I don’t like New Year resolutions. You see most of the time I think we fail to keep them.

We set ourselves up for failure – and often we choose resolutions that are really demanding of us and wonder why by the middle of February we have failed to keep to those promises we made to ourselves.

Or am i alone in that?

And no I don’t like New Year either – probably because it was never a happy time in my home when growing up as it’s the anniversary of my Dad dying (I was just 7 years old and my sister was 4 years old when he passed away just after New Year). Though I do try to make sure that my lack of excitement for New Year is not picked up by my children.

Yet while I dislike New Year I do like a challenge.

So if you are like me, why not look at your business and consider what challenge you would like to take on in the next 90 days? Then consider the following:

• What does that mean that you will have to START, STOP, CONTINUE, DO MORE OR, DO LESS OF?
• How will you know you have achieved your goals? What will you measure?
• Who can support you in your challenge?
• What resources will you need?
• What will you do to celebrate your success 90 days from now?
• How will you stay accountable to yourself?

One of the ways I am using to secure my success in 2010 is with the new mastermind group I established a couple of months ago. After just our first two meetings, I know we’ve already made a significant difference in our own businesses. It is truly amazing what spending time with positive, forward thinking colleagues can make and how meeting with them and sharing challenges offers up new opportunities. We also have a group of colleagues to whom we have to account to when we next meet in relation to the promises we have made to ourselves about actions we will take in our respective businesses.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy this fun video from Rhett and Link who also agree with me that setting New Year Resolutions just might not be the way to go – though I am not sure I agree we should as they say ‘raise the bar to walk effortlessly underneath’.

And good luck with your 90 day challenge. and down with New Year Resolutions!

PS – If you are someone that loves new Year Resolutions and always upholds them for the year – perhaps you can share your secret with us?

I have recorded and will soon post an audio interview I did with her for one of my podcasts and have just created an online video to show people the extensiveness of the product.

In the meantime, Hannah has a FREE teleseminar taking place on 9 July 2009 about how to charge what you are worth and set your coaching fees – in fact she specifically covering how to charge more for your coaching services. You can access details of the free teleseminar HERE.

What questions do you have for Hannah about setting your pricing structure and fees for your coaching services – I will then ask Hannah to come back and join me for another podcast interview to answer your questions.

Note: The links to Hannah’s programmes are my referral link – but the call that I am recommending is free – so don’t worry there is no fee to be paid to you and nothing will be paid to me!

Posted via web from Krishna De On Brand Engagement, Digital Marketing And Social Media

Share on Facebook ]]> http://www.krishnade.com/blog/2009/how-to-increase-your-coaching-fees/feed/ 14 http://www.krishnade.com/blog/2009/social-media-measurement/ http://www.krishnade.com/blog/2009/social-media-measurement/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 09:03:59 +0000 Krishna De http://www.krishnade.com/blog/?p=1166 So you have jumped into the sea of social media. But how do you know if your engagement will be successful? And will it be worth the resources (both time and money) that you are investing?

Increasingly I am concerned about the conversations I am having with brand managers, PR firms and entrepreneurs about ‘how to get a social media strategy in place’.

Firstly I don’t believe that social media is a ’strategy’. Social media allows us new ways of listening, engaging, connecting and learning about what our customers and potential customers are saying about our brand/product/service, our competitors and other issues that are of concern to them.

The art is then about what you as a company do once you have listened to the conversation – what is being said; what does it mean; what impact does that have for your company, products and services; what will you do as a result; what resources will you need; how will you know that your actions will be of benefit to your business? And many more questions besides.

In all the workshops I lead I encourage participants to go back to the beginning – what is your business strategy and what are you trying to achieve? Then how can social media help you as part of an integrated plan achieve those goals.

One of the key questions we then explore is how social media can deliver a return on investment.  As with all marketing and communications programmes it’s important to understand what your key performance indicators will be and create metrics relevant to your goals.

