When you’re raising your profile or using the internet to build your business online and give you increased flexibility in your life, it’s only natural to want quick results. And as humans, I think we have a natural tendency to want immediate results!! And so if you write a blog post or get a piece of publicity and your phone isn’t immediately ringing off the hook with orders, you begin to wonder if your efforts are paying off. 

I’ve recently had a few people say things to me such as ‘I got a mention in the Daily Mirror, why haven’t I sold out of stock?‘ or ‘I’ve done some blogging, why isn’t my website at the top of Google?‘ or ‘I’ve started an Instagram account and posted a few times, why aren’t I making more sales?’

But one swallow does not a summer make….

We had a party at our house on Saturday night, and food blogger Lizzie King (aka lizzieloveshealthy.com) was there, along with her husband. Now Lizzie has had huge success in the last year, including building her Instagram following to 16,000 getting publicity in publications like the Daily Telegraph and getting a book deal – and I’m proud to say that I’ve helped her with quite a bit of this!

Instead, focus on a ratcheting effect

At the party, her husband and I were talking about how we’re seeing her profile grow, and how what we are seeing is a ratcheting and compounding effect.

There isn’t one particular thing that has changed the course of Lizzie’s profile building but overall, everything she has done has built her the profile she has now.

It works like this. You launch a (great) website here, you can get more bookings or sell more products there. You get in the Daily Telegraph here, you have more credibility for your social media followers there. You consistently blog and create content here, you get more following there. You build your social media following here, you get a book deal there. You get a book deal here, you are asked to appear in a brand video there. And all of this gets you more website traffic there (that’s the site I built for Lizzie in the picture!).

What I witness in Lizzie and other clients, is that there is no straight line or overnight result to standing out, being more visible, getting more opportunities or whatever it is that you want, BUT results do come from sustained, consistent effort and putting yourself or your business out there across numerous platforms and through numerous modes, including traditional media, online media and even getting out there and talking to people in the real world.

I want to tell you a truth about profile 

Building a profile is not the same as building a house. Your profile is never finished. Many of my clients are household names, but becoming a household name is not an arrival at a destination from which point all is fine and dandy!

Even the status of ‘Household name’ takes maintenance. And well known celebrities and brands spend thousands on that maintenance from publicists (such as, ahem, me) to content creation studios and teams to keep building audiences and keep those audiences engaged.

Meanwhile, I know from the 50 or so hugely successful bloggers from around the world I’ve talked to for my upcoming book, The Million Dollar Blog, that their blogs and profiles have taken YEARS to develop.

In fact, there is a saying that bloggers joke about which is ‘The only difference between successful bloggers and everyone else is that they didn’t give up.’

Just take the next step 

So write your press release, send it out and then write another one. Write your blog post, publish it and then do that again. Make one phone call and make another one. And then do it all again and again and again and again. And over the course of months, you will see results, I promise you that.

I see the ratcheting compounding effect both for myself, resulting from the effort I put into my blog and my own profile and for my clients. Have a read of this blog post in which I share some of the successes I am having with the Zita West Fertility Clinic http://natashacourtenaysmith.com/great-results-zita-west-fertility-clinic/ and remember that what you are reading about is taking place over months, not overnight.