How often have you posted something on social media, just to hear crickets? This week’s blog has been written by our Social Media Manager, Saloni, and she’ll take you through the key steps to creating a social media strategy to build your life coaching business and raise your visibility. Read on to learn more!
As coaches, we’re in a uniquely strong position when it comes to social media marketing because we have lots of transferable skills from life coaching that we can use in our marketing, it’s just about reframing and seeing those skills in a new light. When we’re working with a client, and we’re helping them to set goals, we begin with the end in mind, right? It’s very similar when it comes to our marketing, we need to consider our goals, objectives and our ‘why’.
So, let’s use that same goal-based approach that we use in our coaching and start by considering what you would like to achieve by marketing your coaching business on social media? Do you want to build awareness of you as a personal brand? Connect with your ideal audience? Build relationships with other brands? Drive traffic to your website or email list? Promote your services? You’ll probably have a mix of goals here and it could be a blend of everything I’ve said.
Action: Take a moment to define your specific social media goals. Whether it's increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, or boosting sales, clarity on your objectives is the first step toward a purposeful strategy.
Understanding your audience is paramount. Who are they? What problems do they have? How do they feel? Whilst it can be helpful to be able to break down their demographics too, I’d argue how they feel and think is the most important element of getting really clear on who your ideal audience is.
Action: Create detailed personas for your target audience. Understand their demographics, interests, and their pain & pleasure points. You might have more than one audience persona and that’s totally fine. I like to name my audience personas as this helps me to really visualise who I’m speaking to when I’m creating content for them later.
Not all platforms are created equal when it comes to connecting to your audience. Where does your audience spend the most time? By being intentional and choosing to spend quality time in one area, it builds a focused and effective presence.
Action: Evaluate the strengths of different social media platforms for your business goals. Choose the ones aligning with your goals and where your audience is most active.
Content pillars are a collection of topics that are related to your audience and business, so you can talk about them repeatedly. They help to ensure you’re talking about a variety of topics on your social related to your audience and niche.
Action: Choose 5-7 content pillars to use in your social media marketing. Your content pillars may vary depending on your goals and objectives, but you want all of your content to touch at least one of these points: educate, entertain, inspire, build trust in you, and promote your services.
Now it’s time to put everything you’ve learnt so far into a content calendar so you can easily streamline the process and ensure you’re showing up consistently as you build your life coaching business. Typically, I look at the month I’m planning, start with any national holidays or events that are running and plot those in first, then I balance each of the content pillars throughout the month.
Action: Create a content calendar. This can be as ‘techy’ as you like, I tend to work in Google Sheets, but using a calendar template or even your work diary works well. It’s just for you to be able to see what’s coming up to ensure that you’re posting as planned.
Think back to those audience personas that you created, tailor your content to speak directly to them, using their language. How do they feel about the problem that you’re going to help them solve? How will you help them to feel instead? Share content that will resonate with your ideal audience and really showcases that you understand them.
Action: Create content according to your content pillars that speaks directly to your audience so they feel seen and heard by you.
Social media is all about building and nurturing relationships. I’ve found giving more than you take in terms of having conversations with other people on social media has led to building lasting relationships which often turns into clients or referrals.
If you’re still unsure about the value of social media, I’d encourage you to think of it as online networking. You wouldn’t walk into a networking event, share what you think, and then leave the room again… right?
Action: Reply to comments, comment on other people’s posts, ask questions and use polls, build the relationship between you and your audience.
The only way you really know what works is by looking at the data. So, look at the analytics of your social media platforms and keep track of what’s doing well and what could be improved. I encourage you to spend a bit of time at the end of each month to reflect on your content and keep track of data such as followers, engagement, how much you’ve posted.
Action: Create a spreadsheet or document where you track your results every month, and remember, your social strategy is a living entity and there’s no such thing as failure, only feedback.
There’s lots of questions that I’m often asked and I thought it’d be helpful to share them here too!
It totally depends on what you’re aiming for. If you’re hoping to engage with your current followers, in your social platform’s analytics, it’ll share with you the times that your followers are the most engaged. The times when you’re followers are online are the best times to increase the chances of your content showing up in front of them.
If you’re hoping to attract new followers, I’d encourage you to think about your audience and when they’re most likely to be online. For example, if you work with parents, I probably wouldn’t post during the school run.
Ah the magic question that I’m asked more often than any other! And I’m sorry, but it’s another it depends! But this time, it depends on you, your capacity, and your goals.
If you’re looking for growth, of course, posting more will increase your chances of your content being seen and engaged with, therefore increasing followers. But you need to choose an amount to post that is do-able for you consistently, week after week.
I would encourage you to think about your content as a burger:
Yes, of course you can. Ultimately it comes down to where your audience are and if you’re marketing to them in the places where they hang out.
There are lots of reasons to have a social media presence that aren’t always obvious, for example, it’s an easy way for potential clients to check you out before actually engaging with you.
If you know that your ideal audience does spend time on social media but you’re reluctant to have a social presence, I would encourage you to think about where this resistance comes from and what your perception of ‘showing up’ on social means for you.
Social media can feel loud, but by making a plan and having a strategy in place, you can cut through the noise and speak to your audience as you build your life coaching business!
If you would like to learn more about growing your coaching business, we run a series of Sales & Marketing Workshops for coaches - to find out more and to book your place please, visit our Online Coach Training Events calendar.
About Author:
Saloni is our Social Media Manager at The Coaching Academy, but she’s also a Life Coach who qualified with The Coaching Academy and blends her digital marketing background with her coaching skills to support small businesses in implementing their marketing strategy without getting overwhelmed.
The Coaching Academy was established in 1999, and is now the world's largest coaching school.
In that time we have trained over 14,000 people to become life coaches.
We are accredited by the International Coach Federation and the Association for Coaching, and we're rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
