If you’re serious about growing your life coaching business and serving more people, developing a content strategy is a step in the right direction. But if you’re like most people at this stage, it may seem like a *big* step that comes with a lot of confusion, questions, and overwhelm.
Let’s change that, shall we?
The truth of the matter is that life coaches tend to explore content strategies that are too “cookie-cutter” or simply don’t fit into the soul of their business. As a result, they attempt to mold their business into these strategies when it actually works better the other way around.
If you’re looking for your launchpad to success without losing your unique brand personality, you can skip the trial and error by downloading our coaching success blueprint here.
Otherwise, let’s talk about how you – as a busy life coach – can create a content strategy that attracts more clients without feeling salesy, desperate, or out of character.
I’m going to share proven ways to develop an aligned strategy that generates amazing results, so you can actually enjoy creating content that’ll serve your audience best.
What Does It Mean to Have a Content Strategy as a Life Coach?
A quick Google search on the definition of “content strategy” will give you a ton of jargon and marketing babble.
But here’s what a content strategy really means for a transformational life coach:
A content marketing strategy delivers content tailored to your target audience (dream clients) on a long-term, consistent basis, so you can add value, build relationships (rapport), empower them to make informed decisions, and inspire them to participate in your programs – events – and services.
Now there’s a lot to unpack there, so let’s break it down into all its different pieces, starting with why it’s important to have a content strategy in the first place.
Why is a Content Strategy Important?
The mistake many life coaches make when they’re building content is focusing on promotion – promotion – promotion.
But when you develop and deliver high-quality content to your audiences, you naturally do a few things:
- Provide value.
- Build authority.
- Establish connection and trust.
- Educate
- Inspire
So to avoid sounding salesy or surface-level, I encourage you to try on this mindset:
Instead of stressing about what or how you’re going to “create” content, BE the content. In other words, embody what you create, In return, you’ll naturally exude authenticity and produce aligned content.
Storytelling is the key to building real connections and rapport with your audiences, and that’s what a healthy strategy aims to do. A content strategy eliminates the guesswork and creates a guided path of execution for the content you want to create.
And when you build momentum in your content creation, a solid strategy will also help you maximize the usefulness of everything you produce. You’ll begin to identify multiple uses for your content and repurpose it beyond its original purpose.
But before we get too deep, let’s go over some benefits of having a content strategy in place versus going willy-nilly guessing what “should” work.
Benefits of Having a Content Strategy
With a well-thought-out content strategy, you’ll start seeing measurable success sooner than if you hit the “trial-and-error” road of experimentation. Think of the difference between blindly asking for directions on the way to your destination vs. using a GPS.
On top of saving you time, energy, and resources, a good content strategy will generate the following results:
- You’ll know exactly where you need to focus your attention.
- Your content becomes much easier to manage and track.
- You gain clarity on who your ideal client is.
- You find a common language with your audience.
- You stop making assumptions about what people want from you.
- You become highly effective at identifying areas of improvement.
- You’ll attract new clients faster.
- Your existing clients will feel more valued.
- You’ll naturally find more opportunities for collaboration and networking, which makes it easier to connect with more people and potential clients.
- Your reputation and authority will increase over time.
- You’ll be more connected and engaged, which in turn encourages loyalty and familiarity within your own community.
The good news is that implementing a good content strategy can be fun, simple, and intuitive. All it takes is a few basic ingredients, which we’ll be covering in the next section!
Core Elements and Components of a Content Strategy
1) Content Audit
This is where you review everything that you already have. This could mean your website, active social media accounts, articles you’ve written, podcast interviews, books, etc.
By taking account of everything you already have available, you’ll better understand what you’ve already shared with your audiences. From there, you can identify potential gaps in your content.
For instance, let’s say you’re a relationship coach with a lot of marriage content on your blog. After reviewing the comments and questions your readers are leaving on your posts, you notice that people are curious about conflict resolution in their marriages. You could potentially use those questions that are already being asked on your blog to create a video, another post, or a podcast episode!
