This is a quick, no-nonsense, secret to getting more clients for your personal training business.  It’s not rocket science, nor difficult, and can provide a valuable stready stream of new clients, so what is it?

Social networks – the must have resource for personal trainers
A few years ago anyone suggesting using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and the professionals choice Linkedin to get clients for a personal training business would have been laughed out of their local gym. But with millions and millions of people now using these networks no one is laughing now.

“More than two fifths of UK companies are using
social networking sites to win new business”

In fact, these social networks are the hot news in marketing right now. A survey by office solutions company Regus found out that businesses in the UK are now spending a third of their marketing budgets towards social networking campaigns but you don’t need to spend anything to tap into this vertitable gold-mine and win valuable new leads and clients for your personal training business.

Don’t advertise, be yourself
Instead, the secret to getting these networks to work for you is not to follow the herd and use them as costly glorified advertising channels but use them as they were intended. Join up, interact and communicate. It’s as simple as that.

Don’t set up a Facebook fan page or plaster them with tweets updates about your latest two-for-one offers – this is probably exactly the wrong thing to do to get clients.

Rather, your goal is to focus on building personal relationships with potential clients and build up a network of potential and current clients by being yourself. The key is to remember that you people aren’t buying your company, they become your personal training clients because they’re buying YOU and your knowledge.

What to do
Focus on communicating your knowledge with friendly status updates , your experience and your personality.  At the same time, add value and demonstrate your knowledge and worth by mixing in regular tips and advice, with messages on subjects you know about, eg:

• New exercises to try,
• Nutional information,
• Health news etc.

In so doing, you give existing clients a reason to follow and interact with you which will then be seen by their friends and followers and so provide an opportunity to connect with hundreds, possibly thousands of new potential clients.

Key ways to get friends and followers
When first starting out, link up with people you know in your immediate area and existing clients.  You can then start to grow your following using the following techniques.

1. Search for facebook pages on local venues – pubs etc. Join and follow them. Other people, who by dint of the venues being local will also be mainly local, will find you.
2. Reach out to followers and friends of others. Send friend requests to friends of friends and fans of local pages. Do this only after you’ve built up a lot of useful status updates, these people will then check out your profile, hopefully find your status updates useful and accept your request.
3. Ask your existing clients to recommend you to their followers and friends on facebook and twitter.

Convert Followers to Clients
Once you’ve got a good following, keep repeating the above but occasionally – don’t over do it – write posts detailing offers to entice friends and followers who are not clients to try you out and watch your client list grow.

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