I accidentally worked out how to feel a whole lot better about posting business content on social media, and more detached from the response my posts received.
It happened because posting to Instagram and Facebook became optional.
Posting consistently shifted from something I felt I must do to attract clients, to something I could dip into when I felt the impulse, then disappear from again for a while.
I hadn’t set out with a grand plan to make that happen. But over time, I grew a body of work outside social media that allowed people to discover my thinking while they were looking for insight into their own situation.
If you love that idea but struggle to see how it could work for your business, I want to show you how it developed in mine.
— In this article —
When social media was where my clients came from
Early in my business, Facebook groups were an important source of clients. I spent hours posting, commenting and engaging. It brought in business, but it also took up a lot of my life.
One day, while trying to think of a question that would generate engagement, I remember thinking I’d rather write a one thousand word blog article than come up with a couple of sentences for the group.
And that’s what I went ahead and did. Writing gave me space to explore an idea properly. I could share my experiences and explain how I thought about something, without trying to squeeze it into a post that would catch someone’s attention.
Putting more of my thinking on my website turned out to be the best business decision I ever made.
That blog article people kept finding
Initially, my reason for writing blog articles was quite simple. When people visited my website, I wanted them to get a better understanding of who I was and what I was about.
Then I noticed one particular article receiving a growing number of visitors.
At first, I thought someone might have shared it and that the attention would pass. But I kept looking at my analytics, and people kept arriving.
They had a question, they were searching for information, and something I had written was appearing in those searches.
Some read that article and then explored more of my website. They looked at my offers, and some bought. Because there was no passive newsletter sign-up, joining my email community meant first purchasing something.
I hadn’t done any intentional search engine optimisation at that point. I knew very little about it. Later, I looked back at why those articles were being found and began applying what I was learning to other pieces.
What started as a way to let visitors get to know me had become a way for new people to find me in the first place.
Adding YouTube to the picture
The next layer was YouTube. I began making short, simple videos about things I felt like speaking about, often with very little editing.
Sometimes it was just me talking. Sometimes it was a conversation with someone else. I’d record, speak unscripted and upload the video.
I liked that people could hear how I thought and get a sense of me beyond the written page. Before working with someone myself, I often want that experience too.
A handful of those videos began bringing people to my website and into my offers. In my experience, some videos were discovered much sooner than my blog articles had been.
That gave people another way to encounter my work, without needing to follow me or happen to see a social media post on the day I shared it.
What happened when I published Quiet Marketing
My tiny book began partly as a personal project. I wanted to have written a book, and I wanted to bring my core teachings together in one place.
Blog articles, video transcripts, newsletters and client resources became the raw materials for the draft.
When I published Quiet Marketing, I felt I had completed something I’d wanted to do. I knew it would be useful to some people, but I hadn’t anticipated the role it would play in helping new clients find me.
I ask people how they discovered my work, and after publishing the book, Kindle started appearing in their answers.
I also noticed that people arriving through the book often went on to buy other things quite quickly. Some bought again soon afterwards.
My interpretation is that they’d already spent time inside my thinking. They knew the backstory, understood my approach and had a sense of whether they wanted to explore my work further.
Content that works while you’re not
With articles, videos and the book in place, Pinterest became another way for people to find that work. People still discover me through pins I published years ago.
Can you see the pattern here?
Each addition gave people another route into my work. An article could be found through a search. YouTube could suggest a video. Kindle could recommend the book. Someone could follow a pin to my website.
These pieces could keep introducing my ideas long after I’d published them. I could be doing my client work, taking a walk or spending time away from the business while someone was discovering something I’d created years earlier.
That is what changed my relationship with social media. It no longer had to be responsible for bringing new people into my business.
Publishing alone doesn’t make you discoverable
There’s a misconception I want to address here, because it’s easy to hear this story and think, “Okay, I’ll start blogging, and that’s how I’ll get clients.”
The act of publishing an article or uploading a video doesn’t automatically make it discoverable.
The topic needs to connect with something your potential clients want to understand. How you name and structure the piece matters, as does the perspective you bring to it.
And once someone arrives, your content needs somewhere relevant to lead. They need to be able to explore what you offer and understand why it might be useful to them.
That is how these separate pieces begin to work together as a marketing ecosystem.
Could social media become optional for your business?
My ecosystem grew gradually. I didn’t start with articles, videos, a book and a Pinterest presence all at once.
I followed my interest in writing, noticed what people were finding, and built from there. Other formats became useful additions over time.
You may prefer writing, or find it easier to speak your ideas aloud. The question is how that thinking could become public work that helps the right people find you and explore what you do.
You can still use social media if you enjoy it. Having other routes into your business changes what you need from it, and how much attention you give to what happens when you post.
If you’d like my support building those routes into your own work, explore Become Discoverable. The programme guides you through refining your offer and creating the first pieces of your discoverability ecosystem. If you prefer working with me one-to-one, you can explore the Private Edition.
Finally, is there something I’ve shared here that’s really landed for you? Let me know in the comments. ⤵
Danielle Gardner
The Quiet Marketer
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