Thoughts on being (in)visible

How much of your time at work is dedicated to being visible? Has anyone ever operationalized what it means exactly to be visible? 

How visible and by whom we can and want to be seen has changed immensely. Whereas, not so long ago, we had to be the most popular, funniest, prettiest, or smartest in our class, school, or office, now, with the internet we have to be that in the whole of the world. We can be approached (and seen?) by everyone, at any time. Whereas not so long ago, our companies and organizations had to be good at what they do for their customers and stakeholders, now they have to prove themselves to the whole world. We can be approached (and seen?) by everyone, at any time. Or do they? Do we? 

In the next few years, we will be redefining the impact of visibility and how visible we want to be. What our budgets for visibility are and how far we are willing to go to be noticed/visible? The ethics and practices of using someone’s digital capital (likes, shares, time) will be reexamined, as will how justified it is to post regularly just to stay visible, what actual change or revenue that generates, and what impact it has on us. All of the digital marketing and digital world postulates will need to be operationalized measured, reevaluated and redefined through new ethical standards. Visibility for the sake of visibility and the idea that spending others’ digital capital is not a cost will have to be changed.

Thus, in order to start that process and to be socially responsible in the areas of public relations as well, we have thought long and hard about how to do Impact PR and marketing. 

How do we share what we do while respecting the social impact we have? How do we ensure we don’t add to overstimulation, that we do not impose and that we state clear and only needed messages? How do we combat unrealistic expectations, stress, being overwhelmed, and burnout as negative impacts of the era of social media as a social impact company?

We came up with a draft list of our own commitments, and would very much appreciate any contributions or opportunities to discuss them and work on defining our impact on public relations responsibly:

1. We promise you that we will not try to attract you with our daily posts about our good work thus creating even more content and stimulants unnecessarily. When we have something to share we will post it, if not we will not follow the “post frequently” rule to get the numbers up.
2. We promise to share our mistakes with you as well as our accomplishments, we will not frame them as failing forward and thus make even mistakes stories of success.
3. We will not glorify being busy, we respect our private offline time and follow the rules of daily communication moratorium, and we wish for that to become a general rule.
4. We are generally proud of what we do so we will try to keep our posts informative and modest.
5. We will not send friend requests to people we know privately to grow our audience professionally, if you know somebody that is interested in our field of work it would be great if they visited us or if you shared with us if you don’t that’s great too.
6. We promise to share our expertise and experience in the way you tell us works for you!

Dear reader, this list was compiled by Impact House, and it is by no means exhaustive. If  you would like to add or remove items or talk to us about it we would love to hear from you at tpuhovski@impacthouse.consulting