I love having a full class of students. But first they need to know my class exists. I'm continuously frustrated with how poorly my own club promotes the Indoor Cycling classes we offer. Based on comments offering similar frustrations, I'm guessing that I'm not the only one.
So why not take a few minutes to do a little self-promotion?
The other day a received a request from an ICI/PRO member to join FourSquare, the social media site where you can check in, so other people know where to find you. Like Yelp, FourSquare acts as a search engine to find where there friends are, in the hope to meet up with them. You can also leave and read reviews there. I hadn't spent any time there so I decided to check it out to see what I could do with it to promote my class. At first I thought that only actual businesses could create a listing. Instead I discovered you can create a listing for anything that is an actual place, even if you don't technically own or manage the facility. I saw listings for specific seat rows at a concert, events in a local park and even a listing for a specific airline flight to Europe – maybe they were interested in who they would be sitting next to for eight hours.
In the name field I suggest; Your Name, Time/Date and theKey Words that describe your class.
In the address field; Club Name and address.
Then fill out the other fields – you may want to use the club's phone number.
Click save when completed.
You will then see your new listing. Check that the marker on the map is in the correct place. If it's not you can click and drag it to the proper location.
Now when anyone searches for a Spin class near Minnetonka, MN they will find:
Do you have an elevator pitch? Mine has changed several times — all necessary. But this post is actually about the emotions that sugar generates.
I began with a standard 30-second elevator pitch. Remember that version? It was the original length years ago, but now almost nobody will listen that long.
I shortened mine to 15 seconds.
Yet people went glassy-eyed when I said “psychoactive nutrition,” even though I immediately defined it as “how foods affect brain chemistry.”[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
Still, brain chemistry interested them, so I changed the pitch again. I started with ‘food and brain chemistry’ and left out ‘psychoactive nutrition.’
Then I heard great recommendations from speakers and marketing pros on the perfect pitch:
– Don’t explain your process, just the results.
– Keep it short.
– Avoid big words.
– Start with a question.
All sounded like good ideas. I re-crafted my pitch with a starting question and shortened it again — this time to 10 seconds.
“You know how people have diabetes, high blood pressure, or other medical problems they can’t fix because they’re stuck on sugar? Well, I help people conquer sugar addiction so they can transform their health and feel great.”
I could never finish it. Everyone would interrupt by the time I said “high blood pressure…”
“My father has both, and high cholesterol. What should he do?”
“My mother’s diabetic. Are you a doctor?”
One woman told me, “The second part interested me, but the first part didn’t.”
(Ironically enough, when I asked what she did, her answer took 45 complicated, boring seconds. I didn’t have the heart to challenge her critique of my 10-second pitch when hers was a remedy for insomnia. But I digress.)
I changed my pitch again and dropped the opening question.
“I help people conquer sugar addiction, so they can transform their health, feel better, lose their mood swings, and gain control of their eating.”
It’s 6 seconds long. And I can’t make it through the 6 seconds without being interrupted, right after ‘sugar addiction’:
“Oh, that’s so important!”
“That’s a big deal right now. Everyone’s addicted to sugar.”
“My daughter is addicted to sugar; it’s all she eats.”
“Sugar is more addictive than heroin. Don’t you agree?”
“Do you really believe it’s possible to be addicted to sugar?”
So — and I already knew this — it’s an emotional topic. If I can’t even get through a 6-second sentence, something is charging people up enough that they must speak then and there.
In past presentations, people have glowered at me when I’ve talked about the health problems linked with the granulated white stuff.
A man walked out during one talk because I answered his question that, yes, fruit is sugar.
While I was still working on my doctorate, fat was the go-to dietary demon. In a lecture I gave to fitness pros, I was discussing sugar as a factor in health issues. “I have the same degree you do,” an angry woman shouted [we had master’s degrees in exercise physiology], “and you don’t know what you’re talking about!”
With all of these food-related emotions, this past weekend was such a relief. A real estate agent asked what I do.
He gave me the full 6 seconds to finish my sentence and questioned, “Is there a market for that?”[/wlm_private]
Marketers have specific names for people, based on how quickly they purchase new products or embrace new technologies. The people who lined up, days in advance, to buy the first iPhones are described as innovators. Those of us who waited a few weeks for our new phone are early adopters. The few holdouts still using a rotary dial phone fall into the laggards category.
It maybe a “guy” thing, but I love new technology and feel I'm a bit of an innovator. I'm very comfortable experimenting with new software, especially if it includes a promise to improve my fitness or help me deliver a better class. For example; the second I saw Spotify I knew I needed to learn how it worked – both for myself, and then be able to help motivate the thousands of Instructors who visit here use it as well.
When it comes to Social Media, I hate to admit, I haven't been very innovative. Closer to a laggard. I've been privately wishing that FaceBook would fade away. You see, ICI/PRO has always been about others. My response to questions; “so, what do you do John?” has always been; “I have a platform to promote smart, talented and passionate people in our industry”.
So after multiple promptings to “get more active on FaceBook” and my realization that it isn't going away any time soon – I have finally decided to do just that… get more active on FaceBook and other platforms. Except I realized that I needed some help.
Enter Social Media expert, blogger and Indoor Cycling Instructor – Courtney Messier Lee 🙂
Courtney makes her living helping businesses develop their brands, online, using the various social media platforms. She has graciously offered to help me, starting with the creation of a FaceBook fan page.
Courtney joins me to discuss her plans to enhance my social profile and some of her ideas may help you as well.
You can learn more about Courtney and the services she offers, by following the (you guessed it) links to her profiles below.
