Tracy Beavers is a business and sales coach, who helps entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses with ease. For the past seven years, Tracy has used organic strategies to grow three successful businesses without paying for advertising at all and she teaches her clients to do the same!  

And, specifically, in an interview for this blog, Tracy shared

How to Use Your Personal Facebook Profile to Grow Your Email List

I’m so excited to share this strategy with you, my readers,  because I had never heard of it before and found it super easy to implement on my Facebook profile, and I believe you will as well.

At my company, Meredith Kallaher Marketing, LLC,  we specialize in digital ads strategy and management AND I completely agree with Tracy, that growing your business organically first, before spending money on digital ads is a good idea! When you're introducing a new offer, a new service, or a new course it is definitely smart to test it out with organic marketing efforts first before you add fuel to your sales with ads.  Because just like everybody reads, Facebook and Instagram ads or any paid media can get expensive quickly. 

And maybe you’ll find an organic strategy that will scale big enough to reach your revenue goals so that you never have to incur the costs of advertising and if so THAT is  AWESOME... more money in your pocket always gets my vote!  But if you decide you want to use digital ads to grow, the best way to keep ad costs in line is to run them for an offer that has been proven before you start the ad campaign, i.e. always market your new, unproven offers organically! Once people are buying your offer, and you want to scale, then ads are a great tool to scale and find new audiences fast.

(Ready for ads? Grab a FREE copy of my winning Facebook Ad Strategy HERE)

NOW, I will now get off my soap box and let Tracy take over! I so appreciate her taking the time to share her wisdom on organic marketing with you and ME!

Tracy, thank you so much for talking with me today and filling my readers in on your strategy to grow your email list using your Personal Facebook Profile!

Absolutely. In my practice, as a business and sales coach, I always tell my clients that they really need to get their social media profiles dialed in. And today specifically we are going to talk about dialing in your PERSONAL Facebook profile.

A lot of people ask me, "Tracy, do I have to use my personal profile for business?" I understand their hesitation because it's their personal profile and that's where they put their beach vacation photos and they want it to be for their friends and family.

My personal opinion is that you need to use it for your business as well as for your personal use. If you're not using it for your business in some way, you are missing out on a massive opportunity to attract your ideal clients to grow your email list. When I say your business and personal pages need to be merged, I don't mean making your entire personal profile all about your business and, "Buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff." 

Let me walk you through my suggestions for strategically updating your personal profile on Facebook, with your customers in mind.

1. Use Your Real Name on Your Personal FB Profile

On the personal profile, you use your real name, which leaves no room for confusion about who you are, and your part in your business. For example, I wouldn’t make mine, “Tracy B, or T Beavers” because I’m trying to build an online business that is recognizable and matches.  

So my Tracy Lane Beaver's personal profile matches my Tracy L. Beaver's business page, which also matches my tracybeavers.com website. We want to use your name and enough of your name that people that knew you years ago in case you got married or changed your name would still know it was you. So that's why mine says “Tracy Lane Beavers”, because people from my past know my maiden name, “Lane.”.

2. Complete the Intro Section of Your Profile

 Moving right along, you’ll want to fill in the Intro section, to tell your audience who you are, who you serve, and what you do. When someone lands on your personal profile, they should read your Intro and think to themselves, "Oh, she's either for me or I don't need her right now, but maybe I know somebody that does."

3. Update Your Work Information

Then you want to make sure that your work information is filled in. Are you the owner or founder? If yes, mention that! For me,  I'm the owner and founder of Tracy Beaver's Coaching. If somebody saw something I posted in a Facebook group and thought I was super cool and was like, "Oh, she may be the next coach I need to hire", and they click on my personal profile and it says, "No workplaces to show,” a potential client might be left confused and a new client lost.

4. Update all of your LInks

Then all your contact information, all of your links, for Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, and websites- put all the links are right there. If you have a Linktree, or like me and have a landing page that you use instead of Linktree, you can have all of your links right there in one spot. Mine is tracybeavers.com/resources,  I house a lot of my free guides and training there.  This is a great space to insert a  link for somebody to book an informational call. Don't make people hunt and peck around and try to solve the mystery of you! Let them see what they need to connect with you. 

5. Use a photo of YOU for your personal Facebook profile picture

The other thing that is important when dialing in your Facebook page is to show your face. Your dog is really cute, your car is really cool, your kids are precious, but you need to show the world YOU. When people land on your page, they're going to psychologically connect with you deeper if they see your face. I know some people don't like to have their photo out there, but if you're a business owner, we have to get over that and we have to get comfortable being the face of the business.

6. Add a Call To Action to Your Facebook Profile Cover Photo

Then your cover photo is a prime piece of real estate. It is even shaped like a billboard if you think about it!  Again, a photo of your family is beautiful, or a wedding photo, but if you're an online business owner you shouldn’t waste this real estate and highlight the Call to Action you want visitors to take to further engage with your business..

For me, I have my cover photo speaking to join my Facebook group. When I'm promoting a masterclass, my cover photo will switch to talking about my masterclass and will link to register. In my off-promotion times, in between launches, it is to join my FREE Facebook group. Take that as an example. Right now  I  have the words “Join my FREE Facebook group” and the image of a button with an arrow pointing to it that says “click here.”  Those interested will click on the image of the button on my cover photo,  which makes the photo description box open up to the right of the photo, and I put a clickable link to my FB group along with all the reasons why they need to join my free Facebook group.   So it's really easy for them to grab. I also have some of my free resources there if they want to learn how to sell without selling, or they want to learn how to create social media content with ease, that's all there too. 

Note to Reader, I followed Tracy's directions and it was so easy!

FIRST, I used Canva to create a FB cover photo image with their pre-set size option for the Facebook Cover photo AND I added an image of a button!  

Check it out...

Then, in the description of my cover photo on Facebook, I added an explanation of how people could work with me  AND a secondary call-to-action, to read my latest case study,  for those that are curious about working with me, but might need a little more nurturing before they hand over their email address!

See below. It worked! When visitors to my Facebook profile click the fake button, the description opens.

So that's how that personal profile can be a strategy to grow your email list.

So when they land there, they need to see who you are, what you do, who you serve, really clearly your whole menu of all the things that you have going on. And then that cover photo has got to work for you in some way!

 That’s all really good advice, especially because it can be easy for people to pretend to be somebody else. So if people want to grow their business with more ease and learn more fabulous tips from you, what should they do?

The best place to connect with me is my free Facebook group. It's called, “Be a Confident Entrepreneur: Get Visible + Grow Your Income.” They can join my group. The group is a very supportive, collaborative community. We have every entrepreneur you can think of in there. So if you have a question about an email service provider, or you have a question about the website you're building or you have a question about paid ads or you want to start a podcast but you don't know where to start, you can post that in my group. There are experts in all areas of marketing and growing small businesses in there that will help you. I let everybody promote themselves, and you would think it would've turned into a big spam fest by now because there are over 1500 people in the group. But it really isn't. Everybody in there is kind, supportive, and warmhearted. They just want to build their business as we do!

And as a card-holding member of your Facebook group, I can attest that everything you say is true. That is my favorite part:  the community and the information provided.

Yay! Thank you, Meredith! If they go to my personal Facebook profile, it's Tracy Lane Beavers, they'll see all the links there to join my group. If for some reason they don't like Facebook, they can connect with me through my Instagram @tracybeaverscoaching, or my website, tracybeavers.com.