A visibility problem often first shows up as a complaint about something else.
Clients come to me saying things like, “I need more content ideas,” “I need more people visiting my website,” “I need to get more consistent,” or “My newsletter isn’t bringing me clients.”
That gives us somewhere to start. We talk about what they’re doing now, and I review their website, content, offers, emails, or whichever parts of their marketing matter to the situation. We talk about their experience, the clients they’ve worked with, what people hire them for, and what happens before someone decides to work with them.
Often, the problem they first described isn’t where we end up spending our time. The conversation, the content review, and what I learn about their experience point me to the part of their visibility that deserves attention.
Across very different businesses, I keep coming back to 5 areas1:
Value Clarity
Audience Questions
Expertise Evidence
Next Step
Ongoing Connection
I think of visibility momentum as what happens after someone finds you. Can they understand the value of your work, get their questions answered, see evidence of your experience, know what they can do next, and have a way to stay connected?
Each area affects what happens after someone discovers you. A weak spot in one can slow the results of the work you’re already doing.
More traffic can send more people to an offer they don’t understand. More content can keep answering questions your buyers aren’t asking. More posting can spread advice without showing why your experience makes your point of view worth paying attention to.
And more attention can disappear when people aren’t sure what to do next or never hear from you again.
That’s why one of the first things I want to know is: where is the momentum slowing down?
Value Clarity: Can people quickly understand what you offer?
I often spot a Value Clarity issue when I compare what someone tells me in conversation with what I see online.
They can explain their work clearly when we’re talking. They know who they enjoy working with, the problems they solve, and what changes for the client. Then I visit their website or primary online profile and find that much of that clarity is missing.
This can happen after years in business. You add services, develop new interests, work with different types of clients, and create more content. Someone arriving for the first time may see all those pieces without knowing which one matters to them.
The Value Clarity result in the Visibility Momentum Map looks at whether people can understand what you offer, who it’s for, the need it addresses, and the value they receive.
This can be easy to misdiagnose as a traffic problem. Sending more people to a page they find confusing gives you more people experiencing the same confusion.
Audience Questions: Does your content answer what buyers need to know?
Audience Questions often become clear when I review someone’s content.
There may be plenty of good information. Tips, commentary, explanations, interviews, newsletters, social posts. Then I look for the questions a potential buyer might have before deciding whether to take another step.
Does this fit my situation? How does this person approach the problem? Have they worked with someone in a similar situation? What would working together involve? What happens if I contact them?
Those questions may be different from the subjects that make up your regular publishing schedule.
You can have plenty of content ideas and still leave the questions tied to a buying decision unanswered. The Audience Questions result focuses on identifying one of those questions and creating something that addresses it directly.
I’ve been paying more attention to this in my own content too. Before deciding what to create next, I ask what someone needs to figure out before they can make a decision.
That gives the content a job beyond filling the publishing calendar.
Expertise Evidence: Can people see the experience behind your advice?
This is an area I pay close attention to with experienced solo business owners.
You’ve spent years working with clients, solving problems, making decisions, testing ideas, changing your approach, and learning from the results. A lot of what you know feels ordinary after you’ve done it for a long time.
Then I review the content and see broad advice where there could be a client example. I find a claim where there could be a result or observation. I find a list of tips where you could explain why you would choose one option over another.
Your experience exists. Someone who has just found you can judge only what they can see.
The Expertise Evidence result looks for concrete signs of your experience, such as results, examples, lessons from your work, methods you’ve developed, completed projects, and explanations based on what you’ve seen firsthand.
Research supports the role this kind of content can play in buyer decisions. In the 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report,
73% of decision-makers said thought-leadership content was a more trustworthy basis for assessing an organization’s capabilities and competencies than its marketing materials and product sheets. (Edelman)
Read the 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report
This is why I look at the gap between someone’s experience and what appears online. A person can have 20 or 30 years of expertise, yet a new reader may see very little evidence of it.
Publishing more general advice won’t close that gap.
Next Step: Is the action you want people to take clear?
For Next Step, I look at what happens after someone becomes interested.
I click through the website. I read the article. I look at the newsletter or profile. Then I ask myself what I would do if I wanted more from this person.
Sometimes the answer is easy to find. Other times I see several competing choices, vague button copy, or no clear invitation to continue.
