“I don’t even know what’s wrong with my messaging,” she said. “I just know something isn’t landing.”
She’d booked the call expecting a pitch. I opened her laptop instead.
Three tabs. Her website. Her LinkedIn. Her Instagram.
“Let’s just read these,” I said. “Like a stranger would.”
Her website called her a certified transformation coach. Her LinkedIn About called her a mindset expert. Her Instagram bio called her a life coach for ambitious women.
“Which one is true?” I asked.
She stared at the screen. “All of them. I guess.”
“Right. That’s the problem.”
Three channels. Three different people. Nobody landing on any of them would know they were looking at the same coach twice.
I stopped asking clients what they want their content to say a while ago. Now I ask what a stranger would believe after reading it. Those are two different questions. Most people have only ever answered the first one.
Here’s what I actually check, before writing a single line for anyone.
What does this person’s ideal client already believe. Not what the coach wants to say. What’s actually landing in someone else’s head first.
Whether every channel is telling the same story. Website, LinkedIn, Instagram, wherever someone lands first. Say three different things, and trust breaks before a sales conversation even starts.
And what happens after someone reads it. Not do they like it. Do they move one step closer to a decision, or not.
We spent forty minutes on those three checks before either of us mentioned rewriting anything.
By the end, she had one line. Not three. One sentence, true on her website, true on her LinkedIn, true on her Instagram, said the same way everywhere someone might find her.
Bookings picked up within the month. Not because the writing got better. Because there was finally one person to believe in, instead of three.
Most coaches think their content isn’t converting because it’s not good enough. It’s usually not that. Nobody checked what a stranger would actually believe after reading it.
Pull up your website, your LinkedIn, and your Instagram bio right now. Read them back to back, like a stranger would. If you found more than one person in there, that’s not a writing problem. That’s where to start.
Three takeaways:
Your content isn’t failing because the writing is weak. It’s failing because nobody checked what a stranger actually believes after reading it.
Before you write anything, check three things: what your audience already believes, whether every channel says the same thing, and what happens after someone reads it.
One consistent message across your website, LinkedIn, and Instagram beats three well-written but different ones, every time.
If you want a second pair of eyes on where the gap is in yours, subscribe to The Content Brief. I break down exactly this, every week. [kygexpert.com/p/newsletter]