“I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities.”  So said the CEO of American retailer Home Depot, and we completely agree! Not only do we work closely with our own business coach – who is also one of our clients – but we are thrilled to have been appointed by the International Coach Federation to promote International Coaching Week in the UK.

The aim of the Week, which runs from 5th-11th February, is to raise awareness of business and personal life coaching. Coaches around the world are offering a variety of activities and pro bono services in their local communities to share what coaching has the ability to do.

It also heralds the launch of the ICF Global Coaching Study. This survey of the phenomenal growth of the business and life coaching industry worldwide was based on 12,000 respondents from 117 countries. It follows the first survey in 2007, also undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which was one of the largest pieces of research at the time.

If you think a business or life coach could help you, see the UK ICF website www.coachfederation.org.uk for some useful pointers on what to consider, and how to find a coach.

As we know, January is one of the hardest months for work and life morale, with the inevitable comedown after the excitement of Christmas it can be very difficult to get into the swing of it as they say.

At The Write Impression we like to always look on the bright side, and what better way to lift our morale than to share our amazing successes for our clients over the last few weeks. By January 3 two of our clients had been interviewed on local radio, we had seventeen pages of magazine features and more than thirty pages of newspaper coverage – not a bad way to start 2012!

Aside from our press release guarantee, it’s really important that we continually measure our success, both for our clients and our own team here. So, as well as our cuttings (many of which are displayed on our office walls), we have a success board reminding us of what’s coming up – it’s full up already for January 2012.

Looks like 2012 is going to be a great year for The Write Impression – we hope it is for you too!

New year, new resolutions. It’s time to dust off that marketing plan and match up expectations with achievable targets. And if you haven’t actually written one, set aside some time now – so that this time next year you can pat yourself on the back at having had such a successful year!

Remember that old adage that businesses don’t plan to fail – they fail to plan. So make sure that your marketing plan has an opening summary (which you will probably write last) and includes content that reflects your business strategy, outlines your marketing objectives, and concludes with your action points.

In the process, you will be considering who your clients are and how best to reach them. Then think what your business is all about, what your objectives are and how to achieve them. When looking at your marketing objectives, you should be assessing your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Don’t forget to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-specific. And if you really enjoy analytic techniques, try the Seven Ps: Product, Pricing, Place, Promotion, People, Processes, Physical evidence – and even that elusive Pzazz.

As you move towards working out your action plan, make sure you look at resources, cost, and control – in other words, who is going to take responsibility for putting the plan into place, and how and when are they going to do this.

Finally, take a leaf out of Walt Disney’s book (or film). “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” It certainly worked for him.

Tweeting can be quite a task, you have to think strategically, especially in the world of marketing and PR. So when uploading a post, the hurdles we come across are as follows with tips also. Firstly, the number of characters you are allowed, 140 characters no not words, characters, this means every letter, space and punctuation. So you really haven’t got much room, and you’ll need to use the ‘characters’ wisely, ask yourself what is your tweet about? Take the subject of your tweet and hashtag it! This leads us on to the next hurdle, hashtags or should we say #hashtags. A hashtag is a great way to increase your Tweet visibility. Remember to hashtag the important words/subjects of your tweet, not every single word! 140 characters may be hard to get used to but: less is more, brief is better and the result is, shorter tweets get retweeted, as we have found out for ourselves at TWI.

An example tweet that we posted this week was #Advertising costs exceptionally more than #PR, and the effects are not as long lasting as those of #PR. #presspacks http://cot.ag/tKOQbE. Here we hash tagged the subjects which were advertising and PR, we ended with the point to the tweet which was for people to look at our press packs and as they have prices on them they can compare to the prices they may have received for advertising. So we not only hash tagged press packs but we also slotted in the link to our press packs. The importance of this tweet was to drive those reading the tweet to our website. Twitter Marketing for Dummies states that when developing your brand story on twitter you should; share client success stories, (check) we tweet links to our press cuttings and re tweet our clients tweets, share your company history (check) we have filled out an about us section at the top of our twitter and lastly share your personal opinion (check) only in small doses, too much can get you into sticky situations.

