What should I post on LinkedIn to get consulting clients?

Direct Answer

On LinkedIn, post about the problems your ideal clients are living with, in their words, so they read it and think, "that's me." The test I give the women I work with: get out of the bubble. Your clients don't care what you do. They care about what's going on in their world.

Leah Neaderthal

Leah Neaderthal

Founder, Smart Gets Paid

Best Move

Write every post about a problem your ideal client is living with, in the words they'd use.

Why It Works

The right clients recognize themselves and lean in. A generic expertise post reads like it's for nobody in particular.

Next Step

Take your last post and rewrite it around what the client gets out of the work.

What you need to know

Clients don't care what you do. They only care about how it impacts them.

Leah Neaderthal, Smart Gets Paid

What do my potential clients want to see from me on LinkedIn?

Your potential clients want to see their own situation in your posts: the problem they're living with right now, named the way they'd say it. I call this getting out of the bubble. Inside is everything about you and your work: your process, your deliverables, your certifications. Outside is what's going on in their world, and you have to live out there on purpose.

About you (skip it)About their world (post this)
Your methodology and processThe problem it solves, in their words
A copywriter debating the Oxford commaWhat one typo on a website costs in lost sales
"Excited to announce my certification"The question their leadership keeps asking them

Here's the thing: writing about their world IS how your expertise shows. Any consultant can describe her own services. Only someone who's done the work can describe the client's Tuesday morning so precisely that the reader forwards it to a colleague. Naming their problem this directly can feel pushy at first. It isn't, and how to post without sounding salesy is its own question.

What kind of posts attract the clients I want?

Three kinds of posts do the client-getting work on LinkedIn: the client story, the point of view, and the problem post.

The client story

What was going on in a client's business, what you worked on together, and what changed, with the real numbers where you can share them. The people who can hire you, inside companies and nonprofits, trust what happened for someone like them.

The point of view

The thing you believe about your work that most people in your field get wrong. This is where you stop sounding like every other consultant and start sounding like an expert with a position.

The problem post

Name the situation your ideal client is sitting in, what it's costing them, and what's on the other side of solving it.

All three are doing the same job: putting out the right signals so your exact clients know you're for them. That's Client Signaling, a strategy I teach inside the Academy, and it's what separates targeted content from what I call 100-level content, the generic advice that speaks to mostly nobody. (I recorded a whole podcast episode on this question: "What would I even write about on LinkedIn?")

How often do I need to post on LinkedIn?

Once a week, kept up for months, will do more for your consulting business than a burst of daily posts that dies out. What differentiates the women who get results from the women who don't is consistency, and consistency is much easier when the commitment is small enough to keep on a week that's full of client work.

Here's what a sustainable rhythm looks like:

  1. One real post a week. A client story, a point of view, or a problem post. That's 13 posts a quarter, which is a body of work a potential client can read through before they ever talk to you.
  2. A few minutes of comments on other people's posts, in the rooms where your clients are.
  3. One warm reconnection, because a marketing system is bigger than posting.

If the posting itself is what you're dreading, whether you need to be on LinkedIn at all is a real decision, and it comes before cadence.

How do I write a LinkedIn post people will read?

Write your LinkedIn posts for a reader who scans: one idea per post, a first line that names something they care about, and enough white space to skim. Jakob Nielsen's eyetracking research found that 79% of readers scan a page rather than read it word by word, and that was in 1997, before feeds trained everyone to move even faster.

Three moves matter most:

  • The first line does the choosing. Your reader decides in one line whether the post is for them. Drop straight into the problem or the story. If the first line could be deleted and the post would start stronger, delete it.
  • One idea per post. Name the single thing the post is about in one plain sentence before you write it. A post built around one idea gets read. A post carrying three gets skimmed and forgotten.
  • White space is generous, on purpose. Short paragraphs. Single-sentence lines for the beats that matter.

Before you hit post, read the first line out loud. If you wouldn't say it to a client across a table, rewrite it.

Leah's take

Real talk: when I started posting, I got a lot of the wrong people and not enough of the right ones. So I planted a flag: women consultants, selling to businesses and nonprofits, where landing a client takes a real sales process. And compassion in every post, because I know how it feels to be great at the work and lost on this part. The moment I got that specific, the right women started saying "I feel like you're talking directly to me."

Of course your instinct is to post about your services. Corporate trained you to present capabilities, and nobody ever taught you that visibility works differently when you're the business. The good news is this is a skill, and you can learn it the same way you've learned everything else: say out loud who you're for, and talk about their world until they recognize themselves.

The Academy is where I teach the whole marketing system, step by step, with a room of women doing the same work.

More questions about this topic

Can I just share other people's articles instead of writing my own posts?

You can, and it won't get you clients. A shared article tells your potential clients nothing about how you think, and how you think is what they're hiring. If an article moved you, say what you think about it in your own words. That's a post, and it's yours.

How long should a LinkedIn post be?

As long as one idea needs and no longer. Some of the strongest posts are five lines; some earn three hundred words with a story. Length matters less than the first line and the white space around it. When a post runs long, check whether a second idea snuck in. If it did, that's next week's post.

Do I need LinkedIn Premium to get consulting clients?

No. Clients come from what you post and who's in your network, and neither one requires a paid account. Premium's search tools can be useful later, when you're deliberately building out your connections. Start with the free account, a clear profile, and one good post a week, and put the money toward your business instead.

Is it okay to repeat the same idea in more than one LinkedIn post?

Yes, and you should. Nobody sees everything you post, and the feed moves on in a day. Repeating your core ideas in fresh words is how the people who can hire you learn what you stand for. You'll get bored of your own ideas long before your network has absorbed them. Keep going.

Related pages

Leah Neaderthal

Leah Neaderthal

Leah Neaderthal is the founder of Smart Gets Paid, where she has helped hundreds of women consultants attract more of the clients they want and get paid more for their work. For more than a decade, she has taught women consultants how to bring in clients on purpose and get paid more for their value, through her program, The Academy. She's also the host of The Smart Gets Paid podcast. Learn more at smartgetspaid.com.

www.smartgetspaid.com
Mary G, nonprofit consultant
I just secured a contract for 500% more than I was originally going to quote. I was ready to undervalue my bid and ask for $7,000 but I reached out to Leah and the team for a pep talk and I'm glad I did, because we are now going under contract for $37,500!! I'm stoked!
Denise F, marketing consultant
I was my reviewing my revenue dashboard and it showed that I earned $100K more in 2024 compared to the year before. I joined the Academy in May 2024 and it has transformed my sales approach entirely.
Sarah J, fundraising consultant
We used to book clients just in time to keep income flowing, and we now have a 6-month cushion!

Get more of the clients you want, and get paid more for your work

Leah writes to women running B2B consulting businesses every week, about getting clients on purpose and getting paid for the value of the work.

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