062: Less Social, More Success! 3 Sustainable Strategies to Build Your Business Without Social Media

In this episode, Jules shares three powerful alternatives to relying on social media to grow your audience. Whether you’re feeling frustrated by algorithm changes or simply want a more sustainable and stress-free way to market your business, these strategies will help you create a strong foundation for long-term success.

Key Takeaways:

1. The Power of Networking and Building Relationships: Discover why investing in personal connections—both online and in person—can be your business’s most valuable asset. Jules explains how nurturing these relationships creates a supportive community that no algorithm can take away.
2. Investing in Your Website: Learn why your website should be the hub of your business and how to use it to build authority, grow your audience, and convert visitors into customers. Jules also discusses the importance of tackling tech overwhelm and making your website work harder for you.
3. Getting in Front of Other People’s Audiences: Explore ways to collaborate with others, from guest talks and podcast appearances to participating in bundles, to expand your reach and showcase your expertise.

This episode is packed with actionable tips to help you grow your audience with confidence—independent of social media.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Risks of Relying on Social Media
• 2:34 Building a Strong Network
• 5:09 Investing in Your Website
• 10:18 Leveraging Other Communities
• 11:57 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Morning. Hi. So, I thought I'd just pop on this morning and talk a little bit about what's happening with social media at the moment. If you're looking for alternative ways to market your business, I thought I'd go through my top three.

The Risks of Relying on Social Media

TikTok has been turned off in the US, and for some businesses that rely on it, especially small businesses, it literally could have wiped them out overnight. I definitely have a very minimalist approach to social media in general. I try not to spend too much time on there. I feel the effects if I spend too much time on there.

I feel the effects on my mental health and just on my wellbeing, so I try and avoid spending too much time on there if I can. But a lot of people do. If I think about it, about Facebook, and if Facebook went away overnight, I would be, not devastated, but I would certainly be upset at the loss of the communities that I'm in. The groups that I'm in on Facebook, the connections that I have on Facebook, it would be upsetting, I think, definitely.

So, I think there's been a lot of posts maybe dismissing it and maybe just not understanding why people are so upset about it. But I think it's a good reminder that relying on social media for business, from a business point of view, from a business marketing point of view, is kind of putting all your eggs in one basket, even if you are using different platforms.

It's basically building a business on something that you don't own, on a platform that you don't own. So, you are always then beholden to the algorithm and what happens if that goes away?

If you lose your Facebook account, if you lose your Facebook group, you know, you hear about this happening as well. People actually losing access to their account. I was talking to a local business owner last week who's lost access to her Facebook, and it's a nightmare for her because she hasn't got a website. She's not built up an audience around that. So, the amount of emotional bandwidth to try and get that back, let alone the physical time to get that back, is a real pain.

Building a Strong Network

But anyway, what I wanted to talk about this morning was my sort of three favourite ways that aren't social media that just build you a more sustainable and more algorithm-proof way of marketing your business. So, my first one, my top one, this is the one that I would always say to focus on first, above SEO, above websites, above email lists.

And that is building your network. So, getting to know people, whether that is building your network online or building your network in person, getting to know people, nothing can take that away. Those relationships that you build and those friendships that you make are there for as long as you nurture them, basically.

So, as long as you don't do anything that then makes those people not want to be friends with you anymore or not want to network with you anymore, then there's nothing that can take that away. People buy from people, and we all want to build our networks and we want to just get to feel like we're part of a community. If you actually put yourself out there, and I know it can sometimes, especially if you're not used to networking, not used to sort of going out and actually doing that social thing of making yourself a bit vulnerable and putting yourself out there, it can feel really, really hard.

But the more you do it, the easier it gets. The more you put tools in place that can help you and the more you think about what you're actually trying to achieve and just building relationships with the right sort of people and building relationships in general, you never know what will come from a relationship you build.

And I think that's always one thing I always think when I go into networking, is an excitement of, "Oh, I wonder what could come from this group today? I wonder who's going to be here?" Even if it's people that you've been networking with forever. I wonder who, you know, you never know who they met the day before who could have been a perfect fit for your business. But actually, just you being there and you building that relationship with them again, just reminds them of what you do.

And yeah, I think that would always be my top tip, is to focus on those relationships you build. Maybe if you are building relationships online, it can even be within social groups on social media. It can be those relationships you build there. But when you then bring it back off of the social media and you make connections, you book coffee chats with people, you interact with what they're doing, you join their email list, you look at how you can collaborate with them. Those kinds of things where you're actually building that relationship, I think, is key to something that's a lot more sustainable for your business.

As I say, no algorithm can take away the relationships that you build.

Investing in Your Website

Then number two would be investing some time and maybe some money, but definitely some effort into your website. This is my, obviously, my passion. I love websites. It breaks my heart that people don't realise how much power is in their website.

And it breaks my heart when people are putting so much effort into social media, sharing so much great content on social media for free, building the social media's content. But then you come back to their website, and there's nothing talking about what they do there. They're not talking about the problems they solve.

