Get More Coaching Clients Through Your Blog – 10 Steps

Last updated on October 14, 2022

What do you do when you stumble upon a problem?

You pick up your phone, open your browser, and type your question into Google.

That’s why content marketing becomes more and more effective. By making good content, you attract people who can identify their problem and are looking for a solution.

According to Hubspot, blogging is the third most common content marketing strategy. For businesses, a blog can generate leads and eventually make a contribution to the bottom line.

On average, companies with blogs produce 67% more leads per month. 

Pretty darn good, right?

But blindly writing a blog post without the right strategy will only contribute to more noise on the internet.

That’s why in this post we will discuss 10 steps you need to follow to get more coaching clients through your blog.

1. See the Big Picture

First, let’s set some realistic expectations. Blogging is a long-term strategy. If your business needs to generate sales right now to pay next month’s bills, the blog post is not your solution.

Blogging is a long-term investment for your business. It works slowly but steadily. If you nail your blog post strategy, your business has its lead generation machine that lasts for years.

Once you decide your business needs a blog, let’s go to the second step.

2. Define Your Plan

To make your blog work optimally for your business, you need to settle on the right plan. Here are some details you need to decide on:

• How often do you want to post?
• Who’s going to write the blog post?

Will you write it yourself? Set the exact time in the calendar to make it happen.

Do you want to hire a professional writer to write the blog post for you? Good! Start looking for an agency or writer, and set your budget.

• What call to action do you want in your blog?

Here’s the thing. We all have a million things demanding our time and attention. Unfortunately, this means that just after people read your blog post, they will forget you. I am so sorry to tell you this, but this is the truth.

That’s why you need to put a call to action in your post. People need to be told what to do next if they want to learn more about you.

Don’t just put one call to action at the end of the blog post. You can sprinkle your call to action throughout the post.

What do you want your reader to do after they stumble upon your blog post? Do you want them to download your freebie? Do you want them to share the blog post?

By having a call to action, your blog post will direct people to do business with you. It will serve you and your potential clients as more than just a source of information. Frankly, people don’t need more information. They want the solution to their problem.

3. Get Crystal Clear on Your Ideal Client

To get a coaching client from your blog post, you need to know exactly who you’re trying to reach out to. That’s the reason for this classic saying: if you speak to everybody, you speak to nobody.

Gather your ideal client’s pain points, the question you get over and over again, and also the result your ideal client needs. Make a list of this information. This will be the resource for your blog post idea.

If you understand your ideal client, you can make a blog post that joins your ideal client’s dialogue in their head. 

Those blog posts you write every week should answer your ideal client’s questions,  their pain points, and how to deal with them.

Do you see the point here?

Writing a blog post is not about waiting for inspiration. It’s a science.

You need to do this process week in and week out.

It’s a long-term game, remember?

4. Post Your First Blog Post. And Keep Posting Regularly.

Here we are in step 4.

Post your first blog post!

If you write the blog post yourself, this step is very important. Just write the blog post and upload it.

Don’t get hung up with keywords and SEO, or wonder whether this blog post will bring clients to your business.

It will not!

The worst part: 9 out of 10 times, this first blog post will be terrible.

But this will be the most important blog post you’ve ever written. Because once you upload it, you beat the fear.

You did it!

One thing that your first blog post will give you: momentum!

After posting your first blog post, now it’s time to make an incremental upgrade for your next blog post.

Just make your next blog post 1% better than before.

Focus on the consistency and quality of your blog post.

A well-written blog post once a week is better than 2-3 posts per week that are written on the fly one hour before posting.

5. Find the Right Keywords for Your Blog

Let’s talk about keywords. This is an important aspect of your blog post. You need to do research on what keywords you plan to target for every blog post.

Here are some tools you can use to do keywords research:

• Keywords Everywhere
• Keywords Surfer
• SEMrush Keyword Analytics
• Google Adwords Keyword Planner
• Google Trends
• KeywordTool.io

You need to find keywords with decent volume and low difficulty.

Why do I say decent volume?

The ideal situation will be if you find keywords with high volume and low difficulty.

But in this day and age, it’s almost impossible to end up with that kind of situation. So, we need to work with what we’ve got.

Put yourself in your ideal client’s shoes, and imagine what you will search for on Google.

Another thing you need to know about keywords: long tail keywords are your best friend.

To make sure we are on the same page, let me give you a simple example:

The point is: long tail keywords answer specific questions.

That’s why the competition is not as huge as that of head tail keywords. The more specific your keywords, the less competition and volume.

If you have to choose, prioritize the specificity of keywords over volume.

Remember, to get coaching clients from your blog post, 5 ideal clients are better than 100 random people stumbling onto your blog post.

Finding keywords can be a never-ending rabbit hole, so the best method is to give yourself a limit on how many topics you want to cover this month. Do your research in one sitting. Then you just need to write the blog posts after that.

If you hire a professional writer, usually they offer additional services to do the keyword research for you. They can make a well-written report on targeted keywords for your blog post, and you just need to double-check their report.

6. Optimize Your Post for Google SEO

You’re done with your keywords. Now, let’s talk about Google SEO.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

It sounds so fancy, doesn’t it? Well, actually it’s pretty simple logic. The point is we need to design our blog post to help Google understand our content.

When our ideal client writes their question in Google, we want our blog post to show up as number one in the Google search results.

