#299: My Favorite Strategies to Build an Audience Without Social Media

Hello there. Health coaches, I know that many of you are in summer mode, but you're probably thinking about what you want to do this fall in your health coaching business. If you're not thinking like that, I want you to go ahead and start thinking like that because the fall's going to be here before you know it and before you even go down the road of like, all right, I really got to get my social media game in order before you resign yourself to like, I have to be more consistent on social media, even though it's provided basically zero return for you and you hate getting sucked into the scroll, but you feel like it's a necessary evil for finding clients before any of that, before you set up a new Instagram account or you invest in some kind of course to help you beat the algorithm.

I've got to tell you, I have to assure you, from the bottom of my heart, you don't actually need to use social media at all. Did you hear me? I'm going to say it again. You don't actually need to use social media at all. You can if you want, but it is just one tool in the marketing toolbox and in today's episode I'm going to share several others that work even better and don't come with all those negative health effects. I mean, we are health coaches. We're not trying to be on screens all day. Am I right? Okay. Thank you. For those of you who are saying hello and that you can hear me as we're live streaming, that's great. Thank you so much. It's lovely to be here live with you. So please ask questions as we go along or throw your comments into the chat. I have my eye over there.

Now. The way I've grown my business, which has been a long road, I mean, I started way back in 2009 as a health coach, and this was long before social media was as all pervasive as it is today. I mean it existed, but barely. I've always therefore kind of had to use, and I'm glad a combination of online and offline tactics and there are benefits to both. So if you are looking to add clients to your practice, first of all, take a lot of notes today. Second of all, definitely want to check out our free blueprint at healthcoachpower.com/blueprint, and I'm going to drop that link right over here in the chat for all of you. That's healthcoachpower.com/blueprint. This particular topic about social media came up in our health coach power community Facebook group recently because Tracy said, and Tracy, I don't know if you're here, if you are, please say hello. She said, I have a private Facebook group and I've enlisted a coach to help me with organic Facebook growth and lead generation. And while this is helping me to drive daily traffic to my group with new members, it's not something that I am enjoying, frankly, would love to hear from those of you who are not using social media and how you're growing your audiences and ultimately achieving sales. So for Tracy and all the health coaches in our community, yes, let's get away from this idea that social media is the path to clients. It is not the path. It's just one maybe sometimes path, and especially if you're not enjoying being there, health coaching, I'm sure you feel this way, I strongly feel that health coaching is a calling as much as it's a career. So we're not here to white knuckle our way through. I want you to find ways to structure your business and your marketing that feels really good for you because that energy it comes through, people can feel that.

So Debbie said, thank God for that. Debbie's saying, thank God we don't have to use social media. You're going to love what we're talking about today, Debbie, I'm glad you're here. Let's get into it. When you're thinking about building an audience, there are two main avenues. My head immediately goes to two main areas. The first has to do with holding or participating in events. Okay, put a pin in that. We'll come back to it. The second is about creating content, and there's all sorts of subcategories within this. We'll talk about it, but those are the two big ones. Events or content. Now, right off the bat, events tend to be more appealing to the extroverted among us, but I want you to be assured that you can be part of events without having to shake hands and exchange elevator pitches. It was not my favorite thing either.

So if you're here with me live, tell us in the chat, have you done any type of events with your business? Yes or no? And if so, we'd love to hear about it. What kind of event was it? What kind of events are even possible? What are we talking about here? Well, just yesterday I was speaking with a private client of mine, a health coach who is trying to set up some workshops in her local area for women over 50 trying to lose weight workshops. Those are events. Workshops are a tried and true way to gain a loyal following and sign clients up, down and sideways. No way around it. This is one of your best bets and workshops can be done. I know you're going to ask, workshops can be done for free or they can be done for some type of fee. Either you're being paid through the venue or you're being paid.

