#217: How To Grow Your Audience Without Using Facebook

Alrighty, hello there health coaches. It's definitely fall. It's definitely fall outside. My leaves in my yard are everywhere and I got a kid home sick today. Meanwhile, I've got a photo shoot happening later this week and I am just praying, praying that it, I don't get it next, that he doesn't get any worse because first of all, trying to take photos when you have a head cold. That's not really how I want my photo shoot to go. It will not be cute if my nose is all red and my face is puffy. So, fingers crossed on that and I'll let you guys know how the shoot goes afterwards. But for today, I promised one of our health coach power community members that I would address her question on an upcoming podcast episode. Jennifer, are you here with us? That's okay. Maybe she'll be watching later, but if you're, if you're here, just shout it out cuz you are the reason for this whole episode, my friend.

Jennifer, last week, maybe it was two weeks ago now, she was talking about the fact that she's a new coach and she doesn't have a Facebook page set up. What about you guys? Do you have a Facebook page set up for your business? Maybe you have a Facebook personal page, maybe you have a Facebook group, maybe you have a Facebook business page. Maybe you have no idea what the difference between all those things are. Anyway, here's what I told her. I said, Don't worry about it . I said Don't worry about it. It's definitely not the most important aspect of marketing yourself. Here's Katherine. She says, Yeah, she has one, but she's not sure how effective it is. Probably not very effective at all. But Jennifer said she pressed me on this and I respect that. She said without Facebook and without a website, cuz she doesn't have one of those yet either.

Probably the same is true for many of you. Jennifer said, How on earth am I supposed to collect emails and grow my audience? And that is the winner, winner chicken dinner question of the day. So thank you for all of this, Jennifer. Today we're going to brainstorm all the many ways that you can do just that, that you can collect emails and grow your audience. Let's see, Emily says she has one and she has a Facebook group, but not utilizing it adequately. They are a lot of work and that is probably my biggest beef with this approach to business, this singular approach that so many health coaches seem to have. It's social media or bust. That's how I'm gonna find my clients. And yet it takes so much energy and the return is very little, right? I mean, if it takes a lot of energy and the return is big, then that's quite nice.

If it takes a little bit of energy and a little bit of return, that's nice too. But we seem to just collectively and tell me if this is true for you, be putting in way more than we're getting out. Kristen says she has a completely useless Facebook page. I also think that my Facebook page, like my Facebook business page, of which I have two, one for my health coaching business and one for my health coach power community side of my business. They are generally useless. It's a piece of real estate that you can have, but you're not doing a whole lot with it. I mean, it just, that's just not what they're for. You guys gotta remember, I started my business when Facebook was really in its infancy way back when social media was absolutely nothing compared to what it is today. And so way back then in the dark ages, we were still, if you can believe it, we were still growing an email list.

We were still finding clients and we were still making money. I know it's hard to believe, but take it from an old lady. It's true. I feel like an old lady when he, you know, when I tell my kids things like, can you believe the internet used to not exist? Can you believe Amazon used to not be a thing and mommy was a little girl? . So this is something that I stress in all of my teachings. Not that I'm an old lady, but that social media is just one tool in the toolbox. Now, I talk more about this in my free training. It's called Earn a Living Doing the Work you Love. It's a half an hour. You totally got this. And there's these huge aha moments. So I want you to go check it out. It's at healthcoachpower.com/training. And you'll see what I mean about Facebook being just one tool in the toolbox.

It's not the end all be-all. And if you're gonna say, Oh, well there's also Instagram and TikTok. No, not them either. So again, that's healthcoachpower.com/training. Let me see if I can just pop that in the comments right here. Okay, great. Let's pretend just for a moment that Facebook doesn't exist and that Instagram doesn't exist and that TikTok doesn't exist and whatever the heck else we're all on. Just think you, you don't have to be a rocket scientist. I I know you're all intelligent human beings with lots of life experience. How could you meet new people? How could you meet new people? Let's just start there. How could you meet new people? Tell me in the chat, tell me in the comments. Amy says, I don't have a Facebook business page. Guess I won't rush to do that. Thank you for one less thing.

