Leverage LinkedIn to attract coaching clients. With five years of experience using the platform for various coaching niches, Jo provides practical tips and strategies for optimising your LinkedIn presence and building meaningful connections.

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:00] - Why LinkedIn is ideal for coaches

[00:02:00] - The importance of LinkedIn's organic reach

[00:03:00] - Optimizing your LinkedIn profile: Headline tips

[00:04:00] - The importance of a professional profile photo

[00:05:00] - Crafting an effective "About" section

[00:07:00] - Experience and services section tips

[00:08:00] - Call-to-action link strategies

[00:09:00] - Building authority through content creation

[00:10:00] - Consistency in posting and engagement

[00:11:00] - Types of content that perform well on LinkedIn

[00:13:00] - The power of sharing client wins and testimonials

[00:14:00] - Engagement strategies and building relationships

[00:15:00] - The "lighthouse" approach to attracting clients

[00:16:00] - Building genuine conversations through direct messages

Ready to take action? Use this checklist to get started:

1. Optimize your LinkedIn profile with a clear headline, professional photo, and client-focused "About" section.
2. Post consistently, aiming for 2-5 times per week.
3. Share a mix of personal stories, industry trends, and valuable insights.
4. Engage meaningfully with others' content to build relationships.

Thank you for listening to this episode! Feel free to connect with Jo on LinkedIn and send her a direct message to build a genuine connection

Useful Links

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If you’re kind enough to leave a review, please do let Jo know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: joanna@joannalottcoaching.com

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Hello and welcome to women in the Coaching arena podcast.

I'm so glad you're here.

I'm Jo Lot, a business mentor and ICF accredited coach, and I help coaches to build brilliant businesses.

I know that when you prepare to.

Enter the arena, there is fear, self doubt, comparison, anxiety, uncertainty.

You can tend to armour up and.

Protect yourself from vulnerability.

In this podcast, I'll be sharing honest, not hype, practical and emotional tools to support you to make the difference that you're here for.

Dare greatly.

You belong in this arena.

Hello.

Welcome to the 84th episode of Women in the Coaching arena.

Today I am excited to cover a topic which I cannot believe I haven't covered before, which is how to get clients using LinkedIn.

I have used LinkedIn for the past five years for my business, varying different niches from executive coaching to career coaching and to now business coaching.

It genuinely works really well for all niches and I feel like it is one of the most genuine, authentic and easy platforms to use.

So yes, excited.

Let's get started on covering how you can get clients on LinkedIn.

Many people believe that LinkedIn is professional and I a place to share your cv and really official stuff, but when you get to know it, it really is a wonderful place to be where you can show your full expression of yourself.

This is why I believe LinkedIn is ideal for coaches.

Unlike other social media, LinkedIn is especially designed for networking, which means there are tools to make this so easy for you to find your ideal client.

Like I've mentioned, whether your coaching niche is leadership, career wellness or business, the professionals who need your help are on LinkedIn and ready to engage if you know exactly how to find them.

It also has a really strong organic reach, although they do, like every social media platform, change their algorithm every now and then.

They definitely did some changes about two to three weeks ago because me and my clients had all noticed the difference.

But actually it seems to have really picked up now.

So I think whatever they did, they seem to have undone because mine and my clients posts are now reaching way higher numbers than for a two to three week period early in September.

Whether that was just because we had taken August off a little bit and been less active were penalized for that, who knows?

Let's talk about optimizing your LinkedIn profile to attract clients.

The most important part of your LinkedIn profile is your headline, which is your one sentence of what you do underneath your photo.

Instead of saying leadership coach or career coach, try and be something more specific.

Like I help female leaders grow their revenue like I help fashion professionals change career.

Something that says exactly who you help and how.

Be as direct as you can with who you help and the transformation that you offer.

Sadly, people can't really look at your job description and understand that you help people like them.

So this element is super important.

The next most important part of your profile is your photo.

Really good photo of your face and shoulders usually is ideal.

A professional photo makes a big difference though.

I completely understand that when you're starting out, you may need to take your own photo photo and I definitely did that for a good six to twelve months in my business when I started and I thought it was okay until I got professional images and realised what an up level that was for my profile.

So I would say even if it's a mini branding shoot, lots of branding photographers now will just do a 20 minutes shoot rather than you needing to pay an absolute fortune for a full day of photos.

