Marketing without social media: My jaw-dropping 2023 results
Marketing without social media: Why we all want it!
If you've read my blog on all the reasons to quit social media, you already know why so many of us want to quit social media in our businesses.
It’s a huge time suck – with the average American spending 3.5 hours on our phones – or 53 days a year.
But when you look at it from a business perspective, there are even MORE reasons to quit – or at least to reduce your reliance on it for clients.
First, you’re literally working for these huge social media companies for free by constantly creating content for them. You’re feeding the machine. And I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel really gross when I think about helping social media companies keep people more and more addicted to consuming.
You also could lose access to any social media platform overnight – it happens, I’ve seen it! You can get flagged for reasons unknown, and it can take months to get back into your accounts. Scary! Not to mention that as I write this, Meta is threatening to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe over user privacy.🤨 Imagine being in Europe and relying on Facebook or Instagram for most of your marketing! And TikTok is getting a lot of heat too!
Next, it's incredibly easy to get distracted. While you’re meant to be marketing your business, you may find yourself 2 hours later having watched a ton of cute dog videos.
And I think the most frustrating factor: It can feel like social media requires your constant attention and more and more content in order to be successful. There’s a lot of competition, because social media is the free and “easy” marketing platform right now. There’s very little standing in the way of someone creating an account and marketing their services. And unfortunately, so much of your success is based on the algorithm (which is always changing), whether you’re following the latest trends (looking like everyone else), and disgustingly, what I call “your lifestyle factor” (meaning your looks, your fashionability, your “I want that” factor, which again, is just gross).
It’s no wonder I hear from more and more online business owners that want to find a way to pull back from relying so heavily on social media in their marketing.
But when it comes to marketing without social media – how do you do it???
Yep, this is the ultimate question, and here’s the answer: There are hundreds of ways to market your business without social media.
Remember, businesses have been marketing themselves since businesses existed – and social media has only existed for a tiny part of that – 25 years if we go back to the very, very beginning. So clearly it IS possible to market your business without social media, right?!
And before we had Facebook and Instagram or any other online platform, we had:
Good, old fashioned relationships.
That’s right, networking. It works. The more people who know what you do and feel a connection with you, the more likely they are to refer people to work with you – or work with you themselves! You can even strategically create your own referral partnerships!
This can look like coffee chats, where you meet with other business owners one-on-one and talk about what you do, or it can look like meeting people at events and continuing to cultivate those relationships over time.
It can also look like just getting out and volunteering, or doing fun things in the world – it doesn’t have to be super complicated!
Another way to market your business without social media:
Be a podcast guest.
This is the perfect way to get in front of a new audience and talk about your business, and it naturally grows that “know, like, trust” factor through hearing your voice and being grouped in with the podcast host whom they already trust. You can join low-cost services like PodMatch to match you with podcasts that are a good fit for what you want to talk about. And if chatting comes naturally to you, this will be easy peasy!
Just remember: Make sure the topic matches what your business offers and showcases your value! Otherwise, you’re doing a podcast interview for fun, which is fine, but you might not get many clients from it.
Grow your email list.
Email lists are super powerful. Some may say email is dead, but I fully disagree; it’s been a driving factor in my success with selling. In fact, email newsletters just might be making a comeback!
And unlike social media, which can be taken away from you, as I mentioned earlier, you “own” your list – meaning that it’s a really smart long-term strategy for your business.
Before you make this more difficult than it needs to be, all you really need to grow your email list is a free opt-in that your target client will really want. Ideally, one that will give them a quick win. And then make every call-to-action on everything you do – podcast interviews, blogs, workshops, etc. – about this opt-in to join your email list. It takes time, but it works!
Join a directory.
This sounds too simple to work, but many of my clients have had success joining local business directories, coaching directories, basically anywhere that your target clients might go in search of what you offer. And joining is typically quick, low-cost, and one-and-done – meaning once you join, you don’t have to think about it again (unless, of course, you change direction in your business, and you need to update the listing).
Host a workshop or present at an event.