The Next Step result looks at whether the action is easy to see, understand, and complete. It could be subscribing, reading something else, registering, replying, booking a conversation, or making another relevant move.
This is another place where the first diagnosis can be misleading.
You may think you need more traffic. When I look at what happens to the people already arriving, I may find plenty of interest with nowhere obvious for that interest to go.
Before working to attract a larger audience, it’s worth checking what you’re asking the current one to do.
Ongoing Connection: What happens after someone finds you?
Someone can have a good first interaction with your work and go back to the rest of their day.
They may find an article through search, hear you on a podcast, see a social post, or get one of your newsletters forwarded by a friend. They may like what they see and have no reason to contact you at that moment.
When I review Ongoing Connection, I look at what happens after that encounter. Is there an easy way to subscribe? Do you send something regularly? Is there useful follow-up? Will this person have a reasonable chance of coming across your thinking again?
The Visibility Momentum Map looks at whether you have a repeatable way to stay useful and recognizable after the first interaction. That could be a newsletter, follow-up email, new content, community update, podcast, video, or personal check-in.
This can be one of the harder visibility gaps to notice. The first part worked. Someone found you and paid attention.
Then the connection ended.
The first problem you name may be a symptom
This is one of the things 30 years of working online has taught me.
Two clients can tell me they have the same problem and need very different changes. “I need more visibility” could lead me to Value Clarity for one person and Ongoing Connection for someone else. “I need better content” might lead to Audience Questions or Expertise Evidence.
Even “I need more traffic” can turn into a Next Step issue once I see what happens to the traffic the business already has.
That’s why my client work starts with conversation and review. I listen to what you think is happening, look at what your marketing shows me, and learn about the knowledge and experience behind your business.
Those pieces don’t always point to the same problem. The differences between them give me clues about where to look next.
And this is where trying another marketing tactic too soon can cost you time. You can end up working harder on an area that was already doing its job.
Find where your visibility needs attention
September marks 2 years since I started publishing Your Visibility Edge.
As I thought about what I wanted to create for the anniversary, I kept coming back to the work I’ve been doing with clients for years. I wanted to give you a simple way to look at your own visibility before adding another marketing task to your list.
So I created the Visibility Momentum Map.2
It’s a free assessment based on these 5 areas, and it takes about 1 to 2 minutes to complete. After you answer the questions, you’ll see a short result showing the area that may deserve your attention first, along with an area that appears to be working well.
You can stop there. If you want more details, enter your name and email and I’ll send you more context about your focus area and one action you can take.
If you want further follow-up related to your focus area, you can choose that option too.
You don’t have to fix 5 things at once. Finding the area that deserves attention first gives you a more useful place to begin.
Here’s your Next Step…
Use AI to examine your Visibility Momentum Map result
Once you know your focus area, you can use AI to look more closely at what may be happening in your business.
Try this prompt:
My priority area from the Visibility Momentum Map is [FOCUS AREA].
Help me examine this area using three sources of information:
1. What I think is happening
2. What my current marketing and content show
3. The experience, knowledge, and client work I may not be making visible
Start by asking me questions one at a time.
Ask follow-up questions when my answer is vague or when you notice a gap between what I say and what someone looking at my marketing might see.
Wait until you have enough information before giving me recommendations.
Then tell me:
- what you notice
- where visibility momentum may be slowing
- what evidence from my answers led you to that conclusion
- one change I can make this week
Keep the action small enough to finish in about 30 minutes.I recommend using the prompt after taking the assessment, rather than asking AI to decide which of the 5 areas applies to you. Your expertise and beliefs about your business give you the starting point. The prompt can help you examine what’s happening inside that focus area.
And before you add another marketing task this week, take a look at the work you’re already doing.
One focused change may do more for your visibility than adding something new.
Got questions or comments? Leave a comment and I’ll get right back to you.
Confession. I’ve struggled with each of these areas in my business over the years, too. With every evolution of my business, something always shows up that I need to tweak and improve.
The Visibility Momentum Map (VMM) has been a work in progress for a few months. I built it from scratch and learned a lot from an initial small beta test group. I almost scrapped it, but decided the feedback was correct, and I carried on. Work is still ongoing, yet I feel now I can release it to a wider audience. Feedback is welcome!