Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile Before Starting Your Online Coaching Business
The biggest mistake an early-stage online coach can make is focusing on the wrong parts and details of the business. They mistakenly focus on a logo and brand colors and spend money building a website—essential components to building a business but not the most critical first steps for starting an online coaching business.
An aspiring online coach shouldn’t spend another dime, their time, or energy building a website without properly auditing their LinkedIn profile.
An optimized LinkedIn profile can reach thousands or possibly millions (if done correctly) of prospects every day. According to the US Digital Trust Survey, LinkedIn ranked #1 for overall trust and security over other social media platforms, like Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.
Why not take advantage of the built-in trust and access to over 800 million users on this world’s largest professional network for your coaching business? If a person is looking for professional help and expertise, they will most likely look on Linkedin rather than taking the risk of finding a random person on a Google search.
So, before you start building that website for your online coaching business, you should audit your LinkedIn profile first and leverage your profile’s visibility to an audience of working professionals seeking to find solutions for their business or career.
Audit Your LinkedIn Profile Before Starting Your Online Coaching Business
Your LinkedIn profile is like your digital business card for prospects to review and get to know you better. And there are ways to optimize your profile to show up on search results as people are looking to discover coaches like you.
The four critical areas to audit for an effective LinkedIn profile:
- Define Your Niche Statement in Your Headline
- Share What Makes You Unique
- Feature Your Best Posts
- Optimize Your About Section
We’ll start the LinkedIn profile audit from the top and work our way down, starting with your headline.
Define Your Mission In Your Headline
Your LinkedIn headline is one of the most critical components to your overall LinkedIn profile. It’s placed right underneath your profile picture. Think of it as your three-second handshake to possible clients and potential business opportunities.
Crafting the ideal headline should include your mission as a coach, who you are, and how you help others.
So, let’s start with your mission.
If your mission statement as an online coach is “I want to help people find a job.” or “I want to help small business owners become more successful.” Then you really aren’t making a compelling case for a person to work with you.
Defining your mission in your headline is like describing the heart and soul of your operation, your purpose for helping others by sharing your core value with your prospects.
If you haven’t figured out the “why” behind your business, I suggest watching Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk” Start with your Why.” It can help you get to the very core of the existence of your coaching business.
Including your mission in your headline will instantly connect you with your ideal prospects on a deeper level.
Share What Makes You Unique, Create a Niche Statement
The other critical component to crafting an optimized LinkedIn headline will include who you help and the value you will bring to their lives. This is the part of the headline where you speak directly to your target customer by creating a niche statement.
There are so many online coaches out there. But that shouldn’t intimidate you; it should get your creative juices flowing to explain why a person should want to work with you.
Here are a few questions to answers to help you come up with your niche statement:
- Who are you specifically helping?
- What are you passionate about?
- What valuable skill or talent do you bring to the table?
- How do you solve specific problems?
Answering these questions will help you develop your niche statement of who you work with and how you can help solve their problems. Combining this with your mission creates the ideal headline for your Linkedin profile.
Here is the complete formula to crafting a perfect LinkedIn headline:
Who you are | Mission Statement | Skills/Achievement | Unique problem you solve
[IN]Side Story– After optimizing her profile and working with me on building her personal brand on LinkedIn, my client Anne Genduso was featured twice by the LinkedIn News Team, landed an interview with Business Insider, and signed a new client. Optimizing your profile is the first place to focus your attention when launching your online coaching services, it has the built-in traffic and audience you need to get started.
Feature Your Best Posts
The most underutilized part of a LinkedIn profile is the feature section. A place dedicated to showing off your best moments and representing who you are as a professional. Think of this section as your career highlights showcasing your best posts, a place for essential links about your services, or relevant articles you wrote or written about you. The perfect space to build that “know, like, and trust” factor about you and your coaching business.
Optimize Your About Section
If your “About” section only shares information about you, then you are not maximizing the potential to capture your prospect’s attention. Most online coaches make the mistake of using this section to only write about their work history.
That’s what the “Experience” section is for.
This section is your opportunity to share with your potential prospects how you can help them and why you are the perfect coach to work with.
Your “About” Section should cover five major points:
- Who is the ideal customer that you’re speaking to?
- What are their pain points?
- How you can help them
- How they can reach out to you
- End with Call to Action (CTA)
This write-up is also a goldmine to include keywords relevant to your services that have the potential to show up on search results on search queries on LinkedIn. But no keyword stuffing here, meaning a long string of words instead of including them in well-written sentences. Those tactics look spammy and out of date, not the type of impression you want to leave with a potential client.
The Final Takeaway- Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile Before Starting Your Coaching Business
You are about to start an online coaching business, and your first task on your to-do list may be to create a website. But that’s not the best place to spend your time, money, and energy to get your name, brand, and coaching services out there.
Don’t underestimate the power of an optimized LinkedIn profile that already lives on a platform with millions of potential prospects looking to solve their business and careers challenges.
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