Increasing your Business Visibility

Welcome to this strategic travel entrepreneur. My name is Rita Perez. Hello. I've been a travel advisor for over ten years and I'm navigating this winding road of entrepreneurship with you. I created this podcast because I wanted to share all the things I've learned from leaders both in and out of our industry that I really wish I would have known way back then. But, alas, the important thing is I'm aware of them now, and I want you to be too. Ready for this week's show? Let's jump in. Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to the podcast. So nice to have you here, per usual. I hope you have had a wonderful week. I am really excited to bring this topic to you. It is a topic that I am so super passionate about, but I don't think a lot of people talk about it as like all encompassing. I feel like maybe we talk more about content marketing. I feel like that's probably like the hit buzzword that's going on. And when you think of content marketing, I think you automatically go into the mode of social media.

And yes, social media is a part of visibility strategy, but social media is not the only thing. I think social media is a very important aspect, especially with our social world. And, I think social media is very important too because it it gives us an escape, particularly if we're looking at reels or videos. Social media does have its important aspects, but it is part of a complete visibility strategy. And, I probably wanna call this more like a marketing strategy, but really visibility strategy. What I mean is how are you getting out there so people are even aware of your business? And this was one of the things that was a very hard learning the past couple of years is that I thought people knew my business and what my business was about and how I helped people. But when I actually did an audit on my social media, I'm like, I'm not even posting anything that's related to what I do. So I guess the first thing is to kind of start there.

Do the audit and see what you're providing of value in your content. So I want to give you some actual strategic tips and advice, and share some of the things that I am doing myself. And the first off is I'm not doing all the things. One, because I can't, two, because I wanna make sure that I actually do the things, and if I intend to do everything, it's just not going to get done. We just don't have enough time in the day, in the week, in the month. Even for me, batch creating my content, I was fighting it so hard, and I don't know why I was fighting it so hard recently. But once I have it done, I'm like, let's go. So there are, I guess, some kind of like foundations, and we can talk about the systems for putting everything in place.

We can talk about, like, getting your branding and your messaging on point, but let's go ahead and really focus in on how to increase the visibility of your travel business. And I can't talk about visibility without talking about one of my favorite topics, networking. And if you've heard some of my past episodes, you know, I did not start off in this business, one, networking, because I did not love networking, which is the second part of it. I thought networking was this very sleazy, dirty, like everybody just out for themselves, and that is not what networking really is. And I don't know if that's because that's not what networking is now, or if I've put myself in these networking circles that aren't like that, that they are very giving and very generous. And, I feel like once you run-in those types of circles of people who are very giving and very generous, you're able to get that mindset within you too. You just want to be very giving and very generous. And this is part of why I do the podcast because I have learned so much that has helped shaped me as a person, but then me also as a travel business owner, that I feel that I almost owe it to you to share that.

We shouldn't be holding onto things that are just good for us, we should be able to share those things with other people. So, again, let's circle back going into networking, talking with other people. It's not an easy thing to do if you're an introvert like myself, but it's something that I knew back in 2019 when I was, when I was having the networking mode out there, I knew I needed to do something different in my business because what I was doing in my business was not getting me results. And I think that's also kind of like one of the first things that you do to kind of like do a business audit and to see like where any chinks in the chain are. So my goal was to get out there. That was my goal for 2020, and we know how that went. But the only networking event that I attended in 2020 has opened so many incredibly amazing doors for me, in terms of getting to know other amazing business owners, and having those other business owners know, and like understand what I do in my business, so that they can advocate for me if they know anybody who is needing my services in the future. So don't hold yourself back, think, you know, it's just one thing, that one thing can open so many doors for you.

