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Do you have a profile on Facebook? Maybe you’re already on Twitter? Have you had success in generating new health & wellness clients from any of these tools? Would you like to generate more?

If you’re not careful these tools can become nothing more than a time-drain – you can spend hours online – twittering, Facebook-ing and connecting with what you hope are potential clients – only to find the hours have disappeared and you’re really no better off when it comes to gaining new business and new clients.

Having generated almost 100% of our own clients using social media and online tools over the past couple of years, here are our top tips to improve your health, wellness or personal training business using social media tools…

On Twitter:

• Do connect with other professionals in your field – it’s a great way to brand yourself as a particular expert within the industry amongst your peers and helps generate referrals.
• Don’t just follow & connect with other people randomly, make sure you’re connecting with people who are in your target market and are already open to your message (i.e. they need your services). Use tools such Tweetscan and Twellow to find topics & people to follow (Like these? Check out the Twitter Fan Wiki for all the Twitter tools you’ll ever need).

On Facebook:

• If you use your personal Facebook profile to promote what you do on Facebook, then get smart about who sees what on your profile. Do you really want clients and potential clients seeing your drunken nights out with friends posted on your profile? Investigate the privacy settings on your profile and consider grouping your “friends” to determine who sees what.
• Make full use of Fan Pages (we prefer these to groups) to create basic discussions and interactivity amongst your clients & prospects. This is a great way to provide value-adds to clients and create a sense of community amongst your client base.

On LinkedIn:

• LinkedIn is usually thought of as more of a professional networking site – it can be of great value if your target market is professionals or you’re targeting corporate wellbeing clients.
• Use the Q&A section of LinkedIn to conduct basic market research and find out what makes your target market tick. Failing that, it is also a great source of information on the topics of business, marketing & technology.

On Flickr/YouTube:

• Use Flickr or YouTube to host photos/pictures/videos of workouts for clients or exercise demonstrations. This is particularly useful if you can’t do this on your own website.

The key to using social media tools to market and improve your business is to understand that it’s often less about simply one-way broadcasting of your message to random people and more about generating two-way conversations & interaction with the “right” community of your people.

Use these tools not only to attract new clients – but also to provide extra value-adds to your existing clients. It’s a great way to set yourself apart from the rest of your industry.

I’ll be writing more on this topic in the coming weeks – let us know what questions you have in the comments…