Social Media is Over, Here's What Will Grow Your Business

I've been on social media a very long time, so long in fact that I started for Instagram even existed. So I want you to call a social media old lady. But in the last year, I completely quit. It's actually been over a year since I've been on any social media platform at all. Yet, ironically, my business grew in the last year and it was a lot more peaceful in the way that I was able to run it and where I could put my focus. And I know this sounds absolutely bizarre because it feels like social media is an absolute non-negotiable to growing a successful business in today's day and age, but here's the thing. Successful businesses existed long before social media ever did. It is not necessary. And if you're gonna use it, you need to use it in a very thoughtful, very intentional, very strategic way or else it becomes just a massive waste of your time, energy, and resources. They're truly as a new way to use social media and that's what I'm gonna dive into in today's video. Before I do, if you're interested in taking what you know and turning it into an actual profitable, successful business without having to rely on social media, be sure to comment knowledge bank below and we'll send you the link to access our knowledge bank business plan on demand. So what is working now? How have things changed? And ultimately, where am I putting my effort? So that I can create a lot less content. We're getting much higher return. Well, it all comes down to a concept called push versus pull marketing. So push marketing, if you really think about it, you wanna think about platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, et cetera. They're platforms where you have to post content in order to be seen. And the content that you post is a very short shelf life because it's going to pop up in the feed, right? But realistically, it's hard to have a piece of content that's gonna show up in a feed for longer than 24 to 48 hours on these platforms because the only way that that happens is they get a ton of engagement. And not every piece of content is gonna get a ton of engagement, which is why a lot of the advice that you hear on platforms like for example, an Instagram or TikTok is to post consistently and to post multiple times a week or a day so that you have a higher likelihood of being seen by people or to really focus on posting it specific times to try and like game it. But the reality is you're still playing this game of, okay, I'm gonna post this and I hope I get seen by people. I hope I show up in their feed. I hope that they happen to see my content. That is a very different game and that is really how most social media platforms are built. And they're built that way for a lot of reasons. Whereas poll marketing is done on a platform like YouTube which is not a traditional social media platform at all. It is really a video publication platform and a search engine. There's also other platforms that are similar to this in the sense of blogs or even Pinterest could fit into this category as well. What I mean by that is the habits of people on this kind of platform are different. Somebody comes to YouTube not necessarily looking to scroll endlessly. They're actually on there with an intent. They have an intent to learn. They have an intent to solve a problem. They have an intent to find an answer. And so they're ultimately on the platform to seek out those solutions. And so they're not on there scrolling and just randomly seeing things pop up in their feed. They're actually there to seek out the content that they need. So the behaviors are vastly different. The attention spans are vastly different. Somebody on a platform like YouTube is on there to actually consume content. Whereas somebody on a platform like Instagram is on there to guess consume content but also to just get inundated with whatever is in their feed and hope that it's curated enough that it's gonna be something that they actually are interested in or enjoy. So when you think about it from that lens, a platform like a YouTube or even something like a Pinterest gives you a huge advantage because you're able to build content assets, videos, or it's et cetera that are going to be discovered by the people who actually need them. You're not just hoping that they show up in front of people or even the right people. You know you're building something that people are going to seek out. And so if those people are seeking that out, they actually need the solution that you're providing. And therefore they have a much higher likelihood to follow through, want to work with you, et cetera. That kind of brings me into the next point. So there's always this sort of argument of like how long should content be, how many minutes should I be looking at here? And it's short form better or is long form better, et cetera. So I'm going to use YouTube specifically as the example here. I have obviously worked with a lot of people. We don't use shorts in our business and there's a reason that I quit social media platforms because they are becoming more and more focused on short form content. Platforms like YouTube, they're built for long form consumption. And again, you have to think about the habits of the people consuming. If someone is seeking out an answer, they don't really care how long the video is as long as they're getting what they need out of it. And so longer form content gives you a lot of advantages. Yes, it might take a little bit longer to create, but it's also going to help you stand out in a sea of too much information, too many things flying at people in their feeds or if they're constantly in a scroll hole or Googling or they're on chat, GPT asking endless questions to figure out the answer. YouTube has this really important factor to it, which is you can actually portray your hard earned wisdom in a way that you can't on any other platform. By creating long form content, it is an automatic trust builder because if you can actually demonstrate what you're talking about and show that you have the proof to back it up, that positions you as an authority, that positions you as somebody that people can trust. And trust has now become the greatest asset online because there are a lot of gurus. There are a lot of people who say they're great