New people are going to buy tickets for $15, $25, something like that. It doesn't really matter. The important thing is that you are getting in front of new eyes, and that means you're generally not going to want to host the workshop like in your living room or at a space that you're renting somewhere. The real magic is holding a workshop with a venue that's going to advertise to their audience. They're going to fill the room for you. That's their job. Your job is to show up and provide great content. So you want to think about a yoga studio. Yoga studios always hold various types of workshops. That's part of their business model. It works really well. You want to think about gyms, Pilates studios, health food stores. I was even talking to my client yesterday about doing workshops at a clothing boutique or a houseware shop, any place where your target market goes and is used to spending money. So you could hold a workshop at the public library and that can be okay, and if you've done that, that's cool, but keep in mind that people go to the library to get things for free. That's what the library is all about. You're going to be more likely to find clients who can afford your services if you hold your workshop in a place where they're already spending money. Now, workshops can also be done online. So even though I just rattled off a whole bunch of local type places, think about the online space, think about corporate workshops going into the corporate setting. Think about online workshops in a corporate setting, lots of corporations have offices in different parts of the country or even the world, and you could be zooming with all of them at the same time.

So lots of options here. The sky really is the limit. I promise you, cross my heart. Swear, did I that your time is better spent pitching and holding workshops than posting every day to Instagram. Okay, I can promise you this. Now, event opportunities exist beyond workshops, and I'm glad we're talking about this because so far everyone that's here live, no one has said that they've done any kind of workshop or live event yet. So let's talk about other ways to go about this. You could be a speaker at an event or you could be on a panel, some type of panel discussion. You could teach a cooking class. You could do those in person. You can do them over zoom. Those are events. Those are things that you can invite people to. Those are things that happen on very specific days. You could have a table at a health fair or a local street fair. You could host a book club or a running club or a meditation, sit or fill in the blank, any of the above. You could partner with another practitioner or brand and host a co-hosted webinar host, a co-hosted webinar. That was a mixed up sentence. Whatever you do. Some of your events might have three people attending, maybe three people come to your cooking class. Fine. That's great. That's so cozy, that's so intimate. They're going to feel like they really know you after that event. And also, it might be good, especially if you're a little bit more on the shy side, and all of us are at first, most of us are at first to have a smaller sized event. That can be a very good thing. Other events, you could have 10, 20, 30, 40. You could have hundreds of attendees. But here's the point. Anytime that you position yourself on the stage, and I'm making little air quotes around stage, I don't mean an actual physical stage that you're standing on, but you are the one at the front of the room.

You are the leader. Anytime you're in that position, first of all, again, you have something to invite people to, Hey, I'm doing this cooking class. Hey, I'm doing this book club. Hey, I'm going to be speaking at this thing next week, right? You're active, you're engaged. You always have something easy for people to come and join you for, and you are immediately seen as an expert. You just plopped yourself in that position and everyone is going to nod their head and go, oh, yes, she's a health coach, or he's a health coach, and this person is an expert. Just because you're the one leading the event, just because you're the person on the panel, just because that's it. So especially if you're a newly graduated as a health coach or in your first few years and you're like, oh, why would anybody ever take me seriously?

It's amazing how quickly people will take you seriously when you're the one at the front of the room. So I can't recommend this highly enough. Go meet people, collect email addresses, boom. You have an audience that is like 100 times more impactful than random social media followers, a thousand times more impactful. It's worth everything. Now. Events are great, and let me know if you have any questions about these. I see one from Linda, I'll get to that in a second. Events are great, but keep in mind they can only happen every so often. I mean, I guess potentially you could host a class or a workshop or you could speak every single day. That would be an awful lot to coordinate these things. Take advanced planning and dates, have to go on the calendar, maybe shoot for once a month or once a quarter to get started. That would be awesome.

All right. Let's see what Linda says. She said, for the book club, what type of books would you recommend? Does it have to be a book related to health or nutrition? I think it would make the most sense if you chose a book that was either related to health or nutrition or wellness in some way, or if you're more of a fiction reader and it's a story about somebody I don't know who was ill or who had a health problem, perhaps. The point is that you would want that book club's discussion to eventually turn to the subject of health. And you being the book club leader and a health coach would be perfectly positioned to answer questions, to throw out some knowledge, to ask really good questions, and to invite people into consultation calls if they want to continue having a real personal conversation how these things go.

