How to Attract Health Coaching Clients With a Blog—Even If You’re Not a Writer

Michelle Leotta: Welcome to the Health Coach Power Community Podcast. I'm Michelle Leotta, ex corporate girl turned certified health coach with over 15 years of experience growing a successful online practice. I started out with no idea what I was getting into and learned a lot of lessons along the way that have given me the freedom to do the work I love and raised two boys as a single mom. I created the Health Coach Power community over a decade ago to make it easier for health coaches to build a career they love and make the world a better place.

Michelle Leotta: Hello there. Health coaches, starting a blog can be a smart way to grow your health coaching practice when done right. Otherwise, it could be a huge waste of time, and I know because I started my own health and wellness blog. 20 years ago. So how do you get started the right way, the easiest way? That's what we're gonna talk about in today's episode. And if you want your blog to consistently bring clients to your door, of course you do. We've got a free event this June called Establish Yourself as a health expert with a practical, low pressure blogging system to help you look legit and find clients. And you can grab your free spot at healthcoachpower.com slash blogging. Now let me introduce my good friend Jana O., who's joining us for today's episode. Jana, I love having you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Jana O.: Oh, I love being here. Thank you so much for having me again.

Michelle Leotta: Is this like our eventh episode together? I feel like we've done so many. It could be, yeah. Always so many good things to talk about and today it's all about starting a blog, the Easy Way. I've been hearing from a lot of health coaches. Recently that they wanna start a blog, even though it sounds like something that we were doing 20 years ago. Blogs are alive and well. Before we get into all of that, can you share a little bit about yourself and why you're like the perfect person to be having this conversation about blogging?

Jana O.: Sure. Yeah. So I've been in online business for about eight years and when I got started way back eight years ago, roughly. I decided I would start a blog and I decided that I would write about the things that I believed and, and was learning that my audience needed to learn and hear and understand more deeply to be ready to buy. And that's how I started my blog. And, um, you know, fast forward, there's all kinds of things I could talk about, but, uh, you know, these days, a lot of the really, all of the successes that I've experienced in my business. Came because I wrote blog posts and now I help students with creating a blog that also brings them clients too. So I have a lot of health coaches and wellness coaches in, uh, the program that I run and in my audience as well, and they're my favorite. So I. I love helping your type of people, uh, get started and having a bl to, to have a blog that just like you said is one that is actually gonna give them ROI and bring them clients, not just be a passion project that doesn't actually bring them clients or do anything for their business. So, yeah.

Michelle Leotta: I know that kind of blog very, very well. That's definitely what mine was in the beginning. Um, so did you hear that you guys, we combined, we have like almost 30 years of experience blogging, which is insane. So if you guys have questions as we're going along, drop them in the chat over here on Facebook or wherever you're watching. Let's start with this idea that like still. Yeah. Is it still a thing, is it really a good way for health coaches to market themselves? What's your take?

Jana O.: Yeah, I mean, I, I always quote this like, guy from the fifties, Howard Gossage, I think was his name, very mad men vibes kind of guy who said that people don't read ads. They read what interests them. And sometimes it's an ad and it's the same thing with blog posts. I mean, people don't go looking for blogs to read today, but when you have a blog post that's about something that grabs their attention because it's solving a problem that they have, or really exploring what they need to do to get to a desire that they have, um, or busting a myth of about something that they're like, oh my God, I did think that was true. Maybe that's why I'm not getting the results that I want. Um, and I'm giving you some hints about what to blog about here already. Um. That's when people take notice and go and they read it, whether it's on your blog or, you know, somewhere else. But one of the reasons why we love having it on your blog, there's a lot of reasons, but it's evergreen, it lasts, it doesn't just get lost in a, you know, fast moving newsfeed.