at what they do, but really can't back it up. So if you go into a long form arena or realm and you have to create long form content, you kind of got to figure out how to back it up. In addition to, people used to be able to fake it. You would be able to just sort of copy how to other people's content. But now, chat GPT AI can curate that content way quicker. And so answers are not really what people are seeking out. On YouTube, people are looking for solutions. They're looking for transformations. They're looking for deep wisdom. They're looking for somebody that they can trust because they're overwhelmed with trying to figure out the solution on their own. They're going down these rabbit holes of trying to find the answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. And yet, it's so much information to take in that they ultimately leave with analysis paralysis and they don't take any action. So it's a sigh of relief. If somebody can find a go-to guide trusted authority who can actually show them that they know what they're talking about. And that's where YouTube has a massive advantage in today's day and age with way too much information and drowning information and starving for true transformation because this is the best place to be able to demonstrate it. In addition to, people are able to copy cat content, et cetera. But I do think that, especially with AI, it has allowed us to very much so outsource our intuition and outsource our wisdom because we can ask it questions that we should, in some cases, be asking ourselves. And that also allows people who don't really know what they're talking about to use AI to create this copy cat content based on just information. But if they don't have the earned experience to be able to demonstrate that they know what they're talking about or to demonstrate that they're actually really good at that thing, it's not going to be beneficial at the end of the day. And it's more built to create short form content that's a quick hit of info versus long form content that can really transform people and make a deep impact on them. So that's really why I say we're in this day and age where it's really the rise of the true expert, the people who have the proof in the years of experience and the wisdom to back up what they're talking about. And it's the fall of the fake guru because people are starting to see right through it and they're able to use other tools and resources to find the answers that they need without needing to rely on somebody who's just regurgitating and copying information. So that brings me to what I call the triangle of trust and why this is so important when you are leveraging online platforms of any kind, whether that be a social media platform or a platform like YouTube. So the triangle of trust comes down to these three things. You need to know exactly who needs your help, you need to know exactly what they want and you need to know exactly how to help them. And what this does is it creates something that we call the algorithm flywheel so that you can own the algorithm and you become the boss of the algorithm versus the algorithm owning you because I'm sure maybe you've experienced, you're creating all this content, you think it's really good but then you hear crickets when you post it. Nobody sees it, you get zero engagement, you get zero comments, you have no idea if it's a landing because it's just getting lost. So using this triangle of trust allows you to dictate who sees it and actually what they're seeking out so that you can match those two things together. So you show up the right time for the right person. And like I said, we have that knowledge bank business plan and there's a tool inside of that will actually help you define your ideal client in a matter of minutes. So just comment knowledge bank flow and we'll give you the link to access it on demand. So what this flywheel comes down to is you have your ideal viewer and really your ideal viewer is a person who most gonna benefit from your content and ultimately it's a person who really is going to be the most likely to want to work with you at a deeper level. From there, you're gonna create hyper relevant content for your ideal viewer. The algorithm actually understands how to categorize you and your channel so that it pushes your content to more people just like that. And from there, once you start to get categorized, it uses its internal traffic sources like search suggested browse to push you in front of more people who are your ideal viewer. So then you're getting pushed to more of those people with less of your effort and creates its flywheel effect to really position your channel as the go to authority with less and less effort from you. So that sets you up to be seen 24-7 on autopilot from people all over the world who are seeking out the solutions and the transformation that you can provide versus on social media platforms like an Instagram or a TikTok or a Facebook, you are constantly having to push your content out there and create new content in hopes of being seen by the right people. Instead of gaming the system on YouTube, for example, and creating content that you know your ideal client wants and is gonna be seeking out and they're gonna end up finding it. They're gonna seek it out with high intent to get the answer, they're gonna find it and you're not gonna have to push it in front of them. And in a lot of ways, this is how social media really has changed and evolved with time. We are now more focused on creating these smaller, more engaged audiences than we are in trying to reach the masses because trust me on this, we get people coming to us every single week and they've built these audiences that are 200,000 people or half a million people and they're barely scraping by financially. They're relying on things like grand sponsorships or affiliates, et cetera and they're barely able to make an income from it because these audiences are massive and they're also very broad. So it's a lot of window shoppers, not people who are there because they actually want to take the action to buy, to invest and to do the work to get the result that you could offer to them. So that's where the concept of micro-universits comes into play. So if you are gonna leverage a platform like YouTube, this incredible search