063: The Shift Away from Social Media – What’s Next?

There’s a growing conversation about leaving social media, with more business owners questioning whether it’s really worth their time. In this episode, Jules explores why social media isn’t essential for business growth and how websites and SEO offer a more sustainable alternative.

What’s covered in this episode:

• Why social media can feel exhausting – and why it’s not the only way to grow a business
• How focusing on a website and SEO helps attract people already looking for a solution
• The key steps to getting started with SEO and increasing visibility
• How to create content that works long-term instead of disappearing in a feed

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 2: Why You Don’t Have to Keep Feeding the Algorithm – Why social media isn’t the only way to market a business
• Episode 28: Exploring Social Media Minimalism – Reducing social media reliance while still growing a brand
• 033: Social Media vs SEO: Busting The Myths
• Free Guide: Discover Your Core Topics – A step-by-step guide to defining your key content areas and building topical authority
• Google Search Console & Analytics Quick-Start Course – Learn how to easily set up Google Search Console and Analytics to track website performance

Need help getting your website working for your business? Book a Discovery Call to chat about how Jules can support your business growth.

Do you love social media, or are you ready to step away? Leave a comment or text the show.

Subscribe for more bite-sized website and SEO insights.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Social Media Fatigue
• 1:59 Alternatives to Social Media for Business Growth
• 3:01 The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health
• 7:48 Exploring SEO as a Marketing Strategy
• 9:20 Getting Started with SEO
• 12:05 Optimising Your Website for Better SEO
• 13:32 Connecting Content and Building Authority
• 16:54 Final Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction and Social Media Fatigue

Hi, happy Friday. I've had a few conversations this week and I've been seeing lots of emails coming in, lots of posts on social media about leaving social media.

Just people talking about the fact that they're feeling a bit done with social media and they're feeling like it's not really making a difference in their business. I'm on a lot of people's email lists and quite often they will be talking about the alternatives to social media.

There's a couple in particular who do talk about it. I love it. Love hearing other people talking about just that possibility of growing a business without social media that there is this feeling like that you have to have social media. You know, there's no way that you can grow a business without social media.

And I firmly believe that that's not true, that you can grow a business in whatever way is right for you really. And yes, it's great to have a presence on social media if you think about it like an advert or a billboard, it's not going to do you any harm to have something there that shows some information about your business, what you do, but actually using that as a marketing tool where you're posting all of the time to social media, and it's taking up a lot of your time and taking a lot of your energy.

And you're not necessarily getting something back from that. That's the thing that I really don't like about it, and about the message that you've got to be using social media, otherwise you're failing in business. And I see this a lot, where clients will come to me, even having conversations with people, and they won't even realise that there is that possibility, that they can have another, an alternative route, really.

Alternatives to Social Media for Business Growth

I talked about this in the last episode about my three favourite ways to grow your business without social media, and I had some really positive comments about that and some feedback about that as well. So I think the big thing is sort of how would people find me if I'm not, if I'm not posting on social media, how are people going to find me if I'm not constantly posting?

And I think it can, it can feel really tough standing out online. Definitely can feel really tough. There's so much noise out there. And especially with all of the AI-generated content as well. Now, there is just so much noise. And I think that's part of the problem is that when you're then on social media, you then see all the noise.

You see your competitors, you see things that are related to what you post about. So you see, you get that, that sort of imposter syndrome and you actually see other people supposedly doing things better than you or having better content than you getting more likes, getting more interaction. And that in itself can feed into that feeling of I've got to be there otherwise I'm failing. Otherwise I'm not going to get the same sort of results for my business.

The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health

But I think actually, if we just take some time to think about it, and think about the specific places where we want to be, because I know there's lots of people say you've got to be where your audience is hanging out, and that is true to a certain extent, but you've also got to enjoy being there yourself.