Our social media pages are now becoming as influential as our website. It is important to make sure we remain active. We have decided to upload our press pack pages onto Facebook as a way of reminding people of the different services we offer here at The Write Impression.

A company’s logo is one of, if not the most important aspect of the business, as a logo will always be looked at and analysed by your potential customers.

Equally, when pitching press releases or feature pitches to the media we have to make sure that the images we provide to the press are not only of a quality standard but send the right message about the news story and the company.

A picture really does make a difference and most publications will not print a news story or feature without a captivating image or worst still no image at all. Using a poor quality image can devalue your release. Your image needs to be of top quality and really deliver what the release or feature is about.

As an example, one of our clients Ingot Services who specialise in commercial kitchen cleaning provided us with company portfolio images, these included images of the vans with their logo and images of the owner of the company. All quality photos; however, we found that we had already used several of the images in previous press releases; therefore, we decided to source a high quality image to go with the release. We are sure many of you know the choice of high quality professional images online are vast, we went for a image of a fire as the press release was the subject of hotel fires so we deemed this as appropriate.

A week later the press release was picked out by ‘eat out’ magazine along with the image and straight away you are drawn to the powerful colour of the image of the fire and how it matches the publication’s corporate colour. The Write Impression and our client were delighted with the whole piece of coverage.

So a tip to you when you next have a photo opportunity for your company is, use it! Invest in a commercial photographer to take as many high quality images as possible and make sure the message they portray is eye catching and represents a story.

Just a short blog today to say thank you to the team from Ipswich Electrifiers Speaking Group who gave up an evening to help a group of us who are speaking at the Ipswich and Suffolk Small Business Association (ISSBA) ‘Stir it and Stump It’ event next week. Through these experienced Toastmasters we picked up some fantastic tips and advice on presenting including: - Practice makes perfect - Know your audience - Engage with your audience through body language and eye contacts - Smile! - Choose your words with care to paint a picture in your listeners’ minds - Act and behave like the expert you know you are - Take your time to pause, breathe and relax

If you’re one of the 90+% of people who try to avoid public speaking the we would highly recommend the Ipswich Toastmasters group – and they have a guest evening on Thursday, 20 October. Look them up at http://ipswichelectrifiers.org.uk/

I’m a lover, not a fighter” – what if you’re a writer, not a sales person? We have been lucky enough to work with business coach Gina Gardiner to help us overcome a barrier that is an issue for many very talented business people. We’re great at what we do, but selling it doesn’t always come easy. Read more about our journey and the results we achieved working with Gina here http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2011/9/prweb8772844.htm

Look out for Kate and Caroline on stall 14. The MENTA trade fair which takes place at The West Wing at Ickworth will be opened officially by councillor John Griffiths at 3.00pm. The evening finishes around 8pm so TWI have a busy day of networking and hopefully meeting their potential clients, you never know it could be YOU!

Click here to listen to Sarah Dean of Deans  interview on BBC Radio Essex

We often get asked to work with businesses who want in-house training and advice on marketing. So… we have compiled a few ‘top tips’ and we’re going to give these out a few at a time starting with…. 1. Start at the beginning – what are you doing now? Where do you want to be in 12-months? 2. Think about the news stories you can create? You should be able to think of at least six business news press release ideas for the next 12 months. If you can’t; create news by getting involved with a charity or a local organisation, having an open event, linking with a celebrity or offering an exclusive offer – the list is endless 3. Pick your top ten media contacts – research the publication and the named contact and start building a relationship with them 4. Put together a schedule – remember you need to start contacting magazines three to six months before your story needs to be published.

Or – you can get us to do it for you – with results guaranteed www.thewriteimpression.co.uk