driven platform at the end of the day, yes, there's entertainment here, et cetera but I'm not talking about using it. And that way I'm talking about it as somebody who uses it as a business owner and has generated millions of dollars leveraging it in this way. You really wanna focus on what we call micro-universes. Creating these micro-universes, building these really, really, really targeted audiences and what that does, if it's all the right people and it's all your ideal client, every time you publish a new video, you're feeding the algorithm with even more signals of who you're trying to reach and what you wanna be known for. And that is helping the algorithm then serve your content to more of those people. The problem is people start on a platform like YouTube with no plan and they just start posting this content and what it does is it confuses the heck out of the algorithm and then you get seen by either nobody or a bunch of random people. And if you're getting seen by a bunch of random people, that's very confusing to the algorithm. It's confusing for your content because you ultimately have nowhere to go. You don't know who you're trying to reach and therefore you're reaching nobody at all. And a really great example of this is something like I always say is niche down below up. I think that's the most important thing you can do as a business owner in the online space. The more that you can get known as the big fish and the small pond, the better your business is going to do and the more it's gonna benefit the business. So Alex and Beth, they help cleaning business owners create peaceful and profitable cleaning businesses. And if you look at their channel, it is so targeted. They have an authority keyword, which is something that you really do want to own on a platform like YouTube. And it's the keyword that you know would resonate most for your ideal clients and your ideal viewers. And so every video they create has the term cleaning business and the title and it's optimized for that so that it's going to be seen by more of those people. And they went from using paid ads and struggling to hit their financial targets with their program to now by leveraging YouTube in this way, they've been able to scale to $100,000 a month. And this really leads me to the place of like, there is this, you know, concept, I think when it comes to creating content online that really gets confusing because business owners are not content creators at the end of the day. Yes, you can create content like I'm creating right now, but it's really how you use it and where you use it. And you're either gonna do it in a way that creates a ton of pressure and ton of weight by leveraging, you know, these push social media platforms where you're constantly having to feed it with new fresh content or you choose YouTube or a blog or something that is search based and is not necessarily a social platform. And that is gonna allow you to create a more peaceful marketing strategy because you're putting out content that can be discovered for years to come because my YouTube content, I have videos that are like 10 years old that are still generating leads every single day because I'm creating these timeless content that works in an evergreen fashion that for the rest of time, my most ideal clients and viewers, they're gonna be seeking it out. And there's people all over the world who have never heard of me, but yet they're stumbling upon my content because they're seeking it out on search on YouTube on a daily basis and that is building my pipeline of potential leads and clients daily again without any extra effort or without me constantly posting content. And I think we all sort of blindly, myself included, when social media became a thing, we fell into the trap that we thought that it was absolutely necessary to growing a business. But the reality is if you look at the statistics, it's killing businesses. Because you're putting time, effort and resources into making this content and you don't really even know if it's working. So another big piece of this is if you aren't tracking what your content is doing for you, you have no idea if it's actually necessary or not. And if it's not, then stop doing it because your time is your most valuable asset as a business owner. And of course, financially, if you're investing into a team to do your social media for you or you have resources and you don't need them because they're not converting into clients, then that's something that you probably need to reevaluate and cut in terms of your expenses so you can increase your profitability. But that all comes down to properly tracking using things like UTM tracking and link tracking so that you can know, okay, this video on this topic actually created this result in terms of how many clients I was able to generate or how many leads I was able to add to my email list. But when you don't know how to track and you're not tracking the performance of your content, not based on vanity metrics like likes and followers, then you're basing all of your performance and your investments into something that is not real because vanity metrics at the end of the day are like monopoly money. What is actually real is is it generating me leads and is it generating me paying clients? Is there an ROI to my efforts on social media? And if there aren't, you don't need it. And that's ultimately how I came to this decision because I was posting consistently and I was thinking it was absolutely crucial for me to do so. Then I really dug into the numbers and I was like, oh, this isn't actually pushing the needle at all and the thing that is pushing the needle is the YouTube content and my email list, which those both work together really well because YouTube builds my email list, my email list drives traffic to YouTube. So I was like, well, if I just do those two things, I wonder what will happen. And so leveraging the actual data behind the business allowed me to make the decision really clearly that social media just was not necessary. And instead I was gonna put my focus and intention into these other places where I could do less, but achieve more. I think realistically we're all coming to the reality that we are not built to have this much information flying at us every single day and to have access to