Before we begin, what are voice notes?
Voice notes allow the sender to record a short audio message and send it like you would a text message to the receiver.
Are voice notes a great alternative to text messaging your clients? After all you don’t need to write anything, just open up your phone, record a message and click send.
But, do voice notes have a place in your online coaching business? If, so where and how should they be used?
Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of voices notes in relation to using them to coach your clients:
Let’s start with the pros:
Most people have used voice notes before in their personal lives.
This means like text messaging, voice notes are nothing new to your clients and can have a more personal feel.
Sometimes when a client hears the coach’s voice and can help cement the relationship between coach and client. This personal touch is something many online personal training clients may like.
They’re convenient for the sender! (More on that shortly). Voice notes are very easy to send. If you send a voice note, you can still continue to use your phone or do other things and they are quick to send when compared to a text message and in some circumstances making a phone call.
Voice notes can also give an honest impression of what you’re wanting to say at the time. You can be more emotive and more spontaneous with it than text-based communication.
That is about where the pros stop. Let’s take a look at the cons when it comes to using voice notes in your online coaching business.
The biggest issue with voice notes in an online coaching business is, they’re much less convenient for the person receiving the voice note. Yes, voice notes are very easy for the person sending. Just done in a way that makes it much less convenient for the person receiving the message.
For the receiver, they have to be in a place where they can listen to the note; they may not want others to hear what the sender has to say. A coaching client may not want others to hear what their coach is saying. Likewise, a coach can’t be in a public place to listen to a private message from their client in case others hear it.
It also takes time to absorb, longer notes you may need to listen to more than once.
We’ve become accustomed to scanning large amounts of text in a short period of time, and to parse the information within. A voice message, you can’t scan very quickly.
If a text pops up on your screen, you can quickly tell whether or not it’s urgent. If the only clue you have is a picture of an indistinct soundwave, you don’t know if that message needs your attention right away or can wait until you have a spare minute.
Which leads onto another issue with voice notes, referencing the content. Not knowing what the notes are about can make reference to them very time consuming. If you or your client needs to find past information, they would have to listen to all their notes again to find it.
The information in the voice note is not very practical when it comes to a person actioning it. If a coach wants to use that information, they would need to transcribe it. If a client wants to implement, they would either need to transcribe it or remember it, which given how voice notes are used in society, isn’t likely. Voice notes are great for quick updates that don’t contain any important information. Such as ‘I’m just driving and running later for a season’
In general voice notes seem like a great tool and are loved by many coaches and clients but in reality they are impractical.
Based on the pro’s and con’s, voice notes should only contain non-essential information that doesn’t need to be referenced again in the future or applied in any other way by the coach or client. Anything outside of this would mean more work for the receiver, whether the coach or the client, and can cause delays in that information being implemented.
Voice notes seem like a good option but when you take into account all the above, they can have a very negative impact on the growth of your online coaching business. Costing you more time in the long run, doesn’t give you any data to improve your systems and make it harder for you to scale.
So, is there a way to have all the benefits of voice notes without the downside?
Yes, we think there and in this video, I’ll show you a technique we use at PTD Ninja when helping personal trainers build their online fitness business with PT Distinction.
Want to know more about how to make the most of PT Distinction and master your online fitness business check out https://ptdninja.com
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