5 Easy Tips To Grow Your Health Coaching Facebook Tribe

 

Facebook is the largest social networking site on the planet and a great place to build your health coaching facebook “tribe”.  Seth Godin coined the term tribe which speaks much better to the group of people we want to work with.  Many marketers speak of target markets and ideal clients.  While these are useful terms, it implies that you are separate from them while a tribe is a group of people all with a common interest, goal or vision.

I imagine you started your health coaching business to be of service to people, not to become a marketer or salesperson.  This seems to be where many holistic practitioners run into trouble.  We are lifelong learners, full of knowledge, and eager to help others reach their potential.  Many of us run into problems when it comes to “selling” our services or products.

Instead of focusing on selling, when you switch to a focus on building a tribe or community, you naturally become connected to people who come to see you as an expert and trusted source of information.  Then when you announce your services and programs people will already see you their “expert” and will be drawn to learn from and work with you.

This feels better from both sides.  As a customer of any service, you are much more likely to buy something that you are seeking than something you are being “sold”.  As a health coach, you can focus on what you are passionate about, sharing your message of health, instead of trying to be a salesperson.

What better place to start building your tribe than Facebook?  People are already there looking for connections.  Here are 5 easy ways to start growing your Facebook tribe.

1.  Focus Your Message

Focus your online health coaching on a specific group of people.  It is much easier to find people interested in what you are doing if you know exactly who you want to work with.  If your Facebook fan page tells people you are a “Health Coach”, they are much less likely to stick around than if you focus on one specific topic that they are already interested in.  Name your fan page something that when people read the title they say to themselves “I need that or I need to learn more”.  This will be especially helpful if you decide to do any advertising on Facebook, which I highly recommend.

2.  Use Facebook As Your Fan Page

Did you know that you can surf Facebook using your fan page instead of your personal profile?

Now go to Facebook groups and pages where your tribe hangs out and start interacting.  This typically more effective than saying “please like my page”.  Remember, start out building connections and providing great content.  It’s much better to have 100 fans that are really interested in what you are doing than 1000 people on your Facebook page that just “liked” you on a whim and really aren’t all that interested.

3.  Search Facebook For Your Tribe

One of the easiest ways to search Facebook is to type in quotes what topic you are interested in.

This will let you find groups, pages, and public posts about your topic.  Not only is this a great way to find people, but it’s also another way to research what is going on right now in your field.

4.  Use Sponsored Stories in Facebook Ads

You know the sponsored stories on the side of your Facebook page that says a friend of yours likes something?  Aren’t you more likely to click on this than if you didn’t see your friend’s name?  Once you have a Facebook fan page set up, this is very easy to do in Facebook ads.  This is one of the reason’s the title of your fan page is important, since this is what shows up in Facebook sponsored stories.

There are also lots of other techniques for using Facebook ads to get people to your fan page, but this is a great one.

5.  Put a Facebook “Like” box on your website.

Go to Facebook developers at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box.

I was at a holistic marketing conference last week and I met someone who was still in school and was using these techniques to build a thriving community on Facebook.  She hasn’t even graduated yet and already has over 4,000 fans on Facebook.  After doing the work to start growing your tribe, it actually becomes easier over time.  When you are just starting out, nobody has any idea who you are or why they should listen to you.  As time goes on and the number of fans you have grows, people will naturally find you.  They see you on their friends’ pages, when new people show up they are more inclined to see you as an expert when you have a larger number of fans.

You can also have more than one fan page, you can actually have as many as you want.  I would not recommend having a bunch of different pages since it will dilute your message, but if you have totally separate groups you want to work with it can be a good idea.  For me, I have a page devoted to my poetry (which I haven’t done much with lately) since I’m sure not many of them will be all that interested in hearing about online marketing.

Summary

Get started today building your Facebook tribe.  And don’t forget, while you are sending them to your Facebook page make sure you are delivering something of value.  Having an opt-in for your mailing list on your Facebook is just as important as on your website.  Make it easy for people to connect with you.