With over one billion websites as of September 2014, and increasing rapidly every second (according to Internet Livestats) – that’s a lot of noise you need to compete with when building an online presence for your coaching practice.

I can’t recall the software I used to build my first website, some 18 years ago. It was very basic and all I needed for my first business – a Secretarial and Bookkeeping service.

A few years later when I expanded my business and service offering to include Career Coaching and Resume Writing, I upgraded to MS Frontpage.

And, when my business expanded again to offer Personal Branding Services and later Business Coaching and Marketing for entrepreneurs, I was well and truly hooked on WordPress.org software.

With each stage of advancement, I used more technologies to help me build my online presence, however in the last few years I have developed a list of favorite tools and technologies that I love and use when building an online presence.

Here they are:

Website/Blog:

These are the tools I use with my website.

• WordPress.org

Read my article: Your Blog: Free or Self-Hosted. Which is best for your brand to find out why I think it’s important to have you own self-hosted website, rather than using a free website/blogging service.

• Get Noticed Theme

I’ve used a number of different themes (free and paid) over the years. I even had a graphic/web designer create one for me. I’ve loved them all, however not as much as I love my latest update, using the Get Noticed Theme, which has been developed by Michael Hyatt and his team.

In just a few short months after updating to this theme, I have received a number of media (print and television) opportunities, due in no small part to this latest update.

This theme has certainly lived up to its promise of “getting me noticed.”

• Click To Tweet

Want to share (or have site visitors share) an inspirational quote or sentence (or two) from your article with their Twitter community? Click to Tweet allows you to do this.

[Note: I no longer use this as the Get Noticed Theme comes with it’s own version.]

• Audio Acrobat

Want to embed an audio or video into your blog post or webpage? You can with this tool.

While I know there are free services (such as YouTube for video and Sound Cloud for audio) I prefer to use Audio Acrobat as I have hundreds of hours of material I’ve created and can share them privately with only my clients if I wish.

Images:

• Shutter stock

I recently upgraded to Shutterstock (from another well-known image site) and must say I am very impressed with the level of images and their pricing options.

I use an image for every blog post, my newsletter, and inspirational posts.

• Canva
• PicMonkey

Both of these resources are fantastic for creating graphics for your inspirational posts.

Podcasts:

• Audacity

While I am an Apple fanatic and have Garage Band at my fingertips, I prefer to use Audacity to record, mix, and edit my podcasts and other audio recordings.

• Bluberry

I use this tool to host all my podcasts.

• Sound Byte

This tool stores all my sound/music files, which I mix directly into my podcasts as I’m recording them.

Social Media Platforms:

These are the social media platforms I use regularly to help build my online profile as well as my online community.

If we’re not yet connected, reach out, and say ‘Hello!’

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Linkedin
• Pinterest

Question: Which are your favorite tools you use when building an online presence? Go ahead and share by clicking here.