If it's exhausting for you to be on Instagram, if you find that every time you go on Instagram that you feel awful, or if you go on TikTok, or if you're on LinkedIn and you really don't enjoy being there, then you're not going to put your best into that. You're not going to enjoy interacting with that.

It's not going to make you feel good in your business. So actually, how can we find other ways to market our business in a way that feels good to us? But I am seeing this shift as I say I start I've started hearing this from the bigger coaches that I follow so people that have been in their programmes and groups and things and they're starting to say that actually they've reduced their social media use.

And it's not necessarily made a difference in their business. And this is something that I feel like I've been talking about and sort of banging on about since I started the podcast. Definitely way before that in terms of when I am talking to people, when I'm networking, when I'm having conversations one to one with people.

Talking with clients as they're coming through and on discovery calls and things that I, I, it's one of my, my firm beliefs that there are alternative ways. But it's interesting seeing this shift come and more people now doing that. And I think in general, people are, seem to be coming into the new year, beginning of 2025, people are thinking whether actually using these platforms is affecting their mental health and whether they actually want to be contributing to these platforms.

I know a lot of people have left Meta and boycotted it. And I think people are actually just thinking, what is the alternative? What other platforms are out there where I can connect with people? Because ultimately it's all about connecting with people. That's what we want.

That's the whole, that's from our point of view. The whole point of social media is to be social. From the social media company's point of view. The whole point of it is to get us on there so they can sell more ads. They're all their businesses that make money. They're not there as these sort of benevolent companies that are there for the good of humanity they are there to make us stay on the platform for as long as we possibly can and to keep scrolling because then we keep seeing the ads and they can sell the ads when you when you listen about the why these platforms are set up part of that is designed to make us feel like we have to keep coming back to be part of the community and to, to feel good about ourselves.

And I know certainly when I use social media, it generally doesn't make me feel good about myself. Unless I'm very intentional about the groups that I go into and I just go into those groups, but it's really hard. And actually the groups are the only thing that I enjoy about social media. And I'm now really exploring how I can use the communities that I have that are outside of Facebook groups, which is ironic because I'm here in my Facebook group talking about this, but I am exploring that.

So we'll see.

Anyway, I feel like that was, like, that was going to be a two-minute intro about social media and it's seven minutes in.

So anyway, I digress as usual. But got lots of episodes around this. I talk about this a lot on the podcast and feel like I have talked about it since the beginning. Episode two was why you don't have to keep feeding the algorithm. Last week I was talking about this again.

And so I will link in the show notes to all of the episodes that relate to social media and to our website being an alternative to that really. But every now and again. I get that feeling as well. I'm very much sort of at the point now where I'm trying to decide, okay, do I continue marketing my business on social media?

And I really don't market it very much. I don't do a lot on social media. So do I go down that route of just saying, trialling that and see what happens, putting my energy into that. I haven't marketed the podcast on social media. It's been a deliberate thing. And I love the fact that I've done that. I went into it with that in mind that I wanted to be my own success story.

And it's been great. I think I've just got over 3,300 downloads in just over six months, I think, well, coming up for seven months now. And without, that's without promoting it on social media. And I love that. I love, you know, as much as that's not big numbers in terms of podcasts and in terms of downloads, when I look at the individual episodes, that if you'd have told me that on day one of the podcast that I was going to have 3,000 downloads, then I would be over the moon with that.

So that's deliberately something that I've done. But I still feel that pulled. I still feel like, oh, maybe social media would be a good way to grow my business. Or maybe you just, you know, you think about that post, maybe something will go viral and that will then make it make things go crazy.

But realistically, even if that happened, then it wouldn't necessarily relate to sales in my business as well.

Exploring SEO as a Marketing Strategy

So anyway, I'm going to stop talking about social media now, but this is why I love websites and SEO as an alternative to social media and a way to market your business, because then you can create content that you own.

So you create content that has longevity. You create content that stays there once you've, once you've created it and you've uploaded that content onto your website, it's not going to be gone in the way that a post maybe would, where it disappears within a very, very short space of time.