There’s no better way to build trust in your expertise than hosting a strategic workshop in front of your ideal clients. You can present workshops at in-person or online conferences, retreats, or in other people’s courses or programs. And sometimes – you can even get paid! Win-win!
Think about who works with your ideal clients in a different area than your niche and pitch them on hosting a workshop! Example: You provide SEO and website services to coaches – pitch a business coach for coaches! Or let’s say you’re a health coach for people with autoimmune diseases, ask a local health club, gym, or spa if you can host a workshop for their customers.
Create your own “non-social media” content.
Start your own podcast. Start a blog. Pitch to write guest articles. And if you want to make it even more effective, focus on SEO keyword research from the very start to get the biggest “bang for your buck.” And yes, you can use SEO for podcasts too! SEO can take 6-12 months to begin working (it’s taken about 4 months for me to see it working), but the content lasts much, much longer than social media, and the impact grows over time (vs. losing value or getting lost completely which tends to happen on social media).
Be super strategic and picky about social media marketing.
I love nuance, and I hate black-and-white thinking. Some social media might be totally okay for you and your business! You know what your “trouble” areas are best. For me, it was Instagram and Facebook – they distracted me far too much, and they just didn’t feel good to my soul.
I still use Pinterest and LinkedIn, because they aren’t on my phone and never have been, and I just don’t get lost in them in the same way. I still post to Instagram, though far less and only using Planoly, and I check it once or twice a week from my laptop. And with Facebook: I only log in very occasionally to post in my favorite Facebook groups – especially because my data has shown these posts have the ROI I’m looking for, like far more visits to my website or downloads of my podcast!
My experiment: Can you make money while marketing without social media?
The “too long, didn’t read” answer: Yes!
In fact, I took January 2022 completely off of social media, and guess what? I signed two clients and made just over $1100 – without launching and without even really trying to sign clients!
Now, I know…that’s not a ton of money. But I only put out two podcasts, and sent two or three emails to my list. That was it. So imagine the potential results if I’d been actively selling!
And before I started my month of quitting social media, I wondered to myself, “Is it even possible to market my business without social media? Can it really be done in 2022?”
And I especially wondered:
Can marketing without social media be done by someone who hasn’t been in online business seemingly forever?
I’ve seen online business owners like Mika Perry, Leonie Dawson, and Jenny Shih, completely leave social media and continue being successful. But they also have hundreds of blog posts, and likely thousands of email subscribers on their list, which I just don’t have.
I decided I wanted to try. I wanted to see what’s possible. Mostly because I absolutely LOVED being off of social media – way more than I thought I ever would. Without social media, I feel free, energized, and clearer about what I want. My mind feels uncluttered, my creativity on fire.
I wanted to show that it IS possible to have a successful business without social media – even if you’re just getting started with the non-social media methods.
My “rules” for my “marketing without social media” experiment:
I say “rules” in quotes because these might change as I go; it IS an experiment after all!
Keeping Instagram and Facebook off my phone.
At this point, I can barely bring myself to add the Instagram app to my phone just to do a quick story update. I’ve done it twice in February, but immediately removed the app.
I love feeling so free! Less notifications, less itchiness to share every single moment, it feels good!
I will log into the platforms via my laptop once or twice a week
Posting in Facebook group promo threads.
My biggest ROI on social media is posting about my podcast, blog posts, or freebies in promo threads in Facebook groups full of my ideal clients. I find that so many business owners think these aren’t worth it, but I disagree! In fact, I’ve gotten clients from my Facebook group comments! People search Facebook groups for recommendations – it works!
Instagram posts for my podcast.
I will probably continue to post 2-3 Instagram posts per podcast episode. I have templates that make this super quick and easy, so it doesn’t take much time. And I can tag my podcast guests for extra exposure. I schedule my posts out via Planoly, so I don’t even have to go into Instagram if I don’t want to!
Two podcasts/blogs per month, optimized with SEO keywords and with Pinterest images.
I release two podcasts a month, which I turn into blog posts. I do SEO keyword research for both the podcast and the blog post (using the same keywords) to make every piece of content – including podcast interviews – work harder for me over time with SEO. I also create Pinterest images – also optimized for SEO – and pin them to my Pinterest account. Again, I have templates so this is quick for me.
