Nothing will kill your sales faster than being generic. If you’re like everyone else, why would people stop at you specifically to buy your products? Can’t they move on the next person whose the same?
Social media is the perfect tool to showcase your uniqueness. But most people don’t know where to begin. Here’s five places.
Step 1: Share Your Personal Story
We all have a personal story. We’re all unique and telling that story through social media is compelling stuff to your tribe.
The origin of you, how you got to where you are, is a great way to make yourself relatable. It shows your emotional connection to your subject matter and is way more powerful than certifications and equipment.
You’ve got to put your personal story out there and show how it changed your life. It illustrates that you, too, are a work in progress, looking for people on a similar journey.
Step 2: Understand a Niche Problem
Find your tribe. Find that collection of people who have a specific problem or are looking for a specific lifestyle change that you feel compelled to serve.
Understanding their problems is at the heart of how you can interact with them online. You have to recognize the problems your niche faces and then dig deeper. Find niches within the niche.
Digging deeper and understanding your niche’s problems will lead you to incredible revelations. And it’s valuable content.
Step 3: Make a revelation/solution
Let’s now attack those problems with workable solutions that will benefit your clients by finding revelations and sharing those on social media.
Revelations come in all forms, from the most unexpected places. But they won’t reveal themselves without that exploration that comes with interacting with your tribe.
It’s all about relationships, and peeling back the layers can take you and your tribe to great places.
Step 4) Challenging Question
With so much content coming at your tribe, how can you interact with them in a way that shows they’ve understood your message? Ask a challenging question.
This is the call to action that encourages more engagement between you, your tribe, and the work that binds you.
That phone has changed the game. So interaction is key. A challenging question is a great way to fire up that interaction.
You end with a challenging question.
Step Five) Attractive Visuals/Video
Content is more than words. There’s a visual component to all of this that you can’t forget about.
Be sure to include attractive visuals.
Think about it, your average client is bombarded with content. And studies have shown that you need more than double the amount of pieces of information to make decisions than what you used to.
So be bold and colorful with the graphics (or videos) that you’re including in your posts. Social media needs to engage the senses and an attractive visual is a great way to do that.
Be memorable. Build your relationship with your tribe.
2. I want you to stand out. Plain and simple. in today’s over crowded, noisy market you CAN’T be like
everyone else.
We now live in a reality where there is a gym or studio on every corner. Ever park has a boot camp.
Everybody knows several fad diets. You could say we’ve oversaturated the market.
When I was coming in the biz, fit pros were taught nothing about marketing. It was all about technical
stuff. Knowing the right techniques and moves. Being up on all the latest equipment. That was what being a
good trainer meant.
Today the stakes are different. Because we’ve got all these programs coming out of our eyeballs, it’s
important to stand out. Otherwise, how else are you going to attract and keep customers?
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STAND OUT!
3. But that’s easier said than done.
Being different doesn’t mean you need to be the first person on the block offering the latest trend. The
product doesn’t have to be groundbreaking, but your approach does. Let me explain.
If trainers have no formal instruction in the marketing and social media world, it’s easy to see why so
many of them are doing the same thing. Sure, you can advertise in the usual places, but that doesn’t
inspire people. It doesn’t hook them. It doesn’t allow you to build a tribe.
My approach to all of this, especially using social media, is simple. And we can all do it easily. Because it
involves the right packaging of you.
What I mean by that is your life is kind of what you’re selling. Your story is essential to what you’re
offering.
When you focus only on the technical stuff instead of your own personal story, you’re missing the chance to
create connective tissue with your audience. Your average person that’s looking for a change in their
lives isn’t going to be impressed by your knowledge of the lumbo-pelvic hip complex. That’s technical jargon
that will only impress other trainers. That or you’re hoping you’ll dazzle someone with words they don’t
know, and that’s really not a way to market yourself.
Instead, think about putting yourself in the shoes of the people themselves. What are they looking for? How
did they come to this? What brought them to this place, looking for this solution? Why are they here?
Doing this sets you up for success. I’ve got a five point plan for mastering social media and drawing
customers to you. It’s customizable, you can mold the specifics to your business model and plan.
People are looking for solutions to their problems. They’re looking for someone to lead them. They’re
looking for guides. Be that and more for them and you’ll achieve success and loyalty that most businesses
can only dream about.
These five steps help you accomplish that by pointing out how different and unique you are. You’ll
stand out in a sea of sameness.
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We all have a personal story. We’re all unique and how we got to where we are is the most important thing.
You need to begin at the beginning. What was it that led you to your path as a fit pro? For some of you, it
may have been leaving behind a job that wasn’t for you. Maybe it was the time you decide to change your
unhealthy habits. Whatever that inciting incident was, it is valuable and deserves to be shared.
