You establish your expertise by writing expert articles. A full 3000 (!) words is a length that makes your blog post relevant to search engines, which means you will be found for your expertise by potential clients. On the other hand, more personal, short, witty and entertaining blog posts anchor you with your background, story, and unique personality in your readers’ minds. Personal articles are read, liked and commented on a lot and lead to you being remembered.
If you strike the right balance between the two, you build a strong brand with your blog! By following the motto “know, like, trust”, the blog writing eventually leads to new clients. Expertise plus personality are what make coaching and consulting more attractive to clients. Share your expertise and your personality, and you will much faster become the go-to person for a broader audience. The ones who search for expertise will follow you as well as anyone who feels attracted by your personal style.
So how do you demonstrate your expert status and show your personality? Here are 7 blog post ideas for coaches and consultants who want to build their brand and gain new clients by blogging:
1 – Explainers
“What is …”, “What Does … Mean?” or “Have You Ever Heard Of …?”
A good place to start is by explaining something. Maybe explain how coaching works. Ideally, you have something you developed yourself. Do you have your own process or concept? Make a list of “What is” questions and use them for blog articles every now and then. You can look up your topics on Google if you’re short on ideas. Make it your own by improving it.
2 – Comparisons
“What Is The Difference Between …And …”, “What Is Better … Or …?”, “Why I Work With … And Not …” or “Why I Recommend Doing … And Not …”
In this article form you go one step further than the explainer article by expressing your opinion and giving a recommendation. Just by doing that you’ve already put some personality into it. This shows your readers what you like and don’t like. If you do something differently, tell your readers why and how!
Once again, it’s a good idea to google topics and see what questions people have. Does anything tend to be confused easily? Are people looking for specific advice? Sometimes topics that appear quite simple to you get you the most website traffic. “What is the difference between coaching and consulting?” “Do I need a coach or a consultant?” “Why people are looking for a consultant but actually need a coach”
3 – Trend Spotting
“Here Are The 5 Most Popular Coaching Fields In 2022”
You can establish your expert status or thought leadership by writing about trends you observe in your coaching or consulting segment. Are you seeing any trends in your field? Do you have any predictions for the consulting industry?
Be sure to keep an eye on your past articles and remove them if things do not go as expected!
4 – Reviews
This Year Was All About…” “This Month I Focused On…”
Rather than focusing on the future, you can also write about the recent past. Reviews are a perfect way to personalise your blog. What have you been up to? What were your hot topics? Pick out a few events or topics that highlighted the past weeks or months for you. Which training did you attend? Were there any personal experiences that are worth mentioning? Did you encounter any new topics or questions? And don’t forget to include a few snapshots of you in action!
Find a good balance between business and personal aspects. Maybe go for 60% business and 40% personal. With this mix, you provide lots of conversation points to a wide range of readers.
Make sure your boundary between personal and private is clear, and only share what feels right to you.
5 – Background Stories
“How I Got Into Coaching” or “Why I Decided To Become A Consultant” or “This Is How I Onboard New Clients And Why”
Background stories or anything where you reveal something about you and your work, is another great way to build trust and become more personal while still highlighting your expert status. Write about how you started your business and why. What difficulties did you face at the beginning and how did you overcome them? What is most rewarding about your work today? What have you learned since you started out as a coach or consultant? How has your life changed?
Of course, there is a limit to this type of blog posts, but you could still celebrate your business anniversary every year by adding to your background story!
6 – Listicles
“10 Reasons Why You Should …” or “5 Things To Avoid When …” or “7 Ways How To …”
If you don’t have much time to write but want to publish something, then go for a listicle. This is a new buzz word and basically means writing a list. Your listicle should consist of single points that also can stand alone. And the order does not matter either, unless it is a ranking, like “The top 10 …”
The more points you collect, the shorter any explanatory text should be per point. For example, you can list 7 points and explain each point in one or two paragraphs, or you can make a list of 50 points and then just list them without any further text.
7 – Case Studies
“Case Study”, “Best Practice Case”, “Client Experience”
Nothing underpins your expert status more than writing about real clients, anonymously of course. Describe the situation before the coaching or consulting, what the problems or pain points were and how you and your client resolved them.
It’s good advice to always ask your clients if they are willing to provide you with a text about their coaching or consulting experience. They may prefer to be interviewed rather than writing themselves. Publish the full interview or write an article based on their answers. That way any potential new clients visiting your blog will gain an immediate understanding of your expertise and how you apply it. They will also see how your clients connect to you on a personal level.
Share It!
Have you found your way of blogging to highlight expertise and personality? Then make sure that people will read it. Remember? Spend 20% on writing and 80% on marketing your blog post!
You can simply share your blog post on social media by sharing the first paragraph or intro text and the featured image. Don’t forget to place the direct link to your blog post and maybe add some hashtags for people who search for your topic.
But you should also use your blog content more than once. Create striking social media post visuals in Canva to present some strong quotes or the most important points of your blog post. Just add the intro text of your blog post or maybe the paragraphs before and after your quote plus the link to the full blog article, and you are ready to post again.
If people still don’t come to your blog post, then you need to carry the content to them. Publish your blog post on other sites, e.g. as a LinkedIn article or a contribution at medium.com This way you will expand your reach and find new followers.