Jana O.: Um, and it's close to the point of like sale, if you will, in the sense that it's adjacent to, um, where people are gonna go to learn more about you and your offers and to book with you, like a consult or to buy from you. So. That's what I always say when people are like, are blogs dead? No, not at all. People have been reading blogs this whole time. Um, but a lot of people are wanting to kind of get away from the social media treadmill. I call it sometimes people call it a hamster wheel. And so we're hearing more about blogging because it's such a great like center for what people are really looking at as more quiet, sustainable marketing as well. But it still really, really works. And so I think that's why you're probably hearing it even more than usual from your audience. 'cause everybody's all about. Blogging again these days,

Michelle Leotta: it's having a comeback. And I think you're right. It's a bit of like the opposite energy of social media where it's like. Anything you post on social, it's there for 30 seconds and then it's gone and you gotta keep doing it and you gotta keep doing it. And no one's ever looking at the stuff that you posted a year ago, but with a blog, you could be getting visitors to that blog post for years and years and years. So that has this like longevity you don't get with social. Not to mention, you know, I don't know if we'll have time to get into it today, but you create a great blog post and boom, now you have a bunch of. Content for your socials as well.

Jana O.: A hundred percent. And that's a big part of what I teach too, is like using your blog to make all your other marketing easier as well. So, yep.

Michelle Leotta: Kristen saying over here, she loves that blogging is evergreen. Much better than spending so much time on social media with most that barely gets seen. Yes, exactly. And like you own that content when it's published on your blog as opposed to publishing it on Zuckerberg's platform. Right. Where it's building his business. That's right. That's right. Like you're building your own. So I'm always driving traffic back to my website to read and and to listen. In the case of a podcast, maybe that's worth mentioning. Just real quick too, podcast versus blogging.

Jana O.: Yeah, I think that both are great. I think a blog is the most low lift way to get started with what I call long form thought leadership. Content, uh, because something we didn't even mention is that when you have a blog, you're able to go deeper and really give people the shifts that they need to really feel confident and ready to buy from you. Um, and that doesn't happen as much with like short form, you know, content, um, on social media. So a podcast does the same thing. Um, but I think a blog is the best, most low lift way to get started. And I have a lot of students who you don't need a team for a blog. Um, you know, down the road you can get a team if you want, but you don't have to in order to leverage a blog. Um, I have a lot of students who start with a blog with the intention of also. Having a podcast at some point down the road, once they gain some traction in their business and they have grown their audience a little bit more, and then they go back and they use a lot of their main blog posts that they've written to create their podcast episodes, so you have that option. But I think a blog is the most low lift, easy way to get started.

Michelle Leotta: And we love when you guys just get started and there's not a huge tech hurdle in the way, and you don't have to hire people or figure out all this new stuff. You can all. Type words and hit publish. You know, this is accessible to everyone. So that's a really great way of kind of deciding which way to go. Um, super important. We've got a couple other questions. I'm gonna wait on those because, um, we'll get there. Uh, but to get started, it does feel like. It's complicated 'cause we get questions. I wanna start a blog, but how, how do I start when really it's kind of like the most simple thing ever. So what mistakes do you think coaches are making when they're like, I wanna start a blog. But yeah.

Jana O.: I think honestly a lot of health coaches and all coaches and service providers for that matter really over complicate. Having a blog. And most of that comes from the idea that they think of a blog as something that you have if you're a blogger. Um, and I always say, you're not a blogger. You're a coach with a blog. And that those two things are very different. Um, blogger information, if you like, if you're looking on YouTube or anywhere about how to start a blog, most of the content you're gonna see is going to be the kind of content for people who wanna start a blog as a business. They're going to monetize with traffic, with ads, with affiliate links, things like that. We're not gonna actually do that as health coaches. What we're gonna do is we're gonna create a blog that has, it's the center of our thought leadership content, and it covers thoroughly. Those things that your audience, again, needs to hear and learn and understand more deeply. To be ready to hire you.

