FOR LIFE COACHES
What should a life coach say in a welcome video?
A simple structure for a homepage welcome film that feels like the first minutes of a discovery call, with UK notes on captions, embeds and claims.
When a free Facebook group builds trust for a UK life coach, how to set one up calmly, and how members move gently towards a discovery call.
A Facebook group for coaches works when it gives people a calm place to try your ideas before they book. Keep it private, give it one clear purpose, use membership questions to welcome the right people, post on a weekly rhythm you can keep and invite members gently towards your programme or a discovery call. It stops working when it becomes a second, unpaid job. Decide what the group is for and how much time you will give it before you open the doors.
Picture the week your programme opens. Before you have posted a word about it, three members of your group have already asked whether there will be a spring cohort. They have watched you answer questions for months, tried the exercises you shared on a Sunday evening and seen how you speak to people when things get hard. When they book a discovery call, it feels less like meeting a stranger and more like carrying on a conversation you started weeks ago.
That is what a good group can be: a warm waiting room for the people who are nearly ready. It can also become a noisy space you feel guilty about every morning. The difference lies mostly in the decisions you make before you press Create, and that is what this guide covers.
It can be, if your clients already spend time on Facebook and you enjoy conversation more than broadcasting. A group lets people watch how you think, ask small questions without committing to anything and meet the people who might share a programme with them.
It is less worth it if your clients live on LinkedIn, if you already struggle to keep up with Instagram, or if you hope the group will do the selling for you. An empty group with an occasional promotional post can feel worse than no group at all.
For most coaches, private is the better choice. Facebook’s help centre sets out the differences:
| Public group | Private group | |
|---|---|---|
| Who can see posts and comments | Anyone on or off Facebook | Current members only |
| Who can see the member list | Anyone on Facebook | Current members only |
| Joining | Automatic, no approval | Admin approval, unless limited membership is on |
| Sharing content outside the group | Allowed | Not allowed |
People talk more honestly when colleagues and family can’t read along. A private group can still be visible in search, so people can find it and ask to join, or hidden, so only people you invite can find it. Bear in mind that Facebook lets admins change a private group to public later, but content from the private period then stays visible only to people who were members at the time, according to Facebook’s comparison of public and private groups.
Give the group one promise that a stranger could repeat. “A Sunday evening reset for women returning to work” is easier to join, and easier to run, than “a community for personal growth”.
It also helps to know where the group sits in your client journey. For many coaches it sits between social media and a paid programme, as one part of their wider marketing for life coaches: someone finds you on Instagram, downloads your workbook, joins the group to use it with others and then books a call. If you already run a free workbook, the group can be where people bring it to life. Our guide to creating a lead magnet workbook explains how the two fit together.
Three settings do most of the work.
You can ask people who request to join up to three questions, each limited to 200 characters, as either checkboxes, multiple choice or a written answer. Facebook says answering isn’t mandatory, but admins can use Admin Assist to approve or decline people automatically depending on whether they answered, according to its help page on membership and participation questions. Good questions for a coaching group are simple: what brings you here, where did you hear about the group, and do you agree to keep what members share inside the group.
Facebook lets admins set up a new member intro, a message that appears automatically the first time someone visits after joining, and it can include the group rules. Admin Assist can also publish a regular welcome post at a rate you choose, such as weekly, as set out in Facebook’s guide to welcoming new members. Keep the rules short: be kind, keep confidences, no selling, and this is coaching, not therapy.
Finally, decide when you will be in the group, perhaps twenty minutes on three set days, and say so in the intro. Members relax when they know when you will reply.
A light weekly rhythm keeps the group alive without filling your week:
Much of this can be the thinking you share on Instagram, reworked for a smaller room. Our guide to Instagram for life coaches covers the public side of that. If the content is the part that keeps slipping, that is exactly what social media for life coaches is designed to take off your plate.
Quietly and regularly. Members should always know how to work with you, without feeling sold to every week:
Most members will never buy, and that is fine. The group earns its place if those who do book arrive already trusting you.
A group is rented space, so many coaches use a membership question to ask for an email address. In the UK you generally need someone’s specific consent before sending them marketing emails, and the ICO says you must give a simple way to opt out in every message, according to its guidance on electronic mail marketing. An email typed into a joining question is not the same as clear consent to your newsletter.
A cleaner route is to link to your workbook sign-up page, with a clear opt-in there. You then own the list, whatever happens to the group.
A private group keeps posts from the wider internet, but members can still take screenshots. Remind people of that, and never use what someone wrote in the group in your marketing without their permission.
When you promote your own programmes, the usual rules on claims still apply. The ASA says the CAP Code covers non-paid space online that you control, such as your Facebook page or Instagram profile, when the content is directly connected with selling, according to its guidance on the remit for own websites and social media. It is sensible to treat sales posts in your group the same way: no promised outcomes and no health claims. Our guide to advertising rules for life coaches goes into the detail.
Watch for the signs: you are answering in comments the questions clients pay to ask in sessions, you feel anxious when you haven’t posted, or nobody from the group has booked a call in months. Any one of these is a reason to change something, not necessarily to close. Tighten the purpose, post less but better, open the group only around launches, or keep a separate private group just for paying programme members.
We want your group to feel like a warm room you look forward to opening, not another thing on your list. We began as the in-house team of our co-founder, the bestselling author Jack Cartwright, keeping his social media, videos and website working together. For coaches, our social media for life coaches service plans and creates the posts, videos and invitations that keep your group and your feed alive between launches. A clear brief, scope and fee are agreed before any creative work begins.
Smaller than you might think. A few dozen engaged people who know each other’s names can be warmer, and more useful to your practice, than thousands of silent members. Judge it on conversations and discovery calls, not on member numbers.
Many coaches post as themselves, because people join to be near the person rather than the brand. Facebook notes that when a Page joins a group, every admin of that Page can see and interact with the group’s posts and members, so think about who has access before you link the two.
You can use a private group as the community space for a paid programme, with access managed through your booking or payment system. Keep a clear line between that and any free group, so free members never feel they are missing a hidden layer, and paying clients feel the difference.
Say so plainly in your rules and your new member intro, and use membership questions to ask people to agree to them. Remove promotional posts quickly and kindly. If it keeps happening, you can require admin approval for posts, which Facebook offers in both public and private groups.
Quiet spells are normal, especially in summer and over Christmas. Ask simpler questions, post a short video instead of text, or run a five-day challenge around your workbook. If it stays quiet for months, narrow its purpose or fold it into a programme group.
A simple structure for a homepage welcome film that feels like the first minutes of a discovery call, with UK notes on captions, embeds and claims.
Prompts, framing, sound and simple ways through camera nerves, so UK life coaches can film short videos that sound like a real conversation.
Where stock images are fine on a UK coaching website, where they quietly cost you trust, and the licence and advertising rules worth knowing.
Four quick questions, and we’ll show you where we’d start. Your answers come straight to us with your message, so you won’t have to explain it twice.
A 30-minute introduction call on Microsoft Teams, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Your answers come with the booking, so we’ll be ready for you.
Prefer to talk it through? Make an appointment for a 30-minute call on Microsoft Teams, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
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