Are you visible online?

Do people know who are you? What you're selling in your business? Who you work with? Why they should buy from you? 

Getting visible online is something a lot of business owners really struggle with, but it's also one of the very best ways to be seen. To be known. To get more clients. To make more money.

When you're visible you can share your experience, your expertise, and give your audience the opportunity to get to know you. This is how you build relationships. You're creating the "know, like and trust" factor, which is how many people choose what to buy and who to buy it from.

Here's the good news. You don’t need to be a social media expert to make social media work for your business - you just need to be visible on it!

The bad news? Visibility is often something business owners have a really hard time with.
You may find yourself shying away from posting online too much or not wanting to share too many photos, personal stories or selfies. 

So, how can you get comfortable and start taking action so that people can see you, your business, and all of the value you have to offer? Be visible. And if that feels hard, get more comfortable with being visible in a safe space designed just for that - my visibility challenge.

I want to support business owners as they talk about their mindset. I want them to be more comfortable posting in a variety of places online, dabble with video and even start thinking about getting media attention.

Let's get you in front of more people so more people have the opportunity to start working with you!

Are you ready to attract your ideal clients? Together let's get more active in the online space, share relevant content, and build relationships with the people in your networks. That is how you stay top of mind, which is what visibility is all about. 

So, sign up for my visibility challenge.  It takes about 5-20 minutes per day (some days less!) over 14 days. We'll start getting comfortable, setting up good visibility tactics and building relationships with each other at the same time.

Let's get visible together! See you over there!

How to sneak "vegetables" to your audience

You know how some people talk about sneaking vegetables into their family's food?

"I can't get my kids to eat the right healthy stuff so I hide it! Pureed vegetables in their meat foods; they never knew it was there! I'm am sneakily keeping them healthy even though they don't care about healthy. BWAHAHA!"

I want you to think about how you can sneak vegetables into your audience.

WHAT?

Ok, so here it is:

What we want and what we need are not always the same things.

What experts know we need and what we think we need are not always the same things.

That means that while we want to talk to everyone about the things we KNOW they need… they might not be thinking we're talking to them because they think they need something else. And that's why we need to talk about the "something else" and hide a bit of the stuff we know they actually need inside of it.

What your audience thinks they need to know

Let's use some examples.

Maybe you know that what people need in order to have more energy and feel better is to move and exercise more. You know that once they do that they're going to start feeling better all around, which is going to have a snowball effect on their lives.

Meanwhile, they're thinking, "I just wish I didn't look dumpy in every piece of clothing I put on."

What your audience really needs to know

You may know the problem isn't that they, "need to lose more weight" but that's all they can focus on right now. So, you need to talk about how to lose weight, and while doing that you need to work in some ideas of what they really need to know and do to be healthy.

Here's another example, you're a business owner and your business coach knows that business strategy, planning and working on your mindset is really going to help you move forward in your business. But you really just want to know how to market yourself better so you can get more clients and learn how to screen share during a Facebook Live. If that business coach pays attention and talks about marketing and gets your attention with some how-tos and simple strategies to get more visible, they can weave in the importance of business planning and mindset as part of THAT content.

You're not being dishonest

This is NOT being dishonest. It's giving people what they want, and learning that the best way to get the right messages to the people who need it isn't to yell louder and louder until people understand what they're saying, it's to get their attention with what they want and educate them while they're learning about that thing.

I don't know about you, but I know some people would never CONSIDER eating a mostly veggie based meal, but give them a good meat lasagna and they're excited and ready to eat. And if it was GOOD and REAL lasagna that had some healthy vegetables in it (no bait and switch here!), everyone gets what they needed and wanted.

How will you sneak "vegetables" to your audience?

So, how can you sneak vegetables into the things your audience really want? Thinks about the people you talk to on a regular basis... what are they asking you about? Are they often asking you for things that don't seem like the right place to start? Can you start there anyways?

Leave a comment telling me how you can apply this to your business or if you aren't sure how - come over to my Facebook group and ask and we'll brainstorm it out together!

Want more content and tips like this, with all kinds of vegetables hidden into the meat sauce? Join my free Facebook Group!

And if you want a bit more on HOW to provide value to your audience and figure out what they want, check out this blog post: http://thebiz.studio/blog/are-you-providing-value.

Are you providing value?

If you want people to pay attention to you in this very busy, loud and overwhelming world then there is one thing you need to make sure you always do - PROVIDE VALUE. 

People will only make time for things they really WANT, so it's your job to understand your audience enough to have figured out what they want. 

WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?

