How To Use Social Media For Health Coaches (Ultimate Guide)

As of right now, there are 2.94 billion monthly social media users. To put this into perspective, the total world population is 7.7 billion. Numbers like these can significantly benefit your health coaching business. No doubt, social media has evolved from a fun pastime to a serious business tool. Here’s how you can use it to your advantage.

Why is Social Media Important for Growing Your Health Coaching Business?

Social media has a reach and immediacy unparalleled by any other form of communication. This makes it an important resource for creating and growing your health coaching business. It spreads the word about you and builds rapport that can turn prospects into clients.

Social media can assist your business in several ways:

• Drive traffic
• Increase brand awareness
• Build trust

Social media allows you to be in many places at once. By appearing on several platforms, you increase your visibility and power to draw visitors. Other people’s social networks are often huge. Connecting with even one person could connect you with their entire network. The domino effect from this can be massive, making social media for health coaches indispensable.

10 Social Media Marketing Tips for Health Coaches

Social media marketing is unlike any other type of advertising, which is why it should be approached differently than any other medium. Here’s how:

1. Have a Unique Angle to Your Business

Fifteenth-century poet, John Lydgate, famously said, “You can please some of the people all of the time…but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

While it’s understandable that you’d like as many clients as possible, you must tailor your services to a target audience or your branding won’t work.

Do they spend most of their time on Facebook? Snapchat? Are they in their 40’s and prefer Mercedes and caviar or in their 20’s and like motorcycles and fast food?

These factors will all affect the unique angle of your social media marketing and help you stand apart from similar competitors such as Gold’s Gym and Planet Fitness.

2. Define Your Goals

One of the best ways to define your social media objectives is through SMART goals (Specific, Memorable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely.) SMART goals can refocus a generalization, such as, “Get more followers” into “Deepen interest in our Facebook page by running contests.”

Your primary social media goal should be to add value. The main way to achieve this is to get people on your email list by offering a freebie in return. Once they’re on your list, you can upsell to your coaching services.

3. Have a Budget in Mind

A rule of thumb is to spend 10 to 20 percent of your revenue on marketing. Here’s how to create a budget without unexpected surprises:

• Know your goal – If you don’t know your end game, you won’t know what to spend to get there.

• Know your audience – If you don’t know your audience, you’re not going to know how much to spend, where to spend it, and what to spend it on.

• Test your ads’ performance – Spend $100 on an ad and see how it performs. Increase the amount incrementally until you have an idea of how much you’ll need to spend on an ad that performs well.

4. Be a Real Person

Formal language and lofty ideas have no place on social media. Instead, let your individuality shine through with banter and relatable stories. Tell your audience about your successes and challenges. This lets them know you have ups and downs just like them.

Regularly post updates about your interests and hobbies. Do you like hiking? Do you volunteer? These activities will give you lots of interesting stories to tell, and readers will keep visiting to see what you’ve been up to.

Mix in plenty of photos of yourself enjoying these activities. Photos will literally give your social media a face and build trust.

5. Share Value

WIIFM may look like the initials of a radio station, but it actually stands for “What’s In It For Me?” Your audience wants to know what you’re going to do to benefit them.

You can do a slew of things that provide value for your audience, such as liking posts, promptly answering questions, and posting info. The more engaged you are, the more you’ll position yourself as your audience’s go-to for health coaching.

That said, social media can be an addictive time suck. That’s why it’s best to schedule a specific time of day for it and set a time-limit. Establish boundaries for yourself by creating notifications or using a scheduling app.

6. Post Regularly

Posting on social media is entirely different than posting on blogs. On social media, posting is very strategic:

• Facebook – Minimum: Three times/week; Maximum: Ten times/week
• Pinterest – Minimum: Five times/day; Maximum: Ten times/day

You can post health-related topics such as food shopping tips, meal prep ideas, recipes, exercise routines, health and wellness retreats, health and wellness books/podcasts/videos, and inspirational quotes.

Did you know you can automate your social media posts? Buffer is a web-based tool that can schedule and manage posts so you don’t get overwhelmed by social media. It lets you schedule up to 10 daily posts and publish the same content on several networks simultaneously. Buffer is especially helpful as your business grows.

If you prefer the human touch, you can hire a virtual assistant instead. Many virtual assistants solely manage social media and would be happy to take a load off your plate. (Our guide to hiring a virtual assistant provides you with all the details.)

