This article was first published in SA Coaching News.  Download your free copy of this issue of SA Coaching News by following this link.

I was working with a client recently who is doing a “soft” re-launch of her coaching consultancy. I noticed that her WhatsApp profile showed a picture with a quotation, and she didn’t show her full name in her profile so that the first time she sent me a WhatsApp message I couldn’t even be 100% sure who it was from—after all, there was no profile pic and the name could have belonged to a couple of people from my neighbourhood alone.

I remember reading some research done at Princeton University many years ago which said something to the effect that people were the first brands and our faces are our logo’s.

I strongly believe that we need to “sweat our real estate” as entrepreneurs, and this particular piece of her real estate would have lowered the temperature in my freezer it was so far from breaking a sweat! So we had a quick tutorial and tour of WhatsApp’s settings to sort the situation out.

If you want your WhatsApp profile to work for you while you aren’t even aware of it (I’ve secured two clients purely from my WhatsApp profile description), here are the 3 quick and easy steps you need to follow:

Step 1: Click on the 3 vertical dots in the top right hand corner when you open WhatsApp and select Settings from the dropdown menu

Step 2: On the Settings screen click on the section just under the green Settings header

Step 3: Upload a picture of yourself or your company logo by clicking on the camera icon.

Make sure you show your full name so people know who is contacting them.

Finally, include a quick one-liner describing what you do.

AND DON’T FORGET TO CLICK SAVE!