All right, guys, I’m so excited for this blog post today. I have kind of talked in and around the subject in a variety of posts.

Today we’re going to be talking about the three visibility platforms. 

The reason I realized I actually really need to do a post on this is because just a few days ago, it was Memorial Day and I don’t know what your Memorial Day was like, but normally they’re kind of washed out here in the Portland, Oregon area. We have the joke that summer doesn’t officially start till July 4th because that’s usually when our weather gets warm, nice and predictable. But this year, we had the most glorious weather. It was in the mid 80s. It was beautiful. I spent three days in a row at the pool with my children and I went to a wine tasting birthday party and it was just such a lovely time. 

At that birthday party, there were a few other people who run their own businesses and they did not know what I do for a living because I actually didn’t know anyone there except for one person. They were kind of talking in and around the subjects of visibility. And one of them in particular said something along the lines of “Oh, blogging just doesn’t work anymore.” I was like, no no no – it totally works! It works when it works and it fails when it fails. And that right there is why we are doing this episode because there are multiple ways in which you can commit to a visibility strategy. 

Whenever there’s multiple ways to do something, you’re always going to find somebody who says, “No, that doesn’t work!” or, “Hey! This is the only way.” And neither of those are true. I really hate and despise or very strongly dislike, whichever language you like best, when people go out on a limb and say things like this is the only way. It’s just not true! It’s just not.

To lift a quote from Dov Gordon way back on episode 64 of my podcast – and just a side note, the episode is so fantastic! I think I quote him a fair amount of times because he’s got a lot of really good sound bites. I just looked at the quotes that we pulled from that episode and they’re all really good! So if you haven’t heard that, go check it out! 

But we were talking about social media platforms. And he specifically said “They all work when they work and they all fail when they fail.” And that is why I am going right here and saying, I am a platform agnostic. You are not going to hear me say blogging only works for X or you have to have a podcast for Y. It’s not the only way. They work when they work and they do, all fail when they fail. 

The key behind each of these three platforms is strategy. I outline what that means exactly in episode 115,  Visibility Plus Strategy Equals Money (AKA clients). That’s what we’re all looking for, right? So if visibility and strategy together equal money, then let’s separate that out a little bit. You still have to have a strategy and skipping over the strategy is not going to help you. Even if you choose the right platform for you, whether that’s written audio or video (as we’re about to talk about) it does not matter if you don’t have the strategy to back it up. 

What do I mean by strategy? Well, I mean, you’ve already got your messaging dialed in, you know who you’re talking to, you know what it is they need, and you know how to package it up in a product that they can use to get the results that they are looking for. That is the strategy you need to have in place for your visibility platform to work.

You also need a value ladder strategy or a “client journey strategy” as I sometimes call it. That means that wherever your best client is in their journey right now, you have something that will bring them into your world and to help them so they see that you are a good solution. 

Now, if you’re newer in business, you may only have one level of service in your business. That’s pretty typical. And that is okay! I am not telling you that  if you don’t have an entry level, medium level and an elite level offer, you need to go out and build them right now. That’s not what I’m saying. But I am saying if someone comes into your world, and they’re really looking for entry level products and you don’t offer that right now, it’s possible that even with a good visibility strategy, you’re going to lose that client. It’s just one of the trade offs of not having a fully fleshed out value ladder yet.

So if you only have one offer, even if the offer is doing really well, this is something you’ll want to consider for the future. You don’t have to, but if you don’t, you just need to understand that there may be a place where you lose clients along the way and that’s okay for where you are at in your business right now.

Okay, so moving on. We are going to talk about the three visibility platforms

1. Written
2. Audio
3. Video

As well as the benefits of each, the weaknesses of each, and how you can start choosing which one you are going to commit to

I am going to start with written visibility because for a lot of people it’s the easy entry point into a visibility platform.

Visibility typically has visuals. Getting things your eyes can see is part of those things. But we’re talking about just the written word here, and because of that, I do want to make a strong case here that just because we’re talking about writing, doesn’t mean you don’t also want to have visuals to go along with it.

If you were choosing a written platform, I still think you need to have either photos of you or a really, really well-branded graphic collection of templates that you can use to supplement the written word because we are visual people. Most humans learn better with a mixed media approach. And frankly, words don’t look that pretty unless you have a fantastic typography designer on staff. So you want to have some sort of visuals that you can use to kind of gather attention, if you will. 

Alright, so blogging is typically going to be your written platform of choice. So I’m gonna back up just a quick second here. I cover these three platforms in The Show Up System. I basically tell people in my Show Up System, you need to choose one of these three for regular content creation. Regular can mean whatever you want it to, but for the purposes of this episode all of these are going to be talked about in the weekly format because I’m going to tell most of my clients, you need to commit to a weekly content plan, and that’s what we’re gonna be discussing here. 

So, back to the blog and the written platform. Your blog content and your written content need to be a weekly topic that you cover. Then from there, you can repurpose it into a few different feed posts for things like LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. You can repurpose quotes pulled from that article as stories, things on Pinterest, and other things like that. Whatever you do, you’re going to start with that original article and that original weekly topic as your source and then parceled out into smaller pieces. Now, you can do that using like the three main points of your article, you can do it with just quotes, you can do it with just two main points. And then maybe for your third post of the week, if you’re going to do three is something a little bit different. But you’re gonna base it around that.