It was great to therefore see that the conversation about metrics relating to digital marketing and social media was being discussed at Ireland’s first Measurement Camp earlier this week. You can see the Twitter chatter and back channel from measurement camp here.

I was therefore interested to see Omniture announce a service to measure Facebook apps this week. Omniture is a provider of online business optimisation software and their new service allows their clients to measure the popualrity and success of Facebook applications.

The goal of the Omniture service is to help companies:

• understand Facebook users and their engagement with applications
• access insights into the relationship between Facebook, site traffic and other online channels
• develop more relevant applications.

Check out screen shots of the Omniture Facebook app measurement tools on Flickr.

Omniture have offices in Europe, Asia and the US, so if you are interested in exploring more detailed measurement of Facebook applications, you might want to contact them.

What other resources do you recommend for measuring the return on investment in social media?

The event will be taking place on Wednesday 3 June at 11am at Dublin City Enterprise Board – this is a small group meeting and you are welcome to attend if you are an entrepreneur or business representative.

Dublin City Enterprise Board are interested in our views on the issues facing enterprise and its development in the short and long term; for example what are the priorities that should be adopted for the development and support of entrepreneurs and enterprise in the Dublin region, and what are the gaps in the available supports? The planned actions of these interested organisations and individuals, will be included in the development of enterprise strategy in Dublin city and the wider Dublin Region.

ere are the details of the event:

Date:                Wednesday 3 June 2009

Time:               11am – 12.30pm

Venue:             Dublin City Enterprise Board, 5th Floor, O’Connell Bridge House, D’Olier Street, Dublin 2

• To book your place please email Eibhlin Curley, ecurley@dceb.ie or email her your comments if you can not attend.

My eight year old devours books too and she loves selecting books from the book store. In tough times reading is a great way to develop out knowledge and keep us on top of our game and is one of the most cost effective ways to enhance professional development, especially if we then apply what we read to our business.

However I know that not everyone has the time to read lots of business books. So how would it be if you had someone do that or you and then identify the top 100 business books of all time that they summarise for you so you can glean some insights and perhaps then decide which areas you’d like to explore in further depth?

Well look no further as the executives of 800-CEO-READ, a specialist business book retailer, have just published a new book ‘The 100 Best Business Books Of All Time’. A number of bloggers recently had the opportunity to interview just had the opportunity to interview Jack Covert the founder of 800-CEO-READ and Todd Sattersten the company president and co-authors.

Here’s what they had to say to me.

Krishna: What inspired you to write the 100 best business books of all time?

Jack: I have always been a supplier of information. From my record store days to the 800-CEO-READ, I have always tried to be the place for information. About ten years ago, I changed my tactic from telling people about all business books to telling people about the best business books with Jack Covert Selects. That branched into our Business Book of the Year awards and our book is the natural extension.

Krishna: What is your goal with the book and what do you hope that the reader will benefit from reading it?

Todd: Our goal is to help people find books that can help them solve the problems they are dealing with.  We hear all the time that people don’t read business books because they don’t have time. The first step in that process is searching out and finding a book to read.

There are 11,000 business books published in the United States each year. That is the real problem. It is too hard to find accessible and applicable books. The 100 Best Business Books of All Time provides a great set of books for a wide range of topics.

Krishna: Which book has had the most profound impact on you individually as a leader and why?

Jack: I really was trying to come up with some clever, why didn’t I think of that, book but I need to stick with the classic business book and that would be ‘In Search of Excellence’. That was the first business book I read where I understood and appreciated the point the authors were making plus the book is written with a real in-you-face attitude, which I really found amusing and captivating.

Krishna: Which book has had the most significant impact on you as a marketer and why?

Todd: Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow’ changed my world.  I read it in 2003, when I was running a small sheet metal fabrication shop with my father. We needed a way to stand out from our competitors.

That is a common problem with small business. Most owner/marketers think the mission is to get noticed.

