What’s the best way to set yourself apart on social media as a life coach right now?

You’ll want to keep reading if:

1. You’re sick of getting overlooked despite being passionate about the results you can create.

2. Your social media posts fade into obscurity and get lost in the noise.

3. Despite taking many programs, you need fresh insights on what it takes to stand out, share value, and get clients from your content.

The good news is you’re right where you need to be to learn the best ways to get seen and heard on social media, even if your following is nowhere near where you want it to be.

If you’ve been stuck in a “social media death roll” where you’ve been easily discouraged by getting ignored, it’s time to overcome those hopeless thoughts and find a new way to get more momentum.

And expect it to take a while…

A friend asked me the other day – “how long ago did you work with Lewis Howes?”

And I thought for a bit and remembered it was back in 2011.

“Why?” I asked.

And she said he mentioned he had 8m followers, and she wondered how long that took…

And he asked me to help him grow his Facebook Page to 5000 Likes – from a hundred… so that’s what we did, and we made that happen in under a month – but with ads, not content.

He grew his influence (and income) from webinars and Linked In back then.

He picked one offer and one platform and found audiences to share his webinar to start making seven figures.

This was well before his huge podcast, The School Of Greatness.

He has 3.4 million followers on his huge Facebook page, but he didn’t get those just from scheduling some posts on his social media accounts.

But he also didn’t lament his lack of followers on Facebook when I met him…

He tried to work out a way to find a bigger message than teaching Linked In, creating valuable offers, and reaching more people.

He stuck at it – consistently and refined his message but didn’t stop believing and working towards the goal.

He didn’t throw his hands up and say, “I can’t get the followers I want on Facebook, so I’m not going to bother”.

Lewis Howes knew he wanted to reach more people and create more influence to grow his business and revenue.

And even though he’s changed his positioning, his offers, and his status – he’s always been Lewis and he is his brand, and that is what content will help you build.

But it’s trial and error, maintaining consistency and holding to the goal of sharing a message that matters to you, discovering how you can make it matter to your perfect people.

You need to get started with the message you have for the value and results you can create now for a specific market with a specific problem.

But you don’t have to wait until you have that completely figured out before you start sharing more of yourself on social media – because being perfect does not get you growth, engagement, and subscribers.

It’s setting yourself apart with a distinctive difference, taking a stand and showing that you care, and speaking to the heart of your audience’s silent fears or secret desires.

That’s what gets attention and builds connection; that’s what your potential clients will be drawn to, and that’s also what the social media algorithms love.

Some of this will be trial and error,  most will be strategy and commitment with a splash of luck – but waiting to be inspired to share will shortcut any hope of you creating the consistency and commitment you need to create content that leads to more clients.

It takes time, but that’s why it’s so brilliant to start before you’re ready and keep going. It helps to activate attention with some content creation guiding principles.

It’s NOT your experience, or how much you know that gets you noticed on social media.

The last thing most people want when looking to escape on social media is more information.

And while you need to have a level of knowledge and skill, of course, that’s not where most of us are lacking…

How do I know?

Because I coach the most talented, smart, and accomplished women – they have degrees, coaching certifications, modalities, and natural abilities out the wazoo…

But many remain clueless and frustrated when sharing what they do online and making offers in a way their audience understands and responds to.

Instead, they continue to avoid building their showing-up muscle because they want to be liked, win every time, and avoid the discomfort of putting themselves on social media.

So, instead of creating more opportunities for themselves and more of a chance to impact the lives of more clients, they invest a ton of time, energy, and expense into stuff that doesn’t get them any significant results.

Things like taking more courses, getting more certifications or qualifications when already over-qualified, or trying some one-hit wonder strategy that keeps them in learning mode (HIDING mode) rather than sharing mode (VALUE mode).

The problem is that when we go out to try and get clients online, it feels incredibly uncomfortable, so we obsess…

About whether WE’RE good enough…

WHAT other coaches do better than us, and

ALL that we don’t know.

So much so that we ignore what we know and find a way to share that easily.

