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For every 18-year-old on social media who thinks they need a big following just to make a few sales, there are 100 silent business owners quietly earning more.
“The information economy,” according to journalist Oliver Burkeman, “is essentially a giant machine for persuading you to make the wrong choices about what to do.”
Creating content is an overrated way to build a business. So what’s better?
Treat your profile like a sales page.
To understand what that means, first consider this:
Snoop Dogg and Solo Stove once teamed up on a viral marketing campaign that earned 19.5 billion global media impressions. In it, Snoop said he was “Giving up smoke.” The smokeless firepit company gained 60,000 new social media followers. AdAge ranked it the eighteenth best advertisement of 2023.
Two months later, Solo Stove’s CEO resigned with this statement: “While our unique marketing campaigns raised brand awareness of Solo Stove to an expanded and new audience of consumers, it did not lead to the sales lift that we had planned.”
The lesson: A share doesn’t help business if nobody cares about the business
Stop obsessing over likes and shares
Think of your online platform as a savings account. Make investments when you have extra time and money. Improved brand awareness can be beneficial long-term so long as you don’t rely on it for your short-term success.
Social media’s best thought of as a lagging, not leading, indicator of impact. It amplifies what’s already there. It’s the fuel, not the fire.
To appreciate how that works, imagine you’re at a parade. There are 30,000 people lining the streets. It’s packed; nobody can see. Then one person stands on his tip-toes, and has a good view for a few seconds… until everyone else stands on their tiptoes too.
Warren Buffett said it best: “Your view doesn’t improve, but your legs begin to hurt.”
Every time tech presents a new way to share information, collect data, advertise, create content, or market in any way, it seems like that tool is an immediate winner. By standard measures, the tool often appears better than whatever you were doing before: It seems like a more scalable way to reach people, an easier way to entertain, a new filter to be more attractive, or a better algorithm. The list goes on.
The problem isn’t that it doesn’t work. The problem is that it works equally well for everybody.
Viewed individually, the trendy thing right now often makes sense to use. But when everyone starts to use it, the impact neutralizes everybody else’s successes.
The more people playing the same game, the harder it is for anybody to win. What initially looks like an advantage unfortunately results in us all working more, benefiting less, and burning out in an endless cycle of one-upmanship.
It’s true that social media is an incredible way for you to reach people. It’s true for me, too.
It’s also true that technology allows you to precisely target potential customers with advertisements; me, too.
And, yes, it’s true that artificial intelligence is a fantastic way for you to create huge amounts of content; me, too.
For the earliest adopters and the most skilled, the rewards are huge. However, democratization of technology results in what can only be compared to a developing country’s economy: A few super-rich elites, no middle class, and the majority of the population working hard, yet poor, hungry, and hopeless.
The problem looks like this:
Image credit: The Obvious Choice by Jonathan Goodman
There’s currently 254 million posts with the hashtag #photographer on Instagram. Unsurprisingly, the solution to getting bookings is not to somehow outdo them all when you produce #photographer post 254,000,001.
We all start at the same parade. The solution isn’t to try to stand a bit taller. It’s to find your own parade. Or, simply make friends with somebody who has already found a good seat.
A Better Way to Use Social
Here’s a case study of how to do it right.
Jeff Steinberg runs an online community for parents. Once someone joins, he has no trouble converting them tino being clients for his paid Fit Parent Project offering. But he had a problem: Although he was creating content on social media, not enough people were joining his community.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. You don’t compete with other business owners when you create content. You compete for attention with full-time influencers.
Feeding the machine is exhausting. On top of running a business, it’s often too much. If you enjoy content creation, then, obviously, keep going. But most do not enjoy it. Most people tell me it’s a constant source of anxiety, frustration, and burnout, but they don’t know a better way.
Eventually, Jeff stopped trying to find customers by producing social media content. He instead did a search for mompreneurs with at least 10,000 followers. These women were already selling healthy products at premium prices to Jeff’s target market. And people who buy premium health products, buy lots.
One of those mompreneurs is Rhowena, who owns and operates Healing Mama Co. She makes pre- and postpartum kits for expectant mothers. Her Instagram page had 20,000 followers.
At the time, an Ultimate Labor & Postpartum Hospital Bag from Healing Mama Co. cost $288.88. Jeff bought one and did a collaborative giveaway with Rhowena on Instagram. To enter, people had to join Jeff’s Fit Parent Project online community (which is where the winner was announced). More than 100 people joined.
Most people view social media as a tool for generating attention. And it is. But you’ve got to be all-in on content creation — a game most business owners I speak to don’t want to play.
That’s why I wrote above: It’s better to build your account like it’s a sales page — with updates, case studies, and testimonials. Its job isn’t to attract attention; its job is to convert attention that was attracted elsewhere.
Jeff’s minimum coaching package costs $2,000. He could run seven promotions with Rhowena and get one client to break even.
Within six months of shifting his focus away from the content hamster wheel, his business grew to the point where his wife quit her unfulfilling job and joined him in the business. And Rhowena was happy too: She made a sale — without having to make more content.
This essay is a slightly modified excerpt from The Obvious Choice: Timeless Lessons on Success, Profit, and Finding Your Way (HarperCollins Leadership).
