You might have heard other marketing coaches talk about “getting your name out there”, but before you go crazy on social media or start filling your diary with networking events, let’s look at why it’s important to be visible.
Think back to one of the last services you paid for. Did you hire a coach, visit a homeopath, start classes with a yoga teacher? Did you go to a talk, get a massage, see a nutritionist? Remember back to how you made the decision to commit to paying for that service.
When we hear about a new practitioner or product, we don’t tend to think “I must part with my money right this very minute!” Our instinct is generally to want to find out more.
When we’re planning a holiday, we might spend hours on YouTube looking up videos of the cities we want to visit, reading hotel and hostel reviews, looking on forums, checking train times. We don’t want to have a conversation with a reservation agent straight away; we want to do our research and check out things from a distance.
If a friend suggests we come along to a gig, we’d probably check out the band’s music on his MP3 player before we buy a ticket.
What this means for your business
You want plenty of people to become paying clients. Right now, many of those people are strangers. There are various phases in the journey of them moving all the way from stranger to paying client with you and I affectionally call this early “checking out” stage the stalker phase.
The stalker phase is a really natural phase and it’s your job, as service professional, to enable and encourage this. It’s your responsibility to ensure prospective clients can get a sense of you and your approach before making initial contact with you.
There are a number of ways to do this, but let’s first check how stalkable you are now.
Stalk yourself
Imagine you’re someone other than you – in fact, you’re your ideal client. You’re sitting at home (or wherever you are now) and you’ve just heard about you from someone and you want to check you out.
Try and find out as much as you can about you. Look on Google, see if you can find your website, look on Facebook or see if you’ve been tweeting.
As well as your professional credentials and principles, people like knowing the little things. Your favourite food, where you’ve travelled, the music that gets you moving. They’re not deciding factors in whether they hire you or not, they’re just nice little extras that show you’re human – and we human beings tend to feel safer with other human beings.
Make a list of how many ways people can currently find out more about you and your approach without you yet knowing they exist.
Haven’t got many options on your list?
Become more stalkable
Here are some options for making yourself more stalkable:
- Have a website, even if it’s very basic.
- Include a photo (Caroline Webster in North London does great headshots).
- Reveal a little more on your About page; paint a picture of yourself as a whole person, rather than hiding behind qualifications and staid professionalism.
- Give a talk or teleclass. Someone can sit quietly hidden in an audience and experience you live and it’ll build their sense of safety that they could work with you.
- Record some videos, upload them to YouTube – the next best thing to live events.
- Write a blog or an article for a magazine (online or paper) so people can get a sense of your voice and your approach.
- Be visible on social media and combine your professional messages with more personal whole-life stuff.
Prospective clients need to be able to find out about you, get a sense of you and see if they resonate with your approach. If you’re not adequately stalkable, they can’t yet do that – so make it your mission to stop hiding and be findable.
Have you found it useful to “stalk” a practitioner before hiring them? Did it lead to a better investment of your time and energy? Any top tips on how to make it easier for prospective client to stalk you? Leave a comment below, let us know.
From strangers to paying clients
You’ll discover a lot more about how to take strangers through to becoming paying clients in chapter 7 of Turn Your Passion To Profit: a step-by-step guide to getting your business off the ground. Get your copy of the book here > >
© Corrina Gordon-Barnes 2012
Great article, Corrina – it can seem a little egotistic at first looking oneself, however, we really have to get over all the old voices that tell us not to “blow our own trumpet” etc and just stalk ourselves in whatever social media we use. It can be amusing as well as reassuring to find out that we really do exist outside our own heads!
Keep up the good work – Dawne
Dawne Kovan´s last [type] ..Various bits and pieces today – Uranus/Pluto, the Mayans, the Fixed Signs
Hey Dawne – yes, it’s to make ourselves more available, to be more of service, for those we’re here for.
Thank you Corrina, useful and informative blog, food for thought!
Pleasure, Kay. Let me know if there’s a particular topic you’d love me to cover in future posts.
Love this post. It was you that taught me the value o’ being stalkable and I LOVE being able to read about, and find out as much as possible, about the people I dig and might want to work with to make sure we’re a perfect-o fit. Thanks for sharing yet more nuggets o’ awesome, CGB x
“Nuggets o’awesome” – oh you have a way with words, dear writing/editing/publishing guru you, Lisa.