Just knocking it down. Throw 'em at me, I'll just knock 'em down. So many things you don't need. All right, so how could you meet new people and add names to your mailing list if social media did not exist? Michelle, right here, wrote, hold a workshop. You know what, that was top of my list. Yes, um, Michelle also says start talking at local events. Boom. Exactly. So, let's talk workshops. Workshops can be, and this is very key, they can be anywhere. They can be at a gym, they can be at a yoga studio. But the key is that you're doing it for someone else's audience. Because if you hold a workshop like yourself in your house, you can only invite the people that you know or that you're connected to. But when you are holding it in front of someone else's audience in their space and they're inviting all of their people, and this is very, very common.

You know, if you hold a workshop in a yoga studio, they do this constantly. They probably give you 60 or 70% of a a profit split, right? Everyone who attends the workshop probably is gonna pay 20 bucks, 30 bucks, whatever it is, and they're gonna share that profit with you. Other places, I know I've done lots of workshops that are entirely free. I can remember when I did at a gym one time. It was a packed house cause I promoted the heck out of that thing. But the point was I was promoting it to the Gym's audience. I was hanging flyers all over their locker rooms. I was even helping the gym owner send out emails about it. Like, you wanna get involved but you want them to be promoting it to their people. And now all of a sudden you're in front of this new group and they're like, Wow, look at all this great value this person has.

And when you offer a reason for them to get on your mailing list, they're gonna put their name down. Okay? And it's even better cause they've met you in person that's worth like a hundred people that you meet online, especially if you're just meeting them through social media. Okay? So that is one fantastic way to do it. How about webinars? Because we do live in this online world and if you're like me and you have a kid home from school, six, sometimes you can't be out and doing things in the world and it's much easier if you're working from home. I used to do, and I say used to just because my business has changed through the years and grown and you know, what I'm doing now to advance a multi six day year business is different than what I was doing then. But at the point where I think most of you are at in your business, I was doing a lot of webinars with guests.

Why? Same reason, same reason as I said before, because I'm, if I'm just gonna do a webinar by myself, I can only invite the people that I can invite . You know what I mean? But if you're going to do a webinar with a guest who is going to help you promote that webinar and you guys are gonna get on together and have a conversation, something packed with value from both ends, it's a win for your community and it's a win for that person's community and for each other's businesses. Cuz you're cross pollinating audiences. So when I say hold a webinar or do an online workshop, which would be another way of thinking about it, or well we'll get to, we'll get to podcasting in just a minute, but anything where you have invited somebody else to do it with you, there's this opportunity for crosspollination and that's how you add people to your audience and build your mailing list, right?

None of that requires social media at all. You invite people with a Zoom link. Heck, some of you are here right now with me on a Zoom link. What if I was doing this today with a guest, right? They'd be getting in front of a new audience. You, if they had been co-promoting, I'd be getting in front of their, their audience. Okay, What else? How about cooking classes? Cooking classes are fun. And when you're on Zoom, you don't have to worry about any of those pesky, you know, Department of Health things about , renting the right kind of space and having this license or that license, whatever. I used to hold cooking classes in my kitchen. I had no idea that there were any rules around it or that I was breaking any laws, but I was in fact doing plenty of law breaking, I suppose, in that first year of my business cuz I kept inviting people over to teach them how to, uh, make hummus for example.

Wow, what a rebel I am. Anyway, when you're on Zoom, you don't have to worry about any of that or your kitchen being dirty or anything except for the part that people can see on the camera. Clean that up and it's fun. You can broadcast it anywhere. So yes, you could broadcast it to Facebook, but you could again, hold it on Zoom, tell all your contacts and tell them to invite their friends, right? It can be an open event, it can be the kind of thing where you call your mom and say, Hey, join me for this because I, I think we can make some of these recipes for Thanksgiving dinner this year, or whatever it is, right? So I always found that cooking classes have a real community vibe to them and people will bring a friend and they'll come this week, next week, the following week.