And I think it's easier to understand like just do the one thing. Everybody had to get started with one step, we all did, and we're all just doing one more step to get that successful business, to get the successful life that we want. What am I doing with networking? So on top of like different networking events that I attend virtually, because I'm a little I'm a little I'm still like, I'm not sure, like I wanna get out there, but I'm also like holding myself back right now, in the sense of like health safety. One of the things like when I do attend these networking events, if I really vibe and I really gel with somebody, I try and get their contact information so that I can connect with them at a later time. So I'll send them an email, and shoot them a link to what I call a not so coffee chat scheduling link. So that we can just get to know each other, and what each one of us does in business, and how we can help and support the other person, so that they can also have successful businesses. So that's one of the things that I really love doing. And, I do this semi within the travel industry, but it's mostly outside of the travel industry.

And I try and like really connect with either people that I really vibe with, or people that I know are in the circle of my ideal client, or potentially my ideal client, which in my travel business, that is people who are educators, coaches, trainers, corporate execs, people with, very large HR knowledge. Those are the people who are, who are my ideal clients and who are going to be putting on the travel events that I specialize in to produce and help with all the logistics and X, Y, and Z, you get the gist. So it's not just networking to get yourself out there, it's networking to be strategic. You have to build strategic partnerships to get your brand out there. Moving on from networking is the consistent content marketing. So yeah, I would say that there's three main basis of what I am currently doing to increase my visibility as a travel business owner. I'm networking, I have a consistent content marketing plan, and I'm getting in front of other people's audiences. So going on to step two, consistent content marketing.

I produce a weekly podcast, and you're thinking the podcast is verbal, but it doesn't matter, like content can mean a lot of different things. Content is information that you're producing into the world. I would say like that's the most basic understanding of what content is. And so I produce a podcast. I had started doing YouTube videos. I was finding YouTube videos weren't kind of like where my audience was, and I that's part of the strategy method is that you have to know who your audience is, and where they hang out. And I feel like my audience hangs out more in the podcast realm because they're wanting to get that education because they are execs, or they are business owners just like me. What else have I consistently done? So I've done the podcast consistently every week for over a year now.

I have consistently emailed weekly to my clients for, I would say, I think it's going on three years now, so I send every year, or every year, every week, a weekly email article, and that weekly email article gets repurposed into my blog post on my website, and gets repurposed into a LinkedIn article, which is where I know my ideal audience is hanging out at. I think that's one of the the big things, like when we're when I say, yes, I do an email, yes, I do a blog, yes, I do a LinkedIn article, people might think like, oh my gosh, but that is like so much, like, do I have to, no, you don't have to prepare different articles, just repurpose it. And I know for me, the secondary hang up was, but they're gonna all see the same thing. I had to argue with that as well, because not everybody's going to be following you everywhere. But the more that you are out there, the more your ideal client is going to be able to find you. So if it is them like doing a Google search, so the SEO picks up and they end up on your blog article, or if they are on LinkedIn, just scrolling away, kind of doing their intentional engagement for the week, and they stumble upon your article, or if they are reading my weekly email because they joined my email list, they're going to consume the information in some manner, and it doesn't matter. Like I was hearing, what was it? There was an Instagram reels expert that I was listening to the other day, because a similar question had come up on that regarding like, well, if you're putting out two reels in a day, like, aren't you competing? And he's like, no, it's kind of he's, he, paired it with the Olympics. So the Olympics just happened.

And of course, you know, let's take swimming for example. The US doesn't just send one American swimmer to compete in that. The US sends a couple of American swimmers to compete in that to increase their odds of getting one of those metal places. So wouldn't you want to increase your odds of somebody being able to read? Like maybe they are on your email list, but they're buried in emails and they'd rather scroll LinkedIn today. So give them different methods of interacting with you. Also, what I have done so I was not very good at social media, but this summer, especially when I went ahead and resigned from my full time job, that was a very big or like boom, like hello. Like, we have to put out content into this world, obviously, on social media. I really love being on Instagram because I think, again, that's where my ideal client is.

