How to get comfortable being visible online: 3 things we learnt from Sara Dalrymple

Sales and visibility expert Sara Dalrymple hosted a brilliant session in our members Facebook group yesterday covering how to get the confidence to show up online in a more effective way. Sara talked about why online visibility is important, how to increase it and how it helps.

Here we share a few of the key takeaways.

PEOPLE BUY FROM PEOPLE

For product-based businesses, it can be tempting to lead with product (understandably). But from a consumer perspective, there’s a lot more that we buy into beyond what you’re selling.

Before any customer will decide to buy from your business, there are three key things they want to see from you, and being more visible online accelerates our customers’ ability to absorb all three.

Connection: People buy from people. Customers want to feel connected to your business, your back story and the people behind the brand.

Confidence: Customers want to understand why you exist and gain confidence in your brand and your offering.

That’s why it’s so important to tell stories about your business - i.e, what led you to start your business? What are your experiences? How did you get to where you are now?

Clarity: Once customers are connected and invested in you and feel confident in what you do, then it’s about how your product might be able to help them.

If you’re ever stuck for ideas make sure it fits into one of the buckets and just know that what you’re doing is facilitating your customer experience. You’re basically making sure that your customers can get everything they need from the social platform that you’re on.

VIDEO IS YOUR BEST FRIEND

There’s no faster way to get people connecting with you than talking to the camera. So if you want to have an impact, talking on your Instagram Stories will help you achieve this.

While it can feel very unnatural and uncomfortable at first, talking to the camera is such a great way to find and nurture a connection with your audience. And showing your face will enable people to feel that they know you.

Being visible online is not about growing your followers, it’s about nurturing and caring about the people that are already following you.

On Instagram, Stories is where you go for conversations, where you can ask for people’s opinions, what they need from you etc. They’re ideal for taking your audience behind the scenes, showing your workspace, what you’re working on and similar.

The information you get from your online conversations through Stories are so valuable and you can tailor your content and your offering based on the interactions that you have.

Most of us are not very comfortable posting Stories of ourselves, so if you’re feeling a bit scared start small and find a rhythm with it. Even if you post a story once a week showing your work set up. And then you can build on it from there as your confidence grows. Posting a story consistently will help keep you front of mind.

SETTING THE MOOD

You get to choose the mood and atmosphere that you provide. Think about how you want your customers to feel. Do you want to be educational or entertaining? Are you more introverted and want to create content around this?

It’s not about oversharing or sharing something you’re not comfortable with, but it’s about the atmosphere that you create.

If people see you and they feel they know you, they come to expect a certain mood or the way you show up. So finding your ‘identity’ and sticking to this is key.

When you cultivate an environment, active selling becomes much lower and you help people to opt-in more naturally.