You know, it's not like it's the same information over and over. It's always different. The, the conversation is always different. The recipes are always different. And with something like that, it's so obvious, like, I'm just gonna put the idea in your head. You can say all of these recipe, Well, first of all, they might have to sign up to join you for the cooking class. So boom, right there, you've collected their email address. But even if they bring a guest, right, you can offer a cookbook with the recipes that they can download. Again, they have to give you an email address for that. Jillian is saying, Do you make these paid or free cooking classes like free content? You could do it either way. You could absolutely email your list and say, Hey, I'm doing a series of three holiday cooking classes between, you know, now and Christmas.

And you know, one's gonna be about appetizers and one's gonna be side dishes and one's gonna be desserts or one's gonna be cocktails, you know, healthy, healthier cocktails. You're gonna get people signing up for that and people will, again, be likely to share it. It's like a, it's, it's a fun thing. It doesn't sound like, Oh, we're gonna get together and talk about counting macros, which sounds boring, you know, but everybody wants to get together and make chocolate recipes. So you could do it free or you could do a page. You'll obviously get more people signing up when you do these things for free. Um, they may not even show up, but if they're registering with an email address, boom, you got them on your mailing list. So, and that doesn't really matter. Also, something free, like when you're doing a give like that, I'm gonna be doing a free holiday, uh, you know, healthier holiday recipe, cooking class or something like that. You can tell people about it and they can share it on your behalf, right? So you don't have to be all over social media posting this, that, and the other thing. Invite your friends, join me to ask them to invite their friends. Maybe they'll post it somewhere for you. Um, I have a friend who's a yoga teacher, so in the past I've reached out to her and say, Hey, I'm doing this free thing. Do you think all your yogis would be interested? And she's like, Yeah. And she puts it in her newsletter, right? So anytime again, we're going back to that crosspollination issue. Do it. Hey, you have a friend who's a chef, you have a friend who just wrote a cookbook, or you don't even have a friend, but you know, someone who has a great cookbook that they're trying to sell. Invite them to the cla do the class with you.

You can both be cooking in your individual quick and side by side the same recipe. How fun is that? And again, if they can help you promote the class, you're gonna have twice as many people there. Okay? So these are all events that what we've talked about so far are all event-based ideas to grow your audience and your mailing list. Now, let's shift gears. Has this got your wheels spending, by the way? Can you think of any other ways that you might be able to grow your audience that has nothing to do with social media or Facebook in particular? Hmm? I mentioned one in passing earlier. I mentioned podcasting and then I remembered we were gonna get to that. So let's move to that topic now of content. First we did events. Now I wanna talk about list building content. The way to do this is to not just start a blog and give away a ton of free content on your blog and recipes galore and, you know, long everything every anybody ever wanted to know and just put it out there.

I mean, yes, you can do some of that, but the magic happens when you're offering something for free within the blog post. So let's just stick with the holiday recipe theme since here we are on November 1st. And I know I'm already thinking about my Thanksgiving menu. So let's say that you are a health coach who works with women who have autoimmune disease. You could publish a blog post with some of your favorite autoimmune friendly Thanksgiving recipes. Publish one or two of them, maybe three, but in each one include a button. Include a link where they can click to get your whole AIP friendly Thanksgiving recipe book, right? So maybe you're gonna share a couple of them from that free recipe book. But anyone who is reading that blog post, anybody's like, Yes, I need that kind of thing in my life. I need that kind of recipe for Thanksgiving.

They're gonna see that you have more and they're gonna want it. So this is called a gated content upgrade. It's a content upgrade on whatever you are publishing in your blog post. And it's gated because they have to give you an email address in order to access it. But this is a fantastic way to use the content that you create to then grow your mailing list. Okay, here's another idea. It's very similar, but if you're blogging, that means you're writing articles for your, your own publication, right? On your own blog or your own website. Another way to do it is writing for somebody else's publication. You can write guest articles, you can write a column, you can be a content contributor. I've done this for lots of different sites. In fact, I was just kind of digging a rabbit hole back through the old internet and found where years and years ago I was a content creator for New Balance, you know, the sneaker company.

