A Social Media Presence is a Waste of Time When Growing Your Business

5 better ways to promote your business

Unless you want to be a social media influencer, having a social media presence is unnecessary to grow your business. In fact, in some instances, maintaining social media for your business is a waste of your time, because there are better ways that you can promote growth.

While my opinion probably goes against all popular beliefs, it is true. Especially in my case.

I built my spray tanning and photography businesses with very little social media presence at all, and both businesses are thriving. On the flip side, I used to run a photo booth business and I tried painstakingly to build social media to advertise, but it failed miserably.

The reason? It is genuinely difficult to grow in social media organically. You need to consistently create quality posts, which is very time consuming when you also need to focus on the business itself. I focussed so much on my photo booth business’ socials, that I couldn’t look after the quality of my actual work. The work that brings in my money. I burnt out.

Furthermore, some people don’t even want a social media presence. I personally like to keep my life private, so I blog under a pseudonym and use very few pictures of myself. I want business without putting myself at the forefront. There are plenty of other people who want anonymity like me, so the advice of using Tiktok, Twitter or Instagram to grow is useless.

Here are my ways to grow your business without building your socials.

Use someone else’s social media presence

There are already so many influencers and people with a platform, so why not take advantage of them? They have already built a following that you can access immediately. This is the easiest way (and often the cheapest way) to build a following for your business.

If you approach someone with a very small following, you could often get free advertising in exchange for your product. As the influencer’s following increases, you may need to start paying a fee. However, if you choose the right influencer, the return on your investment is amazing.

I built up my spray tanning business on influencer advertising alone. I do have an Instagram account, but I rarely update it. I probably post there once a month and you can’t find any photos of me there. I only have the account so influencers can tag my business page and potential customers can click across to my business. Furthermore, these days I only ask my influencers to link directly to my website from their Instagram stories, making my own business socials completely pointless.

How to do it:

• Set up some socials with your website linked
• Hire influencers using this method
• Have the influencers link directly to your website if possible (it’s the preferable method). Or, they can link to your social media, which will direct clients to your website.

Use Pinterest

Contrary to popular belief, Pinterest is NOT a social media website; it is a search engine.

Social media requires engagement, likes, reposts and comments for the platform to promote your content. It is social. A search engine, on the other hand, relies on keywords and search engine optimisation (SEO) to promote your content. So, like Google, you can rank highly on Pinterest without followers, repins and comments.

Pinterest is great if you don’t want socials but still want potential clients to access your website. It can promote all websites.

Sophia, from By Sophia Lee, established her blog without any social media presence. She created social media accounts on each platform to reserve the names just in case she wanted to use them in the future, but she literally had no posts or even linked to any of her accounts.

Sophia grew her blog by using Pinterest alone. In fact, she was able to earn over $9000 a month in only a year and a half with Pinterest advertising alone. She uses social media now, but only because she’s decided to pivot her business. She still advocates Pinterest as being your starting platform.

Pinterest is honestly a goldmine. It has a high Google ranking, so even if your website doesn’t have good SEO, your pins can still appear on the first page of a search.

I personally am developing a blog and I intend to only promote it via Pinterest.

How to do it:

• Create pins using Canva
• For each piece of content you create, design at least different 5 pins
• Have a mixture of text-only and text-image pins
• Pin daily either manually or by using a scheduling program like Tailwind

Focus on SEO/algorithm

Having your website organically appear on page one of Google is the ultimate goal. It will drive up sales and clients better than any other method.

I really pay attention to SEO for my photography business and it drives most of the traffic to my website. I would say that 50% of my business comes from word of mouth and 50% comes from organic Google searches.

It’s really not that hard to do, but it can be time-consuming. You just need to do some keyword research, decide the words you’d like to rank, and then ensure you use those words as often as possible. The key, however, is to ensure that you use the keywords authentically; spammy words won’t help your cause. Think about everything: You need your keywords in the title, the body of text, embedded into the metadata of any photo used and in the search description that appears on Google.

When done correctly, doing keyword research and focussing on your SEO is a fantastic return on investment

Sometimes if I need a bit of an extra boost, I’ll use a paid ad on Google. Any engagement on my website increases my organic ranking.

How to do it:

• Use the program, Keywords Everywhere, to find your keywords
• Write down all keywords you’d like to rank for
• Use the words in your title, the metadata of images, at least twice in the body of your text, in tags and in the search description
• Make sure the keywords appear organically on your website. Being spammy by just repeating the keywords over and over will not help your SEO

Use local buy/swap/sell pages/websites

Local marketplaces are really a great source of traffic for any business, but especially a business that has physical products or services. Actually, these websites are rarely spoken about with regards to business and I believe they are underused.

I use Gumtree (an Australian local B/S/S website similar to Craigslist) to advertise both my photography and my spray tanning businesses. They both convert really well, but especially because I like to use freebies and discount codes as a way of drumming up business.

The only concern is people who look at these types of pages are often after a bargain. But, if you create freebies as a way to attract traffic, you’ll have no problem developing your business.

These websites are great because they are free to use, and you can get much better and faster organic traffic than you would with a social media presence.

How to do it:

• Create a freebie to promote your business
• Create a free listing on a website like Craigslist, Gumtree or Facebook Marketplace
• Use the freebie or special offer as a way to entice traffic to your website
• Reassess your listing weekly. If you find you are not getting enough traffic, tweak your listing regularly until you find it is working for you

Use paid ads

Paid ads are always a great way to go. The reason people use them is that they work.

As I already mentioned, I use paid ads on Google sometimes because it improves my organic reach. It honestly works for me and I have a number of clients clicking through to my photography website.

If you use paid ads for your business, you will see increased traffic. The only downside is that they do cost a bit of money. Yes, you can set a spending limit so you don’t go too overboard, but my limit is $20 a day, which can really add up.

For that reason, I put paid ads as the last method. The one I want to use when I need a bit of a boost. I recommend trying out the other free/low-cost methods first.

How to do it:

• Choose a platform that you’d like your ads to appear such as Google, Facebook or Instagram.
• Research the most effective way to use your chosen platform
• Set a spending limit and keep an eye on click-through rates. If you find that your ads are converting to quality traffic and clients, keep going with the ads. If they are not converting well, cease your ads until you can research better ways to use the platform
• Always keep a focus on your keywords when creating an ad

Final thoughts

We live in a day where social media appears to be the most crucial thing for a business. If you see content from any online business expert, you’ll likely be seeing them talk about the importance of social media. There is a place for socials if you really want them or if you want to pivot your business.

However, if you think that it is the only way to get traffic, you need to change your mindset.

It is extremely difficult to grow a social media presence by using those platforms alone. Usually, you would need to employ one of the other methods listed above to build a following on your socials.

Furthermore, you really need to consider your return on investment. If you are going to invest your time in anything, it should be in the quality of your product and ensuring your potential traffic finds you as soon as possible. You’ll find it is a better return and you’ll get the fastest growth.