In this week’s episode of SUCCESS, I speak with Veena, a young entrepreneur who is ready to put her coaching business on the line. However, she is having trouble standing out in the crowded coaching industry and wants to know how she can use social media to help her business grow.
It’s easy to become lost in a sea of the same these days. Coaching has become a crowded and diluted industry. That isn’t to say that there aren’t good coaches out there, or that you can’t become one. Read on for my top three lessons if you can relate to Veena’s situation and want to understand how to stand out, stay consistent, and increase engagement.
Be Genuine in Your Appearance.
Trying to be everything to everyone is one of the most common pitfalls for entrepreneurs. But we don’t need everyone; just those who are looking for what we have to offer are needed.
In a sea of the same, we must discover ways to distinguish ourselves. There are lots of opportunities out there, but it all starts with figuring out what makes you stand out and emphasizing that message. Someone will choose you above the hundreds of other trainers available because of you and your distinct personality. Consumers prioritize the person over the service.
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If we want to enhance interaction, we need to start by being more genuine on social media. It doesn’t have to be a detailed account of your life; it could simply be a video of you speaking to your audience. When you communicate directly to your audience, though, you will naturally attract people who want to collaborate with you (while pushing away those who don’t).
Allow people to get to know you and bring yourself to the forefront of your material by allowing them to learn about you. If you do, I believe you will notice a huge increase in engagement.
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Make Sure Your Message is Clear.
Consistency is the misery of most entrepreneurs’ existence on social media, including mine. I don’t have time to devote to social media because it is a full-time job. To combat this, I plan out my material quarterly and come up with a theme for each quarter, which I teach my clients to do.
When you choose a quarterly topic, curating your content becomes a lot easier because you’ve narrowed the lens through which you’ll be filtering everything. If something doesn’t mesh with the theme for that quarter, it’s tossed into the “maybe later” bin.
Your audience will show up if you have clarity on your North Star and a quarterly theme that supports where you’re heading and who you want to bring with you.
Although the audience may be smaller, engagement will be significantly higher because you will be engaging on a deeper level. I’d rather have a lot of comments and messages from people who have a deeper connection to the material than thousands of superficial likes from people who have never interacted with the topic.
Make a list of the types of engagement you’re aiming for and the levels at which you’d consider yourself successful. Build a system to measure what you’re doing to see whether your content is effective in enabling connection with your audience, and maybe most crucially, create a method to measure what you’re doing to see if your content is effective or not in facilitating connection with your audience.
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Establish a Community.
We need to figure out how to establish a consistent dialogue with these folks over time once we’ve identified our distinctiveness and identified our audience.
Veena, for example, recently published a book but is confused about how to find out how readers are reacting to it.
She’ll need to devise a communication strategy to deal with this. This could take several forms: she could contact those who have purchased the book, she could start a Facebook group, she could start an email list, and so on.
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However, a book, like video courses or any other type of material you can develop, is simply one of the tools that might help you grow your business. Your job when you scale your business is to cast as many nets as possible in order to attract as many individuals as possible into your universe.
It all starts with finding a means to build a community of like-minded people who share your viewpoint. The community you build and the involvement within it determine the worth of your business in large part. Make yourself known in your community as someone who adds value and is regarded as an expert. As you provide more and more value to your community, they will begin to invite others to join in the fun.
Make an Event
This is a great approach to catch people’s attention. What might this entail? A parade, a conference, a seminar, an awards presentation, a celebration, an animal show, a charity event, a book signing, attaining a milestone, and so on are all examples of events.
I once hosted an event to commemorate Arbor Day or Tree Day (the dates vary by state) by giving away free, plantable trees. They were tiny, fitting into a test tube-style container. People, on the other hand, were enthralled by the cool packaging, the fact that they were helping the environment, and the fact that they could share the tree-planting experience with their children.
Another design business focused on Friday the 13th. They held the event in a parking lot with prizes, food, jugglers, and interactive (Friday the 13th theme) events such as walking under a ladder, in front of a black cat, and so on – it was a carnival-like scene where everyone had a good time and everyone associated good feelings with the design firm host.