Friday is quickly approaching, and we are super excited to have our Blogging Success Forum! Below are the bios of our two panelists. I’m sure this will be a popular class, so please make sure to save the date: This Friday, May 15th, from 10-11am PST / 1-2pm EST.

Rick Burnes is Inbound Marketing Manager at HubSpot, a leader in marketing software for small- and medium-sized businesses. He is the editor of HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Blog, which is consistently featured on the AdAge Power 150 top media marketing blogs. In addition to his work on the blog, Rick develops videos, research, case studies and webinars on new approaches to online marketing. Prior to HubSpot, Rick was co-founder of Faneuil Media, a startup that provided inbound marketing solutions for local businesses. From 2001-2004 Rick worked at NYTimes.com, where he managed the launch of new sections, including search and theater. He started at The Times two months before 9/11 and spent his first year working on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Nation Challenged section. He has also worked at Google, The Moscow Times and The New Bedford Standard Times. Rick is active on Twitter and occasionally posts on his personal blog. He resides in Cambridge, MA.

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Roger Matus is a well-known commentator on the use of email, IM, and messaging technologies. He was CEO and founder of the email archiving company, InBoxer, which he recently sold to Safecore, Inc. At Safecore, Roger is now the Executive Vice President. He has been in the software business for about 25 years, and worked on the development of an email product back in 1983. Since February 2007, he has been the author of the blog Death By Email, which Roger says was essential to growth and successful sale of his company.

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Cindi Schmitzer is the married mother of four who lives in Sparta, New Jersey. She is the co-owner of LTDchix, a company who created a line of funny tees targeted specifically toward moms. She grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and attended Penn State University where she received a bachelor’s degree in accounting. She eventually married and has moved around quite a bit with her husband’s job. In fact, they brought their four kids home to four different addresses. Her and her business partner founded LTDchix about three years ago. In the past few months, they have started a blog relating to their business. On the blog, they share funny tales about motherhood and news about their business. The blog web address for LTDchix is www.blog.ltdchix.com.
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4. Have a ‘traditional’ Home Page for your WordPress.com website
5. Comment posting
6. Widgets and protecting your blog from SPAM
To learn more, please listen to our podcast below. This Friday, we’ll be discussing how to promote and market your WordPress.com blog/website. Be sure to sign-up at the Webinar’s page!

1. Understanding what a blog is: an informative, opinionated, ‘human’ look at a company/business or person. As a coach, this will be the way that your potential clients will get to know the ‘real’ you – not just the one you show for your sales copy. Why do we want to show this human side of a life or business coach? Well, what is the first rule of sales: we buy from people that we know, like and trust – and a blog allows us to build that!

2. Blog styles: we discussed Blogger, Typepad, WordPress.com and WordPress.org

3. Get involved: before you start your blog, however, you should read and participate in some that are interesting to you, or are in your industry. Make sure to choose ones that are active and popular. In order to find a few blogs that you like, search Technorati. Oh – and the answer between Authority and Ranking is that they’re basically the same: to build authority or ranking within Technorati you need to build links from other blogs to yours. Be aware that links will ‘clear out’ from Technorati if they’re older than 6 months.

4. Have a plan and get started! Your blog should be part of your over-all marketing plan – so before you get started with designing or adding content to your blog, it’s a good idea to have a clear idea of where it’s going.

This week, we’ll be reviewing how to update your blog – design wise and adding multi-media. If you would like to learn how-to customize your WordPress.com website / blog, click here to be sure to sign-up for our May 1st class!

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If you are a life or business coach, or an entrepreneur, on a major shoe-string budget, then I would recommend WordPress as a way for you to quickly and easily build a website. WordPress.com is the free version of WordPress in which you can set-up a blog in minutes. Their free templates aren’t the greatest, but it can easily be customizable. If you want your own URL, and host your own WordPress Website – then I recommend WordPress.org. For hosting the WordPress website, I always recommend BlueHost.

When we build a website utilizing WordPress, we first focus on the design of the site – utilizing our own 6-step design process that really captures the essence of our clients. We then build the site utilizing the WordPress technology, allowing our clients to easily make changes once the site launches. It’s also more Search Engine friendly than basic HTML websites.

This first video is how-to make basic changes in your WordPress website.

The second video is how-to make basic color changes to your WordPress website.

Just a reminder – your ‘Admin’ page to sign-in is your URL (or web address), plus /wp-admin. So, for example, for http://www.helpinghandsforcoaches.com it will be http://www.helpinghandsforcoaches.com/wp-admin.

If we didn’t help you develop your website, and you would like custom HEX colors (the series of numbers/letters that tells browsers what colors to show) – then you can visit this website: www.2CreateAWebsite.com