And if you're thinking about that and thinking about creating content around what you do and creating content for your website, the good thing with that is that whether they're searching in Google or using AI, they're actually connecting with them at the point that they're looking for a solution to their problem and people are out there looking for solutions to their problems, even with the AI overviews, people will still be searching.

Regardless of which way people search, they will still be searching for things to buy and a solution to their problem. And if you can connect with them at the moment that they are actually searching, then they're already that little bit further out down the, down the route to buying from you.

Then if you're just trying to interrupt their scroll, that's the problem with when you're, socials is it's just interrupting their scroll. Whereas actually people are out there looking for what you sell, so, if you can be there and you show up when they're actually searching, then that's, immediately going to give you a much better chance of actually them converting.

So if you were thinking about this and thinking about using SEO as a way to grow your visibility, then there's, there's few things where you can get started with thinking about SEO.

Getting Started with SEO

So the first is just to explain what it means.

Essentially, when we're talking about SEO, we're talking about setting up the content on our website to make sure that it's set up in a way that shows up in Google and other search engines and then connect with those right people. And so I would say to start doing this, first of all, think about make sure that you know what you want to show up for.

So, think about, you know, before you start diving into worrying about keyword research and things, think about what are the things that people would be typing into Google or not even that. If you were having a conversation with your customers, what are the things that people would be telling you? What are the words they would be saying?

What are the things that relate to your business that you want to show up for? And think about that first and foremost, really. So make sure you know what you want to show up for and then think about which pages of your website are most relevant to show up for that. And each individual page of your website should be thought of as an individual thing.

So Google ranks web pages rather than whole websites. So that's why you want to think about, okay, I want to show up for this particular search term. What is the most relevant page of my website to show up for that? And then. Think about the search intent. So think about if you were, um, just trying to think of an example if you were thinking about hormonal changes that affect your skin in your early early 40s or something like that and you've written a blog post about that so if you're thinking okay, I want to show up for hormonal changes in their 40s or in my in your 40s or whatever.

I've got this product I want to sell and actually I want to show up for that in terms of whichever page it is on your website. I want to show up for that in Google somehow. What I would then do is go to Google and type that search term into Google and see what shows up. So see whether it's product pages that are showing up, whether it is blog posts.

It depends on how you actually word the question. I think that would determine what shows up and you might with that kind of thing, you might actually get a mixture. So you might have some products at the top and you might have some blog posts. So Google is trying to work out what do people want from this search?

Do they want to know more about why this happens? Do they want a solution? Do they want to, you know, do they want more information? So that's where you actually get just going to a Google search page and just seeing what shows up around those terms is a good way to get started. So you think about that, you think about what, search intent that is.

What pages you want to show up for which terms and then optimise each of those pages for important areas of the page and put those keywords in those important areas. So the important areas are things like your page titles, your page descriptions, and then naturally throughout the content and also in at least one image alt text as well.

So when you add images to your page, think, do they relate to what particular search term I'm trying to show up for?

Optimising Your Website for Better SEO

And if they don't, find another image that does and then when you add that into your website builder, there'll be a little box that says alt text or alternative text. Make sure you have that keyword in there as well. And it shouldn't be naturally that the description of that image should then fit with the keyword that you're trying to rank for. So those that's the thing make sure that your pages you're optimising those particular areas and then make sure that Google can actually index your website as well. So you make sure you've got Google Search Console set up. That's one of the things that I see so often when people come to me, clients come to me. And we're looking for things that are quick wins and things that we can do to help them immediately. If they haven't got Google Search Console set up, and quite often they haven't, people may have heard of Google Analytics and they might have set that bit up, and then just gone, nope, that's too complicated and never thought about it again.

