This is the whole Instagram strategy for getting clients right now. All of it, from your first post to someone booking a call with you.
If you are posting and it is just not bringing in leads, this is for you. If you have not started yet but you want Instagram to grow your business, this is for you too.
I have looked at a lot of coaching and consultant profiles on Instagram over my years in this business, and the ones getting clients are all doing the same five things. One founder using CreateSocial started with 65 followers. He is over 100,000 now and bringing in business from Instagram every week. None of it came from a trick. It came from running the chain below and not stopping.
The Chain: A Stranger Sees You, a Client Pays You
Between someone seeing you for the first time and that person paying you, there are five steps. They see your content. They see a story that asks them to do something. You end up in a DM conversation. They book a call. Then there is a deal.
Content is link one. That is Reels, carousels, longer videos, whatever you are posting. And most people spend all of their time on link one and then wonder why nobody is booking calls.
When a coach tells me they post every day and nothing comes of it, the first thing I look at is what kind of content they are posting, and which platforms they are posting on. Almost every time, the answer is that all the effort went into the first link and the other four do not exist. Nothing ever asks the viewer to do anything, so they watch and leave.
If your content is not going anywhere yet, or you have not posted anything at all, you are not behind. You just do not have a system yet. That is what this post gives you: the formats and the habit, your profile, stories, DMs, how you get someone from a freebie to a call, and engagement, which most people get backwards. You run all of these at the same time, not one after the other. At the end there is your exact first week, so you know where to start.
Link One: Content
If nobody is watching, nothing else here matters. People usually get this link wrong in one of two opposite ways.
No views yet: it is a reps problem
If you are not getting views yet, it is almost always reps. It is not a hack. It is not the sound you picked. It is not what time you posted (I went through the posting-time studies and they disagree with each other anyway). You need enough videos out there that Instagram can figure out who to show you to, and you need enough reps that you stop sounding stiff on camera. Your first few dozen videos are mostly you learning how to talk to a camera. You have to get through them.
While you are doing those reps, there are three numbers to watch. Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, said in January 2025 that the signals that matter most are watch time, likes and sends. In your insights that is average watch time, likes per reach and sends per reach. Sends count a little more for getting in front of people who do not follow you yet.
So when you are picking an idea, think about who would send it to someone. "Five leadership tips" gets sent to nobody. "How to tell if your boss is untrained in leadership" gets sent to the coworker who has that exact boss. Chester Elton has a Reel on that exact idea sitting at over a hundred thousand likes.
Views but no clients: more views will not fix it
Now, if you are getting views and nothing is coming from it, more views probably will not fix that. Do not just push more water into a leaking hole. I talk to founders all the time whose numbers look great and nothing comes out of it, because the people watching were never going to buy. A thousand people who will never hire you is not a business. Forty of the right people is.
This is what is wrong with so much Instagram advice. It is go viral, go viral, go viral. I wrote up why that fails for expert businesses in qualified attention, and it is why everything below treats each post as doing a specific job.
Three formats, each with a job
Reels are the front door. They are still the most reliable way to get in front of people who do not follow you. Carousels get pushed to new people now too, and so do longer videos, but Reels are the surest bet for getting found when you are starting from scratch.
Within Reels there are two main kinds worth having. You on camera taking a real position on something your buyer cares about, and quick B-roll with text on screen. You want some of both. The first one filters, the second one buys reach. There are plenty of others, reactions, green screen, talking-head lists, and I have covered them in the formats that work for executive coaches and in a full post on reaction videos.
Carousels do something Reels do not. People save them, and they mostly reach people who already know you. Use them to go deeper on something you only had thirty seconds for in a Reel. Longer videos are the same idea with more room. Someone who watches you for six minutes is a very different person from someone who watched you for six seconds. That is where people figure out you actually know your stuff and are not just good at hooks. A lot of high-ticket people, a health coach selling a five-thousand-dollar package for example, completely neglect long-form, and I think that is a big mistake. That package needs the deeper relationship long-form builds.
The habit: one thing, every day
The standard advice is to rotate your formats so the feed stays fresh. I think that depends on where you are at. Early on, your job is making content and getting a system down. Do not build a rotation you cannot keep up with. People want to start by posting four Reels a day and three stories. That is ludicrous. Pick one thing you post every day and get your workflow tight enough that recording is not eating a whole day of your week. You have a business to run.
Once you have an audience, then you rotate based on what you need that week. Need leads? Post more proof and more about your offer. Not reaching new people? Post more reach content. Whatever is stuck that week is what you make more of. But you only get there once posting every day is something you do not have to think about. The weekly plan and the one-afternoon batch are how I get people there.
Before Link Two: Your Profile
Quick detour, because there is a step in between that almost everyone ignores. Someone sees your Reel, taps your name and lands on your profile. Stories only go to people who follow you. So your profile is where somebody decides whether they will ever see one.
A lot of coach profiles say Coach, Mentor, Speaker, helping you unlock your potential, rocket emoji, link below. Whose potential? For what?
Fix four things. The name field, the bold line under your photo, is what Instagram search reads, so put what somebody would type to find you, not just your name. Then three lines of bio: who you help and with what, proof, and one thing to do next. One link, the one you want clicked. Then pin three posts at the top of your grid: who you help, a client result with real numbers, and your offer or freebie. The full version, with a before and after, is in how to write an Instagram bio that gets coaching clients.
Link Two: A Story That Asks for Something
This is the one nearly everyone skips. Your stories should be going somewhere, and the last one should ask for something. Think of it as a sequence. The first frame sets up a problem your buyer has. The next couple build the case. The last one asks them to do something. Reply with a word. Vote in a poll. Tap a link. Send me a message if this is you.