7. Sell Yourself (But Not Aggressively)

What if someone told you about their product once, twice, three times, 20? You probably wouldn’t want to have anything to do with their product, or them, ever again. This is what’s called a “hard sell” – a tactic you want to stay away from. On social media, you can promote yourself more effectively with a “soft sell.”

You can start soft-selling by only mentioning your services once every five to 10 posts. In these posts, you can promote yourself in several ways:

• Through stories – For example, “Here’s how I helped Janet lose 10 pounds.”

• Through a common problem – By focusing on a common problem shared by your target audience and how they can expect positive results working with you.

• Indirectly – By showing yourself putting together a meal plan and inviting your target audience to book a discovery session.

8. Use Popular Hashtags

A hashtag is a short link preceded by the # (hash) symbol. A hashtag turns any word into a searchable link. For example, “Keto Diet” could have the hashtag #KetoDietFans. Hashtags can also be used as sly asides: #OhGreatAnotherHashtag.

There are two types of hashtags used in marketing, direct and indirect:

Direct Hashtags

Direct communication is hashtag engagement on all a brand’s social media sites. A few of the best direct health coach hashtags include:

• #health
• #healthcoach
• #healthylifestyle

Indirect Hashtags

Indirect communication happens when customers talk about your brand, products and services but not on your social sites. A few of the best indirect health coaching hashtags include:

• #glutenfree
• #healthyrecipes
• #organiclifestyle

Hashtags are powerful marketing tools. On Twitter, for example, tweets with hashtags receive two times more engagement than those without hashtags.

9. Optimize Your Images

Make sure your images are optimized, which are images sized to look good on all your platforms. You can optimize images in the following ways:

Tailor Images to Each Social Media Channel

Each social media platform has its own optimum image sizes. For example:

• Facebook profile picture – 180 x 180 pixels
• Twitter profile picture – 400 x 400 pixels

Use Text Effectively

Brevity is the key to effective use of text in social media. On these platforms, text is usually chiseled down to a few sentences, so you want to make them count. A long-winded post stuffed with nothing but text can be off-putting, so it’s best to spice it up with a photo. Text should also be sized for effortless reading.

Make Images Attractive and Click-Friendly

Visitors need something that motivates them to click. You can influence them by:

• Having a beautiful image that entices users to click through to your website.

• Having an image that contains only partial information where users must click it to see the rest of the message.

Create Images Yourself

If you’d like to create images yourself, but don’t have graphic design skills, there are options to bring your visions to life:

• Canva – Canva is a browser-based, drag-and-drop tool for non-designers. Among its many features is a library of optimized images for every social media channel. Canva has all the capabilities of advanced design software.

• 20 Dollar Banners – If you’d like your social media images expertly designed, 20 Dollar Banners is among the best services available. Not only do they create slick designs, but they also understand the psychology of each social media platform. Prices start at $20.

10. Be Patient

You don’t ride your bike for three days and expect to be a Tour de France medalist on the fourth. Building a social media audience is no different. You must be patient and keep at it. Gaining an audience is slow in the beginning, but it builds over time.

More followers aren’t necessarily quality followers, though. Would you like to have 50,000 followers for the sake of sheer numbers? Or would you like to have genuine connections with 5,000 followers?

You can start the ball rolling by:

• Creating an engaging bio
• Sharing with your audience
• Posting consistently

Social media channels are plentiful and ideal for expanding your health coaching business.

Best Social Media Channels for Health Coaches

As a health coach, you can promote your business on several social media channels, including:

• Facebook – The Goliath of social media platforms, Facebook users post messages, videos, and photos. Its sheer volume of traffic makes Facebook prime real estate for marketing.

• Twitter – Second-in-command to Facebook is Twitter. With succinct, 280-character tweets, Twitter has the immediacy of real-time communication.

• Pinterest – Pinterest is an online bulletin board that allows users to “pin” images for anything from recipes to home remodeling. It can also be a great source for backlinking.

• Instagram – Instagram is a photo and video sharing app. With strategic marketing, you can use Instagram to increase sales and brand familiarity.

• Snapchat – Snapchat allows you to send videos or images (“snaps”) that disappear after one to 10 seconds. This impermanence is ideal for your business because audiences hunger for new content.

It’s best to narrow your focus to one social media platform when starting out, ideally Facebook or Pinterest rather than Instagram or Snapchat, due to age demographics.

Sixty-three percent of Instagram’s users are between 18 to 34 and Snapchat reaches 90 percent of 13 to 24-year-olds in the United States. In contrast, 79 percent of Facebook users are between 30 and 49 years old.

