So a couple of days ago, Facebook went down #Facebookdown. The largest social network was out of action for almost 30 minutes. Kinda funny right? Twitter went crazy, media agencies were reporting about it, anyone would have thought it was an apocalyptic event!

All we could see was a message that said. Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.

What’s truly funny – I got an email from a client asking me what happened to Facebook and when I read it, I actually laughed out loud. I might know the ins and outs of how to generate clients using Facebook – but I had no idea why the social network went down (and I’m sure it will be kept a widely guarded secret at Facebook HQ).

What did cross my mind though is, what if Facebook went down for good? Is my business protected and are my clients protected? And it’s not just the fact that Facebook might go down that’s a cause for concern; it’s also the fact that Facebook keep changing the rules.

Have you noticed that you’re not reaching as many people on Facebook now because Facebook changed the rules and made your organic reach go down?

I know, it’s super annoying.

In this article I want to show you how to protect your fitness business and generate more leads and clients at the same time. So it’s going to be a win, win all round. I’ll cover as much as I can in this article and then at the end, I’m going to show you where to go to get more help if you want it. Is that okay? Yes? Awesome.

So many of you spend a lot of time communicating with your audience on Facebook. You’re there to encourage them to reach their health and fitness goals. You’ve spent hours creating Facebook posts, putting up images of your clients results and creating an environment which provides unconditional support.

But what happened if it was gone in an instant? Now, the likelihood of Facebook shutting down is pretty much slim to none. But what happens if the social media platform isn’t all that popular 12 months from now? Or Facebook changes the rules (which is only going to make things harder over the coming months) and it makes it harder and harder for you to reach your fans, who you’ve already worked so hard to get to your page?

Now I want to make one thing very clear. Facebook is an absolute gold mine for fitness professionals. It’s a way to build relationships, establish yourself as an expert and to generate leads and clients into your fitness business and it will be for many years to come. If you’re not on Facebook then I highly encourage you to get on there because so many people are having such incredible success using this platform.

This article is purely showing you how to turn your successful Facebook page into something more, and to protect yourself in the future. No matter what you do in business, you should always have control over your marketing platforms and I want to show you how to do this!

So, how can you help to protect yourself and your fitness business?

Get your fans to become a lead outside of Facebook. This is where the lead and client generation actually happens. You can do this 2 ways. Either through creating and sharing great content on your existing page or investing in Facebook advertising (this method is seriously paying off for a lot of people in the fitness industry).

You want to encourage your fans to visit a link outside of Facebook. This might be a page on your website or a Facebook app and have people opt into your list. Facebook apps are a fantastic way to collect leads without taking your fans outside of Facebook.

If you do link to a Facebook app or your website then you want to make sure you’re providing them with a really valuable offer. So it might be a contest that they can enter to win something, or a free ebook with heaps of great information– you want to create something that they will find really valuable (providing immense value is the key here).

This allows you to capture their email address and you can then create an email marketing campaign and begin to build relationships with your list.

Then, you can gradually introduce sales opportunities to them.

This means that not only are you now in control of your own email list and not at the mercy of Facebook, but it also provides you with a place where you can really build relationships with your fans and start turning those fans into clients.

(If you’re not too sure how to do this, I’ll show you towards the end of the article)

Email marketing is one of the best places to convert fans into clients. If you create engaging valuable content for your email list, then once they start consuming this great content then you can take the next step and get them to sign up and become clients. If you follow the strategy of “help now, sell later’, you’ll be able to build your relationship with your fans, build your reputation and you’ll find you’ll be able to sign up a lot more clients.

It’s super important that as a part of your strategy you are actually building your email list, rather than simply focusing on Facebook. Facebook is an amazing tool you can use to generate leads and clients – for now, but the time will come when it’s value is significantly diminished and you want to make sure you have control over your marketing efforts, rather than building up an asset in Facebook – and then losing that asset because Facebook popularity declines. So to protect yourself – start building your email list. As they say, ‘the money is in the list’.

I know sometimes it can seem a little bit daunting, setting up your Facebook page as well as an email database and figuring all of this stuff on your own.

So, I mentioned at the beginning of the article that I was going to show you where to go to get more help if you want it. So, if you’re looking for help on how to build your Facebook page and use it to generate leads and clients into your fitness business then checkout our training program – Getting Facebook Fit.

We created this training program specifically for fitness professionals to guide you step by step and show you how to use Facebook to build your fitness business. This program was designed for beginners as well as advanced users. We cover the basics and we also show you how to start using Facebook advertising to new clients if you want to invest in Facebook ads. Through our training program, we take you inside our Facebook page and show you exactly what we’re doing to get results. We show you how to build relationships with your fans and we break it down step by step and show you how to turn your fans into leads and leads into clients. We show you how to protect yourself when Facebook changes the rules and we show you exactly how to get fans onto your email list and how to get people eager to sign up to become a client.

If you want more information about our training program then click here now and I’ll explain it all to you.

Takeaways from this post;

  • Get your fans to become a lead outside of Facebook
  • Provide them with a really valuable offer to get them to opt in to your email list
  • Continue creating engaging valuable content for your email list
  • Follow the strategy “help now, sell later”
  • Use email to build relationships and your reputation and introduce them to your offer
  • Learn more about using Facebook to generate leads and clients right here.