There are so many opportunities out there because brands, uh, different other, other people's blogs, websites, they need content, they need good content. And if you're willing to provide it, they're like, great, thank you again. You're usually doing this for free, although there are paid opportunities as well to be contributing to other publications. But here's what I would gun for the most, not, I don't care if you pay me $50 for my article. This, this is not what's gonna move the needle on my business. What's gonna move the needle is, am I allowed to have a link in my byline? Am I allowed to promote a free event that I have coming up? Can you use this platform that you're writing for to drive people somewhere where they can either download something for free or join your free event, join that free cooking class, get that free cookbook, whatever it is, Um, because then it, it's worth much, much more than anybody's gonna pay you for the individual article.

So you can either write content for yourself or write it for someone else. I have some more content ideas coming up, but I see here we have some questions. Um, Catherine says, Be careful not to give too much away for free in her cooking classes. I suppose you mean it's a 30 minutes and it's a make and taste type thing. And at the end of the workshop I take signups for the big workshop to make intake. So I think Catherine, all of these that you're doing are in person sounds like it. If they're tasting, I'm suggesting that you can do free cooking classes and you can do as many as you want because it's kind of thing where somebody missed you last week, maybe they catch you this week and it can be a different recipe every time. They're not tasting anything, but you are giving them, number one, the chance to learn something new.

Number two, once you're making something in the kitchen, I don't know about you guys, but I grew up cooking with my mom in the kitchen. And what do you do while you're cooking? You talk, right? So if I'm using a kind of like funky ingredient, like let's say I'm using nutritional yeast in a recipe, well, I'm gonna have to talk about why I'm using this odd ingredient and what it is and it's, oh, it's because this is a dairy free recipe. Well, why would you go dairy free? And now we're suddenly talking about digestive health. Do you know what I mean? So you can segue from talking about food and delicious things to health issues pretty quickly. Um, so there is this loop to connect it back to hiring you as a coach, but you wanna be very, you wanna do that very purposefully.

Okay? That's all I'm gonna say about that. Kristen says, How do you find someone with your target audience to offer a guest blog post? Pretend you are your target audience and go on Google and search for something that they are searching for. They're probably not searching for like nutritional yeast, You know what I mean? Because that's something that, you know, probably you and I know about cuz we're health nerds. I know my target market, my health coaching business. She does not know what nutritional yeast is. She's not looking for that. She's looking for things like, uh, you know, simple easy things that I can make for the holidays or how to relieve stress or how do I get my headache to go away or, you know what I mean? You wanna search for what she's looking for and see what comes up. What publications are she reading?

You can also ask, ask hey, to your clients, you know, what blogs do you follow? Or to just friends, anybody that you know in the right demographic, ask them what podcast do you listen to? Which brings me to my next point, having your own po your own podcast. Kind of like what I'm doing right now, right? With my own podcast. This podcast is aimed at health coaches problems that health coaches are facing. You could create a podcast that's aimed at what your target market needs. And it's an excellent way to reach people because people are literally going onto Apple Podcasts and searching just like they're searching Google. So think again, what are they searching for? Are they looking for help with their career? Are they looking for help getting pregnant? Are they looking for help, right? Like, think about from their perspective what they'd be searching for.

That's your podcast, . Those are your podcasts could be all about. Now podcast is a pretty big undertaking. So is writing a blog on a consistent basis, but it's worth it. And you would use the same technique I mentioned earlier where you're giving great value during the podcast episode, but then you're also going to offer freebies during each episode. So you're talking about a topic, Hey, if you want more on this, I have a free resource that you can download at. And you give the url, right? I think I did that at the beginning of this episode. So you can use, again, your own content to reach the right people who will then want more from you. That's, that's the overall strategy here. Now of course, you wanna start your own podcast. You can do the same thing we just talked about. Be a guest on other people's podcast.

And for those of you who are inside Healthy Profit University's core curriculum, you hear me talk about this a lot because it is ridiculously easy, in my opinion, to get booked as a podcast guest. Like you think on a scale of 1 to 10, it's gonna be a 10 or an 11 to get booked on a podcast, especially when you're a new coach who wants me on their podcast. It's like a, a two or three, you know what I mean? So there's this huge discrepancy between what we think and what is true about guesting on other people's podcasts. But same thing, you show up as a guest. Whenever I have a guest on my podcast, I literally say at the end, Hey, do you have a free gift or anything for our listeners? Or where would you like our listeners to go to learn more about you?