For example, I worked with someone called Vicky Knights and she gets about eight people to meet her in this hotel.

You know, every now and then she's there for a day.

You get your 25 minutes slot and therefore she doesn't need to charge you that much because she has all of these other people also having 25 minutes slots and I got some amazing photos.

It's crazy what she can do in such a small amount of time.

Highly recommend if you're in the Surrey area that was a hotel in Guildford, but otherwise just Google mini branding shoot and see if you can find someone local to you.

Next up is your about section.

So this place is where you can tell your story in a way that resonates with your ideal clients.

The biggest mistake I see here is people treating it like their cv.

For example, I'm an experienced leadership coach and have 20 years business experience prior to this.

I help my clients with XYZ and people say I'm whatever they say, you know, like really we want to talk directly to your ideal client.

The good about section looks like are you a female leader?

Struggling in that position?

You're feeling imposter syndrome, you're feeling all the things you really want to be able to lead better, have difficult conversations.

So again, it's not about you.

This section is actually about your ideal client, helping them feel seen, heard, understood.

And then you can say, if this is you, I can help.

And that's when you would go into how you can help them.

It's really important to use clear, direct language.

I think AI has made everyone's profiles really awful recently because we all use AI or some of us do to fast track thinking time.

But what can happen is it makes really convoluted language and language that a normal person just cannot emotionally connect with.

And if it's a robot writing your stuff, then you're not going to be able to touch that person's heart to help them to see that you are the solution to their problems.

So yes, use AI to kind of check it out, but please always put your own spin on it.

Read it out loud, make sure that they're using words that you would actually say in real life and just make it sound as normal and human as possible.

Remember, in this section the most important part is people don't care about your whole life story, they care about how you can help them.

So whilst storytelling is super powerful, ensure that your clients can see themselves in your story rather than this part of your profile.

Be about you scrolling down your profile.

We then will get to the experience and services section.

Highlight your coaching experience here.

Any programs, success stories, any previous jobs that you may have worked with.

I think it's still useful to have them there so people can see your background and also it just gives that talking point of like oh, I used to work there as well, or I live in wherever it is.

Your previous business was.

Your previous workplace was as well.

So as much and as full as your profile will enable people to connect with you on lots of different levels.

The last important section I will cover is a link to where people can find you.

This link is usually found underneath your headline.

This is your call to action.

That might be a discovery call link to a calendly, perhaps it might be a lead magnet link.

If you have created a lead magnet.

A lead magnet is a free resource that attracts your ideal client into your email list.

So really think about what would be the best use of your time.

If that's your website, that's absolutely fine, but try and think about what to type on that link.

In other words, rather than visit my website, it might be browse my services, it might be your website.

That's the best place for people to find you.

So really think this part through.

Okay, you now have a really strong LinkedIn profile.

Let's start with building authority through your content.

The best way to build authority online is through free content that is valuable to your ideal client.

LinkedIn loves posts that are genuine, not AI developed.

Anything that you can inject with your own personality is brilliant.

Real stories do super well on LinkedIn.

Let's now cover three things you can do to create great content on LinkedIn the first is consistent posting.

I often have clients who post once and then think that that is job done.

And sadly, I would be aiming for five times a week.

Ideally two to three times a week is still okay.

That will still help you to build your authority on the platform, but as often as possible, and certainly every week is really good to remind people that you exist.

It also really helps the algorithm.

The LinkedIn algorithm, like any other social platform, wants you to be on the platform.

They will favour people who use it more often and people who actually engage in other people's content as well.

It's not a matter of post and ghost, it's a matter of actively building relationships.

Relationships build your business, so do invest in building them.

If you're thinking about what type of thing to post, then stories from your coaching sessions without breaking confidentiality.

Industry trends work really well.

Mindset shifts you've experienced personally or with clients polls do really well on LinkedIn.

Video is starting to get favoured on LinkedIn as well.

Currently it's not a particularly video heavy platform like Instagram, but it is going that way.

Video is doing well right now.

Carousels are doing well.

They're the ones that you scroll across and read someone's story, for example, on lots of different slideshow.

There's lots of ways of making it really exciting.

My favourite part about LinkedIn though is that you don't need to add any photo if you don't want.