The same thing will happen in a cooking class. You can just start by being like, today we're making hummus, and the next thing you know, you're talking about protein and the next thing you know you're talking about how somebody went vegan and then about their health issue or whatever, and suddenly they start having questions, and it's a perfect segue to like, oh, I really want to talk more about this with you. Why don't we put a time on the calendar? So yeah, pick a book that would lead into that type of conversation. And there's so many out there, right? I mean, gosh, any of your favorites is a really good place to start, whether you decide to do events or not. Like I said, you could be doing one every month, you could be doing one per quarter or more, but I love also having content creation as another way to build an audience.

So I said those are the two paths. One is the event path, one is the content creation path. So the reason that I love content creation is because it kind of fills in the gaps between those events. Like we said, you're probably not going to do them every day, but content creation, oh, it's so flexible. You can do what, you can produce a piece of writing. You can do a podcast episode anytime from just about anywhere, and doing content, creating content on a weekly basis over time, it's a slow and steady approach. It's much more appealing to the introverted among us. But it's great for extroverts too. I'm just telling you that these two pads we're discussing today, they just work beautifully together. You could do one or the other. You could do lots of events and no content, lots of content, no events. I suggest you do some of both.

So when I say content, I'm talking about writing a blog, starting a podcast, maybe a YouTube channel. Generating content on social media can also kind of fall into this category, but that's not what we're talking about today, right? So let's just think about content in terms of long form content. It does happen online, but it's not social media with the likes and the comments and the dms and the dopamine hits. This is you producing good quality content and publishing it. My entire coaching business started as a blog. I wasn't even done with health coaching school yet, but every week I was creating content on my blog, and I had somehow attracted this group of readers and my blog readers turned into many of my very first clients. Now, these days, of course, podcasting is my preferred medium. I also had a podcast for my health coaching practice, and years ago I even did a live radio show every week.

But the point is, when you create long form content, it earns the trust of your readers and your listeners very quickly. So think about social media. You're only giving some crumbs of information, some quick tidbits, like a 62nd reel or one little post long form content shows expertise, depth and personality, and it's the kind of stuff that people share. I'm sure you've been there, you read something really great and you just know your friend would love it, so you forward it to them. Before I left for Italy this summer, my project manager forwarded me a blog post and had all the best apps to download while traveling in Italy. She was like, oh, I saw this. I thought of you. This is called organic reach. It costs $0 and it is highly effective at getting you in front of the rate people. Now, for either of these approaches to work events or content creation, if you actually want it to build an audience, I just want to tie it together for you. What do you do? You're doing a workshop, great. You're writing a blog, super duper. Then what? You need a mailing list. That's where your audience is going to live. So you're not just given a workshop, you're adding those names to your mailing list. Got it? You're not just publishing podcast episodes. You're offering free resources that lead listeners to your mailing list in every episode. It's like the whole point. And frankly, even if you are on social media, it is the exact same thing. All of these things we're talking about today, these are top of funnel activities. That's what's called in the online marketing world top of funnel. They work best when they lead in a direct line to growing your mailing list, and from there, you will find you're paying clients.

So just to recap, today, we talked about events and content creation as major ways to grow an audience without touching social media. And the truth is most of us will probably use social media to some degree, but let this be your sign to at the very least, diversify the ways that you're reaching new audiences. Again, Social media, it's just one tool in the marketing toolbox. So if this resonates, my suggestion is to choose one idea. Maybe something I said today or maybe something that you heard made your brain go, Ooh, I could do that. Write that down, and then look at it and think, what will it take to make this happen? Maybe you've never done it before. That's good. That means you're going to start stretching those non-social media muscles, okay? I want your brain to start thinking about things that you can be doing in other places. In other ways it's only going to serve you in building your audience and in building your practice. And if you're seriously looking at adding more clients to your health coaching practice, make sure to check out our free Healthy Profit University blueprint at healthcoachpower.com/blueprint, and I'll see you next week. Take care, everybody.