Don't give your website url, Don't tell 'em to follow you on Instagram. Direct them to a freebie. Direct them to that free downloadable thing that they can get from you. Direct them to your upcoming free event. Anything where they're gonna be giving you an email address in exchange for signing up or an exchange for downloading. Got it? This is, like I said, it's not rocket science, but it's the same strategy over and over. Get in front of a new audience, offer them a free thing. Can you say that with me? Get in front of a new audience. Offer them a free thing. All right, I got one more When it comes to content, what about YouTube videos? You can become a YouTube content creator, putting your videos up there on a weekly basis or whatever, whatever schedule is going to work best for you. And you would do the exact same thing that you would on a podcast or on a blog post.

Give away something great and if they want more, you got a resource for that. Here it is. Go download it. Kaing people on your mailing list And that I said Kaing, cuz that is money in the bank. You can run Facebook ads and if you're lucky, you could get leads, new people on your mailing list for like $10 each, each or more. Sometimes it's like $15 each. But when you're doing something like this, even if 1, 2, 3 people join your mailing list, right? You, it doesn't cost you any money. You're not putting anything out in order to get them on.

Okay? Amy says, When you promote your workshop for someone else's audience like a gym, do you extend your target market? Or do you tell the gym that it's a workshop for your specific group? Okay, it depends if your target market is like women who have Lyme disease, a gym is not gonna want to have that workshop, right? Cuz maybe they have some people there who have Lyme disease, but that's not really why people go to the gym. So if you're dealing with a really specific target market, if you're going into a more general setting, think about offering a workshop that is a bit more general. So it's for wi like, I don't, you know, I'm not a Lyme disease expert, you guys, but tell me what is one of the biggest symptoms? Maybe fatigue. So maybe you're gonna go to a gym and you're gonna offer a free workshop around women who you know to have more energy, more energy for women. You would call it something better than that. Do you know what I mean? So you're broadening from your target market so that you can find people to attend your workshop. Every person who attends is a potential client. They don't necessarily have to be, have Lyme disease to work with you, right?

Target market helps us find the right people that we're best suited to serve. It does not define who we are allowed to work with. And if when you're inside this workshop, you mention that you yourself use these techniques to find more energy after battling Lyme disease, or this is something that your clients with Lyme disease get a lot of benefit out of, someone in that room is gonna go, Oh, I have that problem. Or, Oh, my sister has that problem, my sister has Lyme disease. She's really been having a hard time with it. So you can start to connect back to like targeting the exact right people that you want, even within a broader group. Okay? Jennifer's asking, can an email list operate without a website? Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. If you don't have an email list set up yet, I have a tutorial where you can do that right now.

You can get it done in like the next 10 minutes. You wanna go to healthcoachpower.com/mailing list. Do you see what I just did? I didn't even do that on purpose. Thank you Jennifer. I'm here talking to you about building your mailing list. An obvious question someone's gonna have is, well, how does a mailing list work? Boom, I have this free thing for you, right? Wasn't that seamless? It was in context of what is needed. So it's not like nothing about that feels salesy or pushy or like, you know, sign up for my mailing list now do my thing, buy my stuff. No, I'm like, Hey, I can help you, I can help you get that done in 10 minutes. Jen, here, here's where you wanna go. That's exactly what I'm talking about and done podcast over. Okay, no , I've got a couple more for you. So we talked about free events, we talked about content, and now let's talk about good old fashioned networking. So yeah, you can join that b and i group or attend actual networking events, but these are not my favorite things. But you do you, if you're great in those types of situations, do it up. I wanna talk about something that's so minor, you think I'm kidding, but I'm not. What's in your email signature?

Have you ever received an email from someone and you don't know them that well, but you notice there's a link in their email signature? What do you do? You go check them out. I know this happens all the time because my email signature, even just my personal email has my website, right? And if I meet one of my kids', uh, friend's, mom or I met somebody at the gym and you know, we exchange whatever, you know, I just making friends, just knowing people in my life has nothing to do with business. Nine times outta 10, after I email them, at some point they'll say it to me, Oh, so I checked out your website, or, Oh, I made that, uh, I made that recipe on your website. It was, it was pretty good. Or, Oh, I listened to your podcast and I'm like, Wow, cause I never told them about it.