this amount of information just by typing in a few words. It's overwhelming and it is hurting our ability to critically think and to actually have a unique perspective and have a unique expertise. So if you do, it is more important now than ever for you to be able to showcase that and to showcase it in a way where it's not sort of selling yourself short with a 30 second clip of you dancing on Instagram. I'm sorry, like it's really allowing you to create content that really does demonstrate you as an expert and your expertise. A really great example of this, my clients, Mark Green and Dickson, so they were full time lawyers. They both enabled to replace their salaries as lawyers with their online program. And just by leveraging YouTube as their messaging vehicle and they were able to successfully transition away from using short form platforms, they were actually focused on TikTok to leveraging YouTube and they will tell you firsthand what a difference that made to the quality of the people who were discovering them because the intent was so much higher and these people were actively seeking out this solution so they were paying close attention to the content and making the decision to actually work with them and invest in the program that they had created. And their client results are incredible for that reason. They have the right people getting to their program at the right time because they have a vehicle in YouTube that's constantly working for them. And here's what they had to say about that. Showing up as a business owner and not a content creator. You are not like in this rat race. You can be very intentional and you are rewarded for it. So I think what it comes down to is if you're going to create content of any kind, the most important key now is that you know why you're doing it. And I say that because if you don't, you are gonna end up on a hamster wheel where you're constantly creating content and just hoping that something hits. Also not even knowing what it means when something hits because if you're not quantifying it based off of let's say leads or sales or clients and you're just quantifying it off of vanity metrics, you are ultimately gonna be chasing something that's going to elude you a lot of the time. So it just puts you on this constant hamster wheel trying to chase that next win and you don't even know when it's gonna come. So define that micro universe based off of who you want to be serving and what you ultimately want to be known for. Create content that shows the depth of your wisdom because that's your greatest differentiating factor nowadays because there's a lot of people that can just fake content especially for short form content whereas long form content is a trust building and authority building engine because you can really show not just tell. An attempt just try creating less, creating maybe one less piece of content a week and see if it makes any difference at all. And the best way to really figure out how to create less content but get a higher return is to track. Make sure you are tracking the performance in terms of your business performance, leads generated sales mate, et cetera, not just those vanity metrics and more importantly than anything own your audience because if you are creating content strictly on social media or on something like YouTube but you're not driving people to an email list that you actually own, you are setting yourself up for disaster and long term failure because platforms can change, they can disappear as I told you I started on this in this world a long, long time ago and I've seen platforms where people had built these big audiences disappear overnight and then they're left with nothing. So make sure that if you're attracting an audience be sure to turn it into email subscribers as well by providing people with things like an e-book or a PDF or a lead magnet or a video sales that are a webinar something that can ultimately nurture them further into your micro universe, into your world positioning you as the trusted experts they can tune out the rest of the noise. And look, I know this is all very different than maybe what you've heard and I know I'm approaching this from a business driven perspective because I do run a business and I also am a wife, I'm a mom, I have family obligations, I have friends that I love deeply and I don't wanna spend all my time creating content. It gives me the ick, so I wanna only create content I'm excited about and then I know it's gonna add deep value. So that's a big part of the reason that I really wanted to audit my time and audit my efforts and really think to myself do I need to be doing this. And it was very shocking and surprising to me when I really realized that social media was just completely unnecessary to achieving the level of growth that we wanted to achieve in the business and it's proven by this last year where we completely quit and we were able to grow. So I hope this gives you a little bit of light and hope and it helps you approach social media in a completely different way or maybe even not have to do it at all, right? So I hope this gives you a game plan to move forward with and know what you need and what is required to actually build a successful business if you're gonna play any kind of content game at all. So you can use that content in a very strategic and intentional way and great less but it'd be able to achieve more independence, more financial freedom, more client impact and the list goes on. And like I said, we have that knowledge bank business plan and there's a tool inside of that will actually help you define your ideal client in a matter of minutes. So just comment knowledge bank flow and we'll give you the link to access it on demand. So thank you so much for watching and if you wanna even sort of deeper dive on what it took to move in this direction, be sure to check out this video next on how we generate $500,000 a month without needing social media. Really appreciate you being here. Let me know in the comments what your light bulb moments were where you're gonna take away from this and put it into action because ultimately information without action doesn't really help and I love those comments they are my live language. So I'll see you there and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.