How Visibility Accomplishes Enormous Results and Social Proof for Your Business
Not being visible just isn’t an option if you’re running your own business. Three experiences taught me this; one from my corporate job, one from my first online business and one from my current business launching websites in a day.
Visibility Story #1: Take A Risk
Some of my best decisions began with me thinking: ‘F*ck it’ and hitting ‘send’.
One of these times was at my corporate job. In my corporate life, I made the classic female mistake of thinking that if I just did a really good job, someone would notice and rewards and accolades would follow (fool!)
I was clueless at playing the corporate game.
My final role at the company was internal rather than client facing, on the methodology team.
My task was to collect all the best practice work flows, processes, assets, tools and templates from creative teams across all our offices, consolidate them, and roll them out to the entire company.
The goal was to create efficiencies so that creative teams across the globe could just grab the best framework and get going without having to reinvent the wheel at the start of each project.
I was told it was a super-important initiative, given a budget of six dollars and no team. Stretch Goal!
One of the biggest tasks after creating the content, was getting the word out. Not easy. I used to joke that I could easily fill 30 hours a week just being an employee.
My (and everyone else’s) email inbox was constantly overflowing with internal company emails reminding you to fill out your time card, take this mandatory training, attend an all hands meeting or go to that brown bag learning lunch. There were ‘Ring the Bell!’ client win announcements, quarterly 360 reviews and of course internal distribution lists.
I was competing with all of that. I had to breakthrough all of the internal company spam with…more spam?
So I did what I knew how to do: I wrote some funny shit and made it look cool.
I had already started my own side-hustle at this point, and had been using MailChimp. I thought it was the revolution.
Little ol’ me could send out these fancy marketing emails! If only I could send out such sexy mails to the ‘Creative All’ internal mailing list. But alas, I couldn’t. I had to use Microsoft Outlook.
So I tweaked one of the Outlook ‘stationery’ templates with the little bit of HTML I knew, and made it look a little cooler than a normal email.
I decided a would send an email newsletter once a week with a digestible tidbit of info on what we were building for creative teams. I called the ‘Weekly Dose’ and created a little branding around it.
I wrote headlines like: ‘Nice Assets!’ or ‘WTF is a DTPR?’ or ‘Seriously, You Should Model’ (riffing on the UX process of creative modelling)
I had a secret advantage: I knew my audience.
These were my people and I was one of them. I had been on creative teams and gone through the pain of trying to track down the super super slick site map template I saw another team use.
I had the same sense of humour. I spoke their language, had the same sensibilities and the same experience.
I had so much fun writing it.
Fortunately the company had a culture that supported asking ‘forgiveness instead of permission’. Besides, what was the worst thing that could happen? I’d get fired (please!)
I didn’t think to tell anyone about my project and just sent it out.
Not only did I get a lot of positive responses, people started reaching out asking about my newsletter and asking if they could get on the list!
Suddenly, directors in other verticals (technology, project management) also wanted a ‘newsletter like Eleanors’ for their teams.
I don’t think our initiative actually got any organisational traction. There were circumstances beyond our control: A merger later that year, leadership and priority changes (meet the new boss, same as the old boss...)
But I got promoted that year. And it was 100% because of that newsletter.
Visibility story #2: Keep putting your work out there.
The first business that I launched after quitting my day job was a printable wedding stationery business called ‘e.m.papers’.
This was in the mid-aughts before Canva and Etsy. Printables, stationery templates you could download and print and home, were just becoming a thing.
I designed entire sets of wedding stationery, from Save the Dates all the way through invitations and ‘day of’ items like place cards, menus, program templates and, of course, thank you cards.
I was so excited about this business.
I cranked out designs, printed them cut them out and photographed them. I bought advertising and sponsored posts on wedding blogs, submitted them to DIY blogs and joined Pinterest groups.
I worked on my SEO. I made sales! But not as many as I hoped or as fast as I wanted.
One morning I remember waking up and feeling very much like a failure. ‘This isn’t working’ I thought to myself.
It was a despairing thought because I wasn’t sure what would else I would do. Going back to a corporate job wasn’t an option. The freelancing jobs I was still picking up regularly reminded me how much I hated agency work.
But later that morning, there, lying in my email inbox, was an email from an NYC based editor from Martha Stewart weddings.
She sent me a screenshot of one of my designs from my website and asked if I could send a printed set for the April edition of the magazine.
My design is at the very top. Fom my first online business, e.m.papers
If you don’t know, in the 00s Martha Stewart Weddings was THE magazine for weddings (when magazines still kind of mattered). This was HUGE. The crazy thing was, I hadn’t even tried, I didn’t even think to pitch!
What I had done, though, was the work.
I kept making products and publishing them on my website. Consistently.
Once the set appeared in Martha Stewart, editors from other magazines like Glamour took notice and they started contacting me for samples. Then I developed relationships with the editors and would send them friendly emails when I had a new collection.
It was a chain reaction.
The lesson: Keep going and producing/publishing.This did not result in a massive Tsunami of sales, but it did give me some important social proof which I was able to then leverage into even more social proof. My designs had appeared in, and were recognized by, major publications.
Visibility Story #3: Connect, engage and be ready with a legit, professional website that shows people who you are
Maybe some of you remember the 2000 MTV Europe Music Awards. It was the show where Madonna came out wearing a Kylie Minogue t-shirt.
Later, Kylie Minogue was asked by a random reporter if she knew Madonna was going to be wearing a shirt with her name on it
“I was just as shocked as you would be if she came out wearing a t-shirt with your name on it” answered Kylie.
Well that’s how I felt walking my dog in the snow on a regular day, listening to the latest episode of one of my favorite podcasts ‘The Business of Authority’.
The topic was productized services, and not surprisingly, towards the end of the discussion website-in-a day services came up. Rochelle and Jonathan started swapping providers they liked.
I was taking mental notes on the names they were mentioning when Rochelle mentions that two providers in her community that she likes are Eleanor Mayrhofer (!!!) and Sarah Moon (my former business coach).
I felt like Kylie Minogue sitting in the audience at that award show.
WAIT WHAT!?!? HOLY SH*T! OOMMMGGGG!!!!!!
It was unreal, and thrilling.
For context, The Business of Authority podcast is not small potatoes; they interview heavy hitters like marketing guru Seth Godin and ‘Atomic Habits’ author James Clear.
The whole experience got me thinking. How did I even make it on Rochelle’s radar? My conclusion: visibility.
As it happens, I posted a video on Instagram earlier in the month on the necessary evil of being ‘visible’ when you have an online business. I had already connected with Rochelle on LinkedIn and Instagram - both places I show up regularly.
I use both of these platforms to drive people to my website where they can find out more about me, what I offer and find out if I’m legit.
I don’t think Rochelle would have ever felt confident mentioning me if she couldn’t have seen my professional website, my portfolio of client work and my strategically placed testimonials and social proof.
This is one of the reasons a website still matters.
Yes, I show up on LinkedIn and Instagram. Others may be regulars on TikTok or Clubhouse, but a website still matters. It’s a place where people can dig a little deeper and find out WHO YOU REALLY ARE.
The takeaways from these three stories?
If you don’t tell people what you’re doing they won’t know about it.
If you know your audience and community your E-mail newsletter will not be experienced as spam; just the opposite.
Put your personality, and your own unique spin on things - write from the heart (humor really helps).
No risk, no fun.
When opportunity knocks, you need to be ready to meet it with a professional online presence.
Are you ready for a website that amplifies your confidence and makes the world take notice?