This week I asked my email list how they wanted to be visible next year and sent them a link to a blog post by Jude Wharton at Ready Steady Websites that includes links to lots of great visibility tools for 2026. Now you have it, too!

We do need to think about what we want to do next year, but it’s equally important to think about what we want to stop doing, or at least do less of.

Too often, I see business owners stuck in a ‘should loop’. It’s easy to feel like everyone else is doing something, so we should too.

What we don’t see is how the thing everyone else is doing actually works for them and their business. Are they just talking about it a lot because they’ve invested time and money in it, so they need to make it work? Or does it genuinely feel easy and effective for them?

We can’t know what’s working for everyone else, but we can take time to reflect on what’s working for us.

How do you want to be visible?

Visibility isn’t really about building an audience of thousands (or more) for most businesses. There are ways to do that, and if you have the money to throw at it, you can make it happen, but is it worth it?

What’s important for most micro and small businesses is being seen by the right people: the ones you can actually help and who want to hire you.

Being in front of the masses who don’t actually want to work with you won’t help your bottom line, but performing for them to keep their attention just might burn you out and deplete your financial resources.

We, micro and small businesses, need to connect meaningfully with the important few, not get hung up on vanity metrics like subscriber numbers or followers. How do we do that?

There’s no one-size-fits-all or even one-size-fits-most answer (does one-size-fits-most really work for anything other than scarves?). What will allow you to easily make meaningful connections with your audience may not be what works for me or anyone else.

Let’s look at the options.

Networking

You thought I was going to start with writing, didn’t you? I’ll come to that shortly. But actually meeting people is important for making meaningful connections.

However, many of us would go to great lengths to avoid having to stand up in a stuffy networking breakfast to introduce ourselves and our business. I know I would.

That’s not the only, or even most effective, way to network.

If you go to a networking meeting – in person or online – and it doesn’t feel comfortable, ask yourself these questions:

• Is it because it’s new and will get better with time?
• Is it because it’s the wrong group for you?

If it’s the wrong group for you, don’t go to that one again – this is why most networking groups give you free sample sessions.

For me, the ‘wrong’ groups are those that focus on selling to each other, while the ‘right’ ones focus on building relationships. For others, that would be reversed. You need to find what works for you.

What if talking to people in real life or in virtual meetings puts you on edge? You can still network.

That’s actually what LinkedIn is designed to allow for (send me a connection request).You do need to post on there from time to time so people can see who you are and what you do, but the real magic is in the conversations you have in the comments on other people’s posts and in the dms. Those conversations are networking you can do from the safety of your keyboard.

If you want to work efficiently on LinkedIn, I recommend creating curated lists (this article explains how – just save each list in a bookmark folder in your browser) so you can easily stay in touch with the people you want to build relationships with. It also helps you avoid being at the mercy of the dreaded algorithm.

Remember, networking isn’t about making sales in every meeting (it’s not magic or instant). It’s about building know, like, and trust with people who might hire you and people who might refer you to others.

The founders of one the networking groups I go to, ONLE, have a page full of resources (free and paid) that will help you improve your networking – have a look, you might learn something.

Questions to ask yourself

What networking are you doing? Do you enjoy doing it? Are you making meaningful connections through it?

What kind do you want to do more of? Less of? Make this a conscious decision.

For example, I do less in person networking through the winter months because I don’t drive and don’t fancy walking around in the cold and the rain to get to meetings.

Evergreen content

I told you I’d come around to writing. If you have a website, you need to be creating content regularly. Otherwise, it will look out of date to visitors and to search engines.

This doesn’t need to be a huge time commitment. To keep everything up to date, you only need one blog post a month.

If that sounds like a huge time commitment, it’s likely because you’re thinking that you’ll write it and post it and no one will read it.

If it just stays on your website and your SEO isn’t very good, you might be right. But if you break that post up into social media posts (remember what I said about posting on LinkedIn?) and in your newsletter, it saves, not wastes, time.

I’m not the only one who thinks this. I came across a post on Substack by Kel Rakowski (she’s well worth following and posts a lot about how she’s making meaningful connections) – she’s not writing new stuff this month or next, but she’ll still be posting. How? By repurposing.

Need some help with repurposing? Read ‘Repurpose Your Post’.

If you’re more comfortable writing short social media posts, write several on the same topic and then string them together as a blog post. You don’t have to start with the long form first – as you’ll see in the post I linked to above, I don’t always start there.

If you prefer video to text, you could start with a long-ish video (10 minutes or so) on a particular topic, then turn the transcript into a blog post and several short text pieces. Also, YouTube functions as a search engine, so posting there first, could work for your business.

Questions to ask yourself

What content are you creating? Are you making it work for you, or is it just busy work? How do you feel about creating that content? Are you working to your strengths, or doing what you think you ‘should’ do? What support do you need?

