#116: Simple Events To Build Your Online Presence

Hello, health coaches. How are you doing this week? Glad to be here with you today. We are carrying on with our special series succeeding online in a quarantine world. Now, in the last episode, I mentioned holding online events. And today I want to talk about some simple ways of doing that because I know it can sound scary. Oh my God. Online events. What does that even mean? So we're going to break it down. Some of you may not have even thought of some of the ideas that I'll share with you today. So this is going to be a juicy episode. I want you to get like ideas cranking. I want you to put dates on the calendar. Like let's make this very actionable today. I want all, all of us to succeed, right? Cause we have a lot of unhealthy people out there. Many of whom... I just got off the phone with one of my clients, many of whom have developed unhealthy habits during quarantine.

They're experiencing more stress than ever before. So we have work to do, like, in my opinion, this is the best time to be a health coach in the history of health coaching, or at least in the history of my 11 year career. So anyway, if you're here, live with me, please say, hello. I'm going to be looking for your comments in the chat area and drum roll please. Before we dive into these simple online events, I'm in announcing right here right now for the first time that the waitlist is now open for my Healthy Profit University's fall fast track semester. Okay. What does that mean? As you know, I teach, as you may know, I teach everything that I know about creating a profitable health coaching business inside my course called healthy profit university, but only two times a year, I offer a live accelerated semester and it includes weekly live coaching calls with me and a group of peers that all move through the program together.

It is fantastic. The comradery is through the roof. And if you already know that you might want to join, you can get on the waitlist right now and take advantage of all the special bonuses and extras that I have planned for you. And the waitlist is available@healthcoachpower.com/waitlist. Obviously I'll say that again. It's healthcoachpower.com/waitlist. Excellent.

Now I imagine that those of you who are joining us today to talk about hosting online events, you're probably the kind of coaches who are like ready to take some action. You know, like otherwise you wouldn't even be listening or tuning into this episode. So first of course, I want you to join the waitlist because I love working with motivated coaches. And second, I want you to pick a day on your calendar. Let's say two weeks from now, maybe three weeks from now, look at your calendar right now.

What's a day that you have some free time, put a little pull note right there. That's going to be the day for your online event. That's how simple these things are. You really can plan for it just a couple of weeks from now. I mean, you could do one tomorrow, but I'm always going to encourage you to promote stuff ahead of time so that you get the most people participating with you. So two, three weeks from now put a date on the calendar so that everything we talk about today is something you can put into action. Now here's a little secret. Whenever I plan events like these and I have done a gabillion events like this in my career, whenever I do them, I always announce the event that I'm going to hold. I always start generating signups. If it's something that I'm collecting registrations for, I do all of that promotion before I actually create any content.

And that weird, I'm going to encourage you to do the same thing. Pick a date, pick a topic or a theme and start promoting it. You're promoting like the shell of what the event is going to be. Cause you may not even have all the details figured out, but don't worry. You will. Because when people start signing up for your event or once people start talking about, or once you even just put it out there, it is very, very motivating. And suddenly your brain kicks on your motivation, kicks in and you're going to get all that content figured out. Don't you worry about it. So that's my secret sauce for making sure that you get sign-ups, making sure that you get people excited that you promote in advance. And you're not trying to do these things last minute and you just kind of flip the order.

It's always more successful that way. So the very first kind of online event, but I want to talk about today. This is cool because it requires minimal technology. Does anybody like that? It'd be like not having to use too much technology. It requires no video either for all of you that are super, super scared about putting your face on video today, you have options. I'm always encouraging you guys to go on video, put yourself out there, of course, but if you're not quite there yet, or maybe you've already been doing a lot of video and you want to do something different and just kind of mix it up a very successful online event that I have held. It's so simple. You guys, it's just a Facebook party. That's what I call it. Anyway. Sometimes you even see these people who sell, like what's that company, us born books or certain I've seen like all different Facebook parties around, you know, for different industries and people selling different things.

