How to Choose the Right Social Platform for Your Coaching Business

This week, Emily Merrell and Lexie Smith chat about choosing the right social media platform to market your coaching business. They talk about different social platforms they’ve utilized in their businesses, how they track growth metrics, and the main things to consider when selecting where to put your efforts when launching and growing your coaching business.

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

• The different types of social media platforms that you can market your coaching business on
• How to know where your ideal clients are hanging out on social media
• How to measure your growth across different social platforms
• What to consider when deciding which social platforms to invest your time in
• Learn how to leverage your personal strengths to grow your coaching business authentically on social media
• And more! 

Follow Em & Lex on Instagram at @readysetcoachprogram

Learn more about the Ready Set Coach Program at Readysetcoachprogram.com

Learn more about Six Degrees Society and THEPRBAR inc.

Transcript

Lexie Smith  00:49

Hi, Emily Merrill.

Emily Merrell  00:52

Can I I'm sorry, I'm gonna brag for a second. I just got the nice. We got off. I hosted an office hours today for ReadySet. Coach. Yes. And one of the one of the participants shout out to Julie. She said, I almost fall asleep to you every night you in lax in my ears. And that just meant so much

Lexie Smith  01:13

to me that she has nightmares. Is that what she said? No, no,

Emily Merrell  01:17

in her ears and her ears. She was like, oh, you know, even on my runs. I'll listen to you guys. And hearing things like that. And I don't know if you feel the same way Lex like, again, when we talk guys. We have no idea who's listening. We don't know. i We don't know where you're listening. We don't know how you're consuming this. But it means so much to us, especially to get comments and feedback like that.

Lexie Smith  01:40

I think it blows my mind to this day that there are people that we know, yeah, but tons of strangers out in the world who are listening to us. You know, it's funny, Emily popped on popped me into the office hour at the tail end. And she was asking the girls in the group like, what should we record a podcast on today? And this is the podcast, by the way, one real time conversation. And I pop in and Julie goes. She says something to the effect of Oh, well. I was listening to the one that Lexi was not in Emma's minisode. I'm like, okay, great. So your favorite episodes, the one where I was not in it? Not what she said.

Emily Merrell  02:20

But yeah, no, it is it is funny. Yeah, it's just so cool to like, hear feedback. And then also a lot of the ways that we get inspiration for our podcast are through real life conversations we're having with our real life in the moment ReadySet coach, cohort members, they're telling us what they want to hear. They're not only getting us in office hours are not only getting us with one on one coaching, they're getting modules from us. But then we're in real time creating podcasts based on the problems that they they have. And we're trying to figure out how to solve them.

Lexie Smith  02:54

So basically, if you've seen Wedding Crashers where the girls that are like, Oh,

Emily Merrell  03:02

you will find you we are everywhere.

Lexie Smith  03:04

This all in this conversation inspired what we're going to talk about today, because basically to backtrack for a second, when you're on a podcast, whether you have one or not, you're talking into this mic, you're talking to the camera and you're like, Gee, is anyone actually hearing me? And this same feeling the same sentiment is something that so many people so many coaches we work with, even ourselves sometimes wonder on social media, we put in all this work, we write all these what we think are awesome captions. You're Lexie Smith and you take two hours to create one reel. And then wonder, is anyone actually consuming these dang things? Right.

Emily Merrell  03:43

Such a good question. And here's the thing that I get the most annoyed about y'all. I'd be like Lexie, I just posted the funniest fill in the blank story. Real post? Did you see it? And Lexi? Is my work wife like Lexi is basically my shared brain at this point. And she's like, No, I didn't see it, either. Like you're not being served in the algorithm, or I'm not searching for you. And I'm like, Oh, cool. Cool.

Lexie Smith  04:10

Literally, actually, Emily probably asked me multiple times a week if I've seen her. Can you see my post this morning? I'm like, No, I'm sorry.

Emily Merrell  04:21

Because I think I'm funny and so you are funny.

Lexie Smith  04:23

You're funny. I enjoy your humor. You are my friend. Um, so we're talking about

Emily Merrell  04:32

send you your payment yet this?

