The Entrepreneur’s Step-by-Step Guide to Marketing Your Business Without Social Media

Marketing and growing your business without social media? Is it even possible in 2022? It is! 

Social media may have become an integral part of our culture – it’s how we communicate, share information, and connect with others – but it isn’t the final word when it comes to your marketing. 

There are other ways to market and grow your business as an entrepreneur that don’t rely on social media – it’s true! 

How social media took over… well, everything

It hasn’t always been this way. Though, those days seem distant. Remember your first Instagram post? Your first connection on Facebook? Your first tweet? The days of “firsts” are gone and now many of us are feeling spent, tired, and drained by keeping up to stay relevant.

In the beginning, marketing your business on social media meant nothing but leads. It was the Wild West, a new frontier where everything was for the taking and every post had solid reach. 

Now Facebook has 2.4 billion users (with a B), and Instagram and YouTube have more than one billion each. Can you imagine?

According to Sprout Social, Instagram engagement rates now average .98%. That means, if you have 100 followers, less than one of them is engaging with your posts. If you have 1,000 followers – 10 are engaging.

Of course, engagement is now favoring new roll-outs like stories (yes, in the grand scheme of things they’re still relatively new) and reels. But, how much time and money do entrepreneurs spend each year learning new platform updates, new ways to sell, new reel songs and dances, new hashtags (those are already old news, aren’t they?). 

And, all that time, organic content marketing has stayed stable, grown richer, and grew in potency. The reason – SEO.

SEO, the key to marketing your business without social media

Wait, isn’t SEO so 2005? Sure, if by ‘2005’ you mean ‘the most potent form of digital marketing that drives long-term results, increasingly over time.’

SEO stands for search engine optimization. At a high level, it’s the process of making tweaks and optimizations to your website with the goal of showing up in search results on Google. 

Why rank on search results? When a page of your website is listed in search results, that means your content is showing up when prospective visitors are searching for keywords related to your industry or the problem you solve.

This means your content is cutting in line, so to speak. You’re appearing during a problem-aware, solution-seeking period of your prospective visitor’s customer journey. 

Why is SEO so powerful? Here are a few reasons:

• People search when they are ready to solve their problem – when they are ready to buy. In fact, 81% of shoppers who make a large purchase first conduct online research. Wouldn’t you love to pop up on page one right before their eyes?
• It has the highest return on investment. Content you create today will increase in relevancy and potency over time, especially as it compounds with the content you’ll create tomorrow and the next day and the next. It’s all about that compound interest, and it never turns off. Once you start ranking, you can expect to keep going up, not down.
• It ensures your business’ legacy and lifespan. Ranking for keywords means more views, more traffic, and more sales. Your job – create great content (not dance on reels or search for new trending hashtags).
• Prioritizing SEO requires empathizing with your customer or client’s end goal and experience. This means you’re not just ‘keyword stuffing’ blogs but are creating content that truly positions your brand as your industry’s thought leader.

The real kicker – we’ve deprioritized long-term marketing pillars

All of the above sounds great, right? Check, check, check, yes we’d all love those things. But where’s the catch?

The catch is what I call the “flywheel of fleeting content.” See, the social media marketing pull is strong, once it sucks you in it’s nearly impossible to step out. It moves so fast, you have to prioritize creating “relevant” social content daily – instead of rich, value-laden, lasting content.

Now, you have no strong marketing legs to stand on, and you’re left settling for life as a “content creator” on platforms you’re starting to despise. With that trade-off you lose time spent on making long-living, sustainable, searchable content – long form content like blogging (yes, it’s still very much a thing), podcasting, and video creation.

So, our strong organic content marketing pillars have crumbled from disuse and misuse. But, there is a better way. 

Organic content marketing without social media has its benefits, like:

• Allowing you to rewire your relationship with social media and technology to find blank space and time to THINK again
• Connecting you to a ready-to-buy-audience that is further along in their buying process, reducing the amount of time you have to spend nurturing them
• Freeing you to show up differently on social media – free to actually use it as social media
• Allowing you to actually take time off social media (say, a week – a month – a maternity leave – a year – delete your profiles entirely?) and still see leads coming in consistently
• You control it. You control the content, the channels, and the strategy. You are not at the mercy of the algorithm. Instead, you’re at the mercy of Google, which sounds daunting but they provide clear and easy-to-follow guidelines for success because they want their product to succeed in its goal – presenting the best content to searchers
• Driving higher quality leads to your site that you don’t have to heavily persuade or ‘sell’ to – because they’ve done their research and chose you.