But anyway, the premise is the same. Maybe you've participated in something like this. You can do it on Facebook. You can do it on Instagram. You can do it on Twitter, whatever social media platform you are most active on, right? And with these parties, all you're really doing. And you're planning this in advance is you're going to set a day. You're going to set a time. And then you're going to plan like 10 to 12 posts that are going to be posted to your account over the course of an hour. So just like you would post anything, just like you would post a picture or a quote or a meme or a recipe or whatever you normally post. You're going to create 10 to 12 posts like that and plan to post them every couple of minutes over the course of a whole hour event.

So let's say that the theme or the topic of your party is auto-immune friendly desserts. You would choose a theme like that. By the way, if you specialize in working with autoimmunity, of course you want to try to pick something that's going to attract people that you would want to work with. Good. Okay. And then you're going to plan about 10 posts to be published. Let's say starting at 8:00 PM and ending at 9:00 PM on your party day. So just to kind of show you how this might go do like this, your first post is going to be some sort of welcome where you just kind of let everybody know what's going on. Now. Some people may have registered in advance if you set it up that way. But since this is happening on social media, other people are going to see your posts. And that's a very, very good thing.

And those people are not going to know what the heck is going on. So a little welcome is a good idea. Sometimes you can even number the posts. So like maybe each one starts with like 1 of 12 and then the next one is like 2 of 12, because that gives people the idea that this is actually a, an event or a series and they should go back and see them all. Okay. But those first people are not going to know what's going on. So you might want to say, you know, Hey, welcome to the party. This is what we're going to be talking about today. And then have a prompt, like invite some engagement. So, you could say something like, Hey, if you have an autoimmune disease, say hello in the comments, let me know if you're following any specific diet to help manage symptoms or whatever question you want to ask.

What's something simple you want to ask for engagement, which is going to help more people see the post, right? Like the more people that leave comments, the more people that are engaging with you, the more Facebook is going to push that post out in its algorithm, right? So we're always looking for engagement on these things. So then a few minutes later you would put out like post number two or two of 12. And it really helps if you have these definitely planned in advance. I mean, absolutely. You're going to want like the graphic and the text all written up ahead of time. So it's easy for you to post, but even better than that is you can actually schedule them in advance. So, you know, when you go to post something on Facebook, there's an option to post it right now, or to schedule it in the future.

You could have all these scheduled in advance and then you can just sit back. It does the work for you. And all you have to do is respond, is really respond to the people who are engaging. So anyway, your second post, it could be something like, okay, let's start off with my favorite. Auto-Immune friendly chocolate dessert. It's, auto-immune friendly because, and I'm just making this up you guys, but you know, because it's good for you and it's dairy free and blah, blah, blah. And the last time I made this was for my husband's birthday. Tell me in the comments, do you have a favorite chocolate recipe to share bonus points? If it's auto-immune friendly, like see what an easy ask that is. So even if it's just like your best friend who doesn't know anything about autoimmune disease, like she can engage with that. She could leave a recipe like that.

One of her favorite things and it it's, it's a party, right? It's a party. You're asking questions, looking for engagement, trying to make it fun. And it goes on like that. Or every, let's say five to 10 minutes. There's a new post again. Keep it fun. Keep it light, doing something about desserts is great. Doing something about like boring, bland food. That won't be as much fun. Right? Just think about it. What do people want to talk about? And in between the posts going out, like I said, you're going to start responding to people's comments. Wow. That looks great. Oh, I like that recipe too. Whatever. And you're going to answer questions if their answer, if they're asking questions or maybe you're going to ask them questions, anything that you can do to keep the conversation rolling. And this is all just stuff that you're typing, right?

