CAN YOU BUILD A SUCCESSFUL ONLINE BUSINESS WITHOUT SOCIAL MEDIA?
If this thought ever crossed your mind, you’re going to love today’s conversation. My guest today is Shanna Skidmore, a former Fortune 100 financial advisor who turned into a business consultant helping entrepreneurs dig through the data, optimize the metrics and get a firm grasp on the finances (something most of us don’t like to do).
On top of all that, Shanna has also built her incredibly successful business and she’s done it off of social media. You read that right, she’s built a successful online business off social media. Is that even viable? Is that even an option? Did she sacrifice millions of dollars in doing that? Well, today we’re digging into it. We’re going to ask her all the questions about how she did it, when she made that transition, what it looks like and how you can do it too.
Let’s dive into it!
IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVER:
[3:20] Social Media Independent Business
After leaving her corporate career as a financial advisor, Shanna launched her business in November of 2013. By this point social media became more of a marketing tool, and Shanna found herself struggling with that, not only professionally but mentally as well. So in 2017, she decided to take a year off of social media. She had just launched her signature program and Instagram was bringing in 70% of her website traffic at the time. So, this was a big risk but she knew she wanted to figure out a more sustainable way to do marketing, and also a way that was more aligned with who she was and what she wanted to do. She noticed that she was spending on average 5 hours a week on Instagram so she decided to go off Instagram and Facebook and to use that time to focus more on her blog and Pinterest. And after 18 months, her blog and Pinterest were bringing in just as much traffic as Instagram was before. Now, she gets traffic from blogs she wrote five years ago. She unlocked a way of doing marketing that feels so much more sustainable and aligned. Today, her business is 100% social media independent.
[13:35] Detoxification Process
These 18 months were not easy for Shanna. She explains that her biggest fear was that she would be forgotten, that her business would be forgotten.
As time passed, she soon noticed how addicted she was to her phone. She would pick it up randomly throughout the day without any reason. She also felt out of the loop the majority of the time. For example, when Facebook ads became really lucrative and people were using them to grow their company, she was just watching it all from the sidelines.
But soon an amazing thing started to happen – people were reaching out to her via email and joining her email newsletter. She realized that she didn’t need social media to build brand awareness. What she needed was people coming to her website and getting on her email list so that she could stay connected with them and build relationships. This was the kind of marketing she was after, because for Shanna it’s all about the strength of relationship she has with her audience.
[24:20] The Vulnerability of Social Media
From a marketing perspective, social media is such a vulnerable marketing tool. I’ve had clients who are influencers with million followers, where one day the algorithm changes and they lose a half a million dollars in income overnight. They have no control over it. And they’re completely enslaved to the process. They have to be on that device because that’s how they make their money.
Shanna explains that every business needs a marketing funnel. Everybody needs a way to bring new leads into their business and to warm up those leads and turn them into customers. Your goal should be to get leads on a platform you own aka your website and email list. Having an email list allows you to directly communicate with your audience knowing that a big percentage of them will see it. Social media is just one tool in our era of business, so if you use it you need to get strategic and smart. Find out what form of content works best for you (text, audio, video), and create content and get your audience to your website. That way if the algorithm does change or if social media completely goes away, you’ll be okay.
[33:28] The Phased Approach
If all of this made your ears perk up and you’re considering going off social media or growing a social media independent business, here are some key lessons Shanna learned along the way:
- Know your “why”. Growing your business without social media is slow. Growing a blog, SEO, organic traffic, all of that takes time and you just have to be willing to do the work. And this is why it’s important to have a really strong “why”.
- Create a plan to start a different form of marketing today. Whether it’s blogging, a podcast, a YouTube channel, whatever it is – try to include one new way of marketing that’s not social media and try to get it to outpace social media.
- Workflow your social media. If you’re going to get on social media, set a timer. Don’t lose hours scrolling, instead spend 30 minutes engaging and try to free up time to then go into a different form of marketing.
- Visit Shanna’s website
- Connect with Shanna through her newsletter
- Tune into Shanna’s Consider The Wildflowers podcast
- Did this episode resonate with you? Help spread the message by rating and leaving a review for the show here!
- Connect with me on Instagram!
