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Do you struggle with visibility?

Are you afraid to be seen

Do you struggle with visibility?

Building a business in the online space means showing up – day after day after day.

If you want to grow your following and create a powerful personal brand or even a movement, you need to know your message and share your ideas and opinions. You have to be willing to take a stand, get vulnerable and build real heart-to-heart connections.

As a business owner, you’re being called to step up and own all of yourself, to reveal those personal attributes, choices and beliefs that you may have kept to yourself as an employee.

The trouble is, you’re afraid to let down your guard and be seen for who you really are. 

You’re afraid of what your former colleagues might think of your business. You’re afraid to raise your hand as a bit spiritual, a bit woo woo, a bit emotional, too controversial, or simply full of heart. You’re afraid that if you show who you are, some potential customers will turn away.

So you hide away, find some mildly-fitting brand name, slap a stock image on your website and share safe, generic posts, rather than reveal what’s in your heart. You brush off compliments, or deflect attention for your achievements onto others. Yes yes, you know you need brand images, but you’d like to lose five kilos first.

You’re afraid to use your voice – You love what others are doing on social media, but when you try to come up with your own ideas you just draw a blank. So you share other people’s content, or write with a stilted energy that fails to engage your audience – and it just feels so wooden and disconnected.

You shudder at the thought of being considered ‘self-promotional’. You’re so focused on serving your clients that you’re constantly brushing off compliments, refuse to take proper credit for your successes, forget to follow up leads in a timely manner and miss opportunities to market your brand and build awareness of what you do. It just doesn’t occur to you to share or seek publicity for your brand stories.

You’re working too much from your head, rather than connecting from the heart. So you get caught up in what you  ‘should’ do, looking to others for the pathway to success, instead of trusting your intuition. Buying courses and subscriptions you don’t really need (and will never get around to fully implementing) or following strategies and formulas that the experts say will skyrocket your results, but can actually mess up the good things you created on your

It comes down to this:

You’re not sure how to share who you really are, so you’re struggling to hear your  inner guidance, express what’s in your heart and connect with your audience.

If you’re struggling with being seen, here’s what you can do:

  1. Know your message. Get clear on the core message at the heart of your work and build all your content around that. Ask yourself what is the struggle you wish to help your customers solve? Then consider how each piece of content moves your customer further along that pathway.
  2. Reconnect to the power of your work. If you know you’re providing great value and changing your customers lives or work, then you are doing other potential clients a disservice by hiding your light. What if they are looking for someone just like you? How can you inspire them or show them that things can be different? Keep the focus on how you can help and sharing your message (and getting visible) becomes a lot easier.
  3. Choose your platform. Start by identifying where your ideal people hang out and  then choose one platform to be your focus. You can add in others as your confidence with visibility grows.
  4. Give yourself permission to experiment and play Don’t limit yourself to what you think works for you – instead, try stepping outside your comfort zone. You may feel overwhelmed by the thought of doing scripted videos, but find you love the interaction of Facebook Live.If video is definitely too much, why not try podcasting? The intimacy of a conversation between two strangers can be a powerful thing. Forget about the broadcast audience and allow yourself to relax into the experience of exchanging ideas with another.
  5. Pay attention to how you feel. What kind of content makes you feel energised? What drains you? Where does it feel natural and easy to share your ideas and connect with your audience? What makes you cringe and stumble?Some of us love the written word, while others find it hard to write with confidence and truly shine when speaking from the heart. If that’s you, look for opportunities to appear on podcasts or as a guest expert content summits (or better yet, start one of your own)
  6. Set yourself a challenge. Declare that you will show up every day for a month on your platform.  See what happens when you put all your energy into one space.

Visibility takes consistent action and yes a bit of courage too. But most of all it takes connection to the heart of your work, a deep knowing of what you are here to share and confidence in the difference you make. It’s about finding your message and brand stories and sharing those with your audience in a way that will connect. And yes it’s about facing the fear and doing it anyway. Who knows what might happen when you finally step up and share your truth?

If this sounds like what you need, then join me for my upcoming Illuminate Sessions. It’s a free series of mini-workshops where we’ll be covering all this and more. You can book your spot here.

I want to see you shine your light bright. So let’s do this.

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