how to quit social media without losing your business - a step-by-step guide
breaking up with the algorithm - episode 2
Hello love,
The conversations are on many people’s lips: Should you or should you not ditch social media? Would you still be able to find clients if you ran your business without it? And what would that even look like?
I know because these 2 articles I wrote about the topic are the ones that received the most organic traffic :
More and more highly sensitive people are feeling tired and drained with the noisy platforms, the 6 and 7-figure business coaches dancing to upbeat music and pretending like they’ve got it all figured out. Fed up with the not-so-subtle message that whatever you’re doing is probably not enough, that there’s a smarter way to run your business, a more exciting way to lead your life, and a ton of secrets to marketing and sales you don’t know about but could unlock for just 97$.
Not that this kind of communication is limited to social media, mind you. It’s also everywhere in your mailbox, which probably makes you think email marketing is icky, salesy and faky. It doesn’t have to be this way, I promise you.
If you know in your heart your time on IG, Facebook and TikTok is coming to an end, but you’re terrified that by clicking delete, your business will disappear, I get it.
When I decided to leave social media back in spring 2024, I wasn’t really in business. I was keeping things to a minimal while on a post-partum post-burnout break. Admittedly, this made things a bit easier. Also, knowing that my posts were seen by 10 friends and liked by 1 person who was probably a lurker anyway.
Still, I was febrile when I realised that without Instagram, I had nothing to show for myself except a teeny tiny email list of about 50 faithful subscribers. My first language business was much more developed, but I didn’t want to do languages anymore, so that was quite irrelevant.
So I called onto my rock’n’roll genes - the very same ones that made me pack my life and go settle in a developing country where I’d never set foot before - and went for it anyways, trusting that I’d figure it out. And I did.
In this article, I’ll give you a clear step-by-step roadmap so you can see exactly how to leave social media while maintaining - or even increasing - visibility.
First things first, what is your current situation with social media?
You have an audience of engaged followers and the vast majority of your sales come from social media? —> You need a gentle transitioning plan. Follow the step-by-step in this guide before you quit.
You have sort of an audience but they’re not very engaged, and you’re not selling anything on social media? —> You can quit much faster, I’ll show you in the step-by-step guide below at which stage you can go ahead and wave the social apps bye bye.
The step-by-step guide I’m about to share is one way to go, it is by no means intended to be followed as a cookie-cutter strategy to apply blindly.
Please adapt it to you and your business. If you want my guidance to make that strategy mapped out, book a 1:1 strategy call here. If you know what you want to do but you feel overwhelmed by the mere idea of getting all this shit done: I’m your girl. I love this work, and I’m good at it. Look at a list of my services here.
Ok, I think I’ve said everything. Let’s go.
STEP 1: How are you going to make money?
I always reverse-engineer everything, and this guide is no exception.
If you’ve been making most of your income through “selling in the stories”, the first step is to figure out how you can replace that now.
Here are some of my suggestions:
Direct sales campaigns to your mailing list for offers you’re launching or promoting.
Automated sales sequences on evergreen (so you keep selling without having to be selling all the time.
Regular promotional emails that mention one of your offers, not because it’s time-limited or with a special discount, but just to mention it.
Links to your services or passive offers in your email signature, whether that’s in your regular newsletters or in your direct emails when you communicate with clients, colleagues, collaborators.
SEO blog posts positioning your offers as a natural solution for the people who have the problem you solve.
Pinterest pins linking back to your paid offers.
Through affiliates and referrals who’ll promote your offers for you and make a percentage for themselves.
As you can see, e-mail marketing, SEO and your network are going to be the 3 major pillars of your success without social media. I use all of them except Pinterest, which I’m about to start this trimester. I made sure to start with what was feasible and what I could then re-use, like my email sales campaigns that are then turned into automated sales sequences.
Choose which strategies you’ll put in place first and then move on to Step 2.
STEP 2 : How will they get your promotional emails?
E-mail strategy is my most beloved strategy to follow, to teach and to implement, because I truly believe it’s a powerful and often underestimated way to nurture beautiful relationships with soul-aligned people.
But how are these soul-aligned people ever going to receive your beautiful emails?
You need at least one freebie that is super strategic and attractive. It’s not about giving away stuff for free. It’s not about lazily putting something together and hoping it will do. It’s about carefully understanding your offers, what solutions they bring to what problems, and carefully understanding your people and their level of awareness when they’re coming into your world. How can you help them find a bit of a solution, start the transformational journey and be naturally led into your paid offer?
You need a landing page with clear copy, where people are able sign up for your freebie, enter their email address and consent to receiving emails from you, and then tag them properly so they can receive the said-freebie and you can know through which pathway they entered your world.
You need a welcome sequence that allows your new email subscribers to know you better, to feel seen and understood, and to start trusting that you may be able to help them and how. This is not 2017, a single email won’t cut it anymore.
You need to nurture your email subscribers with regular emails that give them 3 things: relatable content, helpful content, inspiring content. Writing love letters is my love languages, so I don’t mind receiving very regular emails from my favorite creators, especially if they always make me feel good about myself. If you’ve created lots of things on social media, you might want to repurpose some of that into newsletters.
Once you’ve got this step covered, it will be time to present your freebie(s) to your social media audience and invite them to join your mailing list.
Scenario 1: You’ve got a massive audience, this will require time. Create content for social media that promotes your freebie, make sure you’ve got that link in your bio, speak about this weekly, use ManyChat to streamline your conversations in the DMs. Keep it up and encourage your audience to contact you via email, while you move on building your next steps.