Lexie Smith  04:34

Your mom? Yeah, I didn't get that I need to call your mom. They actually had to go in on it because it was that expensive amount of payment. But today we're talking about how to select the right social media platform to market your coaching business.

Emily Merrell  04:54

So Lex, I have a question for you since you started your business a little after I did. Did You have a social media for the PR bar right out of the gate? I did. And did you have a strategy for the PR bar right out of the gate?

Lexie Smith  05:09

Yes and no. So the origins of the PR bar, I had the idea for the name, before I knew I was going to become a full time entrepreneur. So I did what I actually coach a lot of people do to do is claim the name and claim the handle, I put up a splash page of some logo I designed on a random Tuesday or Sunday goes. And prior about a year prior to actually deciding to do the damn thing. I was posting educational resources on Instagram. So I didn't really have a strategy. It was kind of a passion project. My first social strategy ended up being turned on on Facebook, which we can go on, go into in a little bit. But what about you, your overview?

Emily Merrell  05:54

Well, I love that you said that you are giving informational and informational information. I love that you're giving an informational tidbits I always like to think and reference. Bumble. Bumble did a really great job on Instagram right out of the gate. I didn't know what Bumble was. I didn't know what they were selling. But I wanted to follow them because you were so freakin funny. They had these incredible memes and that were so shareable that I just follow them for the memes. And I would share them with my friends, which probably made them follow him. And so like whatever their strategy was, was just make it really sticky and easy to say yes to following this account. My strategy for six degrees was not a strategy at all. i If you scroll all the way back to 2014, I think yeah, I started so before six degrees was six degrees society, it was called City society. And this was the time and like filters were a thing and you'd have Sephia little outline.

Lexie Smith  06:53

You know exactly what I'm

Emily Merrell  06:54

talking about could do a whole array looking. So I would host

Lexie Smith  07:00

Lo Fi so fi low if there was low fi

Emily Merrell  07:03

low fi Yeah, exactly. I would post one picture a month, maybe I think I had by the time I quit my job and decided to make study society into six degrees society, I think I had like 300 Instagram followers. So I wasn't doing it because I had a raving audience full of Instagram people. But as time went on, I, I tracked my Instagram through KPIs, and that was one of the most fun things to do was to track it. And to see the month over month or week over week growth. So if you're not familiar with a KPI means key performance indicator, and it's setting the metric for yourself and just being able to look at the data and see what do a little bit of analysis like, oh, I hosted an event this week, I got 30 new followers, and understand why things are changing. The thing that really helped me grow my social media, and then we'll go into this. So I'm jumping ahead. I did giveaways, I did a shit ton of giveaways. I'm gonna stop there. Sorry,

Lexie Smith  08:07

I just, I can see you like being harshly traumatized by knowing that I'm gonna pause you and make you know.

Emily Merrell  08:17

Sorry, I don't know why I just I just like I just saw like my KPIs pop in front of me. And then the numbers change. Okay, here we go. This

Lexie Smith  08:24

is wonderful. This is why we make such a great marriage because this relationship that we have, okay, so here, here's the question that Emily and I get asked 500 times a day, which social media platform should I be on? For my coaching business? So let's start there. How do you go about circa this recording 2023, selecting the air quotes, right? And by the way, if you're watching YouTube, you can see the air quotes

Emily Merrell  08:56

are seven or seven viewers are gonna love.

Lexie Smith  09:00

My mom's like one, your mom's another one anyway. I don't

Emily Merrell  09:03

know where YouTube is.

Lexie Smith  09:07

Yeah. Okay. So I have lots of thoughts. But I'm going to toss the question to you. First, Emily, I'm going to give you the first stage.

Emily Merrell  09:14

So how do you decide which platform is right for you? Well, you know, Lex, in all honesty, I think we talk a lot about this. We go back and forth on like, pick one platform and you do it. Well. Yes. And also, once you've done one platform, well, you can also do another platform well, too. So just because you're on one platform doesn't mean that you're exclusive to this platform. Now we're going into polyamory of polyamory of social media BC basically all but I started off with Instagram. So I think the first thing that you should do is figure out where do your clients hang out? Are your clients high net worth individuals who are workaholics and you're a health coach who's focused on helping people will heal their IBS due to chronic stress and 72 hour workweeks. LinkedIn might be your ideal platform. Are you more geared to stay at home moms who are passionate about building gardens and baking sourdough bread from starters, Instagram might be a better place for you.

