I have a question for you. What are you known for online?
It’s pretty inescapable that social media has a vital role to play in engaging with and attracting customers. Unfortunately this also means an amazing amount of trainers get really despondent or upset with ‘how things are’.
It’s easy to sit and write about how ‘likes, comments and shares’ don’t make money. On the other hand we all look for validation and signs that our content is appreciated. Therefore even the most rational minds would be a little disappointed if their efforts go unnoticed. This means the natural tendency is to start copying the methods of what seems popular, liked and engaging.
There is comfort in knowing that our efforts are seen.
But here-in lies the problem!
We know many people copy the biggest dude in the gym, or the Women with hot tushies on insta, and fail to realise that there is more than what they are seeing that goes in to getting the result they want. By copying what other people do online you can miss the bigger picture and actually end up in a worse place as a result.
Their approach might not appeal to your audience. You may not be able to pull it off in the same way as they do. It may create anomalies between what you say and do. It can cause a disconnect between how you seem online and how you are in person. Plus, the big one, it’s never just the stuff you see that creates the result. Of course the result you think they are getting may not even be true when you allow for the highlight real we are mostly privy too online.
The best approach is to answer this question….
What do you want to be known for?
Most of us want to be liked but we want to be known for doing a good job. For knowing our stuff and helping people get results in a realistic way.
There is an ever growing gap between people liking you, liking what you say, liking how you look or how you approach things and people liking how you do your job. The popularity game doesn’t translate to service businesses quite like you might think. (Popularity lends itself to single purchase products, influencer commissions, and endorsements but not recurring revenue as a general rule.)
Your efforts are much better placed in showing, quite literally, how you do your job. This will help persuade people that you offer a great service as well as being good at what you do. It is seeing how you do things, that will allow them to see how it can work for them too.
How do you do your job?
If you wrote down all of the great choices you helped your clients with on a daily basis and kept a decent journal, that would make content that allows people to like you for how you work. Over time they can see how these choices lead to great outcomes. This allows people to like you because the choices you make have meaningful impact. While before and after pictures will always be impactful, most trainers miss the vital week by week context of how the progress actually happened.
When presenting yourself online in this context the difficult thing is accepting that you will get less ‘popularity points’ but you will, especially if the client supports the posts, get relevant reach and audience building from people who like what you do for people, the way you do it, and can make that relevant to them.
So, if you want to be liked for who you are, play the popularity game but know that it absolutely doesn’t mean people will value you for how you make your money or sign up to your service as a result.
If you want to be liked for what you do, and how you do it, start by showing people exactly what that looks like.
You just then need to decide on what it is you really want…
Chris covers this in more detail in his Marketing course as well as his Consumer Psychology and Fitness and the Consumer webinars which are available for LTB members. Not a member? Sign up to our trial here.