Scenario 2: Your engagement rates on social media have been low? Create a grid of 9 static posts that show what you do, who you help, what their problem is, how you help them, why you help them, a testimonial, a mock up of your products or offers and your freebie. Link to your freebie in your bio. Write “I’m no longer on social media, find me on… That’s what you’ll decide in Step 3!
STEP 3 : How are people going to find you?
You can have the most amazing offers (and I bet you do) and very well-written & strategic emails in your automated sequences, they won’t do much for your annual revenue if nobody ever sees or read them.
You’ve transitioned some of your current social media followers onto your mailing list, and that’s amazing, but then what? How are you going to find new people and grow?
We’ve already established that we don’t want to dance or sing on Reels, so how are people going to find you and benefit from all the goodness you have to offer?
Here’s a selection of sustainable options. What I mean by sustainable? The content you’ll create will keep on existing and bringing traffic to your offers until they exist.
They are all good, valid options, but here’s a word of advice: don’t pick a platform or a strategy because of “how successful it has made other people”. Instead, follow the joy : what do you really want to do?
Oh, and pick just one to start, unless you have a team behind you.
Youtube. Perfect for you if you love talking on camera! Some consider it a social media, and I disagree. It’s a video search engine first and foremost, meaning that the content you create there will keep on bringing views (and revenue) years from now. Let me throw in some stats: Youtube has 122 million users per day and 62% of internet users watch something on youtube daily. That’s mind-blowing. (23 essential youtube statistics 2025)
Blogging (SEO). Love writing content? Blogging might be the right road for you. Despite what some SEO-adverse souls will tell you, SEO isn’t dead, even if you use ChatGPT as a search engine. Also, SEO doesn’t have to be the painful nail in your fingers when you try to write something with soul: it's really not that difficult once you understand the key goal of Google: bringing the best answers to people’s questions. Do some research to find keywords and what people actually want to know about, and then write with them in mind, with heart and honesty.
Podcasting. This is the most intimate public relationship you can have with your audience. Private conversations in their ears as they wash the dishes or walk their dogs, off their screens, I love it. Make it yours, make it real, and you’ve got a winning strategy!
Substacking. So you don’t want to choose. Sometimes you want to make videos, and sometimes you want to write, and sometimes you want to make voice notes? Substack can be the home of your multi-passionate self! It doesn’t rank as high on the SERP as blog posts or youtube videos, but it comes with a community that sees your content every single time you publish something, and that, to me, is the best gift that Substack can offer.
Pinterest. Again, could be seen as a social media but I personally have never had a single conversation on Pinterest. What I have done, though, is discovered creators, blogs, and products that I purchased, like this amazing eco-friendly bacteria-free soap dispenser: Handso (not an affiliate link). Create evergreen pins, connect them to your website, your offers, your content, and you’ve got new sources of traffic. Forever.
Paid ads, I’m told. But in full transparency, I’ve never tried so I don’t have any experience there. If you do and you want to teach about it, please contact me :)
For a more complete list of ideas on how to gain visibility without social media, I made a little free check-list for you. When you sign up to get it, you’ll also get my free 5 day journaling for visibility challenge :)
STEP 4: A business that feels like a home
You know what I like best about my home? It looks like me, it’s simple and it’s cozy, and I can easily get from one room to another without going through a labyrinth of stairs or platforms. Everything is on the same floor, and I can come and go effortlessly.
You want people to feel the same way when they find you. Which is why you need a website that does exactly that: connect everything together
Your brand, so it looks like you
Clear copy that tells them exactly what this is about, so they can stay if this is for them.
Simple navigation for an easy access to the information they need.
Cozy vibes so you don’t sound like a personality-less corporation.
Everything available, not in an intricate system but in a clear layout.
I love eco-systems of offers and content, I think they do wonders in terms of results. Mapping out your customer journey is important to some extend. But you know what I’ve learned? It doesn’t matter how much we strategise what people should buy first and buy next, humans are humans, and they’ll take shortcuts that you hadn’t always predicted.
Like my coach told me in a group session: Don’t deny people the opportunity to buy something you offer when they are ready, instead of when you believe they might be.
So if you don’t have a website yet, or you have one but it could definitely have a refresh, now is the time to do that.
STEP 5: Stay in contact with the world
Building genuine connexions has always been and will remain the #1 way to build trust and to sell your offers. Make sure that when you leave social media, you don’t leave the world and build a little bubble all by yourself.
Make a habit to answering to newsletters you love and that made you react.
Leave comments under blog posts, podcasts and youtube videos that you’ve enjoyed or found useful.
Reach out to people via email if you want to collaborate. Create a network of people you can be business-buddies with and have regular coffee chats.
Join a community of like-minded people that soothes your nervous system.
Participate in summits and conferences, online and offline.
Final words
Leaving social media can feel like stepping into the unknown, like the end of an era (did you also watch Friends when you were younger?)
But I promise you this: it’s just the beginning of something much more sustainable, intentional, and freeing.
You deserve to build a business that truly belongs to you, where your voice isn’t drowned out by a million others and your worth isn’t measured by likes. A business through which you nurture deep, meaningful connections instead of quick dopamine hits.
Will it require strategy, patience, and consistency? Absolutely.
But you don’t have to do it alone.
If you’re ready to craft a soulful marketing ecosystem that feels like home I’m here to help. Check out my services here or book a call if you want personalised guidance.
And if you just want to stay in the loop with non-icky marketing tips, sign up for my Substack ;)
Here’s to your slow, intentional, and wildly fulfilling business.
Power and light,
Jessica