Lately I have been hearing from many coaches asking me how they can use Twitter to gain more coaching clients. In fact, I have talked to quite a few coaches who told me that Twitter isn’t working for them as means for getting coaching clients.

One life coach told me that she has been offering her free coaching session on Twitter for months, and no one has taken her up on her offer. She decided that Twitter wasn’t good for promoting her coaching business and decided to move on to other online marketing techniques.

Twitter and other social networking web sites are great for promoting a coaching business. However, just offering your free session is not the best way to use those social networking web sites. You need to have a plan for how to use social networking to promote your coaching business.

Here is what you must include in your plan:

Know Who You Want To Meet

You must have a profile of people you would like to connect with a twitter - your potential coaching clients, potential JV partners, etc.

If you don’t know who you want to meet, how will you meet them?

Once you know who you want to meet on social networking web sites, you can look and connect with these people, instead of connecting with people randomly. Just doing this will dramatically improve the results you are getting from social networking.

Get People Interested

Have a good mix of twits - something about you, something that gives back (retweeting others), something that helps others (tips, articles, ideas) and something that promotes your business.

It is about having a good mix and sharing what your followers enjoy.

Social Networking Web Sites Alone Are Not Enough

You need to have a way to invite your followers to take the next step with you - subscribe to your newsletter, attend a teleseminar, etc.

Once people who meet on social networking web sites are subscribed to your newsletter, you can continuously build a relationship with them and introduce your products and services to them.

Use Features Available To You On Social Networking Web Sites To Let Others Know About Your Coaching Business

Learn different features available to you on different social networking web sites to promote your business. For example:

- Use Twitterfeed to automatically post your blog posts to Twitter

- Use Facebook Events to promote your teleseminars and webinars on Facebook

- Use applications on LinkedIn to automatically post your blog posts to LinkedIn

There are many different tools available for you. Learn about them and incorporate them into your overall social networking strategy for your coaching business.

If you are not getting the results that you are looking for from the time you spend on social networking web sites, stop and create a plan. Your plan will help you spend less time on social networking web sites, while getting better results.

Need help creating a social networking plan for your coaching business? Join me for How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Social Networking Training

Biana Babinsky

Lately, I have been hearing from many coaches, asking me to teach them how to get results with social networking. Here is a typical email I receive:

“Biana, I have been reading on many coaching lists and forums about social networking. I jumped in a few months ago, created accounts on Twitter and Facebook and started using them. I typically spend 1-2 hours a day on Twitter and Facebook. It has been three months since I joined and I have nothing to show for it except all this time that I have spent there.

Help! How can I start getting coaching clients from Twitter and Facebook?”

First of all, I don’t recommend jumping into social networking without a plan. If you want to get social networking results, you must have a plan for what you want to accomplish with social networking and how you want to accomplish it.

If you want people who you meet on social networking web sites to immediately become your coaching clients, you will be disappointed. People who you meet on social networking web sites are not there to buy - they are there to learn, communicate, share and promote themselves. Because of this, it is much easier for you to get leads (newsletter subscribers) than clients on social networking web sites. Once you have them on your list, you can communicate with them, continue building relationships with them and turn them into clients. But first you must get them on your list.

But even before that you need to do some prep work. Until you know who you want to connect with and have a specific landing page for your social networking efforts, you are not going to see good results. So let’s get started with your prep work:

Decide Who You Want To Subscribe To Your Newsletter

Before you can get good leads, you need to know WHO they are. Who do you want to subscribe to your newsletter? You always want your target market to subscribe to your newsletter!

Create A Landing Page For Your Social Networking

Now it is time to think about a web page where you are going to send people you meet on social networks. This is the page that you are going to include in your social networking profiles, so that people you meet on social networks would visit it.

This page is extremely important, because it is going to turn people you meet on social networks into leads. This means that the only action that people should be able to take on that page is subscribe to your newsletter.

Many people think that if they offer more option on this landing page, then more people will be able to pick the option that they like and use it. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is true. The more options you offer, the more confused people become and the more likely they are to just leave the page without taking any action.

So if you have a page on which you give your visitors many choices, change it! Give just one choice - subscribing to your newsletter - and you will get more results. A page that gives just one choice is called a Squeeze Page and I discuss how to create Squeeze Page for social networking in the How To Create Effective Squeeze Pages Study Guide.

Now you are prepared to use social networking! Start networking with your target market by answering questions, sharing useful tips and information, sharing links to helpful articles and blog posts and adding value. When your target market sees that you are an expert at what you do, they will visit your profile and click on the link to your page and subscribe to your newsletter!

Biana Babinsky

In the past year I have trained many coaches on how to use social networking and social media to promote a coaching business. As I did this training, there were many questions that were asked over and over again. I wanted to share the three most popular questions (and answers) with you:

1. How can a life coach(business coach, career coach, etc) find her target market on Twitter?

Here are my two favorite tools for doing Twitter search:

search.twitter.com searches twits, the actual things that people say. Use it to search on things that your target market would talk about.

For example, if you are a life coach and your target market is looking for more balance in their lives, chances are your target market is talking about “being tired”, “not being able to do everything”, etc. Search for what your target market likes to talk about and you will locate your target market on Twitter!

twellow.com search searches twitter members’ profiles. So if your target market identifies itself in their profiles, use this search tool to search for them.

For example, if you are a business coach for speakers, search for speaker, and it should give you the results you are looking for.

2. In addition to using social networking, a coach also has to work with clients, lead calls and create new products. How can a coach not spend too much time on social networking?

Schedule your time! Only spend time that you have on social networking. Only have 20 minutes in one day? Spend the 20 minutes on social networking and then go on to your other commitments. Don’t make your client work or marketing activities suffer because of social networking.

Don’t borrow the time that you do not have to use social networking. Do allocate some of your marketing time for social networking. Use that time wisely.

3. How can a coach get clients on Twitter?

This is probably the most popular question I receive from clients, colleagues and people I meet on social networking web sites.

Before we talk about how to get clients on Twitter, you should really understand the difference between leads and clients. Have you seen anyone take out a credit card and give out the credit card number on Twitter to buy coaching services? Neither have I. This means that you are going to get leads, not clients on Twitter.

What really happens on Twitter is that you start building a relationship that you can continue in other media. People you meet on Twitter may become long-term readers of your blog, newsletter subscribers, etc. As they read your blog or newsletter, they get to know you better and will become clients.

Want to learn more about using Twitter to get coaching clients? Get the How To Promote Your Business With Twitter Home Study Guide.

Biana Babinsky