When I was a trainer I used to share my story of becoming a trainer because I hated my 9-5 job and wanted
to do something I was passionate about, and the only thing I loved doing at the time was being in the gym
and if I was going to build my dream life I might as well do it around something I love, so I went and got
my first cert. and just walked into a gym and never looked back.
STEP ONE: SHARE YOUR PERSONAL STORY
5. What's yours?
The idea here is two-fold. One, it humanizes you in the eyes of new customers. People respond well
to others who have been in a similar situation. While anyone can claim to be an expert, it’s the ones who
share their vulnerability that are more relatable. It also hooks people in. It shows that anything is
possible. And people want to do business with people they know, like and trust. That in itself is way more
powerful than a bunch of certifications and citations.
You’ve got to put your personal story out there and show how it changed your life. It illustrates that you, too,
are a work in progress.
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It’s nice to think that you can help everybody, but from a business perspective, it’s not doable.
You can’t talk to everybody because not everybody is looking for the solutions you provide. And
that’s okay. You don’t want to waste your time on people that aren’t looking for you and vice versa. Nobody
spends money on things they don’t need.
That means you’re in a way, useless to them. But hey, if they’re not looking to spend money with you, they’re
useless to you. It ain’t personal, it’s business. I see too many businesses wasting their time, chasing after
every possible sale. It's why they struggle, wagging the tail.
STEP TWO: UNDERSTAND A NICHE PROBLEM
7. Instead, find your tribe. Or better create and choose your tribe.
Decide on the niche of people who have a specific problem or are looking for a specific lifestyle change that
you feel compelled to solve and that you love serving.
I love serving the people who are out serving the fitness industry. I feel compelled to find, coach, mentor
and help lead the fitness coaches who want to create significant brands and a difference. That's me. What
about you?
If you try to talk to everybody, you end up talking to nobody. That’s a fact. And when everybody is trying to talk
to everybody else at the same time, you’ve got just voices yelling at people. That’s not a good look.
So ask yourself: who do I love serving? That’s your niche. Afraid of being too small or too specific.
Nonsense. I say, go deeper. Can you niche it out a little more?
So let’s say that your niche market, the tribe you’re targeting, is stay-at-home moms. That’s a great start and
lots of programs can be aimed at them with tons of success. But what about going deeper? There are sub-
niches within that niche that can be explored by experts like you. There’s post-partum programs for stay-at-
home moms. There’s programs you can do to help with time management. That’s a concern that comes up,
right? Not enough time. You listen to your tribe and then create products for them.
Understanding their problems is the heart of this. You have to recognize the problems your niche
faces and then dig deeper. You have to go underneath it all and pull out the important questions. Like
why. Why do stay-at-home moms not find the time to stay fit?
By examining the roots of many of these problems, you’re positioning yourself to provide the specific
solutions that your niche specifically needs.
Digging deeper and understanding your niche’s problems will lead you to incredible revelations. And
allow you to step in as the authority in solving those issues. That's good for expert positioning.
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You’re not wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat or smoking a pipe, but you’ve basically become a detective.
Because you dug deep into your niche’s problems, you’ve been able to examine the root causes of what’s
troubling them. Now you can attack those problems with workable solutions that will benefit your
clients.
So let’s go back to the idea of not enough time. There are a million ways to solve that. I joke that if your kids
are keeping you from staying fit, maybe they need to be entertained better while you do your exercises. Heck,
give them some NyQuil and put them to bed! Or the stay-at-home mom can talk to her husband or wife or
partner, and work out a schedule. Every family is different and every approach is unique.
STEP THREE: MAKE A REVELATION/SOLUTION
9. But just like you would find a solution that works for your circumstance, that’s what fit pros need to do. They
need to put together solutions from the revelations that come to them that are specific to the needs of
their niche. You don’t hammer in a nail with a screwdriver, right? You use the best tools for the work at hand.
These revelations can come from the most unusual places, places that you wouldn’t think to uncover unless
you were doing that deep digging. Maybe in exploring those questions that your niche has you discover
that the real reason that stay-at-home moms don’t continue being fit is because a lack of energy.
Look for specifics. Find more revelations. Maybe the energy tanks right after lunch or after eating certain
meals. Maybe the weather or the seasons are affecting the energy. I don’t know, but I do know that those
revelations will be found by understanding the problem and asking those deeper questions.
You’ll be surprised where solutions come from. Again we work in a business where relationships are so
important. Constant contact and communication will go a long way to making these revelations. And
when you peel back those revelations, you’ll discover more and more interesting things underneath. Like
finding niches within niches, you’ll also find revelations within the revelations. It’s exactly like peeling an onion,
only to discover more layers underneath. And that is going to allow you to build a robust business.
Perfect!