Google Search Console is a lot easier to use. And from the point of view of actually showing up in Google, it's also a lot more important to that as well. So if you are struggling with that, I do have a short course on my website for that. I'll link to that in the show notes. And that teaches you how to very quickly and easily set up by Google Analytics and Google Search Console and how to use them in a simple way without the confusion and the overwhelm.

So I will link to that. And then once you've thought about that and you've thought about, okay, which pages do I want to show up for? Which things. I've optimised those pages as I need to.

Connecting Content and Building Authority
How can you link your content together? So if you've got that blog post and it naturally leads into one of your products, so you've created a blog post around the idea of selling this particular product, then link that blog post to the sales page.

For example, if you have, if you've, if you've written that blog on how hormonal changes affect your skin in your forties, then link that through to a product that solves that solution. And what that does, it helps obviously helps users. It helps immediately. People are more likely to then buy that product if you tell them about it.

That's something that's sort of pretty basic, but we forget about that quite a lot. Actually, we need to keep talking about what we're selling. It also helps Google to understand that you are an authority on hormonal changes in your early 40s and that you also sell this product as well because Google's bots come through and crawl your website or whichever bots, I talk about Google, but it's any bots come through and crawl your website and they can see those links between the pages and that all helps with your SEO and building up your authority.

And if that blog is also relevant to another topic, then you can also link to that as well. So, you know, if you can think of all the different ways that your content links together, then that is, it's a great way to then to build up your authority around that topic. And that's what we're trying to do.

We're trying to build our website as a hub that shows our authority online and then everything else that we're doing online. If you are doing social media, if you're doing podcasts, if you're doing YouTube, if you're doing anything, it all then links back to your website and that all helps to build that authority up there.

So the big thing is that obviously you are connecting with people when they're looking for a solution to their problem. And that's what, that's where I love it. I feel like that's the biggest thing is that actually. People need our help. If we're the expert on what we do, people need to find us and we just need to talk about it.

We need to talk about it on the place that we own. Our website is the content that we own. So, it's I feel the most important part of your digital footprint. And so that's why I love it when people put some energy into that. So put some energy into that thing that you own, that's more sustainable, that's going to keep paying dividends in the future.

And then just reuse that content as you need to really, so that it doesn't become just that throwaway content that then doesn't help to actually grow your authority as the expert in your field.

Because this is a big problem that I see a lot with clients where they, they talk about amazing things over on their social media and then we look at their website and they haven't even mentioned anything about it there.

So it's really common that that happens, but just spend 15 minutes this week thinking about what your website needs to show up for, what's important that people know you are an expert in and which page of your website tells them about that as well. And then what pages are linked with that, that you can then connect those all together really

Um, but yeah, definitely use ChatGPT or Google Gemini or whichever AI platform you prefer. And that can help you get started. I've also got a free guide that you can get from my website. I'll link to that in the show notes and that's all about discovering your core topics. So if you struggle with this a little bit and you're not quite sure how you should sort of group your content together and what you can become those sort of that topical authority on, then that guide to discovering your core topics is there and that can really help.

And it does it in quite a fun way. You can have a post-it note party with it.

Final Thoughts and Resources

So I've got lots and lots of other episodes about social media. And exploring social media, minimalism. Episode 28 talks about that. And I will link to all of the other sort of related episodes in the show notes. So, thank you for listening.

I would love to hear your comments and your thoughts on this on whether you absolutely love social media and you never plan on leaving and you enjoy using it for your business or you don't you like using it for your personal life but you want to stay away from it in business or vice versa or whether you know your website needs more attention but it's kind of something that's is there I know I need to but I'm not really getting around to it or something in between, but just let me know, leave a comment or you can text the show and you'll find a link in the show notes.

And if you'd like some one-to-one help on this, on getting started with this, starting to improve your website and SEO, then you can book a discovery call and we can have a chat about how I can help you with this just help you to get your website working better for your business. So I hope that's helpful.

Have a lovely weekend and I'll see you soon. Bye