Introductory/get-to-know-you posts

Humans are a curious lot. We like to know about the people we interact with online. That’s why you see people reintroducing themselves periodically.

Your online audience is always shifting, so these introductory posts are a good way to let people who are new to you know what you do and why. They also remind people who have been in your orbit for a while why they’re interested in what you do.

Set a quarterly reminder in your diary so you don’t forget to do this – and try to make the intro interesting by sharing the usual business-y stuff, but also some quirky stories that let your personality shine.

The get-to-know you posts are just as important. At least a couple of times a month, I post something about what I’m reading, what a saw on a walk, what café I worked in, or what my cats are up to. These aren’t hugely personal posts, but they let people see what I do when I’m not working.

If you want an example of how to share about yourself without oversharing, have a look at Richard Hiron’s posts on LinkedIn. He regularly posts about his work playlist and gives a commentary on the CD of the week. This tells his audience something about his interests and tastes without being uncomfortably revealing.

Questions to ask yourself

Are you sharing personal stuff online? Are you doing it regularly? I always aim for weekly, but that doesn’t always happen. What topics are you comfortable sharing about? If you haven’t already, make a short list (3 to 5) – it will make writing these posts quick and easy.

Your book

I know not everyone has written a book. And if you haven’t, you might not want to.

But if you have written one, are you still making the most of it?

If you’re thinking about starting one, do you have a plan for making that content (it’s content too) work for you while you’re writing it?

When I work with clients to write their books, we talk about how to use their draft in their socials and elsewhere early in the process. It doesn’t do you or anyone else any good if you keep your book a big secret until you’ve finished it.

If you do that, you won’t have an audience on publication day. Also, you will have made your life unnecessarily hard during the writing process. Who has time to write a book and other content?

After you write your book, reuse it. You’ll likely have whole chapters that lend themselves to being broken up for social media posts. And those posts have easy, ready-made CTAs (calls to action), buy or download my book for more!

Questions to ask yourself

If you haven’t and don’t want to write a book, skip to the next section.

If you’ve written a book, are you still using it in your marketing? If not, why not? If so, how’s that going for you?

If you want to write a book, do you have a plan for using it in your marketing? If not, what help do you need to make one?

Other people’s audiences

Talking to other people’s audiences as a podcast guest, guest presenter on their programme or in their group, or at an event is a great way to get in front of new potential connections – if you’re reasonably comfortable with public speaking.

If you’re not a confident speaker, you can become one if you want to by working with a coach (email me at jennifer@ewc.coach if you’d like introductions to the ones I know).

I wish I’d known about such people before I started teaching – I got over my reluctance to talk to groups of people the hard way: by having to do it several times a week in front of first-year undergraduates (one of the least forgiving audiences out there). If you’re as nervous as I once was, take the easy way and work with a professional.

If you are a confident speaker (or you become one), you’ll need a plan for getting booked. Unfortunately, having a speaker page on your website doesn’t mean the offers come flooding in (though it doesn’t hurt, either).

Getting booked means either building relationships with people who book speakers or working with someone who will do that on your behalf.

Making the most of speaking also means having some key assets up to date and ready to go: short bios, headshots, clear CTAs.

Questions to ask yourself

If you haven’t pursued this mode of visibility, do you want to?

If you have done this sort of thing, do you enjoy it? or is it exhausting? If it's exhausting, how would it feel to stop doing it (at least for a while)?

If you have or plan to, how are you making it work for you? How are you building relationships after the speaking gig? Like networking, this isn’t magic – turning up to give your talk is only the beginning.

How can I help?

I have both in-person (£300) and virtual options (£50/month)

In-person Content Retreat

If you live in or near Winchester (in Hampshire, UK), you can join me for my new Content Retreats (£300). We'll start with a 121 planning session (via Zoom) and then meet for 2 non-consecutive writing days so you can create what you'll need for the following 3 months!

In your workshop, we’ll discuss:

• How you want to be visible over the following quarter
• What you’ll be promoting
• What content you have that can be repurposed to support those promotions
• What content you need to create
• How you plan to show up for and make use of networking and/or speaking gigs

Then, on the retreat days, you'll write. After each retreat day, we'll have a coaching session to discuss your progress and tweak your plan. Click the button below to learn more and sign up:

Virtual Content Club

If you can't make it to the Content Retreat, you can get similar support in my content club - this is currently called the Entrepreneurs' Blogging Club, but I'm still choosing its new name.

Why rename it? Because we discuss a lot of stuff that goes beyond blogging.

The Club costs £50/month. I offer new members a planning session so I can help them figure out where to start. This session is the same as the 121 Zoom session for my Content Retreat discussed above. 

Then, instead of in-person retreat days, you'll have access to Zoom co-writing sessions to help you stay accountable, as well as monthly checkins and more with me. Click the button below to learn more:

Let's make 2026 the year you do more of what works for you and less of what drains you!