3 Steps to Building Rapport with Potential Clients Through Content
3 Steps to Building Rapport with Potential Clients Through Content
3 Steps to Building Rapport with Potential Clients Through Content

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Theodore Roosevelt
Let’s talk about how to build rapport with potential clients through content creation, in particular, using social media.
A lot of us today are at a standstill and we’re questioning, “How can I connect and build rapport with people online, through social media, with my content?”
Now, more than ever, people are looking for hope and inspiration. They’re looking for a place where they can receive guidance, support, and coaching to help them through this difficult time.
If you don’t have rapport, it’s really difficult to connect with a client or potential client to lead them to understand what you’re about, what services you have to offer, and how you can really help them.
So how can we build rapport with potential new clients? The first way is through our content.
Step #1: Create High-Quality Content
If you don’t have high-quality content, it’s likely people are not going to be interested in what you are saying, what it is you have to offer, and most importantly, how you can help them as a coach.
Remember, we don’t want to be selling, especially when we’re creating content.
90% of people who see your content are not going to care what your services are and are not going to want to buy from you right off the bat.
We want to create high-quality content that gives a lot of value to the people who are looking into who we are, what services we have to offer, and what we are passionate about as a coach.
You became a coach for a reason. You wanted to help people.
You wanted to help people through difficult times in their lives. You wanted to help them get the most out of life, to live their lives to the fullest, and achieve the goals they’ve been dreaming of.
And the best way to really connect with people is to engage them, educate them, and provide them with high-quality content that reflects your skills as a coach and demonstrates to you potential client, before the sale, how you can help them if they choose to work with you.
Step #2: Be Consistent
Being consistent is an area where a lot of coaches don’t focus enough.
In order to be successful and build rapport with people, especially with your online social media presence and content, you must be consistent.
A critical tool to be consistent with your content and your social media presence is to create a content calendar. A content calendar provides a framework that lays out the next 30, 60, and 90 days of the content that you are going to be sharing with your audience, your potential clients, and even your existing ones.
Be consistent. The person who isn’t consistent could be perceived as unreliable, even untrustworthy. When someone is checking out your profile and content and wants to learn more about who you are, what you have to offer, and how you can benefit them, they are going to want to see that you’re consistent and that you offer a lot of value for them.
So, tie the two together: create high-quality content, and then be consistent with that content.
Whether you’re following up every few days with an email campaign, posting daily on your social media accounts, doing videos once, twice, or three times a week, your consistency with your content and your message supports your audience and potential clients before they make their decision to work with you.
First, create high-quality content. Second, be consistent with your content and your messaging. Next, engage with your audience.
Step #3: Engage with Your Audience
It’s not enough just to talk about your story and share what you’ve gone through and how you can help people. Make sure you engage with your audience in a way that brings them into your world and shows them what you’re capable of, and how you are the expert that can help them take their life to the next level as they achieve all of their goals, and overcome challenges or adversities.
There are three ways to engage with our audience:
Ask for feedback. Don’t be scared to reach out to people and ask for feedback. Ask them how they liked your video. What did they think of the topic you discussed? There are so many different ways to get feedback from your audience.
Feedback helps you improve as a coach. Your someone who is communicating to potential clients and feedback helps your potential clients engage and feel connected with you. This is how you start the process of building rapport with them.
Engage with your audience. Ask questions and don’t just ask questions, ask engaging questions. Questions that will allow them to really go deep inside themselves and maybe go a little bit farther into whatever it is you were talking about on your social media or in a video that you shared with them.
Asking engaging questions such as, “What is one of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your life and how did you overcome it?”. Invite them to share, be engaged, and become part of your message and part of what you’re offering. The best way to do that is to ask questions.
Start a discussion. One of the ways I like to fuel engagement with my community, especially on social media, is to start a discussion. I’ll ask, “Have you ever experienced a time in your life where you faced adversity and you weren’t sure how you were going to get through it?” Then I’ll offer some tips on how to do that. I’ll ask, “Hey, what are some things that you have been through and how did you overcome those adversities?”
This encourages discussion and we go back and forth, exploring ideas. This is a great way to start to communication and, more importantly, it helps your community to become engaged. And then do you know what happens? An entire arena opens up for other people to come in and start to engage in that discussion as well.
If you’re using social media, try going live on Facebook once or twice a week. Ask really good questions, get engagement and discussion flowing and your community will open up and then share more with you and others. Now you will be able to adjust and fine-tune the way you communicate and answer based on what your community has shared in this engagement.
A great way to build even more rapport is to really understand how your potential client or audience sees the world and how they experience it. We talk about this in our CCF programs, such as the Level 1 Certified Coach Practitioner Course. In this foundation course, explore how to build rapport and how to understand the unique ways your clients’ process information.
To recap, our first step is to create high-quality content and don’t sell right off the bat. Remember, 90% of people will not care about your services right upfront. They’re going to want to know who you are and then receive some kind of value from you. And, most importantly, they’re going to want to connect with you. And to do that, you need to build rapport before you can ask for people to buy from you or to sign up for your services.
Our second step is to be consistent. The best way to do that is to create a content calendar for yourself. Layout 52 weeks of your content creation: what you’re going to share with your clients, how you’re going to engage them, and always be creating new material. New material doesn’t mean that you can’t recycle and reuse previously created content. Create new and repurpose existing material in a new way.
Our last step is to engage with your audience through asking for feedback, asking them to engage through questions and discussion.
I hope this will help you start to build momentum and rapport with your audience and potential clients, through content creation, your social media platforms and, as a result, allow you to make more connections which lead to more potential and actual clients.
On a personal note, I know many of you have already completed some of our certification levels and may be facing some transitions in your life right now.
I remember looking back when I decided to get out of the industry that I was in and start to move into coaching. I questioned whether or not I could do it but, most importantly, I wondered how I going to connect with more people and what services could I offer them? How could I become an expert and help them transition from where they are, to where they wanted to be, and really thrive in life?
The Certified Coaches Federation offers many different programs and certifications that will allow you to hone in on your skills and become certified so you feel confident that you can go out there and start a coaching business right away.
If you’d like to know more about our programs and levels of coach certification, visit our certifications page.
Mike Chambers is a Certified Master Coach, CCF Coach Trainer and President of Healthy Wealthy and Wise Corporation.

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