Virtual Coach - Become an Authority In Your Niche

Over the past 10+ years that I've been making a living online, I have become an acknowledged authority in such diverse fields as

Internet Recruiting (only resource to earn 5 stars from Inc Magazine back in 1999)

Real Estate (my Real Estate Pro's Internet Edge was a Product Pick from the National Realtor Association)

Avoiding The Contractor From Hell (I appeared on the Sally Jesse Raphael show)
Teaching Children to Read (I developed Lingstar Learning Reading Enrichment)
Auction Mastery (wrote 3 books on the topic)

and many many more.

The first step towards becoming an known expert online is to have a destination site that showcases you to your best advantage. My personal top two sites are

Barbara Ling
Virtual Coach

I cannot highlight enough the importance of having your own domain name as your very own! Not only is it an excellent way to assure YOU are found when people search on YOUR name in Google, it also lends to your credibility.

Buying your own name domain involves the following two costs -

The domain name itself (generally ranges from a few dollars to $35 or so)
Hosting the domain per month/year (generally ranges from free to $20/month or so)

Your domain name should be easy to remember, ie,

FirstNameLastName.com

But if that's taken, you can use:

Your First name followed by your last initial
Your First initial followed by your last name
Your First Name, your Middle Initial, Your Last Name

etc.etc.etc.

Many hosting companies will offer you a package deal - host your domain with them, and get the domain name for free.

Here are some excellent hosting companies for you to explore:

GoDaddy
HostRocket
HostGator


Once your domain name is set, move to:

Wouldn't it be great if you build a blog/contribute at a forum and your targeted customers are immediately notified of your ideas?

Social networking platforms are what will help you get the word out! For example, let's say that you want to get known as an expert in teaching children how to read.

Following the steps above, you've bought your own domain name and set up your site...and now you're going to start writing blog posts that demonstrate your knowledge.

You might write the "The 5 Different Learning Styles for Gifted Children" and publish it to your blog.

Well, that's all very well and good....but tell me now, how will your audience proactively find out about it? They'd have to stumble across it on your blog....

OR.....

They could hear about it from Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, or.....

And how would that happen?

Simple! You'd post ONE update to a comment aggregator like Ping.fm, and it would be distributed to ALL of your social networks.

And those comments would get indexed in search engines and show up in other people's feeds...which in turn would help generate even MORE traffic to your blog.

Here's how to do it.

Visit the following sites and look for the signup fields or links.

Twitter.com
Facebook.com
Linkedin.com

You can also consider places like

Friendfeed
List of Social Networks

It generally only takes a few minutes to sign up on each site.

Oh and make certain to keep track of all your passwords! You'll need them...because once you're done, you will

Set up an account at Ping.fm

This last step is KEY! After you set up your Ping.FM account, start to add your social network accounts. This will ensure that every time you want to broadcast to your network, you simply type the message ONCE and out it goes.

Need some tips for creating profiles? Check out:

Guy Kawasaki LinkedIn Extreme Makeover
Twelcome To My Twitter Page!
How To Create A Powerful And Engaging Facebook Page

Let's see....you have your blog, you have your social networking profiles/sites, now it's time for:

So far, you've bought your own name domain name and you've set up your own social networking platforms.

You now have the ability to broadcast your updates to many places indeed!

Except....to where do you want viewers to visit once they've read your update?

Why, your own words, your own blog, your name domain, of course!

This next step is very easy. All you have to do is simply add Wordpress to your domain. Quite often, your host provider will offer that ability via a one-click installation. And if not, you can install it yourself via these next techniques.

You can download Wordpress for free by clicking on this link:

Download Wordpress for Free

and then set it up by following these instructions:

How to Install Wordpress
How to Install WordPress 2.7.1

Need more help? Move to:

Once you have your blog set up (I'll be writing a lense for that soon) and your social networking profiles set up, it's now time to answer questions and drive traffic to your sites.

Visit

Twitter Search

and look for questions like

How Do I

or

Help

Also visit BoardReader and search for forums in which your niche is being discussed, ie,

"lose weight"
"stained glass

Once you find questions you can answer that are being asked, write a blog post on your name domain that centers around the question.

And how can you find answers about which to write? Great question! Move now to:

It's very easy to find answers about virtually anything imaginable online!

Let's say that your niche blog deals with Alaskan Malamutes and someone asked about why their dog all of a sudden is losing his fur. If you're a true Malamute fancier, you know that's because dogs will 'blow their coats' twice or so every year. But if you weren't, you could search on

malamute losing fur

and find:

My malamute is shedding...?

and several other answers. Voila - you can now craft a post about "Malamute shedding woes begone!" or some other catchy title...and include the links and resources you discovered earlier as well.

There are lots of ways to use Google to zero in on precisely your researching needs. Here's how.

Think Google is for searching only on keywords?

Think again!

You can search in titles, in the URL, in specific sites and much much more!

Here are some resources to help you along:

Google Guide
Google Cheat Sheet
Yahoo Cheat Sheet
Cheat Sheets In One Place

And if you want overall tutorials, check out:

How to find Information on the Internet
How to: search the Internet using Google and find exactly what you're looking for
Search 101

By using the techniques mentioned in the above pages, you can find anything you want to learn.

And I mean anything.

Once you've written your blog post, it's time to:

Once you've written your magnificent blog post, it's time to alert people who want to know.

Remember those social networking profiles you built? Here's how you'll now use them!

Log into your Ping.fm account, and write a brief description of your post. I generally will add action words like "SOLVED!" or "NEW POST" or "NEW IDEA" etc. to mine as well.

Write your teaser, then follow it by the blog title, then follow it by your blog URL. ie,

SOLVED! How to get rid of spyware http://www.virtual-coach.com/forums/forums.php #spyware

Notice that #spyware? Twitter uses "hashtags" (in other words, keywords for a particular topic) that makes it easy for people to follow trends, niches, etc. So...If you add a hashtag to your post, it will magically appear within people's Twitter stream if they're following that particular topic.

Rinse and repeat the above steps...and you'll be well on your way to developing your reputation as an expert in your field.

But don't stop there - you can also:

Once your blog is up and going well, you can also submit your blog feed to other directories so it appears there as well. The more it shows up online...the more traffic you'll receive and the farther your reputation will spread.

Here are some resources for that:

RSSTop55
Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
RSS Submit Directory

Let's now review, shall we?

This lense has shown you:

Step 1 - Brand your name
Step 1a - How to Buy Your Name Domain
Step 2 - Set up at least 3 social networking platforms
Step 2a - How To Add Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn ....AND Ping.fm
Step 3 - Add a Blog To Your Name Domain
Step 3a - How to add Wordpress To Your Blog
Step 4 - Monitor Twitter/Forums for Niche Questions To Answer
Step 5 - Find Answers and Write a Niche Blog Post that Solves The Question
Step 5a - How To Search Effectively
Step 6 - Promote your blog post
Step 6a - Submit Your Blog To RSS Feeds

As you can see, the process is simple once you understand the process. In a nutshell, it's:

• Find out what people want to learn in your niche
  
• Solve the niche questions
  
• Write a blog post that shows how you solve the niche question
  
• Promote the blog post
  
• Rinse and repeat.
  

Hope you enjoy it!

Best wishes,

Barbara LIng