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.
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Welcome to episode 101 of the Mom CEO Suite podcast.
Felicia Pugh:Can a Business Succeed without Social Media?
Felicia Pugh: eting without social media in: Felicia Pugh:Now I don't hate it, but in this episode I share where I stand.
Felicia Pugh:Plus I get into how I plan to market my business without social media as a primary piece of the strategy.
Felicia Pugh: hear what I have planned for: Felicia Pugh:Hey friend.
Felicia Pugh:Welcome to the Mom CEO Suite podcast where faith, family and business come together.
Felicia Pugh:I'm your host, Felicia Pugh, Christian wife, mom of two and life and business system strategist for mom entrepreneurs.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:While many strive for balance, I believe it's harmony, an integrated flow that works for you that truly sustains.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:Plus hear real life stories and expertise from other mompreneurs who are walking the same path.
Felicia Pugh:Motherhood gets hard, entrepreneurship gets hard.
Felicia Pugh:But together we can do hard things.
Felicia Pugh:Welcome to the suite.
Felicia Pugh:All right.
Felicia Pugh:Hey friend.
Felicia Pugh:Welcome to another episode.
Felicia Pugh:Thank you so much for being here.
Felicia Pugh:So a hot topic right now is this idea of doing business without social media and here's where I stand on it.
Felicia Pugh:Do I hate social media?
Felicia Pugh:No, I don't.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:I do not desire to be on social media the way that I was when I first came into the online space.
Felicia Pugh: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?
Felicia Pugh:The investment being my time.
Felicia Pugh:And we see statistics a lot about the lifespan of social media posts and it's not long, right?
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh: And so I've decided for: Felicia Pugh:Now does this mean I am not going to be on social media at all?
Felicia Pugh:Absolutely not.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:I don't want to be on there because I have to be on there.
Felicia Pugh: going to look like for me in: Felicia Pugh:I am leaning into all of the things that are searchable.
Felicia Pugh:Not all of the things, but a lot of the things that are searchable and a lot of the things that include evergreen content.
Felicia Pugh:So the main thing that I will be focusing on is, number one, the podcast.
Felicia Pugh:I absolutely love podcasting.
Felicia Pugh:I find great joy in doing it.
Felicia Pugh:It does not dream me the way that social media was draining me.
Felicia Pugh:And I talked about this in a previous episode.
Felicia Pugh:I'll link it in the show notes.
Felicia Pugh:But I talked about why I ended up ditching Instagram in the first place.
Felicia Pugh:But recently I decided to give it another try.
Felicia Pugh:I said, hey, I'm going to post one reel a day.
Felicia Pugh:I think this was for the month of October.
Felicia Pugh:I'm going to post one reel a day just to see if I can be consistent, build more community, give Instagram another try.
Felicia Pugh:And I did not complete that task.
Felicia Pugh:And in doing it, it reminded me why I left the platform in the first place.
Felicia Pugh:I didn't totally leave, but why I don't post on my Instagram feed, it reminded me why.
Felicia Pugh:And, you know, all marketing strategies work.
Felicia Pugh:Whatever you choose to do, there's someone who has used this strategy or used the platform and been successful with it.
Felicia Pugh:Right.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:And one of those things is podcasting.
Felicia Pugh:So, um, I've already been podcasting.
Felicia Pugh:We are at 100 plus episodes now.
Felicia Pugh:And what I'm going to be doing is optimizing my podcast through the messaging, through the content, and through SEO.
Felicia Pugh: can grow the podcast more in: Felicia Pugh:So that's the first thing.
Felicia Pugh:The next thing that I'm going to be focusing on is email marketing.
Felicia Pugh:Over the past few weeks and months, I have been doing more emailing to my email community and I have been enjoying it.
Felicia Pugh:And so I am really leaning into again, getting better with my messaging, getting better with my storytelling, getting better with selling through email.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:And when people unsubscribed, I felt away a little bit.
Felicia Pugh:But that has all changed.