Jana O.: And that's actually how we're gonna monetize the blog, if you will, is we're gonna get clients with the blog. Um, so we're not gonna worry about the things that bloggers worry about. I've got a lot of air quotes going on for those people who are listening on the podcast. Um, you know, all the things that bloggers worry about. We hear those things and we think, oh, this is gonna be complicated, but it's really not. And then in the health space, there's this kind of added thing where a lot of the blogs we think about blogs and air quotes are food blogs. And food blogs are very complicated, right? There's widgets and recipes and all these things going on, and we don't do that with a blog that is there to get you clients. Um, all you really need is a very simple interface. Um, if you have a website, you just add it to your website. If you don't yet, you can start a blog and that now is your website or the beginning of your website. And you just need a very simple way to literally just post the words that you're writing about, the things that your audience needs to feel ready to buy.

Jana O.: Um, you just need a nice, easy to read font lot, you know, good contrast between the background and the, the font itself, things like that. You don't need a lot of fancy formatting and widgets and the images and all those things that sometimes people think of when they think of, I'm gonna be a blogger if I start a blog. The other big thing that people don't realize is that as coaches and service providers like. We don't, we're not going to blog forever. We don't need to blog quote consistently. Um, we're just gonna, the way I teach it is we create a capsule content library of 12 to 20 pieces of content that cover all those main things our audience needs to be ready to buy. And then we don't have to keep blogging consistently. You don't have to blog once a week or once a month or at any particular cadence. Um, if you are a coach, you are just gonna create this capsule library of content and then leverage it. Um, so I think that's really where people overcomplicate things. Um, those two things is really where people get confused between what it's like to be a blogger, where your blog is your business versus having a blog for your business that gets you clients. The latter is actually much simpler, and that's of course what I teach. Yeah. So those are the things I think that people do that overcomplicate it when they don't need to.

Michelle Leotta: I just took a whole bunch of notes over here. I have like so many things to say, but that the whole idea of that capsule library, I think is brilliant. Definitely nothing I would've thought of on my own because it's always like you have to blog, you have to publish. Sometimes in uh, the early years of my business, which was way back in the early two thousands, it was like multiple times a week I was publishing a blog post and I thought that's just what you had to do. And what you teach is just the antithesis of that, which should make everyone go, oh, thank God this is actually doable.

Jana O.: And it's not that that advice that you heard wasn't valid or isn't valid now, it's just that it's not advice for us as coaches. It's what people need to do if they're starting a blog to make that their business, uh, if that makes sense. So they're blogging in order to get. Enough traffic to monetize through the affiliate networks and the media vine and things like that. That's not what we're doing. It's a different method and it's easy to get those things to conflate them and get confused and go down this rabbit hole of advice that's not meant for you. And I want to make sure people know they don't have to do that.

Michelle Leotta: Well, that answers one of the questions, which is over here from Linda about how do we monetize the blog. It's by selling your health coaching services. That's it. Because if you think about like. With ads and you know, like you said, the A food blog, which crashes my computer every damn time I try to cook off a food blog. I mean, you don't have to be dealing in any of that. That's just a different game. You're just gonna keep doing what you're doing, offering your coaching services, offering your five day jumpstart, whatever it is that you're offering. But this is a new way of bringing people into your world. Exactly. Alright, fantastic. I also wanted to just point out that, um, you know, this idea of like establishing yourself or like thought leadership, you've used that term a few times. I had such a hard time in the beginning of my health coaching career thinking anyone would take me seriously. You guys can just say something in the comments over here if you felt the same way.

Michelle Leotta: Imagine that you're talking to like, I don't know, your kid's teacher, and they're just like, Hey, by the way, I really liked that article you wrote about such and such. Because that kind of thing started happening to me. I would have the link to my, you know, my website or my blog. It would be like linked in my email footer, which is just one of many, many ways that people might find your blog. And so if I emailed, for example, my son's teacher, I. Like people were clicking on that and then they would like go read all my blog posts and then they would bring it up later. And I was like, oh my God. Like, without even realizing it, I was building a reputation. So it'll start happening in these like small, everyday ways.