How to transition to organic content marketing without social media

If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur who wants to start growing and marketing their business without relying on social media, realize you have some work to do, especially if your lead generation process now heavily relies on social media.

It can – and will – happen, with a simple and strong strategy and a bit of consistency. But, it’s not going to happen by accident or happenstance.

You have to set the intention, say it out loud. Because the thing is, marketing your business without relying on social media is different. You have to make some intentional shifts and create a new strategy.

Up until now, many entrepreneurs have worked themselves into a trap where it’s difficult to get off social media. You’ve prioritized it because it moves so fast, at the expense of more sustainable marketing pillars. 

In a nutshell, your new job is to make the transition. Your job is to rebuild (or build) your organic marketing strategy while doing a bit of a push on social media to ‘bridge the gap’ financially as you rebuild, reprioritize, and switch over. 

Creating an organic marketing strategy by prioritizing SEO

Creating an organic content marketing strategy as an entrepreneur is simple. Learn what your audience is asking, create content that meets their needs and speaks their language, and start measuring your results.

Of course, it’s not that simple. There are tons of nuances and strategies that can add a few layers, but that’s it in a tiny nutshell. So let’s dive into an overview – the steps you’ll need to take to build your first (and most sustainable) organic content marketing strategy.

First, discover what your audience is asking and saying

A great organic content marketing strategy and a great SEO strategy begins with audience research to garner Voice-of-Audience (VoA) data. 

Meaning, you want to hear from your audience, listen to their words, empathize with their end goal, and learn to speak their language. It’s a mix of qualitative research and intuition, but it pays off in dividends. 

Here are a few ways you can begin audience research right here, right now: 

1. Conduct audience and client surveys. Surveys prove or disprove what you think you know about your audience. Surveys take your content to the next level by further directing your aim. They help you readjust if you’ve been “off,” and they help you reposition your target if, you find out, you’ve been aiming in the wrong direction all along. 
2. Conduct audience and client interviews. Interviews take surveys a million steps further. Surveys help you scratch the surface of an issue to find commonalities among customer segments while interviews add deeper empathy, verbiage, and insight. Interviews allow your interviewee to verbalize pain points, goals, desires, struggles and objections – all in their tone of voice, unique language, and phrasing.
3. Dive into your Google Analytics. Get cozy with your GA! Viewing your analytics will show you what pages are gaining views, how visitors are maneuvering through your content, and what their actions look like on each page. For example, are people coming to your homepage and bouncing off 3 seconds in? Are people going from one blog to the next? What are their behaviors saying about the value of your content and their intent?
4. Message Mining. This one is pretty fun and requires you to pull out your detective hat. This process is all about searching and digging for real-life human feedback on topics in your industry “out in the real world.” Search relevant topics on Reddit and Quora to discover conversations real-life people are having about the problem you solve. Another fun tactic is to look up books related to your industry and read reviews, good and bad! You’ll be surprised what wealth of audience insight you’ll discover and will be able to use on sales pages, FAQs, blog posts, etc.
5. Focus groups or panels. In this method, you’ll select 4-7 of your favorite current or past clients and ask them some research and discussion questions. This audience research method allows you to build deeper empathy with your end-user (aka, your client or customer) as well as build long-term relationships with them, and them with each other.

Second, do a bit of light keyword research

You knew it was coming, right? When it comes to a strong SEO and organic content marketing strategy, keywords are the name of the game. These guys are the main players, the conduits that connect your content to eager searchers in search results.

1. Make a large list keywords pulled from your audience research. What stands out as something your future audience members are currently searching for on their journey toward solving their problems?
2. List keywords inspired by competitor research. Don’t be afraid to look to the competition. I’m all for community over competition, but sometimes that leads us to believe we don’t have any competitors. A competitor is simply an alternate solution to solving their problem – if they don’t go to you, then to whom or what?
3. Use a free tool like Ubersuggest to find opportunities to perform well. Ideally, you’re looking for a keyword that is relevant to your product, speaks to your audience’s pain point, has high search volume (100-1k searches per month) and low competition. 
4. Make a list of 15-20 keywords to begin. You’ll use these keywords to optimize your website content and feature them center-stage on your blog. 
5. Take a breather – congrats! You just completed your first round of keyword research! Not so bad, huh?

