Can a business truly thrive without relying on social media? In this episode, I'm sharing my take on this hot topic as I outline my marketing strategy for 2025, which intentionally moves away from social media as a core component.

Will I completely ditch social media? No. But I will be focused on leveraging platforms that support searchable content and long term visibility.

If you've been looking for ways to do less social media, tune in.

LINKS & MENTIONS

• Ep 40. Why I Ditched Instagram Posting & Implemented the 9 Grid

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• The Mom CEO Suite Masterclass Collection: https://www.themomceosuite.com/masterclass
• CRM: Dubsado - Get 20% off your 1st month (if paying monthly) or 1st year (if paying annually)
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Welcome to episode 101 of the Mom CEO Suite podcast.

Can a Business Succeed without Social Media?

Now I don't hate it, but in this episode I share where I stand.

Plus I get into how I plan to market my business without social media as a primary piece of the strategy.

Hey friend.

Welcome to the Mom CEO Suite podcast where faith, family and business come together.

I'm your host, Felicia Pugh, Christian wife, mom of two and life and business system strategist for mom entrepreneurs.

With over 10 years of experience working behind the scenes of businesses and ministries and as a work from home mompreneur, I'm here to my personal journey and practical strategies to help you design systems that bring peace to your work and home life.

While many strive for balance, I believe it's harmony, an integrated flow that works for you that truly sustains.

Together we'll explore how to grow your service based business in a way that is sustainable and keeps your family at the heart of it all.

Plus hear real life stories and expertise from other mompreneurs who are walking the same path.

Motherhood gets hard, entrepreneurship gets hard.

But together we can do hard things.

Welcome to the suite.

All right.

Hey friend.

Welcome to another episode.

Thank you so much for being here.

So a hot topic right now is this idea of doing business without social media and here's where I stand on it.

Do I hate social media?

No, I don't.

I like engaging on social media, but I am in a place after having two children, living the lifestyle that I live, being a work from home mompreneur and my capacity being different in this season.

I do not desire to be on social media the way that I was when I first came into the online space.

I am in a place where I want my efforts, the time that I put in to give me the maximum return on investment, right?

The investment being my time.

And we see statistics a lot about the lifespan of social media posts and it's not long, right?

And so if I'm going to be putting my energy into something, I want to have a better return than what social media traditionally gives.

Now does this mean I am not going to be on social media at all?

Absolutely not.

Because I actually, I like social media, but I like to use it to be social and to make connections and to find new people to collaborate with.

I don't want to be on there because I have to be on there.

I am leaning into all of the things that are searchable.

Not all of the things, but a lot of the things that are searchable and a lot of the things that include evergreen content.

So the main thing that I will be focusing on is, number one, the podcast.

I absolutely love podcasting.

I find great joy in doing it.

It does not dream me the way that social media was draining me.

And I talked about this in a previous episode.

I'll link it in the show notes.

But I talked about why I ended up ditching Instagram in the first place.

But recently I decided to give it another try.

I said, hey, I'm going to post one reel a day.

I think this was for the month of October.

I'm going to post one reel a day just to see if I can be consistent, build more community, give Instagram another try.

And I did not complete that task.

And in doing it, it reminded me why I left the platform in the first place.

I didn't totally leave, but why I don't post on my Instagram feed, it reminded me why.

And, you know, all marketing strategies work.

Whatever you choose to do, there's someone who has used this strategy or used the platform and been successful with it.

Right.

But just because all things work does not mean that all things are going to work for you or that all things are going to work for me.

And so it's okay that, you know, Instagram posting on the feed does not work for me because there are other things that I actually enjoy more that work for me.

And one of those things is podcasting.

So, um, I've already been podcasting.

We are at 100 plus episodes now.

And what I'm going to be doing is optimizing my podcast through the messaging, through the content, and through SEO.

So that's the first thing.

The next thing that I'm going to be focusing on is email marketing.

Over the past few weeks and months, I have been doing more emailing to my email community and I have been enjoying it.

And so I am really leaning into again, getting better with my messaging, getting better with my storytelling, getting better with selling through email.

You know, I used to be one of those people who didn't want to email her list too much because I didn't want people to be annoyed.

And when people unsubscribed, I felt away a little bit.

But that has all changed.

That has all changed.

When I see that people are unsubscribing now, I am excited because that just lets me know that you are not a person that resonates with my message.

And so there really is no need for you to be a part of my community.