None of it is like with your face on the camera where you have to be self conscious and wondering like, Oh my God, do I have kale in my teeth or anything like that? It's just typed, no audio, no video. Unless of course, for some of your posts, you could, you could pre-record video of yourself. And that could be the post, right? But that is totally optional. These things work, even if you don't do any of that. So when I've done Facebook parties, I've sometimes included giveaways and this is really fun. It's a nice way to drive up engagement. So say every comment that somebody leaves during the party, you tell them like that's going to be an entry into the giveaway and that encourages them to leave more comments. So, then you can show off the prize or the prizes and one of your posts.

And if you're giving something away from a brand that's on social media, tell them, tell that brand have a conversation with them ahead of time, because it's very likely they will help promote your party. And that is how you start reaching new audiences, which is super important. They may even supply the prize. They may even ship it for you. Okay. So just connect with the brands in advance, ask if they'd be willing to participate, tell them who your target audiences, tell them what kind of gift you want to provide. See what they're willing to offer. You can do this for $0 on your end because they're getting free advertising from it, right? So it's worth it to them to often supply the prize and they're happy to do so. Just a little insider tip there. So how does this all work for your business? That's a good question.

If you're thinking that I'm proud of you, what am I going to get from doing some sort of Instagram part of your Facebook party? Like Michelle's talking about. So it's going to help you on multiple levels. First, you're engaging, right? You're engaging with your audience in the online space and you are building that know like, and trust factor that all important know like and trust factor. So secondly, if you had people register ahead of time, like maybe if you say like, I'm going to be doing this party, if you register, I'll be able to send you a free eBook with all of the dessert recipes that I'm going to be sharing. Okay. So that's an incentive for people to sign up, right? That way, even if they don't sit there through the whole party or they forget entirely about it, they're still going to get the recipes.

Okay. So you can use it as like a carrot that you dangle, get people to sign up and join your mailing list in exchange for something that you're going to give them. Also, if they do that, you can send them email reminders, which is great. Helps more people actually participate in your party. So now you're growing your mailing list with an event like this during your party, you can highlight client success stories. And I don't suggest you do this in like a cheesy, annoying way. Like, let me tell you about one of my clients who lost 30 pounds. Like you don't want to do it like that. You don't want to be like pushy, like book a call with me. If you want to see the same results now, but you could say here's Linda with her favorite Apple pie smoothie. What's significant about Linda will Linda suffers from three different autoimmune conditions.

But when we tweaked her diet, her symptoms went from a 10 to a 2. And she claimed that this Apple smoothie recipe made all the difference. Cause it's her favorite. And it still is, and then provide the recipe. Right? So it's just a way of like dropping in client anecdotes while you're still having fun still in the spirit of the party. So don't forget to do that whenever possible. Whenever it makes sense. Kind of just drop in like, Oh, my client had that experience. Oh, I worked with a woman who had that issue. Oh yes. You know, so this way it just becomes part of the conversation. And you can even end your party with another call for people to go ahead and sign up and get all of the dessert recipes. Again, this whole idea of a dessert party is just an example. But if you were doing a dessert party, cause that is kind of fun, you could say, Hey, you know, we're wrapping this party up right now.

But if you want to get all the dessert recipes that I mentioned in the past hour, I will deliver those to you tomorrow in your inbox. Just put an email address here and have a place for them to sign up. So that way, as all of your posts are getting more attention in social media and the more people are joining, more people are commenting. The more we'll have an opportunity to actually join your mailing list. It's a wonderful thing. I enjoy these parties so much. I think they're just like, they're fun and they're fast paced. And they go by like so quickly, you know, but if nobody even leaves a comment, it doesn't matter. Cause like tomorrow somebody can still see the post and leave a comment. So it's sort of one of these, like when, when there's no way to lose situations. So, I encourage you to try this.

Has anybody done anything like this before? I've done it on Facebook like I said, a couple of times I have not done on Instagram, but the exact same method would apply. The only difference with Instagram, it's a little bit harder to plan your posts or schedule them in advance, but you could, yeah, you could have all of your posts saved as draft inside your Instagram and then one by one, you would just hit publish. Voila! Okay.