Really great post!!! Totally agree with Dawne’s comment that sometimes we are our own enemies and really ‘hiding’ serves no purpose for us or our businesses. Love your blog posts, always seem to come around with great insight just at the right time ….on the pulse Corrina as always
Samantha Clarke´s last [type] ..Where everybody knows your name..
As do yours, Sam. I’m learning tons from you, style guide
straight down the line and to the point! food for thought. so true to make it humane about us as being as that prospective clients are curiuos about!
Hey beautiful Sonia. Your About page is wonderfully conversational and “real” – I suspect your mum clients find that a breath of fresh air.
I love the thought and intention ehind your blog Corrina – and as always love the passion behind your every word – but am a little ambivalent about the metaphor. (I emailed you about this privately but you asked me to share my reservations publicly, hence this post.)
My issue is that I have myself been stalked, more than once, and it’s not a pleasant experience, so to see the term used in the context of an aspiration is a little disconcerting. Perhaps ‘followed’ might be a better parallel? Or could you talk about ‘fans’ rather than stalkers’? Just a thought.
As you would sign off, with much love and respect, Susan
Thanks so much for raising this, Susan – you weren’t the only person to contact me with this point of view, so I appreciate the opportunity to respond.
Words are powerful and I’m sorry to hear the phrase “stalked” holds this connotation because of disturbing personal experiences; please just translate it into whatever phrase doesn’t trigger those memories for you.
My use of the word fits with the cultural concept we now have of “stalking” on Facebook and other social media; it’s how we can describe the benign, amusing and certainly non-criminal way of staying up to date with friends. For example, someone will say: “You’re excited about your holiday to Portland, huh? And comedy improv looks fun. And love your new red shoes! Yup… I’ve been stalking you!”
Again, thanks for the chance to clarify this – and, as ever, signing off with love and respect
Corrina Gordon-Barnes´s last [type] ..Why It’s Good To Be Stalked
I love the passion and purpose of your writing, Corrinna, but I also wrote to you privately to express my concern about your use of the term ‘stalking’ in this context. I accept that that social media reinvents new meanings for words but being flippant about such a loaded term still seems to me distasteful. At best, it diverts my attention, at worst it makes me disconnect from your blog. Regardless of the way terms are used in jest, especially between friends, stalking is commonly understood as a criminal and threatening activity. By the same token,I’ve heard teenagers use the term ‘frape’ to mean using someone’s Facebook account without their permission and I find it shocking because of the connotation with sexual violence. I do appreciate your advice about researching clients tastes and preferences, and showing up in spaces – real or virtual – where they hang out. But I still think the term ‘tracking’ would be more effective than ‘stalking’.
Thanks Juliet for also reposting here publicly – I love that this discussion can happen for a wider community.
I want to be very clear that my use of the word in this context does not equate with flippancy about a criminal activity. You and Susan have taken us into extremely useful territory here because I think a key reason many of us don’t show up publicly/online is because of a perceived thin line between the kind of stalking you’re talking about, and the kind I’m talking about. I’ve often heard a fear of being too visible and the potential dangers that might occur (maybe particularly for women?)
Let’s open this to others… Can a fear of being visible online stop you from running a successful business? Are you torn between wanting prospective clients to find you – and wanting to stay private/hidden/protected? Does the openness of social media and the internet freak you out? Do leave a comment, join the discussion.
I found that when I had the guts to really ” come clean” about having ME and osteoporosis I got a huge influx of new clients who were looking for a teacher/therapist who understood their needs. It’s scary putting yourself out there + I’ve had some backlash, but often anything worth doing is a bit scary.
Rachel´s last [type] ..looking after your hands
Yes, our transparency can create immense safety for prospective clients. Thanks Rachel for sharing this – and for being bravely available for your right clients.
Corrina Gordon-Barnes´s last [type] ..Why It’s Good To Be Stalked
Love it. A positive spin on stalking! Who knew?
