“Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”  John Howard Payne

How do you react when your train of thought is interrupted with a message you have no interest in?

But the king interrupted him and said, “Since when have I asked your advice? Be quiet now before I have you killed!”  (2 Chron. 25:16a; NLT)

We’re back home again after our magnificent ten-day trip to cowboy country (Texas and Oklahoma).  As great as our time away was, and as great as we were treated everywhere we went, I still have to say, “There’s no place like home!”

For the last couple of days, I’ve been wondering what message to bring you as we start our Daily Grams once again, and I’ve felt more and more compelled to share just a bit of the message I had for the Master’s degree students at the Southwestern Christian University Graduate School.  The Assistant Dean, John Chasteen invited me to teach a group of his coaching degree students a course entitled, “Career Coaching.”

While a number of our loyal DG readers are lifestyle coaches, I’m sure the rest of you are wondering what part of a course on making a business of coaching could possibly be of interest to you.  Well, hang in there with me just a minute and let me offer a message that I believe has direct application to almost anybody that has any kind of a position that would benefit by finding and attracting a broader audience to hear your particular message, whatever that might be.

For example, if you’re in the ministry, I’m sure that one of your driving passions is to reach more people with the unique message God has given you to share.  If you’re an author, one of the challenges you’re always dealing with is how to tell more people about your work and what you have to offer.  If you’re in the marketplace in virtually any capacity, you’re almost always seeking ways to let more people know that you exist and learn about your particular offering.  This is true whether you’re trying to reach interested people in your local community or people anywhere in the world.

Did you catch the phrase “interested people?”  That’s the bottom line of the message I want to leave with you.  The world of marketing is changing right  before our very eyes.  No longer do we want to interrupt the masses (most of whom could care less about what we have to say) with our particular message, but we do want to make sure that those who are looking for what we have to say or offer can more easily find us.  And the exciting thing is that when someone who is looking for what you have to offer finds you, they are excited to find you and very interested in what you have to say.  How cool is that?

This new approach to marketing is called attraction marketing by some, relationship marketing by others.  I’ve heard it called permission marketing and social marketing.  it seems that the more exposure it gets, the more names it gets.  I believe the more it becomes the norm the more it will replace the interruption marketing techniques most of us have grown up with and will become the new definition of marketing.

Mike Klingler, a good friend and colleague of mine has put together a short presentation of attraction marketing that is today’s link.  Please let me know what you think.  Just submit a comment and share your opinions and wisdom with the rest of the DG readers.

Prayer Power
Father, we thank You for a wonderful time away and are truly excited about all the things we learned and are now eager to share with our friends.  Bless each and every one of them through the coming weeks.

Link of the Day
Better than Google

Blessings on you as you consider how attraction marketing can facilitate your destiny.

Some of our readers are familiar with the marketing revolution that is occurring all around us which some call social marketing, others call attraction marketing, and still others call relationship marketing.  Even if you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of those techniques, I’m sure you’ve at least heard the terms being bantered around.

Over the last year or so, I have been diving pretty heavily into this synergistic combination of marketing and the Internet (specifically what’s now being called “Web 2.0″) to see how to apply it to our own business–both our coaching business and our wellness business.  The place I started in my quest for information was Renegade University (RU).  In fact, since I had experience with the founder from a prior relationship, I was blessed to be a charter member (student?) of Renegade University, and most of what I now know about social marketing came from that one affiliation.  Admittedly, I read information from several other sources and attended lots of online teleseminars, but still, all in all, the foundation came from RU.

RU, in a nutshell, offers a growing number of on-line audio-visual seminars (some call “webinars”) which explain virtually every facet of social marketing.  These courses are like no others I have ever seen in that they are designed for absolute beginners.  You know, push this button then this will happen.  Then push that button and that will happen.  Then click here then click there, etc.  It’s a click-by-click walk through of what the various tools in social marketing are, how they’re best used strategically, and then how to set them up and use them on a daily or weekly basis.  It’s so beginner oriented, that the main complaint we hear is that it goes too slow. 

RU was started with network marketing as it’s target audience.  Much of the language used relates to the MLM or network marketing industry.  However, I want to emphasize that if networking is not your game, you can easily “filter out” all the networking jargon and take the content of the courses and apply it to any kind of business, local or international, Internet-based, home-based, or a brick-and-mortar store.  In other words, if you have a flower shop that serves your local community, you can learn how to apply social marketing to reach out to many more potential customers than you would reach with traditional marketing approaches.

As proof of that, I have coached two people over the last six months to a year in the use of RU to build their business.  One individual was a missionary who was looking to increase his exposure to churches that might be open to his seminar teachings.  Another was a newly trained lifestyle coach who wanted to build a practice around a very specific niche using the Internet.  Both of those have turned out to be quite successful in applying the technology of the Internet to what they’re wanting to do.  It’s been an extremely gratifying experience.

All this is to suggest that you would do well to take a look at Renegade University.  If you have any interest in social marketing at all, you owe it to your self to investigate it.  Actually, you can get a good overview by simply clicking on the Renegade University link here and giving me your name and email address.  That will give you immediate access to a portion of RU which you can evaluate further.  

I’m also including a link to a video on Renegade University made by a friend and colleague of mine, Irene Kirkman.  (Incidentally, using video like Irene does here is just one of a myriad of social marketing tools and techniques.)