If you’re like most professional coaches, you’re always looking for ways to maximize your effectiveness. If that’s true for you, you’ll find this post really valuable.

Would you like to speed up your writing by 300%? I know … silly question, but I had to ask.

Have you heard about voice recognition (or speech recognition) software? As you dictate into a headset mic, the software transcribes your words into a document on your computer.

What makes this so exciting is that most people speak three times faster than they type. So instead of slowly, laboriously typing words onto a page, you simply dictate them.

I first heard about this software years ago. It sounded amazing, but after researching it, I felt it wasn’t quite “ready for prime-time.”

The two biggest issues seemed to be …

1. You had to spend lots of time “training” the software to recognize your voice and pronunciation.

2. There were numerous transcribing errors.

That sounded like more trouble than it was worth, so I forgot about it and I never gave it another thought.

Then a few days ago, I stumbled upon a discussion in one of my favorite forums about about a voice recognition program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The feedback was really positive.

Apparently the technology is significantly improved, and no longer requires extensive training. Users raved about its ease of use and their improved productivity.

What’s great about this is you can use the software for all of your writing, including email, letters, reports, articles, info products, forum posts, and even live online chat and discussions.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes in several versions. Unless you frequently use medical or legal terms, you should be fine with the standard (least expensive) version. It retails for just under a $100, but I found it online for around $85, with free shipping!

That’s a pretty good deal and you can check it out by clicking this link …

http://visitors2clients.com/recommends/voicerecognition

I’ve just begun using this software and I’m tremendously excited by the productivity gains I expect to achieve.

This is a sensational tool and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

What Do You Think?

E. Alvin Davis
“The Coach’s Online Marketing Coach” ™

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Today, affiliate marketing superstar Rosalind Gardner really set me straight!

Here’s how it happened.

While reading Rosalind’s always informative blog, I learned something new.

Over the last several months I’ve seen numerous references to the demise of the Overture Keyword Selector Tool, that’s the free online resource many marketers use to research keyword popularity.

But my experience was different. Every time I used the tool it worked for me, so I just assumed these were only temporary outages. (BTW, I access Overture’s results through a keyword software program, so I rarely visit their site.)

Anyway, I discovered that while the Overture Keyword Selector Tool may still be online, the search information isn’t current. It’s showing old results from searches in January of 2007.

Yahoo! recently acquired Overture and is obviously not supporting the service at this time. Hopefully, it will return one day, perhaps as the Yahoo! Selector Tool.

I’ll keep you updated when I hear something new, or the next time Roz sets me straight.

What Do You Think?

E. Alvin Davis
“The Coach’s Online Marketing Coach” ™

As a coaching professional, you surely appreciate the concept, “knowledge is power” — and it truly is.

It’s the power to make better, more informed decisions about everything affecting your coaching practice.

Having access to this knowledge allows you to “keep score” on your business. Once you know your “baseline,” you can work to continually improve your performance in every single area of your coaching practice.

When it comes to the online part of your coaching business, there’s a great resource that can help you track your metrics.

I’m talking about Google Analytics, a free resource from our friends at the big “G.”

Even small, minor improvements to your coaching business add up. Tiny changes that may not seem all that significant at the moment, compound and build, and ultimately lead to significant growth.

If you haven’t signed up yet, be sure and check it out. You’ll be glad you did.

What Do You Think?

E. Alvin Davis
“The Coach’s Online Marketing Coach” ™

If you’re a coach, I’ve got a great freebie that will really help your coaching practice (well, actually it’s not just one freebie) — it’s a bunch of ‘em!

My newest favorite website is GiveawayOfTheDay.com. It’s a site that offers free software. That’s right, I said, “FREE SOFTWARE!”

Every day a new software program is unveiled and you can download it and use it for free.

The only slight catch is this: You have to download, install and activate it on the day of release. You have until 3:00 a.m. PST to activate each day’s software.

I don’t care what kind of coach you are, life coach, business coach, executive coach, or personal coach of any kind, you’ll get great value from this site — plus, you can’t beat the price.

What Do You Think?

E. Alvin Davis
“The Coach’s Online Marketing Coach” ™