Stop Chasing the Social Media Algorithm: Become a Content Destination

For many businesses, social media is an important element of content creation for marketing. But it’s not the only important element or even the most important element. In fact, focusing on social media for the bulk of your marketing content might be pulling your attention away from far more effective marketing activities.

As a service business owner, your content has the potential to be one of the most compelling aspects of your marketing strategy. Think about it - ultimately what you are selling is your expertise, and the best way to showcase that is through your content. But if other entities (like social media platforms) have more control over your content than you do, you are placing your marketing under unnecessary restrictions.

This may be hard to digest. “But Lauren,” you’re thinking, “everyone is on social media, and I have no choice but to meet my people there. They won’t find me otherwise!”

I answer this with a very serious question:

Will your business cease to exist if every social media platform turns off your accounts today?

If you can’t confidently answer that question, “Of course not,” then we need to talk about how to diversify your marketing activities. My question is not a hypothetical or a scare tactic:

• Social media platforms get taken offline 

• Accounts get hacked and irretrievably taken over 

• Companies lose their accounts for TOS violations

• Algorithm changes can upend months of focused activity

I personally know of a service provider entrepreneur who had her Instagram account taken down, not once, but twice. And the second time around, she decided it wasn’t worth the effort to have to restart from scratch. She continued her business without it. So, the warning is this - be careful how much time and energy you pour into something over which you have very limited control. 

Social Media is One of Many Marketing Activities

I’m not recommending that every business abandon social media as a marketing channel. That decision needs to be evaluated by each business according to their industry, market, service/product, resources, audiences, personal values, and other factors. The data is clear that consumers do use social media to discover and search for products and services. They might even grow brand loyalty through social media. 

When it comes to becoming actual buyers, however, consumers need more. I have written a lot about how marketing works a lot like an invitation. As a business owner, you should be thinking about social media as the invitation to more. Once people discover you, where will they go to find out if they actually want to connect and align with your brand and ultimately use your service?

Viewed in this light, social media is just one activity of your overall marketing strategy. The content you place on social media should draw people in to find more of your content. Remember, you don’t own your content on social media! Therefore, it’s not advisable to make it the home of all your most valuable information.

Save the good content for your insiders. Harbor it somewhere that they will come to seek it out because they trust you as an expert and want to get their knowledge from you. Diversifying your marketing activity far beyond the veneer of social media is key to building genuine relationships with your potential clients.

Communicate with Your Audience Through Content

When your audience accepts your invitation, they should be welcomed into the experience you promoted. This is where your content really shines. The people who accept your invitation actually want to know more about you. They want to connect on a deeper level, and hopefully, they will become your loyal clients.

Now they are inside your world, where you can present content that makes you a destination. Content at this level can take on many forms. It might be your website pages, blog, email newsletter, print newsletter, downloads, online shop, webinars, 1-1 meetings, podcasts, or videos. The main idea is that this is the content you really want to pour more of your resources into creating. Producing content is never free. Various accounts might be able to exist at no charge, but time, effort, reach, and return on investment all have to be part of the equation.

Consider these contrasting ideas:

• Social media accounts might technically be free, but achieving a high-quality reach takes a lot of resources. 

• While email or text message services involve fees, your ability to personalize that content to the recipient could produce better engagement with your desired audience. 

• An optimized website that works great on mobile and is easy to navigate can be expensive, but a frustration-free, valuable experience for your clients results in higher sales. 

• Mass-produced blog services might save you time, but thoughtful stories that resonate with your ideal clients will solidify genuine relationships.

Every marketing activity is a way in which you communicate with your audience, and you need to know how much control you have over that channel of communication. If the channels that give you the least control are your main methods of communication, then you risk losing all contact with the people who expect to hear from you. If, however, you have a fully strategized system in place, failure in one channel can be compensated for while you figure out a solution.

For example, let’s say you just have an Instagram account, and your only method of direct communication with clients is through DMs. If you violate Meta’s TOS and have your account suspended, you will lose all possibility of communication with your client base.

Now let’s say that your Instagram Link in Bio leads to your website, where visitors are encouraged to enter their email address to receive a free resource. Now if Meta shuts you down, you can continue to reach everyone by email. Even if your email provider goes out of business, you still have the email addresses saved outside of that system. You can restart with another provider or send individual emails (the caveat here is that it is possible to get your domain blacklisted and thus be unable to send emails, however, that usually only happens if you’re doing illegal or not following best practices) Your website is also still live, and people can continue to find you there. Even though you lost one method of communication (Instagram), and had another altered (email platform), you remain in control of your ability to reach your audience (email addresses) and deliver content. This is also a reason why collecting mailing addresses of clients and contacts, can be beneficial. Don’t scoff at the idea, because if all digital options fail, having the physical, printed methods is an effective safeguard.

Take a moment to think about some of your favorite brands. What are the primary ways that you engage with them? Is it really social media? For me, I don’t even follow the social media accounts of some of my favorite brands and some of them don’t even have social channels. But there are brands that I love so much that I will seek out their emails in my inbox or visit their site specifically to read their blogs.

What if people in your target audience actually sought you out?

What if instead of needing to catch someone’s attention in 0.3 seconds with some click-bait style graphic, they specifically went to your site to read your latest blog? Isn’t that the type of brand you want to build?

It’s the difference between someone walking into a library and aimlessly scanning the stacks waiting for a title and cover art to jump out at them and instead walking in, knowing which author they definitely want to read from and selecting their latest book immediately.

Diversify Marketing Activity for a Strong Business

The idea of diversifying your marketing activity might sound totally overwhelming right now. When I first meet with clients, they already feel overburdened by their marketing activity, and here I am talking about creating new content for alternate delivery channels.

What I point out, though, is that the current system is usually overwhelming because business owners are pouring a lot of resources into activities that are difficult to measure and control. Another way to think about it is if you pour more resources into a new strategy or activity, it might make other activities more efficient and easier to get done. For example, if you invest the time and/or money into publishing really strong blogs that highlight your expertise and showcase how you can help someone in your target audience, the work involved in producing content for social media reduces drastically.

Our Marketing Strategy service involves a lot of evaluation and reorganization. It might be time to pull back on activity that is taking all of your effort and redirect it into content that creates better engagement with your best prospects.

If you feel stuck in the social media marketing cycle, we should chat. At Marketing to Mission, we support your business by helping you clarify your message and simplify your marketing. We will help you take control of your marketing content - both the development and the delivery - so that you can engage more with the people you set out to serve in the first place.