Even with a decade-long career, some teachers and instructors can’t seem to fill a group of just 50 people. It’s not that the educators are necessarily bad instructors; good instruction isn’t usually obvious, and many don’t even know they need it.
Start with one place and one behavior
The way to grow a following online for a coach is to commit to one site. Too many people want to post all the time to all platforms to stay consistent on each one, and the result is that they fall off all of them. Educators who grow a following start by picking one platform their audience already uses. They create a consistent schedule, which they then follow through with for a number of months (not 5 months).
Email should be your other go-to channel. Education is known for having high average email open rates of 28.5%, the highest in any industry, and 55% of people said they prefer email to texts. Send out a weekly email sharing something useful with one idea each week, which helps more for the coach’s business and a month’s worth of posting on all the socials put together. Don’t forget to add your email signup link in your bios, video descriptions, and in your email signature.
Use short video content for discovery, then buy it for reach
Many teachers will first meet their online followers through short form video. It’s better to put together a two minute clip discussing a question someone might ask, like what’s a good warm up routine to not get burned out on, then you’ll get more reach than putting out a full lecture. The point isn’t to cover all the information, it’s to prove that you can do it and leave the student wanting to know more.
Post the same videos for both Instagram and TikTok, and you have more reach than if you were on only one platform. Comment on other people’s posts too. You don’t have to make a video about two things, but a few videos in a week is better than one video a month. A coach or a teacher can also add paid reach in addition to organic content once they have built it up and have a good idea of what they will say in the video, like boosting some reels that have already done well organically. This can also help with promotion because it only works well if you already had something that worked. It won’t help if your content is not good.
Create four times as much content
Repurposing is key to keeping things on a reasonable workload. One lesson, or one presentation, can end up as a small clip on TikTok or Instagram, a blog post, email, and a download for an ecourse. You only have to make it once and then you can use it 4 different times.
Give it away for free and sell it for a price
Building trust takes the most time, and you can’t skip ahead with it. If someone wants to sign up for a coach or online course they want a free trial to make sure they like it. You’ll probably get them on board if you give away something they really want, like a free course, and they can keep their paid version. You can still make money though by not giving them some of the most useful things like guidance from a teacher, the framework you have to work with, and other things like feedback. You need to decide if the online material will help the person, or if you’re going to try something different.
The last piece of advice is to think of building an audience as a process. Choose one platform you will use for this purpose. Decide how often you will post something. Capture emails from the start. Make sure to send people somewhere they can receive updates from you and your work. If you do any of this for a whole year you will have an audience. Otherwise you’ll be just thinking about it.