Does making content perfect hold you back from hitting the publish button? Showing up online is essential to promoting an online business. Whether that’s videos, blogs, socials, or online groups. But are your meticulous standards set so high that it causes perfection as a visibility block? Stopping you from reaching and attracting new clients.
If you’re a fan of Instagram (or any social media) do you connect and resonate more with the polished, picture-perfect, every hair in place posts or with the behind-the-scenes, this is what it’s really like posts? I’d argue each has its place. But we build connections with humans. And we know pretty much all humans are imperfect. We also want to show we take our business seriously.
So where does perfection as a visibility block show up for online business owners in marketing?
Videos
How many videos have you seen that are edited to within an inch of their lives? Strange and abrupt cuts, the background not changing when the light on the person changes (green screens) and not a single um or erm. That’s the standard we are led to believe we need to achieve. It’s what we see on screen. BUT it’s not real.
It’s not what someone experiences if they work with you, attend a live webinar or masterclass, or Facebook live. You will um and erm. You’ll go off on a tangent about something unrelated. You will sneeze and cough. And if your cat is like mine he will walk across your desk and stick his butt in the camera.
There’s a trade-off between the time it takes to edit a video and the benefit of making it ‘perfect’. Are there more important things you could be doing than removing every pause or stumble from a video? Most of my videos are single take, I may edit out the weird face I make just before sneezing or coughing. But the rest generally stays.
What is really helpful for me is to start recording and then accept the few false starts leaving the recording running, I then trim the beginning and end so I can stop speaking and then stop recording (rather than trying to do two things at once). The initial empty time at the beginning allows me to relax mentally into ‘being filmed’ without the stress of having to start talking immediately and I can check my hair before I start. And with live videos, just roll with it, you can always delete if it was a complete disaster. A mini-outline of the points I want to cover helps me stay on topic.
Writing Content
Are you over editing your content so it’s perfectly polished? Writing and rewriting. Questioning every word and spending way too long with the thesaurus? Writing five different introductory paragraphs before allowing yourself to get into the main content of a blog.
We’ve been trained all through life that when we publish or submit writing it has to be perfect. And I totally agree that spelling and grammar are important. BUT it’s more important to communicate and help people than keep quiet for fear of getting something ‘wrong’.
Your blog post may not be perfect. Your newsletter may have a spelling mistake (mine do). You may comment on a post in a way that is misinterpreted as mean. You may publish a long-form social post with an unfinished sentence. Mistakes and miscommunications are always going to happen. It’s a fact of life; birth, death, taxes and mistakes.
I’d question what’s the bigger fear here? I’m fairly sure the possibility of a spelling or grammatical mistake is not enough to stop you from ever publishing a post again. Is it judgement? It is someone publicly telling you there’s a mistake? Is it sharing something you don’t want friends and family to know about you?
Practice Equal Progress
As one of my mentors, Tash Corbin, says, your audience will never be as small as it is today. Seriously, how many people are going to scroll back through all your blogs, videos or social posts to see where you published something that wasn’t perfect? And how many of those are going to judge you so harshly they bother to write a nasty comment or refuse to work with you? [Are they your ideal client anyway?]
By practising publishing content you’ll not only start overcoming the perfection as a visibility block, you’ll also start to demonstrate to your fears and imposter syndrome that it’s okay. The world won’t fall apart if you make a mistake, if you um, if you trip over your words or forget what you were saying. And in the meantime, that content can help your ideal clients understand their issues and how you help and move towards their goals. Plus failure is good for business
If you need help tackling your imposter so you can consistently get more visible and grow your business then get in touch for a free chat about how we could work together.
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For part one of the visibility blocks check out the consistency instalment!