Third, plan your content

Now, it’s time to take what you’ve learned about your audience and what they’re searching for to create content that speaks them and serves them to a solution. Here’s an overview:

1. Map your content pillars. These are the 2-3 high-level topics all your content will center upon. For example, if you are a brand and website designer your three content pillars could be brand strategy, website design, and marketing for entrepreneurs.
2. Create cornerstone content. Each pillar will need one piece of what’s called cornerstone content. This is a blog that functions as an ultimate guide. It’s hefty and all-encompassing. For example, this post you’re currently reading is a piece of cornerstone content for me. It should be anywhere between 2-4k words, and in case you’re wondering – yes, it’s a lot!
3. Create supplemental content. Ideally, you’ll have at least 3-4 supplemental blog posts to start – these are 750-1k word blog posts that support a cornerstone piece of content and fall under the umbrella of one content pillar. See? You’re building your pillar!
4. Keep consistent, and carry on.

Fourth, measure and tweak your content

This step is simple – track your performance. Monitor keyword rankings and page performance using tools like Ubersuggest, Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Fifth, layer on your funnel

1. For each pillar of content, create a lead generator/opt-in/freebie/lead magnet. It has many names, but essentially functions as a valuable resource website visitors can access in exchange for their email address. This is your first step toward building your email list community!
2. Develop a welcome email sequence featuring 5-8 sequential email newsletters that automatically send to your new email subscribers. 

How to bridge the gap as you shift strategies

While you transition from primarily marketing using social media to more long-form content marketing, there could be a lull period. To prevent this financial lull, here’s how to handle and prepare for the in-between season:

1. Do one last launch on social media. You don’t have to let the world know this is your last big hoorah, but put all your gumption into it. Your goal is to make 2x or more of your monthly expenditure and team pay with this launch.
2. Create and market an affiliate program. If you have a course or product, reward your customers and students for singing your praises. Create a launch campaign as you roll out your new affiliate program.
3. Create a referral program. This goes hand-in-hand with affiliate marketing. If you serve clients, develop a high-end referral program where you give nice bonuses to individuals who send new clients your way.
4. Ask for referrals. Tell your network and peers that you are searching for clients who align with your target audience. Invite them into your referral program.
5. Get involved. This may be the hardest for those of us introverts, but we have to get ourselves out there and start networking! Connect with local business groups, go to meetups, make new connections and meet future clients.

So what next? A few content marketing ideas to layer on next

Once your bases are covered, keywords are set, and content is flowing at a steady, consistent and manageable pace, here are a few ideas of what you can layer on next.

Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of direct marketing. In fact, email was invented by Ray Tomlinson back in 1971. Since then, email marketing has evolved into a powerful form of communication that allows businesses to reach customers at any time and anywhere.

Print advertising

If you’re looking for a low cost option, print advertising is one of the best options available. In fact, according to the U.S. Postal Service, the average return rate for first class letters is only 1%. That means that even though you might spend $1 sending a letter, you’ll likely receive back less than $1.

Deeper search engine optimization (SEO)

Another effective method of marketing without social media is search engine optimization (SEO), which involves using certain techniques to help your website appear higher in search results. This is done by optimizing your site with keywords related to your product or service.

Video marketing

Video marketing is an increasingly popular form of online advertising. In fact, according to HubSpot, nearly half of B2B marketers plan to use video as part of their 2017 marketing strategy. Videos are easy to share, cost less than other forms of marketing, and allow you to connect directly with customers.

As you create great content, remember this…

You don’t need to create new blogs every day to succeed. Instead, focus on creating quality content that will attract visitors and engage them.

In fact, it’s better to focus on building relationships with people who will help you grow your business.

If you’re looking to build an online community, start by asking yourself what kind of relationship you’d like to develop with your customers. Do you want to sell products and services to them? Or do you just want to provide helpful advice and support? Once you’ve figured out how you want to connect with your customers, you’ll be able to determine where you should invest your time and energy.

Build relationships first

Focus on building relationships first. This will help you gain trust and credibility with your readers. It also helps you establish authority as a thought leader.

Create value for real people

If you’re not creating value for people, then why should they follow you? And if you’re only trying to sell them something, then why would they care what you have to say?

Focus on the long term

It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind of marketing and entrepreneurship. After all, there are so many things to do every day. But if you’re looking at short term results, you’ll never see any real progress. Instead, focus on building relationships with your customers and prospects. This will help you build trust and credibility, which will lead to more sales.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

If you feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks involved in running a business, ask for help. There are plenty of people out there who would love to work with you! They might even offer to pay you for your services, too!