeedBlitz sends my blog subscribers an email each time I post with a snippet of my blog and link to the entire blog.
So today I discovered two ways to penetrate my potential client base and with this new information I am able to anchor into a commitment to myself to begin posting blogs at least once per week.
I am looking forward to my next technology adventure. The Director of Community Relations at CoachWeb produces a small video each week that opens me up to the possibilities of touching global audiences and anchors for me one of the main reasons I became a member of the CoachWeb community… integration of what I love doing (coaching) and my second love (technology).
Wellness & WordPress 