Everything Coworking

In this episode, online marketing strategist Reuben Lau, shares his SEO/SEM expertise with us.

Reuben works with several coworking spaces to improve their organic search engine results, and he also helps them to develop Google ad campaigns that get results.

In this episode, we cover:

What is SEO?
How do I know if my website has been optimized for SEO? What if it has not been?
When you're investing in SEO, what are the actual tactics? What gets done one-time? What do I need to make into a business process that gets done regularly?
What is the 80/20 rule for SEO? What are the 20% of SEO-related activities that will get you 80% of the results?
What SEO tactics can I do on my own? What can my Community Manager do? What do I need to outsource to an expert?
How is SEO different from SEM?
In a smaller market where there's not a lot of search volume, what is the interplay between SEM and SEO? How do I measure the ROI of running Google ads?
Should I set up and run Google ads on my own?

Link to show notes here!

In this episode, we’re focusing on your coworking website through the lens of our customer’s journey.

We talk about the process of conducting an optimization process on your website:

• Making sure your site passes the “grunt test.”
• Getting an unbiased “user test” done on your site.
• Finding 2-3 people in the coworking industry to review your site.
• Reviewing your website through the lens of your customer
• Writing down the steps you want your potential member to take to enter and go through your sales funnel.

Access episode show notes here

This week, I head back to episode 89, where I go through a framework for implementing consistent team meetings as a part of your leadership system for running a successful coworking space. 

You can have the right location, a gorgeous space and a great community and still have the wheels fall of of your business if you don’t have the right systems in place to ensure that the team is aligned with and accountable to your organizational goals.

Weekly meetings are a great way to ensure a regular check-in against KPIs and also to help develop a strong culture, recognize team wins and provide consistent feedback to enhance performance. 

Link to show notes here!

One of the most common questions I hear from coworking space operators today is: I'm having trouble selling my flex desks and dedicated desks. Help! Most coworking space operators can't be profitable without coworking revenue - they designed their product mix and therefore their pro forma, to include significant non-office revenue. They need to sell the open space memberships - maybe 2 or 3x over!

Here's a framework for working through your challenge:

1. Describe your Ideal Community Member in detail. Why do they work away from home? What do they do for work? What type of work space do they need? What problem does coworking solve for them?

2. Out of that group of ideal members, what is the profile of a member that would use mostly open space seating to get their work done?

3. How can you find them? How can you message to them so that they know you have a solution to their problem?

4. What creative ideas might you come up with to frame your open space options to make them more compelling? Can you attract a niche? Can you create more privacy using divider systems?

Get the show notes here.

In this myth or fact session, Mike Abrams dissects questions regarding management agreements and in the process helps us to better understand them.

Looking for the show notes for this episode? www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/191

Leads are starting to pick up for many parts of the world. Many coworking space owners experienced a LOT of turnover in 2020. Many of the members coming into the space now are brand new to your brand and they might be brand new to coworking.

Our onboarding processes might be a little rusty...or a little informal and inconsistent. Or we might have new team members that haven’t done a lot of onboarding. Make sure you have consistent onboarding processes that are intentional and documented. Make sure you’re training your team on these processes and helping them to understand why they are so important.

This episode is to get you back into the frame of mind that...

First impressions matter.

A great onboarding experience is your best retention strategy.

It’s a lot easier to keep good members than to attract new ones.

I don’t think that we can under-estimate the importance of an intentional onboarding process for coworking space members right now.

Here’s what we’re going to cover in this episode. Get the full show notes here: www.everythingcoworking.com/190

- Why your onboarding process is critical to retention

- Four key elements that your onboarding process should include

Daan Van Rossum, Chief Experience Officer for Dreamplex in Vietnam shares:

- How Dreamplex came to be - a culmination of Daan’s experience at international ad agencies, his commitment to helping others discover self-fulfillment, personal development, and figuring out what we want out of life.

- That work should help employees to pursue meaning, purpose and the ability to be their best selves.

- How Dreamplex’s Gen Z research reflects a desire to go to a place to work that is designed around their wants and needs. How the Vietnamese highly value being able to work away from home - which in their culture, is often not a quiet, productive place to focus.

- How Dreamplex’s reason for being is not so much about building community among members, but giving companies access to an intentional work environment that draws employees in. The Vietnamese culture is more individual. But they want to go to a PLACE to do their work. They don’t want to work in a big open floor plan where they can spend the day encountering strangers.

- Why Vietnam is embracing flexible workspaces.

- What later stage startups are looking for as they grow their teams and build a culture and deliver a really great employee experience - which becomes a big factor in attracting and retaining key talent.

- That Dreamplex’s real competition is companies creating their OWN office space - not other coworking spaces, not market saturation. How the physical product is only one tool in engaging the best people for a company….and how Dreamplex plays a role outside of the physical environment.

- How they use content marketing as a major marketing tool.

Listen to the full episode here: www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/189

The ability to acquire customers to fill a coworking space to 90-95% capacity, and then replace customers every single month as members inevitably leave, is central to a coworking space operator’s ability to survive.

If you don’t build and optimize a customer acquisition machine, you may not fail, but you will not thrive.

The ability to acquire many individual or small teams as customers every single month, is what differentiates your coworking business from a landlord or a commercial real estate broker.

In this episode, we talk about what the customer acquisition process looks like in a coworking business and how it differs from models like Knotel which just filed for bankruptcy.

Looking for the show notes for this episode? www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/188

Giovanni Palavicini is one of a handful of professionals in the coworking industry that have a macro view of what's happening in coworking across constituencies. He has deep real estate experience and is the unusual broker that has a deep understanding of the coworking business model.

Giovanni works with landlords and operators on coworking leases, management agreements and other creative deal structures. Avision Young also provides strategic services to enterprise users on integrating flexible office into their real estate portfolio.

Looking for the show notes for this episode? www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/187

Running a business generally means competing priorities. Focus on sales or get our "back-of-the-house" in order? Sales wins every time, but that can cause some headaches down the road...with the IRS for example.

Ain't nobody got time for that. Braden Drake, lawyer, author, educator, shares his perspective on establishing your business entity, saving for quarterly taxes and, most importantly....paying yourself!

Looking for the show notes for this episode? www.everythingcoworking.com/episodes/186