Jana O.: Yeah, and it's so, um, it's still a little bit unique these days to find people who are, instead of, you know, dancing on Instagram and TikTok and whatever, putting their thought leadership into a blog that's very helpful for the readers, um, but is more long form content so it really positions you as an expert. In a way that, again, social media doesn't, and I'm not saying social media is terrible. You have to give it up to have a blog. Um, but it, it definitely adds a certain dimension and credibility to your online presence that social media doesn't totally agree.

Michelle Leotta: So for the tech averse out there, I. And you know, Christie asked in the comments, I was gonna make sure I asked this to you anyway, Jana, where do you post a blog? Like what? Like formally, what is the thing that you are hitting publish on? Can you just give us a little insight there?

Jana O.: Yeah. So if you already have a website, the very best place to put your blog post is on your own website. And we could have a whole conversation about why, but it that really is, you'll have to trust me. That's the best place because when people go to your blog, you want them to very easily be able to click to book a call with you. You know, fill out your contact form, whatever that is that you want them to do next, sign up for your email list. You don't wanna be blogging on someone else's platform. A lot of people ask me these days about Substack and Medium, um, and I consider those more kind of like I. They're sort of like social media, if you will, or outposts, not in the way that they're used, but in the role that they play in your marketing. They can be good, but they're not a replacement for a blog on your own website. So that's the best place to put it. And then if you don't have a website yet, then you can start a simple blog, uh, with the intention to connect your website to it as you build your website. But on your own, on your own site is where you wanna be at a domain that you own,

Michelle Leotta: right? So for example, you could start today like a free wordpress.com. Site, and you know, you don't have to put anything on it except the blog for now. Eventually, you would add an about page and fancy up the homepage and all the other things. But essentially a blog is the beginning of a website, and you can do it for free on like wordpress.com, like I just said, or Squarespace or Wix. I mean, these all have blog functionality.

Jana O.: Absolutely. Absolutely. And when you have a capsule library of content, you can always, um, like if you started it in one place and then down the road you wanted to move it, it's not hard because it's just some posts that you copy and paste. We're not talking about fancy formatting, we're not talking about a hundred posts because you've had to post consistently for the last year, um, or two years, or three years. So, yeah, exactly. It's very simple, simpler than people think.

Michelle Leotta: It is way, way more simple. You know what? Those first blog posts, you just can get 'em out there.No one's gonna see it right away. No one's gonna even know where your URL is. If you don't like it, you can take it down, you can redo it. You know, I just find like just getting used to publishing something, right? There's just this like, oh my God factor. People might read this, but. Don't worry, they're not all lining up to read your blog immediately. You can kind of ease in.

Jana O.: Yeah. Yeah. I would say that's, that's, that's kind of true. Although I like to think that with the way that I teach blogging, you're gonna be creating content about topics that are so irresistible that people are gonna run, read that right away. But I do agree. I do agree with. I know you're trying to not scare people, and I'm like, no, they're gonna see them right away. But, um, I do agree with the, the thing, the idea that like, you can always change them. Nothing's in stone on a blog. That's another thing that I love about it, is it's not like podcast or YouTube where it's kind of hard to go back and edit it and you kind of end up having to rerecord. Whereas on a pod, I mean on a blog, you can update things. So I like that part.

Michelle Leotta: Exactly. You guys, my first blog post was about flaxseed. So I mean, I'm just saying, you know, like sometimes you just gotta. Figure it out. But with Jana's, uh, advice, you'll, you'll be doing much better than I did much more quickly. Now, um, more and more, of course we're hearing about using AI, ChatGPT. If I wanna start a health coach blog, shouldn't I just go to ChatGPT and say, Hey, can you write me a blog post? I'm a health coach and I'm looking for clients.