And you might be thinking, why Pinterest? Because Pinterest is indexed by Google, giving me more reach for my keywords.
But…why not quit social media marketing completely?
Here’s why: I honestly wouldn’t tell any business owner who has relied on social media for getting clients and customers to stop cold turkey without ramping up another method or methods – mine being SEO focused podcast episodes which I turn into blog posts, which lead to email opt-ins to grow my list.
Social media tends to be “fast” when it comes to results – and fast for those results to disappear when you stop using it. The other methods listed here can take longer to have an effect – and also last much longer. I want to be smart in my experimentation, and to me, that means taking the moderate approach with a plan to ramp-down (social media) and ramp-up (SEO podcasts and blogs, etc.).
Marketing without social media experiment: The initial results
I started learning about SEO keyword research in 2021, and started implementing keyword research for my website, blog, and podcast in the late fall/winter of 2021.
These have been my results of marketing without social media so far:
Podcast listeners are up ~43%!
I began using SEO keyword research for my podcast episodes and their corresponding blog posts in late October. And the results have been phenomenal so far!
I had a total of 2,874 downloads of the podcast in 2021; so far in 2022, there have been 645 downloads (an average of ~13 per day), which if it stays the same average over time, means I’ll have 4,754 downloads in 2022. That’s 87 more downloads than I’ve had for the entirety of my podcast so far (which I started in late May 2020, so 1 year and 8 months) – in just one year! 🤯 And that’s if it doesn’t grow even more over time, which is what’s currently happening!
Now, there’s also the question of natural growth over time, but I’ve seen a clear upswing in downloads for the podcasts with SEO keywords that have both a high volume of searches each month and low competition for those keywords. And if you have zero idea what I’m even talking about, check out my tutorials here!
This is a screenshot from an October 25, 2021 email from Buzzsprout. Right before the experiment started, I was expected to get 60 downloads in the first 90 days of an episode.
Just 4 months after implementing SEO research for my podcast episodes!
And 5 months after implementing SEO research — now up 58%!
Organic search is up.
Am I seeing dramatic results yet? Nope. But it’s only been about 3-4 months since I started implementing SEO keyword research in every podcast and blog I produce.
Since SEO tends to take 6-12 months to show results, I’m hopeful my numbers will continue growing. So far, quitting social media is a popular topic and since I love it (clearly!) I'm leaning into it more! But I’m also getting organic clicks for “life coach Denver”, “unhappy achiever”, and more. It’s working, slowly but surely!
And it’s super fun to see how my organic search is doing even better than social media some weeks!
My email list is slowly growing again!
I’ll be honest that I’m still trying to crack the “opt-in code.” I really want to grow my list this year. I currently have ~290 subscribers, with really fantastic open and click rates.
And speaking of, if you want to stop relying on social media to market your business, this opt-in will help!
5 minutes to powerful, long lasting content that grows your audience over time!
I take you through two free and low-cost tools to find SEO keywords for your blog and/or podcast content in way less time – so that every piece of content you produce works for you for years instead of just days or weeks. Just subscribe here!
2023 Update: Marketing without social media DOES work
I wrote 12 blogs in the first half of 2022, and even quit my podcast in September and stopped posting to Instagram aside from occasional stories, and my web traffic still grew A LOT — by about 175%!!
And with that traffic:
My email list grew by 162 new subscribers! — with no ads and very minimal social media posts (an occasional share on Instagram stories or in a Facebook group).
I also made 15 times my revenue goal for 2022. 😲 And I’m on track to make almost DOUBLE that this year.
While it took months to see results, it’s by far been my favorite marketing method EVER.
I get traffic to my website through SEO-optimized posts, and that traffic signs up for my emails, where I can easily grow my relationships and sell my services.
So if you’re someone who:
Wants to rely less on social media
Loves to write
Wants a more “set it and forget it” marketing method…
This is a solid approach!
Want to learn more? Grab my free SEO tutorial right here!
Loved this blog post?
Check out!: My no social media challenge: results from just one week!