So, the other, type of online event that I do a lot of, I am doing right now and you've probably noticed people, people doing our live stream videos, this again works on Facebook. It works on Instagram and it works so well because these platforms like super, super love live streaming video right now. Like they want to push live streaming video in the algorithm. They are going to announce you to your followers when you go live, have you ever seen that?

You're like on Facebook and then you get a little notification that somebody has just gone live, that sort of thing. So that helps you get reach that you won't get if you upload a pre-recorded video or if you upload an image. Okay. So there's a lot of strategic reasons to be using live video right now. So I want you to think of going live in like two different ways. And again, like I said, at the beginning, I want you to put a date on your calendar or for like two or three weeks from now. That can be your first one. It could be the only one, you know, it could just be like a one time event. Maybe you do another one in a couple of months. It's cool. You can think about these things that way. I'm going to do a one-time event on Facebook live.

Cool. Probably going to be a little bit longer one time event. It might be a little bit more involved of a presentation you could even, yeah, I have a guest, right? Do whatever the heck you want to do, right? This is your world. Or you can think of these things as an on going event or a series of events, something that you're going to do on a regular basis. And this can really, really help. I mean, if you only have the, the nerve within you to do it one time, cool, do it one time. But if you think about it as doing a series of shorter, more succinct lives, streams on very specific topics, each time those can happen on a weekly basis, they can even happen multiple times a week and they can be super cool, casual. Like I see people do these from their car, from their living room, you know, the, maybe they're always in a different place and it's very powerful because even if you're just like on your phone and you're out and about boom, you can see, so go live, right?

So don't feel like you always have to be like dressed in full hair and makeup with proper light. I mean, we'll talk about that in a second, but it doesn't have to be, be formal like that with these lives, you can be super duper casual. So again, depending on how you do your live streams, you can register in advance, especially if it's like a one time event that you're going to be holding that way. Again, you can offer some sort of free gift to incentivize them to sign up in advance. You're going to be able to send them reminders. Usually I send a reminder for something like this 24 hours in advance, one hour in advance and then 15 minutes before we go live. Okay. So that's one way that you can be building your list with your lives. Then you can take the videos.

This is great when you do video, because then you have an asset, you can take those videos and repurpose them onto YouTube. You can repurpose them onto your website. If it was an Instagram live great, you know, you can post that to Facebook. You can, you know, you can take that video and you can use it in all different mediums. And that's a wonderful way. It's like leftovers when you're cooking, you know, you cook once and eat multiple times. It's great. Great thing. And the other thing that you should be doing with your live streams is asking for engagement throughout, because really this is all about connecting in the online space. Like the reason you would do any of this stuff is because you want to establish your online presence. So, you want people to understand that you are available to them because if you're available and you're speaking with them, well, gosh, darn it.

They may want to hire you as a coach. You know, they sure as heck want to hear what you have to say about whatever topic you're talking about today, get their question answered. This is how you build a relationship. So the only thing of course, when you're doing lives, and I know some of you, I asked yesterday in the group, like how many of you are doing Facebook lives or Instagram lives or none of these or whatever. It seems like the most popular one is Facebook live just based on your answers. But the big difference of course we're doing the staff, is that, yeah, you're going to be on camera. You know, you can do slide shows. Like when you go live on Facebook, instead of seeing somebody's space, you could just see a set of slides, right. That you can flip through and give a presentation that way.

But most often, as you know, these are done what we call face to camera. So I suggest that when you are face to camera, really, even if you had slides, but definitely when you are face to camera, you need a plan. Like you need to know what you're going to talk about pretty specifically. Cause sometimes you get on these things and someone's like, ah, Hmm, well, and it's boring and you click and you're gone. You don't want that. You want to know what your point is. You want to get to the point quickly. And it's really great idea to have an outline or even a script prepared so that yes you can ad lib. Yes. You can ask questions, whatever you want to talk about, but at least you have an outline or a script to kind of go back to. And like for me, I always have something like that right here in front of me on my screen right next to my camera on the, on the laptop it's right next to the camera. So I'm looking at the, but whenever I need to, I can glance down to my outline. Very, very helpful. And it keeps you from having all of those. And yeah, so that's number one have a plan. The other thing is if you're going to do more than one livestream, if you're thinking of making it like a series, I would suggest picking a regular date and time. Like don't just kind of do it whenever the mood strikes you.