Jana O.: So I definitely, I think AI is great for writing blog posts. Um, I'm not gonna be the person who says like, oh no, that won't work. It has to be your thought leadership. You can use AI for sure. You just have to use it the right way. And the, the way that we use it inside my program is a reflection of how I believe that it is used best, obviously, because I figured it out and, and this is how we use it. Um, first of all, you wanna use it in your process for choosing your topics, and that's really, really important because if you just choose a topic and then ask AI to write you a blog post about it, but that wasn't a topic that was very high converting to begin with, then even if it's fast for you to generate that and get it on your blog, it's probably not gonna move the needle for you anyway.

Jana O.: So. First we can use it to really help us narrow down and come up with topics. And then you can use AI to write blog posts as well. Um, I teach a four step writing process, and basically I would never teach you to go in and ask AI to write your blog post end to end. So I would never say like, um, I'm a health coach and I specialize in hormone health, and I want you to write me a blog post about a certain type of hormone or about what people should do if they have, you know, difficult periods or something like that. What you get back is not gonna be close enough to your own beliefs and thought leadership. Um, and it's not really gonna be what Google likes anyway. And it's also not gonna be what people really want or need either because we didn't take the time to figure that part of it out to begin with. You're just gonna get words and they're gonna make sense, but they're not really gonna like move people to action.

Jana O.: Um, so you can use it, but I recommend using it instead of in all for like end to end with the four step writing process that I teach, we use it in the second step, which is drafting. So what we do is we outline with our brains and then we draft using AI and I have GPTs inside my program, which is a special ChatGPT bot that helps you do your draft, that matches it up with like the high converting format that we use. And then you don't necessarily use it in steps three and four. You could use it a little in step four 'cause you're polishing things up and it can sometimes polish things up for you and make them more succinct and easier to read, which is helpful sometimes. The point is, is that it can play a role in your writing, but you shouldn't be asking it to do the whole, like, you know, outlining and writing process for you. 'Cause otherwise you're just gonna end up with generic gobbly cook. That may be right, may make sense, but isn't really, you know what you need to actually convert clients with that content. So that's my philosophy on it.

Michelle Leotta: Fully agree. Very, very helpful. It's kind of like having a junior level team member that can like kind of help you get there, but you're gonna put your polish on it and your voice on it. But we do love ChatGPT think the way you just explained it, we can make really good use without churning out generic content that won't do a darn thing. We don't want this. Now, someone asked earlier about SEO and I know we wanted to talk about that today. Um, some listeners might say, what the heck is SEO? So you wanna just give us just a top line of that and, uh, what, you know, how do we even approach it when it's such like a big topic?

Jana O.: Yeah, that is a big topic. Um, so search engine optimization is what it stands for, and basically it's exactly what that sounds like. It's like you're, it's kind of. Lingo, but basically you're optimizing what you're writing to be more easily found on search engines when people are searching for things and it is a good thing. Um, but it's a very long-term, like sort of, it's like a long game strategy. And for some people's blogs and topics, I. It can work out really well over time where you can start to like rank on Google, but it takes a while. 'cause it's not just about like adding the right keywords or about, it's complicated.

Jana O.: There's like domain authority, how long your website's been around, how many back links you have. There's complicated stuff. So I actually teach, um, a concept called unforced, SEO. And I do this because I noticed in my own experience and with all the coaches and service providers that I've helped over the last eight years, that almost nobody can start a blog and try to write for like keywords without getting frustrated and sort of feeling creatively stymied by those keywords and giving up and ending up with a bunch of half written drafts in their Google Drive. So Unforced, SEO is the idea that instead of trying to start with keywords and writing around keywords, which for a lot of people, a lot of people who are watching have probably tried that and, and been like, oh my God, this is not what I wanted to write about.