Felicia Pugh:That has all changed.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:And so there really is no need for you to be a part of my community.
Felicia Pugh:And that's totally fine.
Felicia Pugh:Right?
Felicia Pugh:No shade to the people who do unsubscribe.
Felicia Pugh:And it doesn't mean that they're bad people or even that they don't like you.
Felicia Pugh:You know, the messaging just might not be right for them.
Felicia Pugh:Or maybe they just don't want to get your emails and they still follow you on social media or some other mechanism.
Felicia Pugh:So, yeah, I am leaning 100% into email marketing.
Felicia Pugh: And at some point in: Felicia Pugh:Right now I'm sending on average, about three emails per week.
Felicia Pugh:And since I've been doing that, I've made some other tweaks as well, like getting better with my messaging and my storytelling.
Felicia Pugh:But I have seen more clicks, and I have been seeing more engagement and responses to my emails, which is what I want.
Felicia Pugh:I want to increase the engagement.
Felicia Pugh:Yes, I want to grow my list, but I really want to increase the engagement of my email community.
Felicia Pugh:So we have podcasting, email marketing.
Felicia Pugh:The next thing that I'm going to be focused on is my website SEO and blocking.
Felicia Pugh:Okay, this should have been the first thing.
Felicia Pugh:Well, I won't say the first, but this should have been one of the first things that I focused on.
Felicia Pugh:Actually, years ago, when I started my journey, I was introduced to it in a way where you could exclusively run your business online.
Felicia Pugh:And that was very appealing to me.
Felicia Pugh:But I only tapped into social media.
Felicia Pugh:I did not tap into all of the other digital platforms that were available.
Felicia Pugh:And so I never really focused on a website in the sense of SEO and blogging and getting traffic to your website.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:Right.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:So that's what I'm focused on now.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:And then I'm going to start blogging.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:But for each podcast episode, I am going to post blog style show notes on the website.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:So I'm looking forward to that.
Felicia Pugh:And then the final piece of the puzzle for me is going to be Pinterest.
Felicia Pugh:I'm tapping into Pinterest, which is a visible search engine, like all of these things are searchable.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:All right, so make sure you stay connected and listen to the next episode when it releases.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh: So that is what I'm doing in: Felicia Pugh:The podcast, email marketing website, SEO and blogging and Pinterest.
Felicia Pugh:And I'm not creating a whole bunch of new services.
Felicia Pugh:I have my signature service, I have a few digital products, and that is what I'm building the brand around.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:All right, that is how I'm going to be marketing my business without social media.
Felicia Pugh:So now what role is social media going to play in my business?
Felicia Pugh:Again, like I mentioned, I'm still going to be on there.
Felicia Pugh:Mainly I'm going to be on threads because I just like the energy there.
Felicia Pugh:I've met so many amazing people, many who have been on the podcast through threads.
Felicia Pugh:So I'll be on threads and then I love Instagram stories.
Felicia Pugh:So while I don't post on the feed, I am in my Instagram stories almost every day.
Felicia Pugh:Not every day, but almost every day.
Felicia Pugh:I'm in my Instagram stories.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh: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.
Felicia Pugh:So maybe after about 90 days I will come back with an update about how this marketing system and strategy is working for me.
Felicia Pugh:Just to give you some insight into what marketing without social media looks like and the possibilities and the results.
Felicia Pugh:Okay, so definitely stay tuned for that.
Felicia Pugh:I hope that this was helpful, insightful.
Felicia Pugh:Let me know.
Felicia Pugh: ing back from social media in: Felicia Pugh:Shoot me a message over on Instagram.
Felicia Pugh:I would love to chat with you and see you in the next episode.
Felicia Pugh:Thank you for listening to the Mom CEO Suite Podcast.
Felicia Pugh:If you enjoyed this episode, can you do us a favor?
Felicia Pugh:Leave a review on itunes and share with other moms in business like you, help us spread our message and empower others who are at this intersection of motherhood and entrepreneurship.