If you're just got a quick thought and you want to share it, you get to literally post just text.

And I do this often and it does really well, so you don't always need an image.

And that's why it's my favourite platform versus Instagram, or something along those lines that is just so much more visual.

Nothing's quick.

It's all about things looking good, whereas LinkedIn, I feel like is a lot more forgiving.

That is why it's my favourite platform, going further into the type of content you can create.

Like I've said, personal stories work really well.

Usually things like how you overcame the challenges that your client is currently facing.

Most of us have been in our ideal clients shoes and people love to see the other side and get that inspiration.

So don't be fooled into thinking that it's a professional platform and you must never share anything personal.

If you go down that route, your profile will go nowhere and your business will go nowhere either.

I don't believe that you can build a coaching business with no personality involved at all.

And the profile reviews that I do and where I see people go, three tips to speak up in meetings, you know they do okay, but unless they've got some personal thing weaved into them, they aren't likely to really gain traction or really connect with your ideal client.

It's all about having a balance of content.

So yes, some educational stuff, some stories, some polls, some belief shifting stuff.

It's about really thinking about bite sized tips that your audience can use right away.

One thing I'm loving at the moment is sharing more insights than tips because, you know, on social media we are just scrolling by to entertain ourselves.

We aren't likely to literally go and do that CV review there and then most of the time it's about a small shift, something that they can actively changing their mind rather than adding more to their to do list.

And my favourite one client wins.

Sharing testimonials or case studies with clients that have worked with you and achieved great results is a real interesting one because we all relate to personal stories, but obviously also they can see themselves in your previous clients and it's a great one for conversion content.

Finally, covering engagement, thinking about thoughtfully commenting on other people's posts.

Again, this is another thing sorely missed, and people think they're doing a great job because they're posting.

They're all upset that no one's engaging with them.

And I say, have you ever engaged with anybody else's content?

And if you haven't, then that's what's going on here.

You will reap what you sow.

In other words, build those relationships with people and they will start to support you in return.

Think about adding valuable comments to people's content rather than great point, great post.

Or something like that.

How can you add to what they shared?

Thoughtfully expanding on it?

Because again, that's why LinkedIn is my favourite platform.

There seems to be really genuine conversations and people actively building learning, whereas personally I find Instagram is very strange and people just comment like a fire thing or something and it's like, well, that doesn't really add anything to the discussion.

Clearly I may be missing something here, but I much prefer genuine, real relationships, real content, real learning.

And you can really, really build that well on LinkedIn.

I hope today's episode was useful as a whistle stop tour on how to use LinkedIn to attract coaching.

Clients really do think about approaching it with the right mindset.

I often say shine your light like a lighthouse and the right people will be attracted to you.

And I was fortunate enough to take on a new client earlier this week who literally said you are the light for me and you have been shining your light like a lighthouse.

And I'm finally ready to buy.

So she had been listening to this podcast.

Hello, if you're listening, hopefully you know who you are and and reading all my emails and really in my world.

And then the time became right for her to actually take that next step.

But just know that you can be that lighthouse for people.

Don't get despondent that they haven't bought your thing and give up.

Because if I had done that, this person would have never signed up because it wasn't the right time for her at that period of her business.

Also, really think about building conversations.

You can do this in direct messages and it doesn't need to be sleazy.

There's a lot of sleaziness out there.

It can be genuinely thank you so much for supporting my post.

I really appreciate it.

How's your day?

You know, it doesn't have to be weird.

It can be genuine conversation, that extra part of posting, but also building extra conversations will lead to more conversions.

I hope this was helpful to you and do connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven't already.

I'm there as Joanna lot and cannot wait to connect with you and learn and support your posts in return.

Until next time, trust yourself, believe in yourself and be the wise gardener who keeps on watering the seed thank you.

So much for listening to this episode of women in the coaching arena.

I have a mass of free resources on my website, joannalotcoaching.com.

that's Joanna with an a and lot with two t's, joannalottcoaching.com and I'll also put links in the show notes below.

Let me know if you found this episode useful, share it with a friend.

And leave me a review and I.

Will personally thank you for that.

Remember to trust yourself, believe in yourself and be the wise gardener who keeps on entering the seed.

Get into the arena, dare greatly, and try.