Leveraging your Social Media Channels to Build Your Coaching Audience

With 4.2 billion global users (the equivalent of more than half of the world’s population!), social media has become a wildly popular tool to help connect with your family members, friends and colleagues. Although it’s widely used for personal purposes, social media can also be instrumental as you expand your professional network, increase awareness of your coaching business and potentially gain new clients.  

 Here are three steps you can take to develop your coaching audience through social media channels.  

1. Choose the Most Appropriate Channels 

Understanding your audience is key. It is imperative to conduct research on your potential customers and learn what social media networks they use and what content best resonates with them. Just because you have a robust network of personal Facebook connections does not mean that is the best channel to promote your coaching work. For guidance on your target audience’s social media engagement, here’s an overview of a few of the most popular channels across the world: 

• LinkedIn is a professional networking tool with more than 660 million users. A third of its users are between 30 and49 years old. This platform provides consumers with the opportunity to manage their career, search for jobs and expand their professional network. As a business coach, you can use this tool to reach out to mid-level career professionals looking to advance to senior leadership positions with the help of a professional coach.  

• Facebook has 2.74 billion users and tends to attract younger adults, with more than a third of its audience between the ages of 25 and 35 and two–thirds of users visiting local business pages at least once a week. Your coaching business can take advantage of this channel by tailoring content to millennials interested in coaching services in your region.  

• Twitter offers the opportunity to connect with people in diverse life stages, with 330 million monthly users around the world. More than half of its users fall between the ages of 35 and 65. Through this channel, you can quickly grow your coaching platform by posting content and including relevant hashtags.  

In addition to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, there are many other social media platforms you can use to engage with your audience of potential clients. As you explore them, think about questions like “Why do my potential clients want to engage with a credentialed coach? Where do they turn for lifestyle and career guidance? Who or what influences their decisions?” The answer to these questions will help guide you as you engage with your audience on your selected social channels.  

But no matter what platform(s) you decide to use, developing compelling content is the key to building your coaching audience long term.  

2. Use Analytics Tools 

Once you launch your professional social media channels and start releasing content, you can use social media analytics tools to gain a better sense of who is engaging with your content, how often and on which platforms.  

Hootsuite and Buffer are tools with free and low-cost options that provide a dashboard of your social media metrics by platform to help you learn what content receives the most engagement and inform future content strategy decisions. If you only are engaged on just one or two platforms, you can always access that channel’s analytics through the platform itself without the need for an additional platform like Hootsuite or Buffer. This data will give a more in-depth view of your social media demographics, your most popular content and the best times to release new content, among other insights.  

3. Host Live Social Media Events 

In addition to selecting the most appropriate channel to promote your business and utilizing analytics tools, you can further increase your social media activity by hosting live events on your social media accounts. Online events are a great way to directly connect with your existing audience and develop new audience pools. Facebook and Instagram Lives have become increasingly popular, partially due to the ongoing pandemic.  

Social Media is an Essential Tool for Your Coaching Business 

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force organizations to operate virtually for the foreseeable future, social media has become even more vital for small businesses to highlight their brand, grow their audience and connect with prospective clients. By selecting the best social channel(s) for your audience, using analytics tools and hosting live events on your social media platforms, you have a better opportunity to understand and engage with your existing clients as well as earn and retain more long–standing clients.