Then, moving on to our second visibility platform of audio.

Typically, an audio platform is going to be a podcast and this is why we’ve seen such a boom and podcasts available on the market and why it seems like everybody and their brother is starting a podcast because it’s one of only three visibility platforms, of course, people are going to flock to it.

So as with anything you do, in and around your visibility, you need to make sure that you have a really unique idea, a really good perspective that you can come out from and that’s true for whether you’re doing the written audio or video.

But with podcasts in particular, seeing again, as there aren’t visual elements, you want to supplement it with graphics that you create. If you’re willing to show your face, little video clips that you can repurpose into stories, you’re going to do the same things that you did with the written platform, you’re going to transcribe your podcast, turn it into a blog article, and then pull with either audio clips, quotes written out in pretty graphics, or whatnot, and put those into feed posts on things like Instagram, on things like LinkedIn, you can do the same things that you did with writing, you just have the added benefit of having audio to go along with it.

Finally, we move into our third visibility platform, video.

Video is 100% the easiest thing to repurpose from because in addition to all the benefits of the written word and the audio platform, you have actual visuals that go along with it. So when you’re pulling quotes out from that transcribed episode of your weekly content, when you’re pulling out video or audio clips, you don’t have to necessarily just use pretty graphic templates along with it, you can pull the actual video clip and use that as your content. When you create feed posts for your other social media platforms like Facebook, you have an actual video to go along with it, and Facebook will tell you right up, they love video, video gets played really well. So that’s a really big pro for video.

What are the cons? Well, video actually has all the cons of audio and written and a couple extra because if you’ve got even a modicum of vanity like I do, you’re probably gonna want to do hair and makeup to get ready for your video. So the prep work involved for video, it might be a little bit more than it would for written or audio. In fact, other than knowing your content, there’s not a lot of prep work needed for the written platform at all.

For audio, you want a few notes, content ready to go. But because of how easy audio is to edit, you don’t need to be fully prepared. You can actually splice audio clips together and a good editor can smooth those transitions. out. You might want to be aware of verbal tics and things like that, my podcast editor will tell you I’ve got plenty, and you rarely hear any of them. But it’s pretty easy to edit compared to video, video, if you pull out an awkward 10 seconds, your head might end up in a different spot than it was. So unless you’re filming from two angles, or you’re overlaying graphics, you’re going to have some awkward transitions if you edit in that manner. Video will require a little bit more prep work, but you get way more options for repurposing with that particular platform.

So why am I telling you about these three platforms?

Why am I really pushing you to choose one of these platforms for regular content for your business? The answer, unless you commit to a content system, it’s going to be really hard for you to maintain consistency. I’ve probably reiterated many, many times, consistency is the building block of building up your know, like, and trust factor.

In fact, I would rather you do something with imperfect action and have all those verbal tics and have those awkward video transitions and still be consistent, rather than you showing up only once a month, or, you know, twice this week, but only you know, once the rest of the month, just because you couldn’t maintain the consistency because you didn’t commit to a content system. Having that content system is really your ride or die in the online business world.

I was reading a newsletter this morning, a print newsletter, actually, believe it or not, written by Ben Settle called Email Players. It’s his monthly newsletter. But in last month’s newsletter, he said, information your clients read that you create, written, spoken, or video never really dies. And that is so true. You know, things I said five years ago are available for perusal on this podcast. Nothing I’ve said really dies.

I am going to include my take on that quote because while anything that you’ve said, spoken, written, or video, whatever doesn’t die–it can feel like it has died. And unlike things that, you know, may have been popular 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, when people would like quote, movies verbatim and things like that, because there’s so much noise in the world today, your content might not be dead, but it does kind of need a constant revival. Unless you’ve committed to one of these three visibility platforms, and you’ve created a system around your content creation, it’s so easy for your content to feel like it’s died, because you’ve forgotten that you’ve said it, your audience has forgotten that you’ve said it, anyone new and your audience never even heard it in the first place.

You need a way to revive old content, and one of the easiest ways to revive that is knowing you have a very well-laid-out visibility platform. Then, once a quarter going back and checking on your content, what got the most engagement, what led to the most click-throughs to whatever offer you’re talking about, what actually turned into clients–all of those things matter. You’re only going to be able to easily systematize figuring that out when you’ve committed to one of these visibility platforms so you have some consistency in the data coming into your measurement system.

That right there folks leads me to the Show Up System 2.0. I’ve been teasing it for a couple months, and don’t worry, it is not an expensive program. It’s only $37. It is my content creation system. It has all of the visibility templates, all of the show up templates and social post formula templates that I have created over the last six or seven years and they are all packaged up into a really easy to digest course.

Seriously, you guys can be set up in less than 10 minutes if you’ve used a system before, and less than an hour even if you’ve never had anything to do with content creation in the past. I made it really approachable on purpose because this is it guys, visibility is your key to online business success and I want to make sure that I in every way possible make that as easy as possible for you guys.