They're not talking about why they're the person that should be trusted. They're basically just ignoring their website, and I think it happens a lot. I think a lot of it can be overwhelm. It can be overwhelm with knowing where to start with your website. It can be tech overwhelm of actually just even knowing how to make changes to your website.

It can be not realising that it can actually make a difference. But if you invest in your website, that is the one thing online that you own, aside from your email list, which is really important. And I kind of tie those two in together, really. Your website leads to your people then hopefully joining your email list, which then they're in your database.

And again, no algorithm can take that away. As long as you back up your email list, which you should do regularly, then you've got those email addresses forever. So that's, I would definitely say, that's part of it. Your website should be the hub of your online business, or your business online, regardless of whether you've got a local business or an online business. Your website should be that hub, and all of the other places online, all of the other content you're building online, whether that is your YouTube channel, whether that's Pinterest.

Facebook, TikTok, wherever you're building content online, bringing that all back to your website is building your authority in that one place. And it's something that then, again, no algorithm can take it away. Yes, something might happen with Google's algorithm and you lose some traffic, but you still have that website there. You're still going to be getting, hopefully, traffic from other places like Bing and AI and AI overviews. You are essentially building this place where it's the hub of you online and your authority online. Then your social media, if you want to use social media, if you want to use anything else to build up on that, then that is all supporting that. So, you've got that foundation in place.

You're talking about the important things that you need to talk about on your website, and then the social media is created from that, and it all links back to your website. So, the goal is to bring people back to your website. Hopefully, then get them on your email list or get them making a purchase from you.

And it's the thing that you own. So, I would say with that in mind, if you are neglecting your website, if you haven't worked on your website recently, take a look at it. Have a look. Get a look, and don't think about the visuals, because I think often we can look at our websites and think, "Oh, I need to change it."

"I need to rebrand it. I need a whole new website." Most of the time when people come to me, they feel like they need a new website, and the majority of the time you don't. You probably don't need a whole new website unless you're on a platform where it isn't helping you to grow and you need to migrate to a new platform, or unless it's really bad. You probably don't need a whole new website.

Yes, you might need to change the way it looks, maybe. Or you might need to just change a lot of the content. You might need to expand the content. You might need to do things to help it to show up on Google. So, to optimise your website for search. But, you probably don't need a whole new website. You just need to spend a little bit of time investing in being confident to use it.

And I love helping people with that. That's one of my favourite things to do, is helping people to overcome tech overwhelm and help them to actually feel confident to use their website. It's one of those things that I think we often do just the things that feel big. We often will not bother with them, or we will underplay how much of a difference they can make. SEO and websites are more of a sustainable way of marketing your business. It's not something where you're going to have that instant gratification. You're not going to see that instant hit, that dopamine hit, which you might get on social media, of a post being a success or being a failure. Essentially, you know, what we would call a success or a failure if it gets lots and lots of likes, if it gets lots of interaction.

But what you are building is something that can keep performing for your business in the future. So, it's something that will be bringing traffic in over time and continue to build traffic, continue to build authority around your brand, and really help you to have a more sustainable way of growing your business.

So, I would definitely recommend that. Focus some time on your website. If you need some help with this, if you need some help with either optimising your website for search or just knowing where to start or just knowing how to use the platform that you're on, then send me a message and we can have a chat about what you need and how I can help you.

Leveraging Other Communities

So then the third way I would say to focus on is trying to build your authority in other groups. So, if you can get in front of other people's audiences, if you can do guest talks, if you can be a podcast guest, if you can do swaps, if you can get into bundles where you take part in a bundle and then you grow your email list from that, where you contribute something into that bundle, either paid or for free, in terms of people buying the bundle.

What you contribute is normally then that kind of thing of basically, who else is serving your community? Who else also helps your customers, but in a different way? How could you get in front of their community? That again is building those relationships. If people can see you speaking or experience what you do directly, then that makes a massive difference. Also, the person whose community you're in front of, they've trusted you to come and help their community, and that's a really big plus.

And also, you can then build that relationship with that person who's got that community as well.

So that's my top three, is to make sure that you focus on networking and growing relationships, regardless of whether you call it networking or it's just building relationships, just getting to know people, just making the most of the network you already have, even letting your friends and family know what you do and just building those relationships there.

Focusing on your website, so whether that is working on your search engine optimisation, getting more conversions, or just learning how to use the tech and what you need to do to make the changes. Focus on that. And then, getting in front of other people's audiences, and sharing what you do, sharing your amazing knowledge, and really just helping to grow your audience that way.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

So, I hope that's helpful. I wish you the best of luck in growing your audience without social media, or with a minimalist approach anyway. I'm not saying that it's best to not use social media at all, but I'd really like to just help businesses understand that there are other ways to grow your audience, and there is an alternative.

If you don't want to be using social media, then you can still have a successful business. So, take care. I'll see you soon. Bye.