But I want to end that and get you on track to finding and sharing great content.

It’s not the Instagram algorithm, the economy, or tech holding you back from getting noticed online.

It’s not how much time you have, how many clients you’ve served, how much money you’ve made, how pretty you are, or how much you weigh.

But it’s easy to think it could be any or all of those things.

Nope, the real problem is that you’re not showing up consistently on any platform, whether that’s in email, social media, or podcasting – or even trying to shortcut that with ads.

And you’re not sharing a message that matters when you do.

I get it.

I hated showing up on social media for years, and I relied on sharing all my best stuff behind the scenes because I was afraid of being seen and judged.

I relied on marketing strategies and sharing much information to get my clients.

Until I started seeing the market evolve and how content could make a huge difference in a more saturated market.

It’s now an essential connection and trust builder that can’t be ignored or avoided if you want to grow and scale a profitable coaching business online.

So, what’s the best way to set yourself apart on social media as a life coach with your content?

It’s not by sharing what’s been heard before in the same way it’s already been shared…

Or by trying to become a replica of those inspiring, big-name, successful coaches.

Or by blindly adopting strategies from someone with a completely different set of natural strengths, abilities, and instincts and ignoring your own.

I’ve discovered that 4 Content Activators capture more attention quickly, and these work to help you cut through on social media and get lasting results.

1. Stand Out With A New Opportunity

New ideas, opportunities, and innovation are a powerful way to share solutions to common problems.
Our minds are programmed to seek the new and pay attention to it.

That doesn’t mean you have to create an entirely new category or innovation.

Calm down, you’re not Elon Musk (or maybe you are!).

All you need to do here is think about the questions your audience is asking about the main problem your audience is trying to solve.

That’s not starting with the result you help them create, yet…

It’s staying with the problem as they see it, feel it, and speak about it.

That’s where you can harvest a ton of ideas.

And where can you start to discover that?

You can head to a free tool like answerthepublic.com and put in one of the questions your people ask you about getting a result; then, it will come up with the most popular search questions related to the question you entered.

In other words, it is how your audience is looking to get answers.

And make no mistake, creating content that answers questions is a powerful way to start a conversation on social media – and that’s how you get noticed and heard.

When you do this, you’ll start noticing a trend in areas of interest and how you can build out more posts, newsletters, videos, and podcast episodes around these.

A quick way to cheat on this is to go to Amazon bestseller lists, look at other coaches on YouTube in your area, and see which of their videos have the most views.

That’s a great place to get inspiration and couple it with your style and value to create powerful shares.

Test them in a format that comes naturally to you – written, audio, or video.

And most importantly, one that you can commit to regularly.

For example, one of my clients has an energy coaching practice and shares her method to help her clients embrace and activate their energy to hold a new level of space and transformation for their coaching clients.

So, instead of starting with her unique method, which people new to her world had no awareness of, I coached her to see that she could illustrate the concept more in terms of what they were aware of.

And that was holding women’s circles and retreats.

She could then start sharing how they could create and run their own and that her method solves many of their fears and problems.

The result?
Advertising campaigns that made a profit on her initial workshop and a readily engaged audience of 200 people at every event ready to receive and consider her higher ticket offer.

They were moving through awareness together and becoming more engaged at every stage because she bought new insights into their existing issue or desires.

The best part is that she didn’t have to wait for this content to spread organically; we turned this messaging and content into a six-figure campaign instead and used ads to supercharge the spread and engagement.

2. Turn Strangers Into Allies

Many of you understand the importance of choosing a niche to differentiate yourself online and get more momentum in your business, as the right kind of people can understand and recognize your value more readily.

This avoids wasting time, energy, and money on marketing trying to reach and convince everyone.

But with messaging and the content created to share it, you want to think more than just a subset of people; you want to think about where you can lead those people and why it matters to you and them.

Standing up to common enemies creates allies.

Those common enemies can be situations, events, opinions, trends, established doctrines, and people your audience no longer wishes to tolerate. 