It was just a simple link in my email signature. So that link, those links can really work for you. And consider not only just having your website, but it could be a link that goes directly to a free thing that you have going on. Your free download, your free event, you've got a five day challenge coming up, great. Put it in the email signature because you just never know. I was emailing today with people who run a ninja gym for the kids. I wanna sign my kids up for lessons over there. You know, we're going back and forth, back and forth. So she must have seen my email signature six, seven times. I'm pretty sure she clicked on it, right? Because especially she sees it has something to do with health and she owns a gym, there's interest there. It's a really good way to start that networking and it's so, so crazy simple.

Who thinks they can do that? Just say like, Yes, I could put this in my email signature. If I do one thing today walking outta this episode, that is something I can do. Just raise your hand because I don't think there's anyone who can't make that happen. And it's just that first start at networking. Okay? Um, we talked, we've mentioned networking events, like true networking events in passing. Same thing when you're there, yes, you can say, Oh, I'm a health coach. Uh oh yes, I'd love to partner with you. Oh yes, we should discuss business, blah, blah, blah. Give all different kinds of kinds of conversations. What I want you to do is invite them to a free thing that you have coming up. Oh, I'm running a three day, you know, eat more veggies challenge next month. Can I sign you up? Or hey, oh, you're, you're interested in losing weight, you know, I'm running a free webinar next month. Uh, for women, you know exactly your age on weight loss. Would you like to attend? Invite them to something, get 'em on your mailing list. Kristen says, If you don't have a website though, what should go in the email signature A link to your freebie. What is that? It's a page that you set up through your email service.

All my freebies live on pages separate from my website. My website could die today. My business would not take a hit. It would hardly matter because all your opt-in pages are held elsewhere. So when you sign up for, um, mailerlite or Convert Kit, again, if you need a tutorial to get set up on these, I have one, it's at healthcoachpower.com/mailinglist. That's gonna get you set up with your initial mailing list. Once you're in there, you can create these opt-in pages and those are the links that you would be sharing. Okay? And finally, and this is so silly that you might laugh, but I swear this is how business gets done in the world. Have conversations, have conversations with people everywhere you go. And when something comes up, again contextually, someone's like, Oh, I don't know what to make for Thanksgiving.

Hey, I got a free cooking class coming up. Do you wanna join? Right, , you wanna have things that people are actually looking for, and that's how you should decide what to offer. What do people need? What do people actually search for this time of year? Or what does my target market always need and is always searching for, you know, Oh, um, maybe you are discussing with someone that their kid has ADHD and they're struggling with this, that, and the other thing at school. And maybe you are an ADHD health coach and you say, you know, I actually have a resource around adhd. You know, do you want me to send it to you? Yes, anytime I've ever had a conversation like this, the answer's always yes, because number one, they need the help. Number two, they already know you. And they're like, Oh yeah, like, I trust you.

Like I, there's lots of resources out there, but if you have something, wow, that would be extra valuable for me. So don't discount the power of just common conversation. Take that to all your holiday parties and see how it goes. Oh my goodness, okay, so many ideas today. Do you see how we used to run businesses now without even touching social media? It's hilarious. But everything I've talked about today works like gangbusters compared to an Instagram post. I, I can almost guarantee you, you'll have better luck with everything we just mentioned versus, you know, figuring out what hashtag to use today. It's just not worth the amount of time that we're putting into social media. Megan says, When should you start selling yourself? When offering a free event? The beginning, the middle, or the end? I struggle with timing it. I'm just gonna say it doesn't matter, Megan.

I mean, yes, that is a good question. Maybe for another day, maybe next week's podcast episode. But if you could just get them onto your mailing list, then mission accomplished. Like that's what we came for, right? If we can just get them into our world, that's step number one. Learning how to sell to them. We're gonna have to do a part two on this. But thank you everybody for joining me. This has been super duper fun and happy November. Let's get into it, guys. It's a great time of year to do all those holiday ideas that we talked about, and of course, start planning for what you can do in the new year, what people will need. Then now is also a great time to start planning for January. All right, I'll see you all soon. Take care.