An Online Presence Can Grow Your Practice

Coaches continue to look at ways to build and protect their coaching businesses. With the recent FTC/PSA ruling allowing solicitation coaches are delving into online marketing as a strategy to grow their practices.

For those present at last month’s annual PSA Conference we heard the report from Jimmie Santee, our Executive Director, stating that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ruled that solicitation of skaters, by coaches, is to be allowed going forward. We all antici

pate this ruling will transition into our practices in a dignified and professional manner.

There are guidelines and regulations about this change which can be found on the PSA website http://www.skatepsa.com/Professional%20Standards.htm

These documents cover a wide array of information such as the PSA Code of Ethics, the PSA Code of Professionalism and the PSA settlement with the FTC.

An increasing number of coaches have turned to website development as a strategy to clearly communicate their coaching style and areas of expertise in the skating communities in which they teach. One such coach, Sara Robertson, decided to go through the personal brand development process earlier this year to solidify her clear position as that of a “competition coach.” You can view her website and see her position clearly stated on her new simple website. http://www.strobertson.com

Sara experienced an unexpected outcome from the story on her website. “Developing my own personal brand was a great experience. It was fun to capture my skating history, my coaching goals and aspirations and tie them into a few paragraphs that captured what I truly stand for. Recently, by using the opening paragraph Merry wrote for my website as my online profile at my rink, I received 7 new potential skaters in less than two weeks. The families then went to my new website which enhanced these new and budding relationships.”

The bottom line is that online marketing has become a reality in the figure skating community. Coaches are seeing this as a viable way to grow their businesses. You can learn more here.