Stories are the one place on Instagram where you are talking to people who already picked you. They followed you. They tapped through. They are right there. It is the warmest audience you have, and most founders use it for a picture of their laptop.
Content, a story with an ask, a DM, a call, a deal. Stories are the hinge. Take them out and your Reels have nowhere to send people. And this works with 300 followers. If twelve people watch your story and they all fit your ideal client, that is plenty to start conversations.
My cadence: post stories every single day, and run a sequence that ends in an ask two or three days a week. Every day with a hard ask wears people out. Every day with nothing is a laptop photo.
Link Three: The DM Conversation
I want to kill the idea that cold DMs are dead and automation replaced them. Cold DMs still work. People kill them by pitching straight away. And look at where Instagram is going. When it passed three billion users in September 2025, Mosseri said almost all of their growth came from DMs, Reels and recommendations.
So if I am reaching out to someone I know is my ideal client, I do not send "I help coaches 10x their revenue with a proven system, open to a quick call?" I ask about something they posted. "Saw your Reel on skip-level one-on-ones. Do you run those with every new client or only once they have managers under them?" Now we are having a conversation. My own version, which I send cold to profiles I find by searching my niche, is just: hey, do you get clients from content?
Keyword automations are great too, once you are getting consistent views. An automation that sends a link when someone comments only works if people are commenting. If your last video got 500 views and zero comments, the automation is not your problem yet.
And DMing warm leads is huge. Somebody watched your story, answered your poll, saved your carousel. Go talk to them. Cold, automated, warm. You will use all three. There is no one script that turns DMs into calls, whatever anyone is selling you. What works depends completely on where that lead is at, and the full playbook is in Instagram stories and DMs for coaches.
Links Four and Five: The Freebie, the Email and the Call
This is where most videos on this stop. Somebody is in your DMs. What happens next?
Usually they asked you for something. The story said reply STORY. The bio said DM me 90DAYS. Whatever that thing is, that is your lead magnet, and most people make it way too big. Nobody wants your forty-page guide. Make it solve one problem in about five minutes. A checklist, a template, a three-minute video. The best one I have seen a coach use is a three-minute video with one fix in it. Mine is on the CreateSocial site: you drop in your website and it gives you three content pieces for your business, a script, a YouTube outline and a LinkedIn post, with no account needed.
While you are at it, get their email. Instagram, and every other platform, controls how much you can message people and who. A business account can only message someone for 24 hours after their last reply. Your email list has no window, and it is yours if anything ever happens to your account.
Then follow up like a person. Did the checklist help? What part is giving you trouble? Send your booking link after they have told you their problem, not before. That way the call is about their thing and they already know you get what they are dealing with. Your emails keep going for the people who did not reply. And that is link five: a call with someone who told you their problem in your DMs two days ago. The whole sequence is in a lead magnet for coaches.
Engagement: Most People Get This Backwards
The standard advice is to go comment on the biggest accounts in your niche and borrow their audience. Two problems.
First, it only works if your comment has a take. Nobody ever clicked a profile because someone commented a fire emoji. Ask a question. Share a similar experience you had. Offer a counter take. Say something that makes a stranger want to know who said it.
Second, and this is the bigger one, big accounts put you in front of their followers, and most of their followers are never going to buy from you. Go look at a big account in your space. Half the comment section is people selling the same thing you sell. You are performing for your competitors.
So flip the order. If anyone is already engaging with you, even a few people, start with them. Story viewers, people who replied, people who commented. It is a small group, but they are way warmer and they know your name. If nobody is engaging with you yet, which is where most people start, go straight to your ideal client's posts. Skip the guru and find the buyer. It is a shorter list and a better use of the same twenty minutes.
Why Consistency Beats Any One Post
Remember the founder from the start, 65 followers to over 100,000? Another coach on the platform went from a couple hundred to 20,000. Neither of them got there from one video blowing up. The whole chain kept running, week after week.
Your First Week
So much advice is not actually actionable, and I hate that. Here is where to start.
This afternoon, fix your profile. A clear headshot. A name field with what people actually search for. The three-line bio. One link. Three pinned posts. Do it on every platform, not just Instagram, but start with Instagram.
Make one freebie. A one-page checklist or a three-minute video that solves one problem, and a keyword people DM you to get it.
Sit down once and batch two weeks of Reels. That is fourteen Reels, one format, on camera. Write your scripts out and read them word for word if you need to. Get them done.
Block off twenty minutes a day. Post one story sequence that asks for something. Reply to everyone who answers. Comment on five posts from your ideal clients. Do that, and on a Tuesday morning there is nothing to figure out.
Once Instagram is running, do the same chain everywhere, planned ahead. TikTok can take the same Reels. LinkedIn takes video too, and written posts and DMs on top. YouTube is where the longer videos go.
The Bottom Line
Content is link one, and it is the only link most coaches ever work. A story with an ask, a DM conversation, a freebie that gets the email, and a call after they have told you their problem are the other four. Run all five at once, at a pace you can keep, and the account that has been sitting at a few hundred followers starts producing calls.
If the part that breaks for you is making all of this content, planning it, writing the scripts and packaging it well, that is exactly why I built CreateSocial. It gives you ideas from your own expertise, pulled from a knowledge base of your site and your notes, a teleprompter so you are not doing seven takes, subtitles in eleven styles, captions written for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and X, and it turns one recording into Reels, carousels and written posts for every platform. There is a free trial.
Or if you would rather talk it through, book a free fifteen-minute call with me. I will look at your profile and tell you which link in your chain is breaking.