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So you’ve put together this process and you’ve come to incredible revelations and solutions that
you now offer. You’re hitting your stride and becoming the kind of thought leader that connects with their
tribe one hundred percent. How can you gauge if what you’re saying has even landed?
You end with a challenging question.
In any situation, there has to be some sort of call to action. Otherwise, you’ll lose the engagement with
your client. And if we’re talking about social media, you have to really engage. It’s not like the old days of
traditional media, marketing and advertising. You’re fighting a tsunami of information. I’m talking about
overwhelming amounts of data that are all fighting for the eyes, ears and attention of customers.
STEP FOUR: CHALLENGING QUESTION
11. That phone that we all carry around has changed the game. They’ve done studies where they’ve found that
it used to take five separate pieces of information for people to make a decision. That’s the old way,
that’s how they used to do it.
Do you want to guess what it is now? Do you know how many pieces of information it takes before people
make a decision? They’ve found that it takes 10.4 pieces of information. Think about that. Think about what
that says about the attention span of the average consumer.
Now don’t think for a moment that just because you’re speaking to your tribe, you can cut the line. Your tribe
has lifestyle habits that consume their entire existence. You’re swimming upstream no matter how
expert your opinion is or how good your presentation is. You’ve got to come at them with content and
information…lots of it. Consistently.
So that’s where you need to position yourself. You need to provide lots of engaging content and going
at your tribe with challenging questions. Are you showing up that much? Are you popping up in their
feeds?
Think about this, at any given moment, you need to have that huge amount of content if you’re to align with
the exact moment that they are on their social media. Your presence needs to be constant. Those
people that aren’t, that somehow think they can get away with barely being there, will get left behind in the
dust.
Those of you out there who aren’t engaging your clients, whether it’s with challenging questions or whatever,
are simply going to be passed over. Your tribe will move on, they’ll swipe left, they reload. And you’ll be left
behind wondering, what could I have done?
Engage your tribe and engage them often.
That’s what I’ve been saying in all the steps above. You have to engage either with your story, your
understanding, your revelations or your challenging questions.
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We’re being bombarded every day with new media. It’s fast, it’s interactive, it shows up on our phones.
Again, you think back to how things used to be and it’s laughable. When you consider the apex of marketing
in the middle of the last century was guys on Madison Avenue, like in Mad Men, who worked on the copy and
imagery of ads and commercials, it’s another world.
Today we have ads everywhere. Promotions and marketing has become such an entrenched part of
our existence that we don’t see where much of it is. But it’s everywhere.
One thing remains. The attractive visual or video is an important part of any marketing engagement.
And social media is no different.
STEP FIVE: ATTRACTIVE VISUALS/VIDEO
13. We’re visual creatures. We like to look. We love to see new and exotic things. And we like to watch
videos. So put yourself in the mindset, once again, of your tribe. And you’re scrolling through your phone on
the train, at the airport, at home even. What are you going to stop and look at? Is it paragraph after
paragraph of endless text? Is it cute and clever headlines? Or is it an attractive visual or video, something
unique, colorful, maybe off the wall?
Of course the interesting graphic, photo or video will stop you cold. We’re visual creatures,
remember?
Having that attractive visual or video is another way of engaging your clients. This time, you’re engaging
their sense of sight. All of these steps work together to engage your tribe and if deployed correctly,
you’ve become something beyond just being a trainer.
You’re a living, breathing entity that goes through life as a thought leader and that’s something that
people will always seek out. The money flows from this eventually, but doing the work correctly in social
media will create for you a position of strength within that relationship.
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14. Go forth and do all of these steps on social media. Tell the world your story. Understand your niche's
problems. Find revelations. Ask challenging questions. And use attractive visuals. Doing
these steps, day after day, with confidence will endear so many people to you and your brand.
They’ll know how they can trust you with their problems because you’ve proven yourself as a master of not
only your area of expertise, but the problems and lifestyles of the entire tribe.
That’s how you stand out in an ocean of sameness. Do you think those other companies are putting
this kind of thought and feeling into their social media presence? I don’t think so.
Package yourself right. You are the brand and the product. Use social media and technology, things that
are essentially the most powerful and impactful marketing tools in our humanity’s history, to create the life and
freedom you deserve. Share your story to help those who need it.
Let me help you launch your business, income and lifestyle! Follow me on:
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15. As a certified High Performance and Funnel Optimization Coach, Vito La Fata, is the NO BS business
& personal brand coach to the wellness and fitness professional or company that is looking to get outside the box of the
industry and start learning how to grow a personal brand online and offline utilizing a hybrid business model of offline
and online marketing strategies that deploy customer value optimization systems in order to create as much benefit
and offering for the customer and as much profit and lifestyle for the company as possible.
ABOUT VITO LAFATA
www.VitoLaFata.com
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