Lexie Smith  10:26

So it was specific.

Emily Merrell  10:30

A lot of like really cool Instagrams on that what I do well on a farm site said no, anyways, um, so just figuring out where it is your person literally hanging out, maybe that mom that I just referenced and hangs out on Pinterest like Pinterest might be a really good platform and, and a lot of times when we think of social media, I think we we do ourselves a disservice. And only think about Instagram as the exclusive only place to be. Same thing, same question I'll ask you to do your are your people Gen Z and do they speak this different language and they like to do dances and funny videos and they spend their hours on Tik Tok? So figuring out where they're hanging out is their first thing.

Lexie Smith  11:11

Lex was also I have to say something I don't know, dates us. Because you said the statement that we all only think of Instagram, I just did a podcast for the PR bar pitching and sipping is what that shows called. And I had a gal who she launched a PR agency at the 24th She's a Gen Z. And she's like, literally we it's Tik Tok, like anyone who says Instagram, like no one in her generation at all. Thinks of Instagram. So you and I saying that? I think that's really timestamping our age? Because my mom, you know, every generation Facebook. Yeah, right.

Emily Merrell  11:53

So and that's another thing. You're absolutely right. Like it. Facebook was the mecca for so long. Like I think if you look at the number of communities that have been built on Facebook, or Facebook pages or whatnot, like that was the number one thing you were told to do is follow me and friend me on Facebook. And now Facebook is like my Gmail, my personal Gmail, it's just like a placeholder for a lot of junk email. It's like it's not it's not being strategized. So great point. I love that.

Lexie Smith  12:21

So I think Emily commented on the first great question to ask yourself when you're coming from it from a strategy standpoint, where are your people hanging out? Right? So that's part of it. The other thing that I've seen that we've seen that I like to mirror or yeah, we're that strategy with is recognizing who you are as a coach. So in order for social media, okay, backpedal. You can be successful on any social platform, you can fill your coaching calendar from tick tock from Instagram, from Twitter, from LinkedIn, from insert, all the places all of them work, the key ingredient is showing up consistently and it being conducive to you and your people. So let's say you are a business coach, and you're going after millennial woman, there might be a few platforms that you could activate, have a heart to heart with yourself and say, which platform can i And will I genuinely show up to day in and day out? Because that is one of the biggest keys you could say Sure I'll do tick tock but if you really aren't going to consistently be on tick tock and it's just gonna fall flat. So I think there's there's the strategy but mirroring and also with a commitment and knowing yourself well enough. If you're a writer, for example, and you hate graphics, and you don't want to be on video, maybe LinkedIn is your platform because that lends itself to a lot more text base type posting, whereas if you're gonna go activate tick tock, there's an element of video and if you're someone who hates video then even if tick tock is strategic, maybe it's not the right choice for you.

Emily Merrell  14:23

Lex how can people find out how to work

Lexie Smith  14:25

with us? Super simple go to ReadySet Coach program.com and you can show knows

Emily Merrell  14:33

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And that we hear a lot of I in my minisode but you know, everyone thought was the best episode so far. They like like, spiraling out. I think one of the biggest one of the I know one of the biggest challenges people have and I I said this in the minute minisode this feeling of like, well, I hate showing my face Sir, well, I, I'm so embarrassed to show up in that capacity or like, oh, I don't know what I would even say. And we've probably said this in about seven of our episodes, but I'm gonna reiterate it that a lot of times these platforms, which we feel like we have to be performative, or we have to be, we have to be selling all the time. I think that's like the biggest takeaway, like, Oh, I hate selling, I don't want to use my Instagram to sell everyone's I love that there's always this word, everyone, everyone's gonna judge me, everyone is going to think like, What the heck is she doing? Who does she think she is for selling dah dah, dah, dah do all of these false narratives that we tell ourselves, which I 1,000% had, I was so terrified to post the first time or ask or something of my audience, I had this invisible little jury out there that was just judging me for what I was putting out. But the lesson I'm trying to convey is that I think these platforms can also be utilized very much to Lexie strategy when she launched the PR bar. Instead of you feeling like you were selling and you were just dancing all the time. You could be offering value. You could be educating someone you could also, what if you gave someone exactly what they needed? Because your post hit them at the exact

