6 Questions for: Julie Colbrese

Sometimes we’re so proud of our clients, we could burst. We get very close to them and their brands during the brand development process, and when we see them doing great work and achieving great things, it’s very personal to us.

I thought I’d start a series of one-on-one interviews with people we work with who’ve made us proud. They’re rocking their brands in exciting and innovative ways, taking the ideas we developed together and using them to grow their organizations. We find how a brand works out in the “real world” fascinating and hope you will, too.

This week, I’m interviewing Julie Colbrese from Hot Coffee Coaching. Julie believes that advice is best given with a big cup of piping hot java (no room for cream—that’s for girls). Julie’s confidence, experience and earthy energy were definitely what inspired us when we developed her brand and her website. And now, she’s really bringing her brand to life with her insightful blog, Café Diem. (So clever!)

Let’s see what Julie had to say about choosing blog topics, what her site says about her and her long romance with the java juice.

1. All of your blog posts have exactly 200 words. What’s the reason for that?

That is a little fun fact that most people don’t know or notice. I don’t know why or how that started, but I enjoy the editing process as much as writing.

It’s a little like doing needlepoint. Or, what I imagine doing needlepoint is like—kind of a waste of time, but meticulously satisfying.

2. How do you decide what to write about in your blog? Is it targeted to what you feel readers want/need to hear, or pure inspiration that motivates your posts?

I used to post on a regular weekly schedule, but I found that whole forced creativity thing too much like my copywriting days! Now, I write whenever a topic interests me or an idea or theme shows up in my coaching. Mostly something will show up in my life and I’ll find I have an opinion that I think is worth sharing.

3. We’ve seen your analytics, and you get a lot of traffic to your blog. How do you promote it to drive this traffic?

I get a surprisingly high number of coaching inquiries and clients directly from my website. Still, I probably should be doing more to promote my site and blog. All I really do is reference it on my Hot Coffee Coaching fan page on Facebook that links to my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. Should I get t-shirts made?

4. What kind of feedback do you get from the thoughts you share? And do you let that feedback influence you?

I don’t seem to get any comments or create any dialogue from my blog, and that’s okay. I consider myself a writer first, so I’m writing for myself. From my writing, I hope to share a part of myself and my personality with readers or followers. The coaching relationship is very intimate. So, it’s important that prospective clients get a sense of who I am before they decide if they want to work with me. My site and my blog help clients get to know me even before we connect.

5. We hear you get a lot of compliments on your website. What do you feel people like most about the site? Is it the blog?

I do get a lot of compliments on my site. People say they love the way my site makes them feel. That’s about the best compliment I could get. I always tell people, “I spent 20 years in marketing and hired a really great agency to make sure you feel that way.”

Honestly, I think that’s it. You guys got to know me and completely understood the look and feel I wanted to represent for myself and my coaching practice. You just “get me.” *sigh*

6. What do you want people to know about you? Would they know it if they read your website?

That I’m smart and pretty…and am having a lifelong love affair with coffee. Would they get that from my website? My God, I hope so.