And that's totally fine.

Right?

No shade to the people who do unsubscribe.

And it doesn't mean that they're bad people or even that they don't like you.

You know, the messaging just might not be right for them.

Or maybe they just don't want to get your emails and they still follow you on social media or some other mechanism.

So, yeah, I am leaning 100% into email marketing.

Right now I'm sending on average, about three emails per week.

And since I've been doing that, I've made some other tweaks as well, like getting better with my messaging and my storytelling.

But I have seen more clicks, and I have been seeing more engagement and responses to my emails, which is what I want.

I want to increase the engagement.

Yes, I want to grow my list, but I really want to increase the engagement of my email community.

So we have podcasting, email marketing.

The next thing that I'm going to be focused on is my website SEO and blocking.

Okay, this should have been the first thing.

Well, I won't say the first, but this should have been one of the first things that I focused on.

Actually, years ago, when I started my journey, I was introduced to it in a way where you could exclusively run your business online.

And that was very appealing to me.

But I only tapped into social media.

I did not tap into all of the other digital platforms that were available.

And so I never really focused on a website in the sense of SEO and blogging and getting traffic to your website.

It was just, you know, having a website just because you needed a home and you needed to be able to showcase who you were and what you did.

Right.

But not really with a strategy to get more leads, to become more visible, to show up in Google searches organically and all of those things.

So that's what I'm focused on now.

So with the website, really beefing up the messaging on the website with keywords, doing my keyword research and updating all of the headings and meta tags and all of those things so it's SEO friendly.

And then I'm going to start blogging.

Now, when it comes to the blogging piece, yes, I'll be doing traditional blogs for core principles of the brand and topics that kind of all relate to one another and create a story around the brand so someone can, you know, just come in and browse and get all the information that they need.

But for each podcast episode, I am going to post blog style show notes on the website.

And so it's not going to be a full blog for each episode, but it'll be some show notes and it'll be something that will help with the SEO component to make the website searchable.

So I'm looking forward to that.

And then the final piece of the puzzle for me is going to be Pinterest.

I'm tapping into Pinterest, which is a visible search engine, like all of these things are searchable.

The podcast, the website, Pinterest email isn't searchable, but someone opts in to be on your email list so they have an expressed interest in what you have to say.

So in the next episode, I'm actually going to be interviewing a Pinterest coach, marketer and manager and she's going to just give us so many good insights about growing your business as an online service provider on Pinterest.

All right, so make sure you stay connected and listen to the next episode when it releases.

All right, so with Pinterest, what I'm going to be doing is pinning back to the show notes to my podcast and then also pinning other things like my services pages.

And one of the other things that I'm doing with my website, just to circle back really quickly, is that I'm hosting all of my landing pages on my website because some of them are hosted on flodesk.

And I'm just going to move everything over to my website so that the website can be the main hub and it'll help with again, the SEO, getting more traffic, getting more leads, being more visible.

The podcast, email marketing website, SEO and blogging and Pinterest.

And I'm not creating a whole bunch of new services.

I have my signature service, I have a few digital products, and that is what I'm building the brand around.

I'm very solid in those offers, which is helping me to be more Aggressive, not in a bad way, but just be more consistent and present in my marketing, but doing it in a way that is not draining and that has a longer lifespan than a social media post.

All right, that is how I'm going to be marketing my business without social media.

So now what role is social media going to play in my business?

Again, like I mentioned, I'm still going to be on there.

Mainly I'm going to be on threads because I just like the energy there.

I've met so many amazing people, many who have been on the podcast through threads.

So I'll be on threads and then I love Instagram stories.

So while I don't post on the feed, I am in my Instagram stories almost every day.

Not every day, but almost every day.

I'm in my Instagram stories.

I have a presence on Facebook and LinkedIn, but I'm not super active on those and I don't plan to increase my engagement over there either.

So I'm really trying to just keep it simple and create a system that makes sense for me for my lifestyle and test it out, see what works, what doesn't work, and continue to tweak it until I find what makes sense for me.

So maybe after about 90 days I will come back with an update about how this marketing system and strategy is working for me.

Just to give you some insight into what marketing without social media looks like and the possibilities and the results.

Okay, so definitely stay tuned for that.

I hope that this was helpful, insightful.

Let me know.

Shoot me a message over on Instagram.

I would love to chat with you and see you in the next episode.

Thank you for listening to the Mom CEO Suite Podcast.

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