It’s something they can get behind because it matters, and you will matter more to them when they know you care about the same thing they care about.

And as much as you want to be seen as a coach, educator, or mentor, you become Kryptonite for your audience when you start being seen as a powerful ally.

An essential and highly valuable transformational leader who gets noticed by more of the right kind of prospective clients, someone who builds a lasting connection that keeps your people coming back and creates the meaning they’ve been craving.

Now, this doesn’t have to be sharing polarizing and strong opinions or getting on a soapbox if that’s not your style.

You can still share content that pokes holes in what’s well-established and accepted and share a new opportunity or alternative with your message and offers.

One of my clients is a money mindset coach for women physicians. She creates successful multi-six figure launches because she’s not afraid to point the finger at the common enemies and invisible doctrines that hold her audience back and how her approach can help them overcome them.

We weave these in as posts that become ads, and she also shares these kinds of posts on Instagram to great engagement.

She rallies against the common enemies of mansplaining financial advisers, huge student loan balances, and being the sole breadwinner in a family.

These are all elements that her market is battling and struggling with, and sharing the message shows she is taking a stand against these common enemies and how she has overcome them herself, which positions her as a powerful ally. They are naturally drawn to her and her offers.

3. Take Them By The Hand And Show Them A Better Way

When you can show that you can remove a long-held and costly hurdle to a desired outcome, your audience wants you to get their attention fast.

This content activator builds on the first two activators because it quickly positions you as highly valuable without convincing them why you’re the perfect solution to their problem (especially if you’re still getting runs on the board and sometimes struggle to believe it yourself).

Step-by-step shortcuts & systems create compelling influence, but you must make these easily understood.

These systems are what I like to call your Magic Method – a signature system that fast-tracks your audience to the solution they desire.

It’s a simple step-by-step plan to save time, avoid the undesirable, eliminate a long-held problem, deliver them more power and confidence, strengthen their relationships, or make them more money.

When you can start sharing this in simple terms in your content, you immediately capture more interest, position your distinction, and inspire your audience to want to buy from you, or at least hear more.
It also creates a great way for you to start sharing your content as a guest expert.

When I got featured on Amy Porterfield’s Podcast, I shared with her how my Mastermind Success Method could help people with online courses that weren’t selling.

I shared how my method helped enhance results and add value to a course offering and how those with smaller audiences could use it right away to get higher-paying clients and make more money without building a whole new course.

Was I the first to share the concept of offering group programs or masterminds? No.

But I was the first to share it with those who took action after listening.

So, you don’t have to be the first or only person in your area of expertise to create and share your method or approach.

The fact that you show up and share it with the people you most want to work with in a simple way they can understand creates the desire for what you offer.

And you can do that now with what you already know. 

4.  Turn A Mood Into Your Moment

Google defines zeitgeist as “the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time”.

This is where you can hitch your wagon to trends of the moment and either narrate, commentate, or give deeper meaning to the movement behind them to capture existing interest and capitalize on the elevated attention and discussion you don’t need to create from scratch.

Sometimes, these may be physical conditions like Perimenopause, ADHD or something like the Positive Body Image movement or Neurodiversity.

Perhaps you want to take a stand against Bro Marketing online as a business coach or stand up against the Patriarchy; you can find hashtags with millions of followers waiting to engage with what you have to share.

As long as this aligns with your beliefs and style, and even better if it directly relates to your area of coaching or offers, this can be an incredible attention activator for your content.

You can start testing this by sharing other people’s content or viral posts and adding your thoughts or perspectives.

I saw just how huge this can be when I posted a video of Beyonce singing Proud Mary at a concert honouring Tina Turner to mark her death on my Facebook Page.

 There were no hashtags, and it went to one million views. If only I had done this purposefully around something, my ideal clients cared about!

But you can start testing your ideas out now.

There’s no need to wait to start showing up more when you embrace these attention activators and let them guide you to create inspiring content that gets you noticed and gets you clients.

Resources:
School Of Greatness Podcast with Lewis Howes

Answer The Public