As of 2017, Facebook has more users than the combined populations of the United States, China, and Brazil. This means any ads you post will be substantially more effective on Facebook than any other platform.

Forty-one percent of Pinterest users have a household income of $75K or more, and thus have a substantial amount of money to spend. Moreover, eighty percent of Pinterest users are women, making Pinterest a great resource for you since most health coaching clients are female.

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Let’s now take a closer look at the two best social media platforms for health coaches: Facebook and Pinterest. First up, Facebook, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the social media world…

Facebook Marketing Tips for Health Coaches

Facebook can be a very useful addition to your marketing toolbox, with three features, in particular, that may benefit your health-coaching business:

Facebook Pages

A Facebook business page helps people learn about you and your company. You can create an effective page for your coaching business in the following ways:

Create a Business Page (Not a Personal Profile)

Using a personal profile commercially is a serious violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service. If you do, Facebook may delete your account.

Create a Vanity URL

A vanity URL is a long URL that’s been converted into a customized short link. Its brevity helps users remember it and find your page. An imaginary vanity URL could be:

healthcoach.com/supplements

vs. the long version:

https://healthcoach.com/pages/landing/get-supplements?utm_content=site&source?button-blank/website&utm?special_sale/no_one_on_Facebook_is_going_to_read_this_mess

Add a Great Cover Photo

The Facebook cover photo is the horizontal photo located at the top of your page. Generally speaking, the simpler it is, the better it’ll convert.

Add a Recognizable Profile Picture

A high-quality, recognizable headshot will help people find and like you (it should be 180 x 180 pixels). A top-notch photo is important because it’ll be displayed in:

• Followers’ news feeds
• Timeline’s cover photo
• Timeline’s posts
• Comments

Optimize the About Section (Especially the Preview)

The About section of your Facebook page is one of the first things people will explore to learn about you. It provides an overview of what your business is all about.

Links, natural-sounding keywords, and detailed information about yourself in the About preview will boost search engine results. It will also help visitors get better acquainted with you.

Earn the “Very Responsive to Messages” Badge

If you answer Facebook messages quickly and regularly, you can earn their “Very Responsive to Messages” badge, which represents that your response rate is:

• 90 percent
• 15 minutes for the past week

The badge tells people you respond with the high speed that’s now expected on the internet.

Choose a Call-to-Action Button

Facebook provides CTA buttons, including:

• Contact us
• Book now
• Watch video

The button can link to your website. You can regularly swap out call-to-action buttons to add variety to your page.

Post Videos (Especially Live Videos)

Eight billion videos are watched on Facebook every day, which translates into 100 million hours. This illustrates the need for posting videos.

You can also use a feature called Facebook Live to offer live videos. On average, people spend three times longer watching a Facebook Live video than any other.

What can you do to make a successful live video?

• Write a powerful description
• Tell people when you’re broadcasting
• Go live often

Use Facebook Insights

Insights is an analytics tool that measures your page’s performance. These analytics provide insights into everything from communicating with visitors to building brand awareness.

Facebook Insights also tracks your competition’s posts and engagement to give you a leg up. Insights also calculate metrics, such as the best day of the week and the best time of day for posting.

Facebook Ads

There are 2.38 billion reasons why you should advertise on Facebook, the number of users that visit Facebook every month. No doubt, Facebook is fertile ground for advertising your health coaching business.

Another effective form of advertising is a boosted post, which is a post you’ve paid for – “boosted” – so it posts high on audience feeds. Boosted posts can be used along with Facebook ads or as an alternative to them.

If these posts aren’t sized correctly, though, they’ll miss the mark. The ideal post upload image is 1,200 x 630 pixels, which will display as 470 pixels on a Facebook feed and as 504 pixels on a Facebook page.

To deepen your knowledge of Facebook advertising, you may want to consider taking a reputable Udemy Facebook online marketing course called, “Facebook Ads and Facebook Marketing Mastery.” The lessons include:

• In-depth analysis of Facebook ads
• Facebook pixel implementation
• A/B split testing 101

Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are a great way to share information and ideas, which can help foster professional connections and grow your health coaching business. To get started, simply do a Facebook search to find groups you like.

Facebook allows you to join up to 6,000 groups (not that you’d be able to join that many in one lifetime), so only join the most relevant ones. There are three types of groups:

• Public – These are open to anyone.
• Closed – These show on Facebook searches. New members must be approved.
• Secret – These don’t show on Facebook searches, and new members must be approved.