Jana O.: I'm, so, this is making me feel like I'm pandering to, you know, a, a keyword when I really have these thought leadership ideas I wanna share. It's hard basically for people to do that. So the idea is that instead what you wanna do is you wanna write the things, and I know I've said this already like 10 times, but that your audience needs to learn and hear and understand more deeply to be ready to buy. And by writing those things over time. Um, if your topic is search friendly, you could and you will. Um, if your topic search friendly and you're writing thought leadership content rank on Google over time. However, we don't wait around for it. Uh, we don't wait around for it to kick in 'cause it's too slow. And if you wait for SEO and you're not doing any other visibility for your blog, it's gonna be a long time and you're gonna be like, okay. You're not gonna survive that period. Basically, you need clients now, not, you know, a year and a half from now when SEO starts, you know, bringing you enough people that they turn into clients.

Jana O.: Also, sometimes when people write for SEO, it's not very conversion friendly anyway, so they get traffic, but they don't turn into clients. So that's another nuance of the whole thing. But if you just write what your audience needs naturally, and you start with at least 10 blog posts that are just based on what you know your audience needs and asks, that's the very, very best way to start a blog that will eventually rank on Google. If you try to start with keywords, and 99 times out of a hundred people aren't able to stay, you know, active with it and write those posts in the beginning and then it kind of fades into the background and you don't do it anyway. So people get, you know, like I said, creatively stymied, they can't finish writing 'cause they don't like what they're writing. Uh, things like that happen. So that's why I teach unforced, SEO and you know, I believe it's a great way to get clients over time to be found on Google, but the first step to it is simply writing what people need. And yeah, and that's where we start. So hopefully that makes sense.

Michelle Leotta: So it sounds like, yes, of course SEO is a thing. You could go down a huge nerdy rabbit hole around that another time. But, uh, remember also your blog will get read because somebody clicks the link that's in your email footer, or, you know, uh, fill in the blank. All different ways that they can land on your blog. So it's something to think about. It's not something to obsess over. It's. Uh, soul sucking to say, oh, I gotta write with these exact keywords. And you feel like a robot.

Jana O.: Yeah. And then to wait around for those results too.

Michelle Leotta: Yeah. Although it does happen, it does happen over time, and it happens while you're doing other things. It's like, while you're not watching the pot boil, all of a sudden one day you notice that you're ranking on Google, um, because you wrote what your audience needed.

Jana O.: But that's the best way to, yeah, to experience it for yourself and get into action.

Michelle Leotta: So just to recap, and also Christie's asking about what software she needs for writing. I mean, to get started with a blog, you don't need to spend any money. Right. The platforms we mentioned earlier, I'll have free versions to get started with. Would you say there's anything else that a health coach needs before they could sit down and start? Typing away.

Jana O.: No, I mean with my method, it's like you need someplace to write in the beginning, so maybe Google Docs, which has a free. Um, a free ChatGPT account. If you wanna use ChatGPT, it's optional, but if you wanna try it, you could use that. And then, like you said, you can always, you can start a free blog in the beginning too. So yeah, like on WordPress.

Michelle Leotta: And if you wanted to put a picture on there, you get yourself a free Canva account. Now you got a graphic. I mean, this stuff is all like readily available. It's not specialized tools that you have to pay for. And I think that is fantastic for all of our coaches that are just going, yeah. You love it. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jana. I do love this topic 'cause it's so accessible for everyone. We're glad that you're here.

Jana O.: Thank you.

Michelle Leotta: And if this has been helpful for all of you, don't forget, we have a free event this June It's called Establish Yourself as a health expert with a practical, low pressure blogging system to help you look legit and find clients. And you can register for free at healthcoachpower.com/blogging, Jana will be back for that. So I, I love spending time with you and I can, I always back anything Jana says like, she's smart and that's why she keeps coming back on the podcast. You guys wanna sign up for this event and join us and hear more of what Jana has to say. We hope we'll see you there.

So thanks for joining us, everyone. We'll see you soon. Thank you so much for listening to the Health Coach Power Community podcast. Please take a moment, leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. It helps us reach more coaches and allows me to bring you this free content every week to join us live. Ask your questions and have a direct line to me. Join our free Facebook group at health coach power community.com.