Visibility
What Your Likes Cannot Tell You
Likes cannot tell you whether a post did its job. Before you judge a post by its likes, name the job you gave it.
A piece meant to explain a product choice needs a different review from a photo meant to make people smile.
Both can be worth sharing. One reaction count will not tell you whether either did its job well.
I’ve had people come up to me at shows and talk about my posts. They’d been following along, and I had no idea. I’d never seen them comment or click like.
I call them the silent lurkers.
You look at a post and see who reacted. Then you go to a show and find out someone else has been reading it, too. They remember a specific post well enough to bring it up when they see you.
That’s happened to me with people I’d never seen before. If they hadn’t said something, I wouldn’t have known they were there.
I care about visibility because I want the right people to understand the work and the value behind it. That is the work we do at Grit Blueprint, and it calls for a closer look at what people do with the content.
Match the Evidence to the Purpose
Use a few measures you can review. This table is a guide for planning the review.
| Purpose | Evidence to Look For | Limit to Keep in Mind |
|---|---|---|
| Explain a product choice. | Sales uses the piece. A buyer says which part helped. | One response does not prove a broad sales result. |
| Make a leader’s view known. | People bring up the idea in a relevant talk. | A mention does not tell you everyone understood it. |
| Help someone take a next step. | A reader follows the link or makes an inquiry. | That action alone does not prove the article caused a sale. |
Ask the people who use the work. A salesperson may know that a buyer still gets stuck at the same part of an explanation. That is something an engagement report may not tell you.
Keep the response close to what you observed. Silent readers are real, but a quiet post is not proof that buyers are reading it. A new inquiry is not proof that one article caused it.
You can learn from a response without building a success story around facts you do not have.
Edit From What You Learned
I’ve had people repeat a line from my website back to me on discovery calls: “you are the best kept secret and it’s not a compliment.”
They recognized their own business in that. The people who knew them loved their work. They wanted more people to know about it.
When I heard that phrase coming back to me, I paid attention. I wanted it right at the top of our website.
If a prospect repeats something from your site, write it down. That tells you which words they remembered and gives you something to work with when you’re deciding what to say next.
A repeated line is a useful finding. It is not proof of more sales. Keep the useful finding at its real size.
Review the Piece, Not Just the Response
Review the piece itself along with the response. The opening should name a need the reader recognizes. The body should meet it. The next step should fit the purpose.
The reaction count can stay in the report. It does not have to run the meeting.
Let the next piece answer something the last one helped you learn.
