How to Increase Your Visibility and Drive Business Growth
We are so excited to welcome back Fiona Minett, owner of BossYourPR, back to the blog this week with expert advice on how to increase your visibility to drive your business growth. Fiona first appeared in our Moments to Motivate series and we just had to have her back after working with her ourselves over the last few months. We know from launching our own global marketing agency that it’s important not to put your eggs all in one basket when it comes to getting your brand out there. How can your business grow if you aren’t out there shouting about it!?
At the beginning of the year with an international move on the cards, we knew we needed to up our game and start positioning ourselves not only where we were located in Chicago but where we planned to grow. We were already serving international clients virtually but want to start to meet people in our new home, Altrincham/Manchester UK. So over the last 5 months we have been working hard on our own visibility and we are starting to get some great traction. Like social media this sort of work takes time and most importantly consistency is the key to growing your business. We have been working with Fiona to make this happen and she has been kind enough to share some of her insights for you to benefit from and up your visibility game. So, over to Fiona….
When it comes to increasing your visibility as a business I often reference the old adage, ‘how long is a piece of string?’. The work you can do to increase your visibility is infinite. This notion is in some ways, a glorious thing where opportunity abounds, and in others, a very daunting task; the thought of tackling your PR or working on getting more visible and reaching a broader audience can be terrifying and overwhelming in equal measure.
However, as with everything, there are starting points. Approaching any work on your visibility and raising your profile can take any form you’re comfortable with to get you started. Although I do advocate stretching that comfort zone as soon as you feel ready for more of a challenge.
Let’s break it down. When we talk about PR or visibility, we’re just talking about communications. How you communicate with stakeholders in and around your business as well as how you communicate to your audience and the audiences of others. The more you communicate, the more people you reach, the more your audience grows, the more visible you become.
So, what are the most accessible and manageable starting points when it comes to increasing your visibility?
Photography:
Getting yourself some brilliant brand photography is one of the simplest steps to boost your visibility. One of the simplest but also one that people can struggle with most. It’s so very easy to feel silly, self conscious, awkward and uncomfortable when we are the point of focus for a fancy camera lens, even more so if we are in a public setting for our photoshoot. However, the benefits of brand photography outweigh all of this and it is a super actionable way for you to start exploring visibility.
Why?
✨ Great photography will help you in getting visible across your social media which allows your audience to see YOU.
✨It will allow you to be clearly visible on your website. A beautiful ‘about’ page is an absolute winner. The Know, Like and Trust factor is real and it’s powerful. Allow your audience to get to know you.
✨ Great photography is a MUST for the media and many other visibility opportunities. If you are providing content, comment, expertise to the media, they may ask for a photo. This will need to be a professional shot in high resolution. If you are going to be a guest on a podcast or are taking part in a trade show, your image will be needed for promotion of these opportunities.
Social Media:
Chances are that you are already on social media and active on one or more platforms, but what if I told you that you could use this presence to maximise your chances of achieving PR results?
Fiona Minett from BossYourPR using social media to promote her podcast, The PR Spotlight, in which she collaborates with industry experts.
Consistency on any social media platform is key, but beyond this, here are a few points to consider:
✨Follow media editors, writers, stylists and movers and shakers as magazines or online titles you think appeal to your target audience. You’ll get to know names, who people write for and it is all part of understanding the media landscape.
✨Interact where relevant. Have they shared something that has fired you up or taken your interest? Share your thoughts, your opinion or any insight you offer on the topic. Or, if it’s just a pretty picture you like, tell them that!
✨Curate your feed with great original images/videos of your product, you or your service. Give as much intro to what you’re about as possible so that a journalist can see in a snapshot and can see that you’ve got great imagery!
✨Make any messages personal. But not creepy. Is there a hook that you could use? A birthday, a wedding, a promotion that they’ve shared? Can you send a gift or a ‘congratulations’ with your pitch?
✨Know what they write about. Show them that you are engaged with them and their content. Did you love the last feature they wrote and shared to their social? Tell them.
Make yourself visible. Engage. Show off what you do and what you’re about. Make it easy for opportunities to find you.
