 |
Linda |
From the Editor
Welcome to the April 2012 issue of the IAC VOICE!
Forget about March Madness, it's time for April Madness—and an IAC Learning Frenzy, at least according to IAC President Susan R. Meyer. Read her article below to hear about all of the exciting learning opportunities for coaches around the world.
In fact, you can mark your calendars now for April 25, 2012 from 8:00-9:00 p.m. Eastern. Susan will be hosting a webinar titled, "Transform Painful Events into Personal Empowerment," featuring Doris Helge, PhD, MCC (IAC). Please watch your Inbox for more details including registration information.
IAC member benefit provider Sara K. Sims of CoachingWebsites.com has a primer on a very important topic for online success—search engine optimization (SEO). If you've always wondered what it means and what you can do about it, check out her article below.
Does every good coach need a coach? That's the question that IAC Lead Certifier Natalie Tucker Miller tackles this month in her Inside Scoop, Ask the Certifiers column. You can still add your voice to the discussion on the IAC LinkedIn group. Click here to read Natalie's column on the VOICE blog.
Speaking of having your own coach, did you know that if you're an IAC member, you're eligible to receive free peer coaching, mentoring and supervision? There are more details below, or you can log into the members area to sign up now.
When an elephant is well fed and watered, he is happy to go where his rider tells him to go—that's Elephant Mastery, which could transform your coaching practice and your life! It's also the topic of this month's featured coaching article from Jennifer Day. Click here to read this article on the VOICE blog.
IAC licensee Deborah Williamson explores the age-old question, "So what do you do?" in this month's Tools for Coaching Mastery column, and helps us answer in a way that feeds the soul. You can read this article on the VOICE blog.
In another contribution from IAC licensees, DeeAnna Merz Nagel and Kate Anthony share their experience of going through the IAC Learning Agreement process with their organization. Click here to read the interview and learn about their online forum to discuss the IAC Masteries®.
Submission guidelines for the VOICE are available on the website. Submissions are welcome anytime through the month.
Please contact me with your article ideas and your feedback about this issue. Enjoy!
Warm wishes,
Linda
Linda Dessau, CPCC
Editor, IAC® VOICE
Email: voice@certifiedcoach.org
www.contentmasteryguide.com
P.S. Are you on Twitter? You can follow the IAC at http://twitter.com/IACCoachMastery. There is also a list of VOICE authors, columnists and IAC BOG members at http://twitter.com/lindadessau/iac-voice-contributors.
From the President
March Madness – And an IAC Learning Frenzy?
by Susan R. Meyer, MCC (IAC)
president@certifiedcoach.org
‘Tis the season for basketball in the United States. My alma mater’s women’s team made it to the NCAA tournament this year. Across the country, people will be glued to their televisions rooting for their favorite teams.
Here at the IAC, we’re tearing ourselves away from basketball to root for learning opportunities for our members and licensees. March and April Madness are alive and well here. In March, we held our second open call for licensees. The licensee calls provide an opportunity for all licensees to come together to exchange information and to speak with the Certifiers. The calls are also one of the ways we plan to assist our licensees in creating excellent learning opportunities around the IAC Masteries® for their students. We’re also thinking about creating a forum for the licensees in order to provide a place for the licensee community to connect.
In March, we also held our first live "Ask the Certifiers Call." We plan to continue to offer this opportunity for members and potential members to learn more about the IAC, the Masteries®, and our path to certification. In April, I will host our first webinar—open to all, with access to the replay available for members. Dr. Doris Helge will be our first speaker and I plan to feature other licensees and members who can contribute to our deeper knowledge about coaching.
In April, I will be attending the International Coaching Conference in Kuala Lumpur, jointly organized by CESMED and TeamCoach International and co-sponsored by the IAC. Immediate Past President Bob Tschannen-Moran, MCC (IAC) will be giving the keynote address: Coaching Mastery: A Commitment that Matters. Other speakers include Certifier Bonnie Chan, MCC (IAC), Megan Tschannen-Moran, Tih Sio Hong, M. Shanmugam and Past President Angela Spaxman.
The IAC has been invited to present at the World Business and Executive Coaching Summit in June. A panel of IAC members will discuss using the Masteries® to develop coaching skills in managers in a variety of settings. Watch for details about the free preview calls and a special offer for VOICE readers who decide to participate in the series.
Finally, I’d like to find more ways for our members to share learning opportunities with other members. This month, a licensee let us know that they have created an open group for members to work on their learning agreement. Initially, we couldn’t figure out how to do this without appearing to favor one licensee over others, so we need to fix that! If you have similar opportunities that are open to all and are non-promotional, but don’t seem to fit the guidelines for an article, send them to Linda Dessau, voice@certifiedcoach.org and we’ll figure out a way to create a column or link. Also, please make use of our LinkedIn group, http://www.linkedin.com/groups/International-Association-Coaching-IAC-1951844.