The way Google checks on our content is by looking at specific keywords on H1, H2, and H3 levels. (If you’re starting to feel your eyes glaze over, don’t run away quite yet. It’s not  rocket science, I promise.)

How to optimize your post for Google SEO could be a whole blog post in itself. But in this section let me explain the details you need to pay attention to when you optimize your blog post:

• Pick a blog post title rich in keywords. The SEO term is H1 (Heading 1). Every post only has one H1.
• In the first 100 words of the introduction of your blog post, mention your keywords.
• Design your post as bullet points. If you can, put your keywords in your H2 (level 2 headers).
• If possible, you can include keywords at the H3 level as well.

Warning: please don’t “keywords stuff” your blog post. Keywords are important. Keywords research is a must. But keyword stuffing is a big no-no.

At the end of the day, Google wants to give the best result to their user. The best result means that your reader reads or at least skims your blog post. 

Google pays attention to how long your reader spends time on your website. The longer they stay, the higher Google values your website.

If you keywords stuff your blog post, the real human, a.k.a your reader, will not like it—guaranteed!

This is good news for us content creators. Now we can focus on writing for humans with a sprinkle of keywords, and Google will still like our blog post.

7. Optimize Your Post for Pinterest SEO

For a new website, gaining traffic from Google SEO will take time to show results. That’s why we need other traffic sources. One of the most common traffic sources for a blog post is Pinterest.

Basically, Pinterest is like Google but more visually oriented.

If you search in Google, the result is more text-oriented. On Pinterest, the results are pictures.

That’s why a lot of people use Pinterest as inspiration. Here are some details about Pinterest you need to know:

• 76.1% of Pinterest’s audience is female.
• The Pinterest algorithm allows its audience to follow its links to other platforms. That’s why if your audience is women, Pinterest can be even more useful to drive traffic to your blog post.
• Most of the Pinterest audience is in the US.

The way you use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog post is by making a picture, putting it in your blog post, and pinning it to Pinterest.

Your pin should have keywords that explain your blog post so people know what to expect from your post.

Pinterest is not for everybody—it works best only if your target audience aligns with Pinterest’s audience. Use your judgment as a business owner to determine whether Pinterest can serve as a good resource for your blog post.

8. Follow the 6 Months Rule

Blogging is a long-term game. I know I sound like a broken record, but it’s very important for you to adjust your expectations.

If your SEO plan works well, you’ll see the result within 6 months. Before that, just keep doing the same thing.

If you keep changing your strategy just because your first blog post doesn’t go viral, you’ll end up nowhere.

If within 6 months you don’t see traction for your blog, then it’s time to make changes. Analyze your blog strategy, and see where you can make improvements.

When you make improvements, don’t change too many factors at the same time. Change one thing, and study the result.

Yes, for another 6 months.

You see here why I keep saying blogging is a long-term strategy for your business. But when you nail it, it’s worth all the time investment you put in.

Because if Google loves your content, your blog posts will generate leads while you’re sleeping!

9. Decide on Your Lead Magnet

Once you start to see traction in your blog, it’s time to put more attention on your lead magnet.

Having a lead magnet is a way to qualify your lead. Those who download your lead magnet show serious intention to solve their problem. That’s why they are more likely to buy.

A lead magnet is a simple resource you offer for free to your reader to help them solve their problem. Usually, a lead magnet is a pdf, checklist, or short training.

In the beginning, the simpler the better. You don’t want to make your first lead magnet 2 hours of training. That would require a lot of effort to create, and there’s no guarantee people will love it.

Picking the right lead magnet can be an adventure in itself. Don’t take it personally if your first lead magnet is a flop. It’s normal.

The easiest way to choose your lead magnet is to choose the same topic from your most popular blog post.

Or you can arrange for your lead magnet to align with your product/service. The main rule is you want the right people to download your lead magnet—people who fit into your ideal client avatar.

If you are not good at design, it will be worth investing in a designer to make sure your lead magnet is visually appealing. Just spend a few dollars hiring someone on Fiverr to design a good checklist/pdf.

10. Nurture Your Email List

Once your readership starts downloading your lead magnet, your blog starts to become an asset for your business. Your blog attracts the right people, and they want to hear more from you by giving you their email addresses.

Now it’s time to focus on building relationships with your people. You can send them an email every week to catch up and remind them of you and what you do, offering valuable content to your faithful readers.

By nurturing your email list, now you have people to promote to every time you launch something new.

Two things you need to remember:

• Don’t exhaust your list by continually selling to your email followers. You don’t want your email list associating a message from you with an ask for purchasing something.
• Clean your email list every quarter. This is such an important thing we need to do in online business. We work so hard to build our email list. But every now and then we need to delete people from our list.
  
  We delete people who never open our email. Because we want people who really care about our business—we’re not just collecting emails from random people.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve read to this point, you’re a champ! I can see that you are really dedicated to learning about getting coaching clients from your blog.

All of these 10 steps can easily overwhelm you. That’s so normal.

One piece of advice I can give you is this: to focus only on your next step.

By working through these steps one by one, you’ll continually find the best solution, and you’ll arrive at a blogging strategy that brings more clients to your business.

Anggi Pradhini

Hey There! I'm Anggi. I write SEO-friendly blog posts for female coaches to boost their authority and generate leads. My copywriting superpower is helping female coaches connect and reach more ideal clients through their blogs. Need a writer? Get in touch with me!