Collaboration:
Collaboration is something that can absolutely accelerate your business, reputation and visibility when done well. Are you thinking creatively enough about collaboration in your business? Great collaborations with other like minded businesses are a brilliantly effective way of reaching ‘warm audiences’ that are likely to be receptive to your offer and messaging. Why not leverage the power of the audiences of others while we work on building our own?
A recent collaboration between Your AJency and Plann featured on their blog here.
What might collaboration to increase visibility look like?
✨ Collaborations on content - it might be an Instagram live, A Blog interview, Guest content, a series of collaborative content with different like minded collaborators… The power of this kind of collaboration is in the social sharing mechanism that you trigger when you work on social media content with others - they will want to share to their network and it gives your content a naturally larger audience.
✨ Social media competitions - Can you team up to offer a bundle of prizes? Or a ‘money can’t buy’ special bundle? This can generate great social media traction whether you run it with other businesses or a type of social media influencer (local or micro influencer perhaps)
✨A specific gift bundle for a particular retail hook/calendar date in collaboration with a like-minded brand - This can work really well for small businesses to allow them to offer something a little different from their normal offer on a special occasion. It might be a nightwear brand partnering with a beauty brand on an exclusive bundle that can be bought only from the websites of both collaborators.
✨Collaborate on a design edit - Maybe you are an accessories designer and you work with an artist to paint embellishments on a number of pieces…. Maybe you work with an influencer to pick their favourite gift ideas from your range as an ‘exclusive edit’ and build a content and promotional plan around the collaboration.
Any collaboration is a chance for increased visibility by reaching warm audiences of others.
A blogger network event hosted in collaboration between Your AJency and Wildwood Studio. Photo Credit: Wildwood Photography
Networking:
Old school networking has long had a bad rap and since the pandemic, we have become even more used to digital only networking. However, there is little substitute for a combination of online and offline networking to accelerate visibility for a business. I will admit that it’s only recently in the last few years that I have truly started to embrace and advocate the power of networking.
Why?
Because the networking I’d tried previously wasn’t a good fit for me and I didn’t enjoy it. So I didn’t want to do it and I didn’t see the value. The solution is to find the right networking opportunities for you and your business both online and offline.
What could that look like?
✨ Embracing networking and connections on social media. Having genuine conversations and engaging with other accounts; going back to the foundations of our favourite social media platforms and building real connections with other like minded people.
✨ Finding casual/accessible networking locally. Find your tribe in your locale. Whether that’s a Rising Tide chapter in the US or a local ladies network anywhere in the UK; there will be a group that is a fit for you.
✨ Joining online membership communities such as Enterprise Nation and meeting like minded entrepreneurs through a mix of online community and offline meetups can play a hugely important role in building your own support network around your business.
Networking gives us the opportunity to get to know people behind the business. The right kind of networking allows the removal of barriers for people, allows them to learn more about you and your offer, allows mutual support and cheerleading and ultimately, networking can be a really potent way to reach your target audience.
As noted at the beginning, ‘how long is a piece of string?’ will pretty much sum up the approach to visibility for any business, however, there are many manageable starting points that you can embrace to start the journey of increasing your visibility.
Start somewhere and keep moving forward; working on your visibility is an ever evolving job and one that can be both enjoyable and absolutely game changing for your business.
What are you going to start with? What is your best takeaway? We would love to hear! We can’t recommend Fiona, both her membership and services enough. We have had so much fun and made some really positive inroads in getting our name out there.
Fiona Minett, founder of Boss Your PR and The PR Spotlight, is an award winning PR Expert and Educator on a mission to democratise PR for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Having spent over a decade in PR, including 6 years running a PR agency, Fiona now trains and coaches small businesses in taking a DIY approach to their visibility by making the most of savvy and cost effective PR techniques. She has contributed to and written for the likes of Jewellery Focus Magazine, The Guardian, Health & Wellbeing and The Oxford Times, taught and mentored with Domestika, Virgin Start Up and Small Business Britain and spoken at trade shows and venues including MODA, Top Drawer, Allbright, Oxford Brookes University and Harrogate Home & Gift.