You can, it's not like that's bad, to do. It's better than nothing. But I think that if you can train your audience that like, yup, I'm here every day, Tuesday at two o'clock like that, it provides a rhythm for them to know that you're going to show up. You do what you say. You say what you do. That goes a long way towards building trust with somebody. The other thing is, I think as a business owner, it really helps me to have these things on my calendar on a regular date and time. Then I can plan my life around it and they get done. So don't do ad hoc. What else I want to tell you about these? It is. We talked about having an outline. If you do have a script, don't read it like this. Hi, my name is Michelle. And today we are going to talk now, like obviously you don't want to do that.

So sometimes people prefer to have an outline because it doesn't have every word there. You can't read it. So the outline does jogs your memory, what you want to talk about. Try it both ways. Sometimes actually having things scripted out is easier for me, even though I'm not reading it, I suggest that you just yet try it both ways and see what helps you be your most natural on camera. And this does take some practice. The other thing I want to talk about is when you're picking a topic, especially in the beginning, it is helpful. If you pick a topic about something that's like, you are so super jazzed about the, like, you could just talk about like, you know, if you're at a party or something and somebody gets you going, you know, you got so much to say about this topic that helps because you're going to be on camera.

And if you're not interested, if you're not like super jazzed and like your brain's totally turned on about the thing that you're talking about. Like, nobody wants to hear you just drone on about some boring nutrition topic that stinks. So try to make whatever you're saying, newsworthy in a way, right. Something that I haven't heard before, or like a new spin on a topic that you can, you know, that you are providing or maybe it's something that's like a little controversial. That's an idea. In any case you want something that's going to grab people's attention. So they sit down and pay attention and that they listen. I want to tell you about testing because like I said, this takes practice. I've been doing Facebook lives every week for like, I don't know, three years at this point. So sometimes people are like, Oh wow. You know, Michelle, you're just really seamless on camera, which is not true.

I make mistakes all the time. But one thing that really helps me in the beginning and I still use today is you can create a group inside Facebook just as a test space for yourself. Right. Just create a group, add like your best friend to it. You have to add somebody to make a group. And then you have a place that you can go live and no one will see you. So you can test though, how does my background look? Oh, you know, how does my hair look or whatever, how has this, I do it a lot with different microphones. How does this microphone sound? So that is just a little tip for you. If you're a nervous, you can practice inside of a test group. If you're going to be using Instagram, it's a little bit different. But same idea. What I would do is create a secondary Instagram account.

That again is just a test account. You're not following no one spot anybody and nobody is following you. So if you go live again, it's just like practice. It's just a practice space. And you get all those weird issues worked out in advance in terms of audio and lighting. And you know, Oh, the camera is angled. Like it's going straight up my nose. Nobody wants to look at my nostrils. You know, stuff like that. Here's a tip also for lighting. Like I said, on one hand, it doesn't totally matter. These things are casual, right? Like if you have a setup, I have like a studio setup because I do so much of this stuff. But before I did that, I would position myself in front of a window. And you don't want it to be a window at like noon where there's a whole lot of sun like shooting and really harsh on your face.

You want it to be a window. That's just getting like diffuse lighting. And that's a wonderful place to put your, your phone or your camera so that the light is coming in on your face. But it's more of like diffused lighting. And it actually almost is like a real life filter on your face. I mean, like that's the kind of lighting that you always want. So, if you don't have any proper light lighting equipment, that's okay, your skin's going to glow and you're going to be so happy that you took my advice. If you just set yourself up in front of a window like that. Oh, you guys, I mean, I'm just realizing how much I have to say about this because I really have been doing so many of these for so many years. And a lot in the beginning was just me kind of making it up as I went along.

