I don’t know many people who relish the idea of having to constantly promote themselves. It’s therefore useful to be strategic and discerning when it comes to promotion. Here are a few things to consider;

1. If you’re a business owner, you don’t necessarily have to promote yourself, it’s your business that needs promotion. You – the owner of the business – can be as visible or invisible as you like in that process (noting that this depends on the type of brand you’re building).

2. Promotion also doesn’t need to look like photographing yourself in a bikini and sharing it on socials. You can build a wildly successful business without sharing provocative imagery (unless that’s your thing, then go for it) and without sharing one iota about your life. You get to set the boundary that works for you.

3. In the age of the internet and automations and scheduling software, you don’t have to actively engaged with people to be constantly promoting your work. Let technology do it for you and pop in from time to time to build real human connections.

4. Being visible to the right people means identifying where they’re spending time and showing up there and there only. There’s no need for you to try and show up everywhere. In fact, it’s counterproductive to even try. Knowing where to show up and who to show up in front of will cut down enormously on the time you spend on visibility related activity.

5. Because the word ‘promotion’ has negative connotations for me, I prefer the word ‘communication’ instead. When you think about putting effort into communicating regularly in a way that’s clear, effective and concise how does that feel?

6. If you’ve found your crew, showing up and being visible to them is like connecting with your favourite people all the time. When you do that, you can worry less about the idea of promotion and focus more on the idea of connection.

What if we changed the phrase to; ‘Being visible means having to communicate and connect with your ideal community members‘. How much more appealing is that?