“Be remarkable” is a very different mission. It goes beyond and says that people have to talk about your business with other people. The realization for me was that our shop was going to have a really hard time, because there was no natural set of people who talked to each other about metal fabrication. I ended up leaving about nine months later and my dad sold the business and retired.

Krishna: If you could select one book that you think as leaders we should all read given the economic downturn from the books that you cover, what do you think is required reading?

Jack: That is a very good question. My current choice is ‘The Leadership Moment’ by Michael Useem. This is a book of stories of people who find themselves is extraordinary situations and how they react to them.

The book features stories of both leadership mistakes and heroic moments. During these trying times we must hold to our ethical underpinnings. We need to learn from the successes and failures of the people that went before us. No book picked more interesting stories – stories we have heard about and some we haven’t- and told them better than the author.

Krishna: If you were talking with a Gen Y leader what is the one book that you recommend they read that will help them become an inspiring leader?

Todd: I tell everyone to start with ‘The Leadership Challenge’ by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. The book has an elegant, insightful model for leadership.  They have proven that business results improve when leaders display the competences in their model.

I think leadership is one of the categories that everyone can benefit from reading and they should read widely.  The Leadership Challenge is a great starting point and allows you to have a base from which to compare additional views and theories.

Krishna: As publishers and with the well-recorded changing face of publishing, what do you predict is the future of publishing over the next 90 years?

Jack: It goes without saying that 90 years is an awful long time. Being as old as I am, I seldom think that far out. I do think out nine years though and I would like to answer this question within that time frame. Nine years from now we will still have the paper book.

I am not sure if the paper book will be similar to the current vinyl record but it is tempting to compare the two. The music and the publishing industry are very connected. Music ruined itself because they were blind to the changes going on in the tech world. Now they are playing catch up and I feel they have already lost that race.

Publishing is a little different because of the tactile nature of the book. We really love to hold a physical book and turn the pages.

Currently there is no real good delivery system for the digital book but there will be soon. How publishing reacts to this life changing moment will decide where publishing will be in nine years. As the independent book store goes away and Amazon becomes more important and with print on demand, self publishing will become larger and larger. With print on demand and the amazing possibilities of digital, words will be delivered quickly to more people.

Krishna: If you were to predict one book that would be recommended to business leaders to read from the ‘100 Best Business Books of All Time’ at the turn of the next century from the books you featured which would it be and why?

Todd: Oh, ‘The Places You’ll Go’ by Dr. Seuss.  Over time, we hold onto simple and memorable messages.  Aseop’s fables were likely longer stories that over time were distilled to their most essential elements.

Suess has summarized a library of self-help literature in about 600 words of rhyming verse.  100 years from now, I would be my bet is Seuss still ring true:

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

SPECIAL OFFER

Jack and Todd have generously offered all our ‘Biz Growth Community’ a choice of one of three books if you decide to purchase ‘The 100 Best Business Books of All Time’ from 800-CEO-READ this week.

Here are the books and their coupon codes:

• Leadership Moment by Michael Useem – clash
• Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono – csq9t
• Growing A Business by Paul Hawken – xtjpt

Just order your copy of The 100 best Business Books Of All Time at 800-CEO-READ (www.800ceoread.com) and then select which one of the three books you would like to receive as the bonus with the coupon code.

The offer expires March 7, 2009.

GET A COPY OF ‘THE 100 BEST BUSINESS BOOKS OF ALL TIME – FREE

I was lucky enough to get a copy of ‘The 100 Best Business Books Of All Time’ to review in preparation for the interview.

Why not share with me and the reader of ‘Biz Growth News’ your personal favourite marketing, branding, social media or leadership book and why you recommend it by adding to the comments here. I’ll then draw one person out of the hat on the 17 March 2009 – consider it our St Patrick’s Day book festival – and you can get my copy of the book. I promise it is as good as new.