Lexie Smith  16:22

right time? Well, I think to what we often forget is the actual name of social media being social. It's a platform to cultivate community. It's a platform to engage. It's a platform to be social. It's a platform to show up in service. One of my biggest pet peeves currently because I have many maybe it's asleep sleep deprivation stage of my life is long as the stage happening by the way, the rest of forever. Um, once you send teething, maybe I don't know she's girl is partying right now it is. Okay, I digress. So really get back in when people tell you and I, I almost would bet money on everyone listening to this show. If you're in the coaching space, which I assume you are, you have seen an ad or you have seen someone telling you that X platform is the platform, the platform, you need to be on the platform that works. This is the platform that everyone's making money. I'm not saying they're wrong, but they're not painting the full picture. And I think a great example is Emily recently just decided to double down on a different platform than she usually doubles down on. And she's showing up consistently. And I'm teeing you up to share this story now. Well,

Emily Merrell  17:45

I want to start with a shout out if you guys do want LinkedIn support and help to Molly Godfrey, she slipped into my my Instagram, DMS and was like Emily Merrill, you are leaving so much money on the table with LinkedIn. And I was like, Oh, God, iral. I'm being sold to blah, blah, blah. And I took that challenge as an invite to challenge myself. And so for the last 30 days, I've been posting pretty much three to five times a day on a diet. I've got a week on LinkedIn. And one of my favorite things about LinkedIn, which I didn't know they had this was save a scheduling tool. So I've been pre writing and pre batching all of my LinkedIn posts. And I've been really, what actually helped me to like create the content was sitting down with someone who I've worked with it. She's been a client before. She's a member of six degrees. And I was like, What do you want to see more of or what are you curious about from me? And she like, rambled off a whole bunch of things. I was like, Okay, this was a great starting point. So from that, that conversation, I batched out a month worth of content. And I guys I have I'm a connector, I'm a people collector, I have 6000 connections on LinkedIn. And in the first two weeks, my impressions went up 4000. And I was getting eyeballs. And I was showing up in people's feeds that were vacant for a very long time. And from that this, I'll make the story Long story short, I posted about my podcast, I never, I never talked about our other podcast, my other podcast, the sixth degree with Emily Merrill. And this girl saw my post about the podcast, she listened to the podcast. From the podcast, she booked I booked an appointment with one of the coaches on the podcast, she booked a call with me after the call, she became my client. And all of this was because I took a chance on being consistent. So now I'm really excited about LinkedIn. It's proving to me that like I am visible I am showing up in exactly the right fields that I want to be showing up to. And while again, sometimes it feels like I am screaming into a void that no one is paying attention to. I'm really grateful for giving myself the shot to be there. So I'll also be candid with you, I scheduled my posts out on later.com. And later started initially gave us 30 Free posts per month on later than it was 10 Free posts to the pre schedule. Now it's five. And if anything, it's making me deprioritize Instagram, and hang out that much more and engage that much more with people on LinkedIn.

Lexie Smith  20:23

You can schedule directly through Instagram. No, no. Yep. What? Yeah, thing No, go to Advanced Settings. I'll show you later guys, you can schedule I they basically Instagram just put later I don't know later is probably candy cane. I feel bad for their PR team. The lesson that I want everyone to hear from this is it's not LinkedIn. It's not Instagram. It's not tick tock. It's not Pinterest. It's you. It's you. It's the problem. It's me. But it's you. It's showing up it's committing to a platform. And committing to getting messy and committing to trial and error and committing to getting to know that platform. LinkedIn works great. Instagram works great, tick tock, they all work great. If you show up and show up fully, and you show consistently and you show up authentically. And you don't just also treat it as a one way relationship. Yeah, it's also taking time, time blocking time in your day, 10 minutes, five minutes to go through and engage and interact. And don't forget that social part of social media.

