In this weeks guest post, communications coach and social networking expert, Nicky Kriel shares how you can use your coaching skills when developing your social media strategy.

Using Coaching Questions to develop your Social Media Strategy

by Nicky Kriel

Are you using Social Media to help grow your Coaching Business? It is very easy to say you do Social Media as a business because you have a Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook account, but do you have a Social Media strategy? So many businesses rush into setting up accounts without looking at the bigger picture.

Have you thought what you want to achieve through Social Media and how you will know when you’ve achieved it? It is so important to start with the end in mind; otherwise, you could get caught up in the chat, or find it to be an endless, mindless, unmeasured chore.

As a coach, have you ever asked your clients the following questions?

• “What do you want?”
• “And what will that do for you?”
• “How will you know when you have achieved it?”

Have you thought of asking those questions to yourself about using Social Media for your business?

Here are some questions that will help you focus on what you want to get out of Social Media:

What’s the point?

1. Awareness?
2. Sales?
3. Loyalty?

Pick one! Your focus will be very different according to which one you choose. For most small businesses the point of doing Social Media will be to build Awareness. More awareness tends to drive sales.

Where do your customers hangout?

To answer this question you will need to have a clear idea of who your customers are. Which Social Media platform are they most likely to use? Just because you might be comfortable using Facebook doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be using LinkedIn if your business is predominantly business to business.

What’s your business about?

Forget having a few minutes to explain your business. Can you clearly state what your business is about in one sentence? The clearer you are about your business, the more customers you will attract. It is wonderful being warm and fuzzy as a coach, but if you can’t get your message across concisely, you will struggle to get new clients. On Social Media you have 120 characters on LinkedIn (The Headline) and 160 characters on Twitter (your Bio). People will make a decision whether or not to follow you or connect with you based on what you have written.

Do you have a list of keywords? It is worth spending a few minutes jotting down at least 10 words as your keywords. When you post updates or tweet are you using your keywords?

What’s your one Thing?

What makes you special? What is the one word that you would like to be associated with you? Disney has the word “Magic” and Volvo has “Safety”: So what word is yours? Are you consistently getting that message across on your website, in your bio and in your updates?

How will you know?

How will you know if you have been successful using Social Media?

What will you see? – (Will it be more visits to your website or more email enquiries?)

Hear? (Is it the phone ringing more often?)

Or feel? (Will it be the satisfaction of working with someone new?)

If you don’t know what success means to you, how will you know if you are wasting your time? If what you are currently doing on social media is not helping your business, you need to do something different. Start with the end in mind.

It is worth thinking about because Social Media can grow your business if you are focussed about using it.

About the author

Nicky Kriel, Guildford’s Social Media Queen, is passionate about empowering small business owners to use Social Media to grow their business. Her background is in Marketing and Sales and she is a Master NLP Practitioner.

As a Communication Coach, she helps people remember the “Social” aspect of Social Networking: It is not all about tools and technology, but about people and human relations.

Aside from her private coaching clients, she runs Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook workshops for business owners and bespoke courses for SMEs. Nicky really enjoys helping business owners to level the playing field by harnessing the power of social media.

You are welcome to follow Nicky on Twitter or like her “social media for newbies” Facebook page