Can you describe your audience? Every audience is different and you need to take the time to really figure out who your audience is. Understanding who makes up that audience, what they like, what they don’t like and what they would like from you is critical in creating the kind of content that can help you build relationships that turn your audience into customers.

Once you’ve figured that out, creating and sharing content that can connect with your audience becomes a lot easier.

WHAT DO THEY VALUE?

Not every audience is looking for the same kind of information. Make sure that everything you share has some kind of connection back to who you are and who your audience is. 

Think about why they followed you in the first place. What would people expect the content to look like coming from your brand? Make sure your content doesn’t go too far off from that.

Things that people value tend to fall into three main categories:

1. You’re teaching them something,
2. You’re entertaining them, or
3. You’re giving them tools and knowledge. 

WHAT DON’T THEY WANT?

Nobody likes to follow a brand that is only trying to sell to them. That’s valuable to the brand, not to the audience. Make sure that you’re giving your audience something they want or can use so that when you do post some sales posts - and you definitely should - they think so highly of you they’re far more inclined to buy.

People don’t want information that has nothing to do with them or that they can’t relate to.

LET’S LOOK AT SOME EXAMPLES

• If your main audience is young women about to get married, interesting articles about retirement doesn’t make sense. 
• If your main audience is men who want to home brew their own beer, then funny cartoons about being a new mom doesn’t make sense.
• If you promised tips and tricks to help them do something better, just sharing things you’re selling isn’t going to convince them of anything other than that you’re pushy and too sales-y.
• If you sell hammers, make sure that you talk about the hammers, and the things you can do with the hammers. 

Where and how do they want to receive information?
 

Where do your people like to hang out? If they're on Instagram, creating podcasts is never going to work well for them. If they're on YouTube, they want video, so you want to make sure you're creating video.

If they love really clean design you're going to be creating different things than if they really like stories. The more you understand what format they like to receive content in, what they want to know, and where they want to receive it, the more likely your content will hit the mark and connect with them.

Spend some time thinking about your content and what you’re giving to your audience that they would value. Then share some examples (good and bad) of what you’ve seen or done that relates to giving an audience value in the comments.

If you'd like help finding ways to share content online so people are ready to pay attention, come and join my free Facebook Group - The Biz Studio Community. There's a free cheat sheet in the files section with templates to use to highlight the benefit and value of your content when you share it (because even more than providing valuable content, you need to also make sure you're telling people what you're sharing and how it's valuable).

Are you giving your audience value?

There are several phrases I use over and over again because they are key to online success. Today I’m focusing on one of them  - give value to your audience.

We’ve talked about the importance of understanding your brand and how important it is to be thoughtful in what you post, but there is something else you need to keep in mind. If you go too far off course from your brand, values, and promises, you will bore or irritate your audience into un-following you.

How do you figure out if you’re sharing content people who follow you value? Let’s break it down:

Who is your audience?

Can you describe your audience? Every audience is different and you need to take the time to really figure out who your audience is. Understanding who makes up that audience, what they like, what they don’t like and what they would like from you is critical in creating the kind of content that can help you build relationships that turn that audience into customers.

Once you’ve figured that out, creating and sharing content that can connect with your audience becomes a lot easier.

What do they value?

Not every audience is looking for the same kind of information. Make sure that everything you share has some kind of connection back to who you are and who your audience is. 

Think about why they followed you in the first place. What would people expect the content to look like coming from your brand? Make sure your content doesn’t go too far off from that.

Things that people value tend to fall into three main categories:

1. You’re teaching them something,
2. You’re entertaining them, or
3. You’re giving them tools and knowledge. 

What don’t they want?

Nobody likes to follow a brand that is only trying to sell to them. That’s valuable to the brand, not to the audience. Make sure that you’re giving your audience something they want or can use so that when you do post some sales posts - and you definitely should - they think so highly of you they’re far more inclined to make the buy.

People don’t want information that has nothing to do with them or that they can’t relate to.

Let’s look at some examples

• If your main audience is young women about to get married, interesting articles about retirement don’t make sense. 
• If your main audience is men who want to home-brew their own beer, then funny cartoons about being a new mom don’t make sense.
• If you promised tips and tricks to help them do something better, just sharing things you’re selling isn’t going to convince them of anything other than that you’re pushy and too sales-y.
• If you sell hammers, make sure that you talk about the hammers, and the things you can do with the hammers. 

Spend some time thinking about your content and what you’re giving to your audience that they would value. Then share some examples (good and bad) of what you’ve seen or done that relates to giving an audience value.