Great tips too love. It’s just been brought to my attention that I hadn’t included my personal story following my recent site revamp. Off to rectify that now! x x x
Lola Fayemi´s last [type] ..Raise Your Vibes – 21 Ways to Get Unstuck by Raising Your Consciousness
Hey Lola. Personal stories are so useful in sharing with our prospective clients why we got into this area. It feels so much more authentic than “I reckoned I could make a quick buck from this niche”
Feel free to share a snippet of your story here, so we can TRACK (see!) you back to your site.
Hi Corrinna and everyone else,
It’s been fascinating to read the other responses and I hope you won’t mind me replying yet again – see, I have no inhibition about exposing my opinions! I think it’s important to distinguish between transparency about one’s own experience (being open, direct, honest etc) and between activities associated with stalking such as following others in a surreptitious or sinister way, lurking with intent to intimidate. It IS really vital to get to know the people that we’d like to attract as clients, but why not talk about spying or tracking or researching? I still don’t really understand the need to put a positive spin on stalking. To me – and maybe this is just my personal sensitivity and I accept that others respond differently to this discussion – it makes as much sense as trying to put a positive spin on rape. Advertisers often test boundaries in relation to language and imagery, and the shock tactics serve to gain attention (which is what marketing’s all about, right?) In this particular case, Corrinna, I think your ideas are so fantastic and your arguments so powerful that you don’t need to rely on a risque headline to promote them. Looking forward to hearing again from you and others, too. With love, Juliet xx
Hey Juliet – I write about the “stalker phase” in my book – see p155
– and have spoken about it often with clients and on group programmes, so please know it wasn’t just there to be a provocative email title. Thank you for the acknowledgements – so glad you find the blogs valuable – and for adding your energy in this discussion. You’ve given me food for thought.
Hello Corrina,
It has been very interesting to read your blog and the following posts. I too have reservations about the term “stalker,” having been involved with very real cases of stalking, in a professional capacity.
I think “tracking” is a good term. I like “fan” too.
I do also see that it makes for very powerful, attention-grabbing headlines! I did, afterall, choose to read your blog called “Why it’s good to be stalked,” not least becasue I was sure that it would not be the criminal kind, that you were referring to!
I remember that a number of years ago you said that you found it frustrating that I was “invisible” on-line, (as you wanted to recommend me) and I do know what you mean. I regularly think about changing that, and I am seriously contemplating that now, once again.
I have conflicting feelings about it. I am concerned about sharing lots of details about my life with strangers, yes. But I can completely see how doing that makes me more human and approachable.
My biggest concern is that I found using facebook to be mildly addictive. As an experienced therapist, trained in helping people with addictions, that really concerns me and so I stopped using it. The last straw was seeing a facebook post from a highly respected EFT practitioner talking about feeling sorry about “going off-line” for 10 days during the Thanks Giving period, so that he could spend time with his family, and reading at least 40 responding posts, almost all from other EFT practitioners, saying how hard they found it too.
I find that my life without social media is much simpler and more peaceful, than with it.
I would appreciate knowing what others think about this.
With love and respect,
Rosalind
Hey Rosalind – I’d love for you to be more visible so I can send people your way easier! One of my clients is outsourcing her social media activity, that may be an option to consider. There’s a whole other blog post to be written here: “How to use Facebook so it doesn’t take over your life and make you an ANTIsocial computer junkie”
This is such a rich topic, Corrina – talk about a can of worms! I agree with Rosalind that “Tracking” is a good word to describe what you want us to do. I guess the idea is to become trackable or visible to the outside world. Otherwise how will our potential clients know who we are if we don’t let ourselves be seen? I asked myself “What’s the big secret that you are keeping from others?” And it comes from our culture of being a “good girl”, not showing off, being modest, etc – and it shackles us to a life of mediocrity and struggle which we know only too well.
What a nonsense that can be. I want to scream from the rooftops to everyone in the world to look at my blog, to book a session with me, online, on Skype or whatever – it does work, although only modestly, as nice girls don’t shout, do they?
Like Rosalind I find life without Facebook very simple – although recently I started Tweeting. Don’t know how useful it is in the long run, though.
With best wishes
Dawne
Dawne Kovan´s last [type] ..Jupiter in Gemini – June 2012 to June 2013
Dawne – Ooh, nice question. Often that “big secret” is one of our greatest assets. Authenticity is attractive, huh? Feel free to leave another comment and make yourself more visible here