As always, I’m excited to hear how we can help you expand your path to coach mastery. You can contact me at president@certifiedcoach.org.
With warm wishes for your success,
Susan R. Meyer
Susan R. Meyer, MCC (IAC) is President of Susan R. Meyer, Coaching and Consulting and of Life-Work Coach. She provides personal and executive coaching and facilitates seminars on topics including life planning, emotional intelligence, leadership development, communication, and coaching skills for managers. www.susanrmeyer.com.
Claim your IAC coaching, mentoring or supervision benefit
As part of your IAC membership, you’re entitled to receive coaching, mentoring or supervision. We’ve pre-purchased your entry into a reciprocal peer coaching, mentoring and supervision round by partnering with ReciproCoach.
Click here to redeem your IAC-ReciproCoach voucher today.
Be quick! The next round is starting soon!
Search Engine Optimization Tips to Grow Your Coaching Practice
by Sara K. Sims
Did you know that 96% of people who are looking to hire a coach are searching online? You can't play the game unless you get on the court. Having a website is the first step for marketing your business and attracting new clients. However, just having a website isn't enough. If it's not showing up on the first few pages of search results it's probably not doing you any good. If this is your predicament, you are probably wondering what more you could be doing to rank higher in search engine listings. It’s all in the search engine optimization (SEO).
What is SEO and how can it help your practice? Search engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of your website in search engines. An optimized website is one that shows up high in search engine listings when people search for goods and services. If a website shows up on the first few pages of a Google search that can lead to high traffic, which can result in new business. Let's face it—if your website can't be found in searches, then it won't be effective in attracting new clients to you. That is the goal of doing SEO—to effectively drive traffic to your website.
The first thing to know is that search engines such as Google and Yahoo! pick you, you don’t pick them. All of the search engines download the entire contents of the Internet using web crawlers that continually cruise around, cataloging websites. They determine the search engine ranking of each as democratically as possible according to a number of different factors, including: the number and popularity of sites that link to the site in question, the number of visits to the site, how long it has been up, and the amount and quality of the content. Another thing the web crawlers keep track of is the meta-tag keywords associated with that site (meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the header on a web page, after the title tag.)
The more sophisticated search engines increasingly rely on words gleaned from the content of the website itself. Therefore it is important that your content reflects your specialties and geographic location so that people will be able to find you. If someone types in a word or combination of words that's very specific to your site—such as your name—you'll likely come up at or near the top. If they type in more generic terms, such as "coaching" and [name of your city], you'll still come up in the results, but you may be in the company of many other sites that also contain those words! Give it try and see what happens. Keep in mind that nearly everyone with a website would like to be at the top of the search engine listings. Where you—or they—come up in that listing will be determined by some of the factors listed above.
A great easy way to improve your search engine rankings is by listing your website in online directories. That means that in addition to listing your website in the major search engines themselves, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, you also want to list your website on many other important directories like Google local and Yahoo local. The more inbound links (links from another website) pointing to your site the better and these links should come from high quality sites. Just remember: a well-networked website is a high ranking website; high rankings mean high visibility; the more visible your website is, the more business you’re going to get.
Sara K. Sims is the Director of Business Development at CoachingWebsites.com, who specialize in creating coaching websites that are professional, affordable and effective. Websites are just $59/month with no long-term contracts. Attracting new clients and generating more revenue is easy with Coaching-Websites!
Member benefit: IAC members receive a free website with three months of hosting with a promo code available on the IAC member benefit page.
New Certified Coaches
We'd like to welcome our first coaches to be certified as Skilled Cetified Coaches, or CC (IAC). Congratulations to Charles Boyer from Littleton, CO, USA, Debra Chisholm from Williston, VT, USA and Eva Luk from Hong Kong!
New IAC-Practitioners
Congratulations to Angela Spaxman from Hong Kong and Galya Kamenova from Cherrybrook, Australia who recently earned the IAC-Practitioner Designation!
New IAC Coaching Masteries® licensed schools and mentors
| Name | City | State | Country | IAC-CC | |
| INTEcoach | Alicante | Spain | No | View Details |
Your Feedback
We'd love to get your feedback on any issue related to the IAC. Do you have any questions, concerns, encouragement or ideas for improvement regarding membership benefits, certification, the VOICE, the direction of the organization or anything else at all? Please send an email to feedback@certifiedcoach.org. Please help us improve.