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Let’s now move on to Pinterest, which, demographically speaking, is a close second to Facebook for your marketing tactics…

Pinterest Marketing Tips for Health Coaches

Here are the best ways to get the most out of Pinterest for your marketing needs:

Use Keywords Everywhere

More than a social site, Pinterest is a search engine, which makes keywords – the main term(s) that describes your content – super important. Users search for boards, pins, and pinners by keywords, so you’ll want to sprinkle an ample amount in your descriptions, boards, and profile (around 20 to 30 keywords per pin).

As of 2016, Pinterest broke the 2 billion monthly searches mark. This makes keywords particularly important for snagging Pinterest shoppers, a demographic that spends an average of $58.95 while surfing their feeds (more than people spend on Facebook or Twitter).

Research Related Keywords

A term similar to your main keyword(s), a related keyword gives search engines detailed information for more accurate classification and ranking.

There are also semantically-related keywords that are abstractly-related. For example, some semantically-related words to “cook spaghetti” could be:

• Colander
• Garlic
• Meatballs

Semantically-related keywords refine searches and provide more accurate results.

Use Broad and Specific Keywords

It’s important to mix up the type of keywords used in paid promotional pins. Your ads can more thoroughly reach your audience if you blend short- and long-tail keywords:

• Short-tail keywords – Three words or less, short-tail keywords are broad terms, such as “weight lifting.”

• Long-tail keywords – Three or more words, long-tail keywords are specific, such as “weight lifting for women over 60.”

Use Tall Images

Pinterest is far more visually-oriented than content-based, making the platform different than other social media sites. While Pinterest automatically adjusts your photos’ width, you can adjust their height.

In most cases, tall pins draw more attention and generate better results. Pinterest recommends a 2:3 aspect ratio for tall images, which means that your image’s width is two-thirds of its height. Other ratios may cause an incorrect display.

Include Text Overlay on Images

A text overlay is text superimposed over an image. You can add a text overlay by:

• Placing text on the image
• Inserting a transparent shape overlaid with text
• Blurring the image underneath the text

Create Long Descriptions

While the image is the dominant part of a pin, descriptions give you a chance to elaborate and offer a reason(s) why people should click it. In 2018, Pinterest increased descriptions to a 500-character limit.

Use Calls-to-Action in Pin Descriptions

Calls-to-action (CTA) are just as important on Pinterest as on other social platforms. Persuasive CTAs like these compel visitors to take action:

• Learn More
• Repin This
• Buy Now

Explore Pinterest’s Analytics

Familiarizing yourself with Pinterest’s analytics helps you learn about your audience and content performance. These factors let you tweak your social media tactics for better outcomes.

Pinterest’s analytics measures data, such as:

• Repins
• Clicks
• Top Pins

Pinterest can be instrumental in drawing customers to your products and services. Incredibly, 66 percent of Pinterest users buy a product after seeing a brand’s pins, so it pays to have your strategy monitored.

Run a Pinterest Contest

Pinterest pins are 100 times more viral than tweets, and the half-life of a pin is 16,000 times longer than a Facebook post. That’s why Pinterest contests shine for increasing leads and followers. You can run a successful contest by:

• Making it easy to enter
• Making it eye-catching
• Having a tempting prize

Join Pinterest Group Boards

Pinterest users organize their images into personal groups called boards. Since pins are visible to the board owner’s followers, using boards can skyrocket your Pinterest’s reach.

You’ll need to be strategic about joining relevant Pinterest boards. One of the best ways to find a group that matches your needs is through PinGroupie, a Pinterest board directory. All you do is search for your niche’s keywords, and PinGroupie will find matching group boards.

After you’ve used PinGroupie to filter potential boards, there are three ways you can join:

• Get to know the board’s creator – Form a relationship by pinning their pins, commenting on them, and leaving comments on their blog.

• Request an invitation – Send an email to the board owner, requesting an invite. You’ll want to give a good reason why you want to join, so your request doesn’t look spammy.

• From an invitation – You may receive unsolicited invitations in your Pinterest inbox. Before you accept, dig around to find out if it seems like a credible board.

Want to learn more about marketing on Pinterest? A popular online Udemy course worth checking out is called “Pinterest Marketing Edge.” Some of the things you’ll learn include:

• Running paid ads
• Business contests
• Knowing what to pin

Conclusion

Social media is no longer an idle pastime but a mandatory business tool. It’s important to use social media for health coaches to powerfully optimize your marketing and grow your business. In fact, it’s almost impossible to find a successful health coaching brand that isn’t active on social media. You should be one of them!

So, what are your thoughts about using social media for health coaches? Leave your questions and comments below!

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