Make sure that you leave your correct email address when adding your comment as that’s how I will contact you if you are the winner.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

You can read the other interviews as part of the Post2Post book tour here:

On John Moore’s Brand Autopsy

On Phil Gerbyshak’s Slacker Manager

On Chris Taggart’s Crowd Spark

On Eric Taylor’s blog

You can access the free report HERE.

Some of the areas covered includ:

• the importance of taking risks
• how to learn from your competitors
• how to view your business as a system
• how to increase your inefficiency
• how to engage your network to support your success
• how to understand the constraints of your customers and what to do about it.

Remember the report is FREE and you can access it HERE.

It’s definitely worth reading and then underlining the top three challenges you see are holding you back and integrating them into your action plan in these last 100 days before we welcome in 2009.

Well I’ve great news for you – as we have now moved the programme to our ‘Biz Growth Live BlogTalk Radio‘ and the content of the call was so terrific the last time, our guest expert Kim Dushinski has generously offered to be our guest again this week.

I do hope you will join me to find out how mobile marketing can help you as a small business especially as the economy continues to suffer and marketing and client attraction is getting increasingly challenging.

In fact this week I heard a number of difficult situations with contracts being cancelled for some of my colleagues and unexpected job losses for friends of mine.

So over the summer, rather than taking a break as planned from our ‘Biz Growth Live Masterclasses’, we are going to hold them each week. Stay tuned in our newsletter for all the details.

Kim Dushinski, is the author of the forthcoming book The Mobile Marketing Handbook and I’ll be in conversation with Kim on Monday 21 July 2008 at 1pm ET  (6pm Dublin and London).

Here are the details of the Masterclass:

DATE OF THE MOBILE MARKETING MASTERCLASS: Monday 21 July 2008

TIME OF THE MOBILE MARKETING MASTERCLASS: 6pm Dublin and London/ 1pm ET/10am PT

INVESTMENT: FREE

HOW TO LISTEN

• Join us live by dialing into Biz Growth Live Blog Talk Radio show (it’s a US number). Call-in Number:  +1 347 633-9467
• Access the live streaming audio of this weeks at Biz Growth Live Blog Talk Radio
• Subscribe to the show through our Biz Growth Live Podcast feed and you will receive an update when the recording of the show is available
• Subscribe to the show on iTunes – see the link on our Biz Growth Live BlogTalk Radio page

Some of the questions we will be covering include:

• What is mobile marketing and why is it an important strategy for us to begin to consider?
• What are the different elements of a mobile marketing strategy that we need to consider?
• How mobile marketing should be implemented in relation to your overall marketing strategy for your firm/business
• What we need to take into consideration if we are to invest in making our website mobile friendly?
• How and when to use text messaging as part of your mobile marketing strategy?

If you have questions for Kim and I you can ask them by posting them here or on our live questions page or to our FriendFeed room.

If you want to get the low down on mobile marketing, don’t miss this Masterclass – and remember it’s free to join us.

Or do you find that when you are out an about and you search on a web browser from your mobile phone or PDA that you find it difficult to get the information you need about a business – perhaps the opening hours of a shop or their phone number from their website?

Whether we are ready or not, mobile marketing is here and it’s here to stay.

But what does that mean if you have a small business?

Well that’s the question I am putting to Kim Dushinski, author of the forthcoming book The Mobile Marketing Handbook on this week’s Biz Growth Live Teleseminar Masterclass. I’ll be in conversation with Kim on Monday 30 June 2008 at 1pm ET  (6pm Dublin and London).

Here are the details of the Masterclass:

DATE OF THE MOBILE MARKETING MASTERCLASS: Monday 30 June 2008

TIME OF THE MOBILE MARKETING MASTERCLASS: 6pm Dublin and London/ 1pm ET/10am PT

INVESTMENT: FREE

REGISTER: Register here by subscribing for our newsletter if you are not already a member of our community and you will receive the dial in number.

