Promotion without social: How to do ‘marketing’ when social media is dying

We’ve long relied on social media for the reach we need to grow online and create sufficient demand to sustain a profitable business.

But is that day soon coming to an end?

It’s official: social media is on its way out. But where does that leave Authority Entrepreneurs?

The type of entrepreneurs, like many of you, whose livelihood depends upon transforming original thinking into intellectual capital; through IP and assets that scale beyond you.

Whether your IP offers a transformation to your customers without you even being in the room (think educational products, courses, training and licensing) or whether it’s being used to drive people to your services…. This business model relies on scale for success.

How do you reach enough people to hit your revenue goals, without relying on social media?

[Before we get into it! There are just 5 days left to join Authority Letters, at this inaugural cohort rate. Join smart peers who’ll be writing the one Long-Form blog post that will transform their business in the months and years ahead. Learn more]

Is social media dying, truly?

Financial Times journalist John Burn-Murdoch thinks so.

In this post, he writes about the long-degradation of social media that has slowly but surely been turning people off using it.

The recent turning point? Recent announcements from Meta and OpenAI about the launch of new social platforms coming with exclusively AI-generated short-form videos.

“Slop” “Ultra-processed” and “enshittification” have all become descriptive terms for the experience we’re increasingly having with social media platforms that reward click-bait, hooks and dopamine inducing content.

Not to mention AI-generated comments in the LinkedIn feed. Please, oh god, make it stop.

Eminent thinker in this space,  David Perell believes we’ve ‘destroyed the internet’.

It’s not just the adults who are mad, either. Teenage social media usage is declining. Phone-free parties are attracting guests in their droves.

This isn’t exactly news.

I’ve written or interviewed voices on this very subject, specifically as it relates to business owners who make their living online. And the evidence only seems to point in one direction: making a (full time) living by relying on social media platform reach alone, is a risky game.

Can you be social-media optional?

If social platforms are indeed on their way out, can you too, opt-out if you’re building a business around your Authority?

Let’s first point fingers at what constitutes as ‘social media’, exactly:

Social media platforms:

• Know that if it’s free to use, you are the product. Your data, your content. It doesn’t belong to you and can be taken away, repurposed or shadow-banned at any time

• Because they are free to you, social media platforms are funded by advertisers. Their pay-to-play models mean sponsored posts will always receive priority in the feed over organic stuff, no matter how good your work

• Typically are governed by algorithms that dictate who gets to see your stuff

• Anything you post that takes people off the platform, will get deprioritised

• Censorship is common: certain terms (including the word ‘woman’!) have been found to kill reach

And next, things that might look and feel a bit like social media, but aren’t:

• Your website

• Your newsletter/ email list

• Your blog; from a self-hosted blogging site like Ghost, Wordpress, Beehiiv (not Substack - who have built in many social media features, so can’t truly sit in this category)

• Communities, hosted away from social media platforms. Such as Slack, Circle

• Podcasts

• RSS feeds

If usage on social media declines, is it possible to survive as a business owner without a LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok etc… account?

Yes. Businesses existed long before social media existed. You remember.

But is it possible to build a business that is built on Authority, and that has scalable assets?

Still yes.

For example: You could grow your reach through networking, public speaking, podcasting, Google Ads and drive people to your website and or email list. You could write a book and give it away for free to get the word-of-mouth effect. You could easily reach 1000 true fans doing this (to take the Kevin Kelly math) and make a living with more passive income streams, like a course or digital product.

If you think about it, there are plenty of prolific Authority Entrepreneurs who you know not because of their social media presence. Tim Ferris and Seth Godin being two examples of people I’ve absorbed a tonne of content from, but do not follow on any social media channels.

So you too, can do it.

But unlike Tim, your podcast is not going to be one of the early podcasts. Unlike Seth, your blog or daily newsletter won’t be first in its category, either.

Everything got noisier online.

But we also got so accustomed to using social media for discovery, because at first, the being ‘seen’ part was enough. You didn’t need to be great, just consistent.

That’s all changed. Showing up, consistently, is not cutting it for most business owners, there are simply too many of us.

And we too, have built a distaste for lazy, low-value content that leaves us wanting. 

A call to arms for Long-Form Writing

Social media might be slowly fading, but the internet itself isn’t going away anytime soon.

Whilst we continue to hold our breath about the metaverse or blockchain or (insert other thing we’re still not really using), the infrastructure of the internet remains stable.

Email and websites are here to stay. Yes, AI will influence how we engage with them, and create on them, but I’m willing to bet we’ll be reading things online for a long time coming.

So Long-Form Writing is my best bet; for me and for you.

I’m going all in Long-Form writing, not just for my own businesses’ longevity but also doubling down on helping my clients with Long-Form writing, as one of my core offerings. Starting with Authority Letters and inside the 1-1 client work, too.

Though I don’t bring an MA in Creative Writing or a best-selling book to the table, I do bring half a decade’s experience running a fully booked coaching practice with only one consistent marketing method: Long-Form writing.

Clients who will pay your top rates, stay loyal, and refer business to you, will do so because of the way you think and the power of your ideas and beliefs. Your work needs to speak for itself, too, but the way they will decide to engage with your work is because of the depth of thought you can display to them ahead of time, through Long-Form writing.

You don’t even need a tonne of writing to make this work, you can start with a Hero Piece and build slowly from there. That’s my belief, and experience.

Are you coming along for the journey?

Further Reading

• Previous Authority Club member, Matilda Lucy published this piece (her own Hero Piece of sorts!) that offers readers a guide on navigating growth without social media.

• Subscribe to the self hood neighbourhood by Daisy Morris for all things internet behavioural shifts and merging online and offline worlds.

• More from Tara McMullin on the idiosyncrasies of this economic and cultural moment we’re in, and the role of media and paid newsletters.