For some coaches, the words “social media” can be scary. I get it, the thought of creating and maintaining social media accounts can be daunting. Posting every day? Multiple outlets? Sourcing content? No thanks! However you may feel about building your social media presence, the benefits of an engaged (and free) follower base are undeniable.
Allocating just a small amount of time to your social channels each day is really all it takes. The following tips can help you make the most of the time you spend on social media and help you find new athletes and retain the ones you have.
Post engaging content.
Across all platforms, pictures rule. Generally, pictures will incite a better response so always try to find a picture that relates to the message you want to broadcast.
When deciding what to post, follow the 80/20 rule—about 80 percent of the content you post should not be self-serving. Most of your posts should focus on your athletes or your sport.You can post race updates or a training breakthrough from your athletes. Share a recent article about training with power that you found interesting, etc.
The other 20 percent should be promoting yourself and your coaching services. What’s different about your coaching approach? Share training tips! Paint a picture of what working with you and your coaching company looks like. Encourage athlete to get in touch and start a conversation.
Make friends!
On any social media platform, it’s important to engage with accounts that align with your coaching business. You can do this by liking, commenting, and following others on various channels.
On Instagram and Twitter especially it’s important to build relationships. Follow like-minded accounts and engage with their content. In return you’ll receive likes, comments and follows back!
After you have established yourself a bit you can explore utilizing influencer marketing. This can begin with your own athletes. Make it part of your onboarding process to follow your athlete’s social channels and see if they are willing to tag and mention you in their posts (if relevant).
If necessary, offer free or discounted services in exchange for social media promotion from the right person.
Schedule your posts and be consistent.
Being consistent with your social media can be very challenging. Posting content, responding to content and engaging with others is time consuming and easy to push aside when things get busy. Scheduling tools can be a huge help.
Products like Hootsuite and Sprout Social allow you to schedule posts to go live automatically weeks in advance. These tools feature a dashboard where you can manage all your social channels in one convenient place so you’re not switching apps and wasting time.
Keep in mind that posting every day is great, but only if you have the content for it. Decide how often you’ll be posting and make sure you’re creating and sharing fresh content that is relevant to who you are trying to engage with.
Find what works and run (or ride, or swim) with it.
In a perfect world where you have a bunch of extra time you could post every day and spend hours engaging with people on social media. Since it’s not a perfect world, many of us struggle to find the time to do anything with social media.
If you only have time for one social channel, that’s okay! Pick one and be the best at it. Experiment with different kinds of content to see what your audience responds best to. When you find what works for you and your audience, put more effort behind it.
It can also be helpful to peruse other coach accounts on social media to get a sense for what works and what doesn’t.
Good luck!