I had never like participated in some of these events before I just said, Hey, I'm just going to, I'm just going to try this and encourage you to do that. Like with the beginner's mind. So, so far everything we've talked about, like I said, pretty simple, simple, insofar as you just going to push a button and go live right now, a lot of technology required. You just going to put your phone by the window, not a lot of equipment required and not even the whole lot of preparation required. One page of notes. We'll do. Yeah. But when we talk about online events, you might be thinking about more proper webinars, right? Webinars, more where like you have to have this very specific zoom link or a GoToMeeting link or whatever it is, you're logging into that software. And then, you know, there's a chat area.

You all been on a normal webinar, right? Those are a little more complicated. Like as the person hosting the webinar a little more complicated, there's a little more cost involved and not a lot. Right. But there's a little more of your time and investment into running a proper webinar. However, they can be very effective, especially in terms of turning your audience into paying clients. When you do something on social media, you're kind of like showing up to a party that's already happening. Right? So like you show up to someone else's party or to just like a big whatever outdoor party. Remember when we would have those. Remember when my town had a nice concert every Friday night on the river. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, remember that when people would congregate anyway, that's sort of social media. Now you can show up and you know, you can attract attention, but when you host a webinar, it's really like you are inviting people to your party or to your house.

And so there's much, I feel there's much more attention on you. There's less distractions because they're not like within Facebook where a million other things are happening. And it's like I said, it's more effective, especially if you're trying to turn your audience into paying clients. And so, because that's sort of a separate topic, I'm going to talk more about holding an effective webinar next week, particularly around some of the mistakes that I see people make and mistakes that I have 100% made myself. We're going to talk about those in next week's episode.

But for now, let's see, Melissa says, she agrees with the lighting. She got her husband to set up his lighting equipment and it made her feel more confident because she looks better on camera Melissa. I saw your live video and you looked amazing and it even looked like you had a little fan blowing your hair.

And I wondered if you were doing that, like Cosmo style, you know, like the cover of Cosmo magazine, there's always like wind blowing in the hair. It looked lovely. Good job, everybody listening. Do you have a date? Have you put a date on your calendar? We're talking two or three weeks guys. We're getting into September where you're getting to what we call high season for health coaching. People are starting to come back from their vacations, pay attention to their health. You want to show up, this is a great way to do this. So pick your date and then choose from this sort of menu of options that I've provided you today. Either a Facebook party, an Instagram party, a Twitter party where there's no video needed, or will you do a Facebook live or an Instagram live type event, make sure you turn it into a list builder.

So it is really serving your business by either having people sign up in advance or offering a freebie during the event or both. And before we wrap up, I want to give a quick shout out to Eve hi Eve for writing this five star review on iTunes, which I appreciate so much. This is what she said. Thanks for sealing the deal. Hi Michelle. After years of slightly obsessive interest in health and nutrition and helping friends and family reach their health goals, I finally decided to follow my heart, become a health coach through IIN listening to your show, gave me a lot of feedback on what it actually looks like to follow this path and gave me confidence that it's actually something I want and will love to do. Thanks so much. And I'm so grateful to have your show as a sounding board. As I embark on this exciting journey, Eve you rock sister, congratulations on getting started.

I can't wait to hear how it goes. And if you could please then your mailing address to support@healthcoachpower.com and just reference this episode, which I believe is episode number 116. We have a little gift to send your way as a thank you. And for everybody remember next week, I'll be back talking about how to hold a great webinar. In the meantime, you can hop on the waitlist for healthy profit university's fall fast track semester at heathcoachpower.com/waitlist. There's no obligation, but by being on the wait list, it means that you're going to have access to the very best we have to offer. So I look forward to seeing you there and to seeing you all next week. All right, take care everybody.