Emily Merrell  21:31

Lex, how do you how do you recommend engaging? Is it commenting on posts depends

Lexie Smith  21:37

on the platform. But I think again, that's where once you choose your platform, you have to get to know what makes that platform tick at a given in a given season. And this is also the frustrating part about social media is how quickly they're always updating their features and algorithms. It can be hard to keep a pulse on all of them. But let's say you decide to double down we'll continue with LinkedIn. And you for LinkedIn. What is engagement gauging look like it? Yeah, it looks like actually liking commenting, interacting on other people's posts, not just your own. It's exploring different LinkedIn groups getting to know the features available are their LinkedIn events? Can you interact with people in the DMS getting to know all the cool and unique features? And, and just committing to it? And I would also

Emily Merrell  22:27

say with LinkedIn, I feel like they're always promoting upgrade to pro upgrade to pro upgrade to pro or like get a free trial. So I recently did the free trial for Pro. And it's been really cool to see the different stats like who's looking at my, my profile? How are people? Like what are the how do I say this? What are the stats of the views, the insights of the views? Who can I message I took advantage, I'm helping out with the summit for my alma mater and like speak with LinkedIn Pro, I was able to message so many people within mail that I otherwise wouldn't have done to invite them to the summit. And you know, so there's certain perks, so turning things on, and certain times and seasons of your life might make sense for you.

Lexie Smith  23:12

Yeah, great point, you can turn it off too. So like, you know, budgetarily, like, I'm gonna go hard for my group program for the next three months. So for the next three months, I'm going to invest in a premium subscription. That's really smart. The other thing I want to share is if you're you're listening to this, and you're like, oh, hate social, you can have success as a coach if you're not on social media, but you're going to have to equally commit and show up to a different tactic that could be pounding the pavement hard at in person networking events in your city. And if that's the case, and that's where your pool of clientele will come from. Do you have to be on social media? You don't have to? I think it's a free and amazing tool. That why wouldn't you use and I think your your job can be a little bit harder if you aren't using it. But there's more than one ways to for I have said this example, like 20 times this week. I'm I've literally I'm annoying myself, you can get to four by going one plus one plus one plus one or two times two or five minus one. There isn't one answer. It's not a one size fits all approach. But social media is such a huge, huge opportunity for those of us running virtual online businesses.

Emily Merrell  24:37

Yes, and when social media we didn't talk about and I think it's not for everyone, but I think it's for a lot of people and we forget to activate it. But as Twitter. Oh, I'm

Lexie Smith  24:49

on it. That's my main

Emily Merrell  24:49

social platform. And that's your main social platform and

Lexie Smith  24:52

why are you on it lacks I am on Twitter because for my PR world that is where journalists are the It is period blank underscore where journalists hang out. So in terms of, you know, this isn't necessarily applicable to me finding coaching clients, but it's keeping me abreast with what's going on in the world of PR. It's allowing me to network with journalists, it's having me keep a pulse on what's going on for news, journalists, share press requests all the time. But there are people there, believe it or not, Twitter still very much a thing. So if Twitter is conducive, like a place you think you could show up on consistently, then that might be the right social platform for you to for you to try out.

Emily Merrell  25:39

Yeah, and I have, I have a client who is into web three, and she is in to NF TS AI web three and like, Twitter is where it is for her. Instagram doesn't no one understands web three on Instagram, but like it, they're all hanging out on Twitter, all of the people who are activating and innovating are on Twitter. So the next you know, I love to see you assign some homework, what is the homework going to be this week,

Lexie Smith  26:08

give you some reflection questions and just going to recap what they were from, from the session today from the session today from the show today. Question number one, where are your people hanging out? Okay. Question two. What are they hanging out there for? So if you identify they're on LinkedIn, what are they on LinkedIn for? Okay. And question three, realistically, where can you and where will you show up to commit?

Emily Merrell  26:37

Hmm, that's a great, great thing to think about. And you're so you're so welcome Lex. And as always, you know, shoot us a note, shoot us a DM shoot us a LinkedIn connect message if we're not connected on LinkedIn, at us on LinkedIn. But we want to hear from you what resonated with you on today's episode. Anything else you want to see on future episodes,

Lexie Smith  27:03

and we love Instagram too. We like Instagram, so connect with us there. And that's what we wanted to talk about today. Until next time.

Emily Merrell  27:18

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