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How to Blog to Build Your Coaching Business

Posted By Guest Blogger 31st of July 2012 Business Blogging 0 Comments

This guest post is by Amy Harrison of Harrisonamy.com.

This article is part of a three-part series on how your blog can feed different types of business models. In the previous article we looked at how blogging can attract the attention of clients who want to hire you directly, for the right price. In this article we’ll be focusing on how your blog can feed a coaching business model.

Potential coaching clients are looking for two main elements when they hire you:

  • confidence that you can do what you say you do
  • the idea that they will enjoy working with you.

Whether you’re offering life coaching, technology training, or marketing consultancy, your client wants to feel like your service is worth their investment, and that you will be easy to work with.

And through your blog you can provide evidence of both.

Build confidence in your expertise

We looked previously at how writing on the subject of your specialty showcases your expertise. This also works well for coaching models because you are letting your audience do a little “try before they buy.”

Not only are they getting to know you and your personality, but they’re getting to sample what they can achieve if they worked with you one on one.

One of the most obvious ways to encourage your reader to move from visiting the blog to hiring you is by offering lessons they can use to see some results. There are plenty of blogs regurgitating generic theory, but if you can break down your blog post into specific lessons (with examples drawn from real coaching clients), you prove that you can do what you say, and build credibility by referencing people who have seen results through your work.

Obviously you won’t be able to name all your clients, due to confidentiality, but you can still use specific examples without revealing identities.

For example, if you’re a marketing coach, which of these pieces of copy do you think are more likely to build your credibility?

“To succeed in social media marketing you’ve got to get your business to stand out and be noticed. If you look different than your competitors, more people will visit your page and you can increase likes to your business…”

Or this:

Last week as part of a client’s Facebook marketing campaign we made a couple of tweaks to their advert and managed to increase clickthroughs by 20%, get 5% more phone enquiries, and generate two sales within the week. Here’s an example of the processes we used to analyse what to change…

What you’re doing with this style of blogging is proving you know what you’re talking about, and making readers more familiar with the way you work with clients (as well as building social proof!)

Remind them you’re a coach with a blog, not a blogger who sometimes coaches…

If you blog regularly, you might find yourself attracting people who were first looking for the kind of coaching that you offered, but then turned into a blog reader, got comfortable and forgot all about the coaching.

This can happen if people get so comfortable with a presence in their lives that they forget the reason they were there in the first place. (I’m getting married this year and in no way is that an analogy to how I think married life will be—honest!)

Sometimes you need to remind your readers that you can also work with them one on one if they need a little extra support. Otherwise your coaching business is taking a backseat to the blog, and you might find yourself with a large audience, being very popular, and getting all the retweets you can handle, but no sales.

If you offer purely free content, people may go to another coach simply because they forget about your services. You don’t want that to happen.

Every now and then, whether on your blog, or on your newsletter, remind your audience about the services you offer—but position that message in a way that’s relevant to them and their problems.

For example, if you’ve done a rocking blog post on the power of NLP and increasing confidence for presentations, let people know that you offer a specific “confidence for presentations course” that can be done intensively over two days by anyone with an upcoming speech, pitch, or presentation to make.

The key is to make it relevant to the topic at hand, and not simply a plug to sell your services.

Tip: Don’t be afraid of giving away “too much” in your content

I’ve worked with coaches who have been afraid of giving away too much about how they work. They feel that if they explain their processes online, people will just use the advice and not need a coach.

However, reading an article and working one on one with a coach is not the same. In my experience, the more content you publish on your expertise, the more people know, like, and trust you, and want to work with you directly.

Remember, someone who wants you to coach them doesn’t just want your knowledge of theory—they want access to you. They want the accountability that comes with having a coach. They want to be able to ask you questions directly rather than interpret a blog post. They want specific tailored answers that they can apply to their life or their business.

They want you. And your blog is a way of attracting them to you.

What about you? Do you attract coaching clients through your blog? Do you find it’s easier to sign up a new client if they’ve been a blog reader previously? Let me know in the comments! And look out tomorrow for the final post in this series, where we’ll look at blogging to support a product business.

Amy Harrison is a copywriter and content marketer for Personality Entrepreneurs wanting to connect and sell authentically to their audience. You can now download her free report on how to write sales copy when personality is part of your business at Harrisonamy.com.

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Comments
  1. Yet another awesome article.

    I believe that when you’re blogging consistently, you are connecting with your readers. And by becoming a “coach” you are doing nothing but capitalizing on the authority you’re building.

    However, I’d like to point out that before a blogger decides to become a coach, he or she needs to fully understand the responsibility that comes with being a teacher. If all you’re aiming for is getting “sales”, then you’re better off being a direct marketer.

    • Hey Mustafa,

      Coaching is a big responsibility, I wrote with the assumption that people already have a coaching proactice set up that they would liek to market, rather than blogging to try their hand at coaching. Hopefully this helps those who are looking for new ways to market their coaching services to new and current readers :-)

  2. Hi Amy,

    I 100% agree with you about giving the best content away. I find that some people are afraid to give out premium content in their blog but if the content quality is not good enough, why would people bother to follow or learn more from you?

    People are willing to buy for convenience. I am sure we can find pretty much anything we want on the web via blog, forum, news, articles, free reports, videos, etc…the question is how much time are we willing to spend?

    Cheers
    Ming

    • Thanks for your comment!

      People buy for convenience, and they also buy to access a coach’s knowledge directly rather than having to interpret free articles. Sometimes you need that focused attention from a coach to get you unstuck and that can have you up and moving in minutes compared to hours of searching content for the answer. :-)

  3. The point you made about giving purely free content is my number 1 problem. I forget that I need to ask for the sale to make money sometimes because I don’t want to come off as a salesman (despite the fact I sold cars for a while).

    Even though I am not offering coaching, I can really take some of this advice to build my affiliate income.

    Thanks a bunch,
    -Gabe

  4. Yes, I do find it’s easier to to coach someone who has been a reader of my blog. It stems from the familiarity concept. The same can be said for many others because they must be a reader of your blog because they feel engaged to my writing style or what I say really speaks to them.

    Many people pick professionals in other fields to take charge or assist them in some particular portion of their life because of some type of connection. For example, attorneys, church pastors, doctors etc.

    My point is the blogger is more likely to become a coach in some facet than a blog reader taking a stab in the dark with someone they know nothing about as their coach.

    • That familiarity with a style of writing builds trust. The life coach I use, I picked because I read their blog, felt they were qualified to help me, but I also felt I would connect with their personality.

      In such a personal profession, customers don’t always just want someone with answers, they want to pick someone whose personality fits as well.

  5. Your idea of blogging to support your coaching business hits home for me perfectly – with respect to content and timing.

    Great post, thanks a lot!

  6. I’m a little late to the party (or is that latte?) but I really enjoyed your posts here Amy. In the aftermath of the Penguin, clients are finally listening to the message on positioning through blogging and if you’re guest posting here, you’ve obviously done a great job of that. Be well and thanks again!

    SD

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