71: You Can't Sell What People Can't See: How I Fixed My Own Visibility Gap

Have you been showing up consistently, posting tips, sharing your face, doing all the things, and still wondering why your offer isn't getting signups? You're not doing it wrong. You're just not showing it.

There's a real difference between posting about your niche and showing people what it's actually like inside your world. And that gap is exactly where signups disappear. I know because I found myself in it, weeks into a stretch of almost zero new Coven signups, before I realized I hadn't shared a single piece of content about what was happening inside the membership.

In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I'm walking you through the 5-post rotation I built to fix that, complete with reusable Canva templates, a simple Google Form for collecting member stories, and a weekly cadence that makes showing your offer feel way less like selling.

Check out the full show notes for this episode HERE: [link placeholder]

Things I cover inside this episode:

• Why consistent posting doesn't equal visible offer, and what to do instead
• The exact moment I realized I was making the same mistake I coach others on
• A 5-post weekly rotation that makes showing your membership feel sustainable, not salesy
• How a simple Google Form solved the hardest part of sharing member wins
• Why monthly challenge results make more compelling content than anything you could write yourself
• The "make it with me" post type that shows your offer delivering in real time
• How to apply this system even if you don't have a membership

Connect with me:
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🫶🏼 Join my 321 Create Newsletter for weekly content tips 
🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