And I also love being on Instagram. I love the photos. I love the reels. I love joining in on different lives. I just love the platform. So that is somewhere where I focus on and, I have created content and and I, have different themes of content that I put out every week, and I make sure to put out new content every couple of days. But even that, my social media plan, I am honing in on now. Like I am, getting stronger in pillars.

So like when I did some research on what content pillars really were, I was kind of like, I am kind of doing that right now. Like I have to say that I'm very proud of myself. I'm gonna toot my own horn a little bit in the sense that I have been able to do so much work over the past couple years that I know what my business is. And you may not be in that capacity just yet, and just keep working at it and doing what feels great to you and doing what lights up your fire because you will get there. I have been in the travel business, it's going to be eleven years in October, and it wasn't until I found Gift that all this entrepreneurship was kind of illuminated in with me. So all that's to say that it is a process. But looking into my social media plan, even before I really knew what solid content pillars were, I was kind of doing pillar content. Like I focus a lot on cruises and I focus a lot on retreat planning.

And I do try and put a lot of my personal self out there because people like interacting with people. So it's, and thinking about that, like case study, I just, so I do social media posts for some of my clients, some of my personal chef clients. And this is in this, in my virtual business solutions business. And, they haven't done a post on themselves in a very long time, if ever. And they had a recent experience where somebody was like, well, I know you guys are just home chefs. And it's kind of like, no. They are not just home chefs. They are Walt Disney World resort train chefs.

And the wife, because they're they're a husband and wife couple, is actually like a skilled chef. She went to culinary school for this. So I guess that's to say that if you're not putting yourself out there, people don't know who you are and people can't connect with you. And, people have other misconceptions about you. So we put out a post which has been like one of the most successful posts, and I don't know about you guys, my most successful post, like the post that I get the most likes and comments and engagement on, is when I post pictures of myself. I feel like it's more of a people just wanna get to know you. And people love seeing other people and having that relationship with you where I I I did not, like, truly understand that. I thought if I was going to be providing you value and telling you like this is x y z that you need to be doing, that that was the content that people have really thrived off of.

But the content that I'm seeing that people really thrive off of And going back to the case study of my personal chef friends, it has gotten the most likes and engagement out of any of the posts that have been recently set up on their social media. The strategic travel entrepreneur is brought to you by mailbox power. Harness the power to attract and nurture your clients through something many entrepreneurs have forgotten about, the mailbox. Create beautiful custom campaigns and automate annual mailings for birthdays and holidays. And with a pro account, get access to mailboxes not currently started today and support this podcast. So boom, like people people want to see you and people want to hear you. So I do mix up like the content with like cruise tips or jeep planning tips. And then I do try and be silly and entertaining because that's what people want.

People want the realness in you. And it's not for everybody. So and that's that's I think what you also have to focus on in that I could be doing YouTube. And I do have an idea for YouTube that I'm going to be trying out just to be a little bit more consumer focused, but there are other things that people I've been hearing in the travel industry do and do really well and really helps them out that I'm like, oh, maybe I should do that. And then I think, no, keep your blinders on Rita, you need to keep investing in the avenues that you're working on right now, because the avenues that I'm working on right now are really working and I think it's because I've developed such a big library of content that people are able to see the different facets of me and what I do, and they have a clear vision of who I am, and if they are for me, or, if they need to be working with me, or if they know somebody who should be working with me. So when I see like the Pinterest and Clubhouse, those are things that I think would be really great to break into, but again, I want to create a sustainable business and I cannot do all the things, it's just not possible. Now one of the things that I will say is that I want to be getting more into video. And while I have been doing really great with my reels game, and I was recording a lot of really great content when I went on my recent river cruise fam.

I want to do more and better because it's a different avenue, one. Two, video is like the top thing that everybody is talking about now. And three, I think it's another avenue for people, again, to get to know you and to get to know your personality. Because not everybody is for you, and I don't wanna be serving everybody. And I think one of the ways for them to get your personality as well as to get some top notch advice from you is video and and and getting your face out in front of them. And I'm not saying like do videos every single day. And videos can be so simple, like going live. I attempted to go live and it didn't work out for me.

