Coaching Archives - Nelida Ruiz Consulting

Tips for Expanding Your Network Even while Social Distancing

Many professionals and businesses who rely on networking for business have been greatly affected by social distancing during the pandemic. Many events where networking takes place have been canceled, put on hold, downsized, or transitioned to virtual gatherings. So how do you adjust your business development and networking activities given these limits on business events and social gatherings? I was invited to speak at the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York Virtual Leadership Training on “How to be Social while Social Distancing.” I shared with the Leadership Team practical tips on how to stay connected and build new connections in our dramatically changed virtual world, and I’ll share those tips with you here.

Easily and Authentically Build Your Social Media Presence

The interactive presentation provided tips for easily and authentically building your social media presence, communicating virtually, and hosting and participating in virtual meet-ups. Participants received scripts for reaching out to long-lost business associates, acquaintances, and old friends. They learned how to avoid oversharing or coming across as narcissistic, tone-deaf, or creepy on social media. Participants had the opportunity to ask questions like how to handle trending and potentially divisive topics like civil unrest, politics, or business reopenings on social media.

“Cultivating connections on social media doesn’t replace face-to-face time, but it can help you stay connected and amplify your reach to a broad array of potential business contacts relatively easily.”
Nelida Ruiz

If you’ve been hesitant to use social media for your business development and networking, now is the time to start. It can take up to 16 touchpoints to gain a new client and that may be over a few years. Social distancing over such a long period without in-person meetings or socializing with potential clients at community and business events is bound to stifle your business development pipeline and networking success. Cultivating connections on social media doesn’t replace face-to-face time, but it can help you stay connected and amplify your reach to a broad array of potential business contacts relatively easily.

Cultivate a Reputation for Being Knowledgeable and Professional

While WBASNY participants noted their hesitation with social media citing time constraints, unfamiliarity with social media platforms, and risks, all acknowledged they know of other attorneys and professionals who use social media effectively, describing them as knowledgeable, professional, and well-connected.

There are many examples of attorneys and others who have gained new clients and new business from sharing not just their own content, but that of firm peers, industry associations, and business publications as well. Many attorneys, like other professionals, think of social media as a heavy lift, perhaps because of a learning curve and the time and effort of producing original content. While producing original thought leadership content is important, it doesn’t have to be frequent. Attorneys can maintain a consistent presence on social media simply by interacting with their contacts and sharing information from trusted information resources. Regular use of a social media application like LinkedIn will help you learn how intuitive it is, and you’ll benefit from seeing how others use LinkedIn effectively as well.

Social Media Tips

The following tips included in the training can help attorneys, business owners and professionals use social media more effectively:

Update your profile on LinkedIn. You should include a current photo and recent relevant experience and representative matters. (If you’re an attorney, be sure to follow your state bar association’s Advertising Rules.)
Expand your online network by reaching out to current and former contacts, including clients, law/ graduate school and college classmates, associates on volunteer committees, boards and associations, and colleagues and peers you interact with in the community and your career. To download a contact tracer worksheet to help you identify potential connections, visit NelidaRuiz.com/contacttracer.
Support your online network by simply liking and commenting on their posts consistently.
Celebrate clients (companies and individuals) and contacts online when they launch new products, expand operations, receive positive press coverage, change jobs, celebrate work anniversaries, etc. You can choose to do so by commenting on their posts or sending private direct messages through social media.
Follow industry news and business resources you find valuable, and reshare content you find of interest that might benefit others, especially if it relates to your business.
Post when you receive recognition, author or are featured in an article/press, participate in a volunteer activity or community event, or speak at an event, etc.

By using each of these opportunities in combination to network on social media, professionals and business owners can cultivate a consistent personal brand that demonstrates knowledge, professionalism, influence, and well-connectedness. By using social media not just to promote yourself but to support others, share useful information, and celebrate others’ successes, your overall social media presence will be positive, supportive, and professional.

*Republished with permission from WBASNY. This article originally appeared in the October 2, 2020, WBASNY Newsletter.

About the Author: Nelida Ruiz is a GRAWA and WBASNY member with over 15 years of experience helping businesses with their marketing, communications and business development efforts. She is a certified business development coach and professional marketing and communications consultant. She offers business development coaching programs and social media training like this one to individual attorneys, attorney associations, and law firms as well as other professionals.

