AKA - How To Get Anyone To Give a Hoot About What I'm Posting On Social Media For My Doula Business
Recently I was scrolling through Facebook when a post caught my eye from a fellow doula colleague’s business page. She had posted a cute picture of a newborn (which instantly made my ovaries go crazy, so, good call on her part) and a question:
“What did you first think/feel when found out you were pregnant?”
In the comments section were tons of answers. I was impressed at how many people responded to her post. A few days later I ran into her and told her what a brilliant idea that was and how awesome it was that so many people had responded. She said she had gotten two client inquiries from that post (people had tagged friends in the comments section and those friends had set up interviews with her). She mentioned that she had to post questions for a few months before this tactic gained any real traction - her audience needed time to get comfortable with questions like that and be excited to answer. So don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t take right away.
It got me thinking about the best ways to create engagement in social media marketing. My friend’s question was brilliant because most people are never asked about their birth and a lot of parents really want to talk about it.
I notice that a lot of doulas have social media for their businesses, but literally no participation from their audience - which often leads to doulas assuming that social media won’t ever get them clients. But if you can create engaging questions, your audience will be more likely to participate (and share with friends).
What are the benefits to an engaged social media audience?
You can get clients from social media.
You can build relations with other professionals in your community, who will become people who can refer you out to their clients.
One important thing to keep in mind is that is doesn’t matter how many followers you have. It matters how engaged they are. So if you have 100 engaged followers, meaning they comment on posts, tag/share your posts and refer you out to friends and clients, it is way better than having 1,000 unengaged followers that you never get any business from. I’ve known doulas who got inquires via their Facebook page from 40 followers because they created engagement. Moral of the story, numbers don’t matter, engagement does.
The best way to come up with engaging questions is to think: What are my clients (or potential clients) yearning to talk about? Or you can ask yourself “What am I really wanting to talk about? What questions would I love to be asked?”
So I thought up three questions that I know my doula clients would love being asked:
What was the hardest part of your birth? What was the best part of your birth?
What is one way pregnancy/parenthood has changed you?
What is the one piece of advice you would have given yourself before beginning your fertility/pregnancy/parenting journey?
If you’re still struggling with how to tackle engaging your social media audience, I have created this free handy checklist called Social Media Engagement Checklist (creative, I know!). Download it here!