Some of the questions we will be covering include:

• What is mobile marketing and why is it an important strategy for us to begin to consider?
• What are the different elements of a mobile marketing strategy that we need to consider?
• How mobile marketing should be implemented in relation to your overall marketing strategy for your firm/business
• What we need to take into consideration if we are to invest in making our website mobile friendly?
• How and when to use text messaging as part of your mobile marketing strategy?

If you have questions for Kim and I you can ask them by posting them here or on our live questions page or to our FriendFeed room.

If you want to get the low down on mobile marketing, don’t miss this Masterclass – and remember it’s free to join us.

I’ve noticed an increase in the number of organisations considering this as an option. In fact in the CEO of online retailer Zappos recently posted a question asking for feedback about whether people would be interested in being part of a paid for community where the Zappos management team would share information about their organisation, marketing and people policies – from their innovative ways of engaging their people through to the use of social media as part of their marketing communications strategy.

But how do you get started to build an online membership based business?

I was recently asked to review a book by one of our previous guests of Biz Growth Live, Sheri McConnell, who is the Founder and President herself of two membership based businesses.

Sheri has been teaching clients over a number of years how to create a membership based business, and now she has taken the time out to write her guidance in a new book released today, Smart Women Create Membership-Based Businesses.

The book covers aspects of how to establish the business model for a membership based business, how to attract and connect with relevant business partners, creating and leading a virtual team to support you and the key systems you need to have in place to succeed with a membership based business.

It’s a great primer if you are considering establishing a membership based business.

Having reviewed the book, here is the testimonial I provided Sheri:

“If there is one person I know who understand the value of developing a business model leveraging the creation of a membership programme and building a thriving community then it’s Sheri McConnell. In this book Sheri lays out the foundations and steps to creating a membership based business. If you are looking for ways to build on your reputation, tap into a new profit stream and become a key influencer in your market place, then this book is a must read.”

But don’t take my word for it, find out what other women think about Smart Women Create Membership-Based Businesses.

While you are on that page, and for today only, you will also notice that to celebrate the launch of her new book, Sheri has asked members of her network (me included) to provide some terrific bonuses including audio’s and special reports about marketing and social media which are accessible free of charge if you purchase Smart Women Create Membership-Based Businesses today.

Do let me know what you think of Smart Women Create Membership-Based Businesses if you purchase it. Or you already have a membership based business and would like to share your thoughts and tips for what you have found to work in growing a successful business, why not post your thoughts below or at our FriendFeed room?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Sheri joined me earlier this year and we talked about the million dollar entrepreneur mindet – you can access the recording of that masterclass here.

I know that many people I meet have an ambition to be an entrepreneur and so I was delighted when Dave Fahy who organised a conference that I spoke at last year on Talent Management contacted me with details of a forthcoming conference taking place on the 12 June 2008.

The conference is called ‘Leadership Challenges For Todays Executives and Entrepreneurs’ and is being organised by Irish Times Training.

The conference is relevant to you if you have questions about what it takes to survive in today’s challenging ecomonic climate.

Some of the areas that will be covered change management, unleashing entrepreurship and social entrepreneurship:

• Why would an investor choose you or your company?
• What does it take to grow a business from nothing to 10,000 employees and over €3 billion revenue?
• Where will our future leaders and Entrepreneurs come from?  
• How you unleash the Entrepreneur within?
• What are Social Entrepreneurs and why are they becoming so important? 
• Key factors about  leading change and change management as a Leader and Entrepreneur?

You can find the booking form here and if you mention you are a member of the ‘Biz Growth Community’ you can access a discount of 15%. This is not an affilaite programme – Dave offered this discount as a gift to you as readers and subscribers of my blog, newletter and podcasts.

One of the opportunities that you could consider is joining forces with colleagues who are entrepreneurs as there is group pricing for groups of 4 or 8 attendees.

To find out more about the confence or book your place you can contact Donna O’Connor on 086 837 0577 or by E-mail at donnaoconnor(at)ireland.com. Remember to mention you read this blog or my newsletter to avail of the 15% discount.