Three Essential Social Media Tips for Attorneys, CPAs, and Other Professionals

Many professionals shy away from using social media for business networking. This article is the first in a series, providing quick, easy steps to harness social media to connect with people on a professional level.

Are you using social media for your business development? If not, you should be. Social media doesn’t replace your business development and networking efforts; it simply gives you more opportunities to connect with others. And best of all, you can do it quickly from your phone when you’re away from the office. Here are three easy social media tips you can apply today to keep in better touch with clients and colleagues.

Note: the links in the following tips take you to additional content on LinkedIn for help with the tips mentioned. Use the Help feature in Twitter and Facebook for help with those applications.

Follow and Connect with Businesses and Individuals

1. Follow your clients and connect with client contacts. Once you’ve followed and/or connected with a client or individual, his or her content will appear on your LinkedIn feed. You can then easily like, comment and/or reshare your clients’ content going forward. If you’re unclear on whether to follow or connect, see LinkedIn’s article on the differences between the two.

“You can ask someone to join your professional network by sending them an invitation to connect. If they accept your invitation, they’ll become a 1st-degree connection. We recommend only inviting people you know and trust because 1st-degree connections are given access to any information you’ve displayed on your profile. Building your network is a great way to stay in touch with alumni, colleagues, and recruiters, as well as connect you with new, professional opportunities.”
LinkedIn

Celebrate Your Contacts’ Successes

2. Celebrate your clients. If a client has a milestone like an anniversary, a ground-breaking or good press, offer your congratulations on social media. Don’t forget to tag your client and your client contact.

Share Your Employer and Colleagues’ Content

3. Follow and share your firm’s content. If you work with others, be sure to share their content and like their posts.

Starting with these three easy social media tips will help you get more comfortable with interacting on social media, whether it’s LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook or all three. In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing additional social media ideas for professionals. Sign up to subscribe to all the tips.

Business Development Tips: Save Your Contacts

Taking 30 seconds to add each new contact you work with to your contact list can save you oodles of time in the long run.

Synopsis: One simple step can amplify your business development efforts and save you tons of time in the long run. Save your contacts. This article explains why and how.

Time is precious. And so is building your business. One piece of advice I give every attorney, professional and business owner I work with involves an everyday habit with email. Do you save your contacts? Your best marketing and business development tool is hiding in your inbox. It’s your contacts’ email addresses.

Your Email Inbox Isn’t Designed to Efficiently Store Contacts

Too many of us, simply rely on our email inboxes to store and find email addresses and phone numbers of contacts when we need them. That works well for contacts you’ve worked with over the past couple of weeks or month. But beyond that, it can take too much time to search your email to find the contact details for someone you worked with six months ago.

You might have to guess at part of his email address and hope it auto-populates, you might have to search your email to find an email exchange that includes your contact’s phone number in the email footer, or you may have to ask a colleague to provide the contact details. Worse, if emails at your firm or business are archived or deleted after a period of time, you might lose those details altogether. Yet, simply taking 30 seconds to add each new contact you work with to your contact list can save you oodles of time in the long run.

How to Save Contacts in Outlook

Start today. Follow these simple Outlook instructions for each person you email today. Hint: just click on the person’s email address, and select Add to Contacts. Keep it up as you work; if you find yourself searching your email for someone’s contact details, be sure to save that someone as a contact. You’ll thank yourself later.

Give Contacts to Marketing

And if you’ve already developed this habit, don’t forget to provide appropriate contacts to your marketing department as well. They can ensure your contacts are receiving thought leadership content and invitations to seminars.

You can’t rely on your clients searching out information they might need or don’t know they need. Provide valuable content at regular intervals. And to do that, email addresses are one of your most valuable marketing tools.

Six Things You Need to Know about Working with a Coach

This article explains what working with a coach is like and how working with a coach is different than a mentor.

Synopsis: Nothing has taught me more about achieving goals than coaching others to achieve theirs. In this post, I’ll share the top six things you need to know about working with a coach.

Achieve goals using a professional coach — *Working with a coach is a different dynamic than the one you might have with a boss or mentor even though it may seem similar in concept.*

#6. You don’t have to know your goal to work with a coach.