And that's also, like, if something doesn't work out, it's okay. It's okay. Like, nothing is set in stone again in this business. You can go ahead and erase it and, like, restart again, or you can jump start. Like, there was, one of the big content people that I follow, her name is Vanessa Lau, and I followed her when when she was, like, putting all these amazing Instagram videos on YouTube, and then she started a podcast, and then she stopped the podcast because she noticed that other, her other avenues, which she's very heavy on the Instagram, and she's very heavy on the YouTube, the value is kind of going down, and the content that she was producing on the podcast wasn't as good as the other content that she was producing. So she stopped producing her podcast, and she just focused on Instagram and YouTube. And recently, she's go went ahead and she restarted the podcast, and then she noticed again her main avenues of getting clients was going down, or the reach was going down, or the, quality was going down. So she stopped the podcast again, so it's on pause.

And, somebody else that I follow, Jordan Gill, she has also recently put a pause on her podcast. So I think it's really cool. I think we need to have these really great examples to know that it's okay. It's okay if something's not working or or if you find something else is working even better. It's okay to stop and focus on the, the other ones because we don't need to be dabbling here and there and everywhere. We need to be focusing on where our clients are at and we're we're really good at producing content, and where we really love to produce content. All right. So I think we've gone on a lot about creating content specifically with social media, but also with podcasting, also with email.

And part of this content strategy is having a content calendar, which I currently just have a content calendar for my weekly articles, so I know every week what I'm going to be producing. If you need help creating your weekly email things, I do have something called the wet workshop. I believe right now it is available for $25 It's a very quick moving workshop where you create your weekly email themes so that you can have your strategy set in place at least for the weekly articles that you're gonna be creating. The next step of that for me personally is that I want to create a content plan. And so I create a monthly content plan, like for social content, but there's some strategies that I've seen going around on Instagram that I wanna try. And, once I do that, I'll go ahead and share obviously with you here on the podcast, or in the strategic travel entrepreneur group as well. Okay, so we've talked about networking, we've talked about consistent content marketing, and the last thing is getting on other people's audiences. And I did an Instagram story recently on this about how I have been attending different educational things, like either workshops or conferences or just like hour long seminars.

One, to get the education for myself, but two, to be around people who I know are my ideal client or who can't open the door to my ideal client. That is like one way to get in front of other people's audiences. I have also been mindful, I told this to a couple other of my travel advisor friends recently, that that scrolling on Instagram that I've been doing, I have been, and I use this technique for LinkedIn also, is that I need to be really mindful and strategic of how I use these tools. When I was on my river cruise, I was making sure I posted a reel a day on my business page, and then pictures on my personal page for Instagram. And I did that strategically because I wanted to increase my reach on my personal page, and I also wanted to get my or on my business page, and I also wanted to get the people in my personal circle excited about traveling again, and also thinking of me in a different light as providing more value. And, and, like, look what you can do, and look what the experiences that I can bring you. But, like, coming home, I was not noticing this until kind of like, I was like, hey, social media is not just for you to be entertained even though it's really great. And this is why I have different accounts.

I have my business account, but then I also have my personal account. So if I wanna do mindless scrolling, I use my personal account for that. But my business account, I really use that to be strategic. And I use this strategy for LinkedIn and for Instagram. So I am liking other people's posts. And posts that, like, really speak out to me, I am making sure that I'm putting strategic comments. That I'm putting and and I'm trying to be better at this and more purposeful at this, but putting my voice so people understand like where my position is at and how I feel about it, or put like just putting words of encouragement. I feel like that it comments are definitely better than likes.