So show your thing, whatever it is. Show it specifically, show it consistently, and build a system simple enough that you'll actually stick to it Welcome to the Creative Bodega Podcast. I'm M Connors, Instagram content strategist, one of 43 Canva Verified Experts worldwide, and a mom of two who is not on Instagram for fun. I'm there to market my business, grow my email list, and get the heck off my phone, and that's exactly what I teach. You can expect simple content strategy, visual systems, and Instagram to email tactics that actually work without taking over your life. Let's get into it Today I'm sharing something that's equal parts embarrassing and really useful, and I think a lot of you are gonna hear yourself in this one. We're talking about visibility. Not the, like, post more kind or the show your face more kind, the kind where you're actually showing people what you have, what you do, and what's happening inside your world or your business. Because you cannot sell what people cannot see, and I had to learn that about my own membership the hard way. So when a student or a coven member comes to me frustrated about slow growth or crickets on an offer or an email list growing incredibly slowly, the first thing I do is I look at their Instagram. And nine times out of 10, I scroll through her feed and her stories, and I cannot find a single post where she's actually talking about the thing that she wants people to do or join or buy. She's posting tips, she's showing up, she's showing her face, she's super consistent, but the offer that she's disappointed in her results in is invisible. And I've had that conversation probably 100 times. And then one day not too long ago, I had weeks, like weeks, of really low or nonexistent signups for the Content Coven. So instead of spiraling, because that never helps anything, I did what I always tell everyone else to do, and I went and I looked at my Instagram I was not showing the coven. I'm posting about content strategy, and Canva tips, and Instagram growth, and email growth, whatever. I teach all the things all the time. But I wasn't pulling back the curtain on what was actually happening inside the membership. I didn't have member stories. I didn't share challenge results. There was no glimpse of the community, or the calls, or what we were building inside. So I was asking people to sign up for something that they had zero real window into/I wasn't even really asking people to sign up. Okay? So I give that exact feedback to my students constantly, and there I was doing the same exact thing. The bottom line, you can't sell what you're not sharing about It's, like, actually that simple. So I fixed it, and that's what this episode is about. A lot of us avoid showing our offers in action because we feel like we're being too salesy. I, I get it. I literally hate selling. I swear to God, it is my least favorite part of my business, and anyone who's been around for a while knows that. But here's the real difference between selling and showing or sharing. Selling is, "Buy this. Here's the link. Limited time," whatever. Showing is, "Here's what happened inside this month. Here's what one of my members just accomplished." One feels pushy, and the other builds trust and curiosity in a way that makes people want in, honestly. The coven is one of the most active and supportive communities I've ever seen, and I'm not just saying that because I run it and I'm biased. I swear. Members aren't just dropping, like, "Great post," and leaving. They are giving real honest to God feedback to each other, studying each other's content, freebies, posts. They're genuinely invested, and that's not normal. That is so special, and I wasn't showing any of that. If people don't see it, it doesn't exist to them. Right? And that's just the reality of Instagram. Here's what I put in place. Every Thursday, I decided I would post a dedicated piece of coven content on my feed. Instead of figuring out what to post every single week, which was overwhelming me, I created a five-week rotation that cycles through five different types of content, and I built a reusable Canva template for each one of those so that the visual system is done, and I just have to swap out the copy, right, swap out the words. One post, five different types, rotating every week. Let me walk you through each one Post number one, a member spotlight. So I feature a member, what they were struggling with before they joined, and what has shifted for them since. To make this sustainable, I actually created a really simple Google form, and I sent it to my members, asking them to share their experience inside the coven. Because for me, I know all the success stories are there. I see people posting about them all the time, but it's so overwhelming for me to go in and find those stories, okay? So sharing this Google form has made this night and day easier for me. So for example, Janet shared that she hit six figures in the first quarter of this year with less than six hundred Instagram followers. She said it wasn't the numbers, it was the confidence and the consistency that she built that got her there. So again, these stories were sitting inside my community the whole time. I just wasn't sharing them, not because I didn't care, but because I was overwhelmed trying to find them by scrolling through the hundreds of posts that people are making. I'm telling you, this community is so active. I am not joking. If you're in it, you know. So the Google form fixed that problem completely because I am a huge believer in anytime I'm not doing something or something feels overwhelming, I ask myself, "What is the hardest part about this?" Okay, and I was like, "Well, it's overwhelming me to think about scrolling through the Coven community and finding these stories." Oh, okay, so what is the fix to that? Having them share the stories with me in a form that I can then have in an Excel spreadsheet and find them and use them really easily. So the Google form fixed this completely. The takeaway, stop waiting to stumble across wins. Ask people for wins directly and make it so simple to respond. Post type number two, monthly challenge results. So every month inside the Coven, we run a challenge. It's completely optional, and the content members generate is incredible. There's before and afters, there's finished Canva designs, there's posts that went live, engagement screenshots, whatever. I take that and turn that into a carousel. I have asked my community manager, Nicole, to make sure that each time she requires or comes up with what people need to share in order to complete the challenge, it includes something visual that I can share, and then I actually ask people if it's okay if I share as well. So she's nailed this for me, and any time that I want to make this carousel that's highlighting the challenge results, it's super simple. This post shows potential members that things are actually happening inside, celebrates current members publicly, and creates genuine curiosity for people on the fence. A real result from a real person is so much more compelling than anything I could write in a caption on my own. Post number three is a make it with me recap. So members vote once a month on a Canva template they want to design together. Then I lead the call, and we all build this template real time. Everyone leaves with a finished on-brand template that they can use. I then say, "Listen, post your final result in the membership if you want feedback or tweaks on it." So it is so, so hands-on. And so for this Thursday post, I share what we made, all the different ways members branded a particular Canva template for their own business. It's visual and specific, and it shows a really concrete way of how this membership actually delivers, right? Not only you'll get support and community, but here is a finished Canva carousel that a group of women designed together on a Wednesday afternoon. People can picture themselves there. Type number four, behind the scenes, what people are asking inside the coven. So this one came directly from a DM. I kept getting the same question, "Is the Coven right for me?" People are curious, but they couldn't picture themselves inside. So I started sharing the actual questions members are asking inside the community. Real, specific, sometimes messy questions. There is no dumb question. I tell people that all the time. Things like, "How do I price this offer?" Or, "What do I do when my reel tanks?" Or, "Should I use these fonts for this design?" I show people exactly the kind of support they're gonna have access to, and it gives them genuinely useful free value at the same time Post number five is upcoming call and challenge previews. So this one's so straightforward. It is a preview of what is coming up in the month ahead. Guest speaker details, challenge themes, call topics, if I'm presenting, what I'm presenting on. It builds anticipation for current members, and I swear they always comment on it, and it also shows potential members the things that are always moving. So show the calendar, let it speak for itself. That is the system, okay? And I wanna be clear about something. None of this would work if I hadn't made it easy on myself. The reason I avoided this content before wasn't 'cause I didn't care, but it was because the idea of combing through this really active community every single week to find stories felt completely overwhelming. The Google Form solved the member story problem. The reusable Canva templates solved the design problem, right? Each of the five posts I broke down has its own template. I open the file, I swap in the content, and I make the post. So again, one post per week on a Thursday highlighting my membership, five content types that I'm rotating through, five templates already built out, stories collecting in the background. And since I started, I swear to God I have had way more signups, way more DMs, and the thing I didn't expect, current members commenting on these posts publicly and saying how fantastic the community is and what they're most looking forward to and what they loved about certain aspects of what I'm sharing. When someone who's already inside is out there saying, "Yes, this is real, and this is what it's actually like in here," that does more than any caption I could ever, ever, ever, ever write. So you don't need a membership for any of this to be relevant, okay? Go look at your feed and your stories from the last two weeks. If a stranger landed on your profile right now, would they even know that your offer exists? Would they have any real sense of what it's like to work with you? And if the answer is no, that's your starting point. Pick one thing that you want to be more visible about. Commit to showing it in your feed once a week. Build one reusable template so that the design part is already done. Create one simple way to collect wins or stories from your members or just your followers so that you're not doing it from memory lane every single time. You already have the proof. We just have to show it, right? The advice I give most often is the advice I needed to take myself. I was so focused on teaching content strategy that I forgot to apply it to the thing I wanted people to join. And once I started treating the coven like something actually worth showing Not just mentioning it in the call to action every once in a while. Everything shifted for me. So show your thing, whatever it is. Show it specifically, show it consistently, and build a system simple enough that you'll actually stick to it. And hey, if you're curious about the Content Common, the doors are always open, my friend. It is $97 a month, and you can cancel any time. Head to thecreativebodega.com to learn more, or DM me on Instagram with any questions you might have. All right, I will see you on the next episode Thanks so much for hanging out with me on the Creative Bodega Podcast. If you loved this episode, please be sure to share it with a fellow solopreneur who could use a little content creation inspiration. And hey, don't forget to check out the show notes for any resources I mentioned on the episode to help you create content that feels easy and actually gets you results. If you want even more Canva and content tips, head over to my website, thecreativebodega.com or find me on Instagram under the same name. Until next time, keep creating, keep showing up, and most importantly, try and have a little fun with your content. I'll see you on the next episode