2) Content Goals
Measurable results are only made possible when you attach goals to the content you create. These might include increasing conversions, getting more subscribers, attracting new clients, and so forth. The goal of any piece of content should always be to move your business forward.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Once you’ve identified the goals you want to achieve through your content, you need to figure out how you’re going to measure success. There are two options here: qualitative measures and quantitative measures. Qualitative measures are things such as likes, shares, and views. Quantitative measures include things like email signups, sales, page visits, etc.
Qualitative Metrics
When you think of qualitative metrics, consider what would be an indicator that people are positively responding to your business. For example:
- Are influencers or authorities in your niche reaching out to you for collaborative opportunities (like speaking events, podcast interviews, videos, guest posts, etc.)?
- Have your new leads been going into discovery calls with a better understanding of who you are, what you offer, and why they want to work with you?
Quantitative Metrics
Quantitative measures give you a direct way to gauge the success of your efforts through numbers. When you’re able to track how many visitors you have on your website and how long they stay on the page, for example, that data can empower you to make adjustments to your content to increase its effectiveness. If you’re doing A/B testing, you can measure the difference between two versions, identify which one performs better, and adjust your strategy based on the winner.
Tracking Results
As you experiment and collect data, remember to keep publishing your content and let it live. Remember, as long as you continue to provide value and keep updating your material, you’ll keep generating interest in your brand.
After a few months of consistent publishing, you’ll start to notice patterns.
What posts are performing well? Which ones aren’t? Why does certain content resonate with certain audiences? Is there a specific demographic you can target better than others?
This information will help you shape future content strategies.
3) Content Ideation
By understanding how people are responding to the content you’ve already created, you’ll have a good place to start inspiring new content as well. It’s essential to perform SEO research to better inform which topics you could get the best results out of.
SEO research helps you identify what kind of keywords people are typing into search engines to find what you offer (i.e., “How to resolve conflict in a relationship”). It’s like you’re learning how to speak the same language your potential clients are using to describe their questions, pain, desires, and other relevant angles. In addition, it helps you learn which topics perform best and attract the most visitors.
The 5-Step Process to Execute Your Content Strategy
Now, all of this may sound great so far, but it can feel like a whole other beast just to get started. It’s no secret that intimidation leads to procrastination, so let’s remedy it with simplicity.
Let’s break down the content strategy development process into 5 easy steps. That way, you can start creating content with intention and direction faster than ever.
At this point, you should already have a good idea of where your dream clients congregate, what they respond to, who they share their content with, and where they share their content. Once you have those defining target avatar elements in place, you’re ready to begin the process:
1. Source
This is the “brainstorming” phase. This is where you sit down (with your team or on your own) and start thinking about what your audience would find valuable, as well as how you’d love to show up for them. To keep track of ideas, make sure you’re writing them down in a shareable format. Avoid judging or screening your ideas. Instead, allow everything to flow and take space.
2. Sort
Review the ideas you’ve dumped out and organize which ideas feel most expansive to you. Said a little differently, which ideas give you a spark of inspiration – like you want to jump into it and nurture it right away?
3. Select
Out of what you’ve sorted out from the second step, highlight your winning ideas. I highly recommend informing your selection only after performing keyword (SEO) research.
4. Schedule
Establish your intention to implement those winning ideas by setting a date. This could live on a content calendar, for example. Remember to set a time and date to review performance as well.
5. Serve
Deliver/publish your content! This is in alignment with your desire to help people as a life coach, because you will be providing value to your prospective clients.
Maximize Your Content Strategy Efforts with a Proven Blueprint
As a transformational life coach, “Why” you show up online has to do with service, and “How” you get to serve more clients is tied to your strategy.
Oftentimes, it can feel like you don’t have time for both. Especially if you’re trying to figure things out all on your own.
So as you embark on your content journey, I invite you to take this free gift with you:
>> The Coaching Success Blueprint
Our mission is to make sure every individual seeking to help others as a life coach has the opportunity and guidance to make the biggest difference possible.
We’ve spent decades testing, experimenting, and learning in the trenches of the coaching industry — and we created this resource so you won’t have to.
Skip the trial and error and confidently up level your coaching business with proven strategies by grabbing your free blueprint here.
Until next time — think bravely and act boldly,
Mat Boggs
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