Likes I feel are good on the sense to bring awareness like, oh, who's this? Rita like my stuff? Who is this Rita? Let me go on her profile. I do that when people like my content. So it's kind of like, again, putting your self out there. The extra step is to put that content, and you can put the different, I've done different emojis, but on LinkedIn especially, I really try and be mindful. Like last night I was really getting into a lot of HR, employee retention, employee engagement stuff. So putting my voice out there, because especially on LinkedIn, there needs to be meaningful conversation. Like LinkedIn is not the small talk social media. It feels more small talk happens on Instagram.

But I also feel like I've done a couple really great relationships from Instagram. But, the people, LinkedIn, the people are on there for a purpose. And so, especially when I see comments that are just like these one words, and even though I've done it also, but I feel like you get further traction when you have a meaningful comment. So I was sharing, what were they talking about? I'm trying to think now. They were talking something about how you need to engage with your employees in order to have a better atmosphere with your employees, duh, and, how engagement is so simple. And the comment that I put on that was yes, employee engagement is super simple, however, it takes effort. So if employee engagement is not important to you, people are not going to take the effort into doing it, no matter how simple it is. So you see it's kind like those mindful, like I have, I took a stand, I had a point, it's not only the content creator that is going to see that point, but anybody who likes or comments will also see that point.

So it's getting yourself more visible and more audiences, and you have to put yourself out there in order to do so. How else am I getting onto other people's audiences? Through podcasts. I don't know if you've been following my travel business page, Rita Ventures, but I have been, there's, there were a lot of podcast article, or there were a lot of podcast interviews that I did this summer that are finally starting to get out there and trickle out into the world, which is amazing. I mean I have found a lot of amazing people because they were guests of podcasts that I listen to regularly. So the hope is is that I get in front of more people to promote who I am, to promote the different services that I provide so that, more people know who I am. Because that's, that's what I was finding was the most difficult is that it didn't matter all these posts that I was putting. I feel like posts are kind of like passive, whereas getting in front of other people's audiences and meeting new people is more active, and you have to balance out the active with the passive marketing. So I've laid a couple of different things that I do to get myself in front of new audiences.

So I have kind of word vomited a lot on my visibility, my current visibility strategy, because it is always ever evolving. So I would like to hear from you. What are you currently doing? What are you finding are things that are working right now? I feel like for me, reels and having all those reels that I've recently put out from my recent river cruise experience has increased the people who are viewing because that's what Reels do right now. But not only that, having participated in the recent education has also increased people who are following me. And followers don't mean clients, but I don't know if you are a lurker, I'm a total lurker, so if I'm following you, I'm interested in you, and down the line, I would like to use your services. So just because they aren't converting right now doesn't mean that they won't convert. But I think that's also, we focus a lot on followers for social media when it really needs to be strategic followers. And, something that I do, and that Sandra McLemore reminded me of recently as well.

I just purged a lot of people from my followers list on the strategic travel entrepreneur, from the Take the Helm BBS Instagram page. I need to go ahead and do that for my Read Adventures page also, because the more people you pluck out means the more people who are really interested in, or really needing your services will be able to see the content that you're putting out there. So it's I have been able to grow from from all the tactics that I've been utilizing on my Instagram about, I think it's close to or over 50 followers now. And I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go ahead and need to I need to go ahead and, like, start trimming because I was getting lots of, like, random people too following me, like those four x investing and stuff. And I was like, oh, yeah. I feel like that would be my ideal audience and that they could teach other people these things. And then when you really look at the accounts, they're like, no. No.

They're not teaching people anything. So that is something on my to do list. But, yeah, let me know what has been working in helping you take the helm of your business a little bit better. And also, please let me know what you're taking away from this podcast episode. I really, really love to know what content you'd love to hear more about, especially regarding your visibility strategy. Have a wonderful week, and I will see you next week. Thanks for joining me on the strategic travel entrepreneur. Please subscribe and leave a show rating on your favorite podcast platform.

Oh, and don't forget to take a look at the show notes for important information and links. See you next week.