You may not know exactly what your ultimate goal is. And thankfully, knowing your goal isn’t required to start working with a coach. Maybe you just know something needs to change in your career or your personal life. You and your coach will discuss what isn’t working and why you feel that change is needed. Together, you can develop a plan from that conversation. And through that plan, your goal will be a natural outcome. It’s reverse engineering. Your coach will make sure it’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. And that’s just SMART.

#5. You’re being too hard on yourself.

When we set a goal, we tend to give ourselves credit for only the big sweeping actions we take that leapfrog us toward our goals. If we haven’t moved the needle significantly, we feel we haven’t made any progress. That’s just not the case. The reason we don’t hammer down on the gas pedal when a streetlight turns green is it’s uncomfortable for us, our passengers, and even the drivers around us. If you don’t feel immediate change and whiplash when you’ve started working toward a goal, that’s okay. A coach will be able to point out how each action you’ve taken is progress, even if it’s just changing the rudder of your attitude from “I have so far to go” to “I’m doing it.” That subtle shift in thought will take you far. And that leads me to my next coaching lesson.

#4. Great things are accomplished one small step at a time.

Everything doesn’t have to change all at once, and the best and most lasting changes don’t happen immediately. There are dozens if not hundreds of tiny actions that move us closer to accomplishing our goals. Keep a list of every action you need to take that gets you closer to your goal. And the smaller the steps you break those actions down into, the better. Did you write a list of three contacts to network with? Check. Did you contact one person on the list? Check. Did you set an appointment to talk to someone? Check. It all adds up. And every time you review your list to check off an item, you’ll see all of those actions accomplished, giving you the momentum to keep going.

#3. Lists are the best tool you can use.

There was a craze over the past couple of years around bullet journaling. There are countless tools, journals and planners out there developed by motivational coaches for goal setting and tracking. I’ve probably tried at least half a dozen or so myself. What I’ve learned is you don’t need some fancy tracker, journal or planner. In fact, the easier you make the tracking, the more likely you are to do it. The important thing is to keep that list! See #2 again if you need a reminder about why. Your coach likely will have a few trackers and lists they’ll ask you to use. It doesn’t matter whether it’s handwritten on a note pad, typed into a document, tracked in an app on your phone, or charted and forecast using pivot tables in Excel. (I’m kidding about Excel.) The point is: just make sure you’re continually reviewing your list to add new items and check off completed items. One action often leads to another action. For instance, if you’re networking and you’ve added a name to your list, you may also want to review that person’s LinkedIn profile prior to your meeting or outreach. This is where reviewing your list is key.

#2. You’re hiring a coach to keep you accountable to yourself.

It’s very easy to let life, your career, your family, and/or your hobbies crowd out your goals. You hire a coach to help you stay accountable. You’ll meet regularly in person or by phone to check in and discuss your progress. Things may come up from time to time that slow you down, but don’t let that be a reason to put off your coaching. That’ll only set you back further. As a coach to several busy professionals, I never mind when appointments have to be rescheduled even more than once. And I’m also happy to use our meeting time to review the list, brainstorm additional actions, and discuss what may be getting in the way. Just because you don’t feel ready for a coaching appointment, doesn’t mean you should cancel. After all, you hired your coach to keep you accountable and get you back on track.

#1. Your coach plays a different role than your boss or mentor.

Working with a coach is a different dynamic than the one you might have with a boss or mentor. Although a great boss can exhibit qualities of all three, a manager has to balance your needs with the needs of the team and company. When those conflict, the company is the priority. What’s good for you might not be good for business. A mentor is more similar to a coach than a boss. But, generally, you select your own mentors. A mentor may be someone who’s already accomplished what you’d like to accomplish or someone you simply admire. A mentor shares her experience with you and may even introduce you to others who can help you in your career. She may help you gain additional experience or achieve a promotion. A coach has specific training in active listening to help you achieve your goals and a variety of tools to help you. A coach will assess the steps it’ll take and give you specific tools to move you forward and track your progress. If accountability, consistent momentum, and specific tools are what you’re looking for, then working with a coach may be the best way to reach your goals. But nothing precludes you from working with all three! In fact, I recommend all three, and a coach can help you make the most of each.

Let me know if you’d like to read more posts
about coaching by leaving a comment!
Nelida