I spoke last week about not using your social media as a one way loudspeaker. People often think Twitter might be like that, but it’s the opposite. Trying to grow a base of followers is almost impossible if you just bombard them with sales messages. As a two way street it can be great.
For mass reach and getting your word out there, Facebook is much better especially for low cost and one off services. Twitter however, gives good opportunities for more personalised efforts as long as the time and effort involved is worth that investment.
Twitter is the listener’s social media. One where you put in time to notice what other people are saying and then offer solutions. Let me give you an example:
If you want to find local business coaching opportunities, do some searching and make a list of local businesses. Next, check their websites for which of them use twitter. Search directly on twitter for them as well. Follow them. Use the time you devote to growing your coaching business to check what they are saying. Small to medium businesses are more likely to vent and ask questions on twitter. This is an opportunity. If they have a question or problem, can you offer some advice to help? If so help out and don’t try and sell your service. Offer some direct advice, or a link to a how-to video on YouTube, or link an article that helps. Show your knowledge and skill and be helpful. Keep building this piece by piece as you go, you don’t have to do it all at once.
When that person needs coaching, you will already be on their mind. The odds are that if you help them they will follow your twitter account and that allows you to put your message in front of them from time to time, all in a non-threatening, gentle, helpful way, which might even let them realise they do need coaching. You can do the same thing on other social media, but Twitter’s 140 character message limit makes it an easy place for this to work for both the person in need and the coach to help.
The worst case scenario is that you help someone out for free and accidentally make the world a better place. Do that often enough and what you end up with is a good reputation and a pool of businesses who know where to find you and are aware of your expertise and skills. That is a win / win that will convert to extra opportunity for you to help people one to one as coaching clients.