Optimize your Facebook business page.
We’ve talked about social media here before, and by now you should know that it is a great, free tool for promoting your life coach business. In fact, these days it’s required that you engage in some sort of social media in order to keep up with the competition.
The next question is: how do you begin? Today I’m going to help answer that question in relation to Facebook, one of the largest social media platforms out there. It’s easy to create a business page, but it doesn’t do any good if you just let it sit there.
I’ve run a couple of Facebook business pages myself, and drumming up interest seemed almost impossible. My only “fans” (people who liked the page) were friends, and I didn’t know how to attract new people. It felt like a waste of time to have even made the thing.
Since then, I’ve learned that there are right and wrong ways to manage your Facebook business page. These apply to any company, including your life coach business. So take some notes!
- Don’t Use Your Personal Account.When you set up a business page, you have to have an already existing Facebook account. This account becomes associated with your business page, and the person it belongs to is the moderator of that page. If you use your personal account, you may be exposing your non-professional side to clients. Chances are you don’t want potential clients seeing pictures of you at parties or making inappropriate jokes with friends.Instead, create a separate Facebook account that’s purely professional, then use it to create your life coach business page. You’ll need a new e-mail address to do this, so create one on Gmail. (This Gmail account will come in handy in Step 5.)Alternatively, you can hire someone with a very clean, professional personal account who will represent you and your business on Facebook. Whichever option you choose, remember that this person’s Facebook account is linked to your business!
- Create Your Page. Facebook guides you through this simple process. Simply go to https://www.facebook.com/ and click the “+ Create Page” button located at the bottom of the green “Sign Up” button. When you choose a Page Name, keep in mind that this will affect your ranking when people do a Facebook search. So be sure to use some keywords that are relevant to your life coaching business – especially if you have a niche. Remember that you can’t change your Page Name later, so choose wisely.
- Upload a Cover and Profile Image. These are the two main images that will appear on your business page and when you make posts or comments. You can easily do this yourself if you have any experience with Photoshop or the free alternative Gimp. The ideal dimensions for a cover image is 850 px by 315 px. The profile picture is 125 px by 125 px (a perfect square box).Facebook does not want you to make your cover image an advertisement. When you click to upload your image, a message will pop up telling you that ads, promotions, and copyright-infringement are not allowed. However, you can certainly put your business or personal name on the image and make the image relevant to your life coach business. For example, you may have a picture of your actual business or of you and a client working together. Be creative! This is a great opportunity to stand out.
- Add Page Information. This is extremely important, as it is a description of your life coach business. This is where most people go after they land on your business page. They want to know who you are and what you do. Keep it simple (no one wants to read paragraphs on Facebook) and include a link to your landing page or video introduction. Don’t forget to throw in those relevant keywords again. These pages show up on search engines, so you want them to be optimized for your life coach business.Pro Tip: The best keywords are those that are specific to your practice. Trying to rank with a single keyword like “coaching” will be nearly impossible. If you type the word “coaching” into Google, you get 278,000,000 results. That’s a lot of competition. Try for a keyword that is specific to your niche, like “anxiety life coach”. This brings up only 119,000 results.
- Invite People. Now you want to get some people on your business page, and ideally they’ll “like” it so that they’re subscribed to your Facebook activities. This is the whole reason for creating the page in the first place!Remember how I said you should create your Facebook account with a Gmail address? Well, here’s why. Import your client e-mail addresses to your Gmail address book. Now, when you go to your life coach business page, you’ll see a link under the “New Likes” section that says “Invite Email Contacts”. Click this and then click Gmail. You will now invite all of your Gmail contacts (all of your clients) to visit your business page. Simple as that!
- Add Content. With Facebook, your goal is to post content that people will like, discuss, and ultimately share with their friends. This is the social media “word of mouth” that makes all the difference. There are many forms of content you can post: links to your new blog entries, interesting status updates, or image posts to name a few.Keep in mind that the majority of your fans are either going to read your content without leaving a comment or “like”, or simply scroll past it. Your goal is to provide interesting, intriguing, and/or unique content that people will want to comment on, “like” or share with friends. My tips for this are to post things that are quick and easy to read or grasp (like an image with text, an eye-catching blog title, or an encouraging status update that people will enjoy and pass along). Anything that brings about an emotional response, such as humor or empowerment, is also extremely effective.
Play around with Facebook and see what people respond well to. Eventually you’ll get the hang of what your audience is looking for and be on your way to having a thriving life coach business page!
But don’t stop there, you can also download Dr. Craig’s free special report for coaches. Learn the mistakes that most coaches make and how to avoid them from the start.
What social media would you like to learn more about? Let me know in the comments and I’ll include in a future blog post!
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Helpful article. However, #1 is a bit confusing to me. I Admin a number of pages for clients. I’ve in fact, built those pages by way of my personal account. At no time is there a cross over. When I play the role of admin, it’s entirely separate from my personal profile, no one can tell that it is I who posts on behalf of my clients. Tags on my personal account don’t have anything to do with any of the business pages I manage. Will you clarify your position?
Good point Abby, and well taken. Since a guest wrote the article, however, I can’t explain her reasoning other than what’s expressed in the blog post. I suppose a concern was that some people set up pages without regard to any separation of personal and business information, and can make themselves vulnerable to hacking and/or ID theft. Again, I’m not an authority on this issue, but will pass on your concerns to Arina. Thanks for another viewpoint.
This is very helpful to those of us who are involved with life coaching. Many thanks on showing us how to create a Facebook page; my team and I will get updates from here from time to time.