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Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
906: Went Dark on Social Media? Here’s How to Rebuild Momentum and Come Back with Confidence
00:34:24
Here's how to build a routine to show up consistently, build momentum, and rediscover why you were online in the first place.
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Abigail Pumphrey
You're really only supposed to give to other people your overflow. You are not supposed to be self sacrificing. Like you do not need to give up who you are or what you're about or what's required for you to live or thrive to help or make other people comfortable. Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host Abigail Pumphrey and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way. One that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Business settle in. It's time to talk strategy. Looking for a way to make a difference with your morning coffee? Grab a bag of talitha coffee@bossproject.com Coffee Every purchase helps support survivors of human trafficking. Make every cup count@bossproject.com Coffee have you ever gone completely dark on social? I'm guessing you press play on today's episode either because you're in the middle of it right now or this is absolutely been a part of your story in the past and you want to come back now. Whether it was because life got away from you, you felt uninspired, or you just needed a break, I want you to know I get it. I have been there too. For the last several months, I have been in the weeds with life, dealing with my dad's stroke, moving him into assisted living, and recovering from my own surgery. I've barely showed up online, at least on a social media front, and while I've kept other parts of my business incredibly consistent, that was something I decided to put down. But here's the thing. Coming back doesn't have to feel impossible and it certainly doesn't mean starting from scratch. If you've been stuck in this like starting and stopping cycle, or you're afraid that your absence has been noticed and people are going to think differently of you, then I need you to know this episode is for you. Today I'm sharing exactly how I would return to social media and how I want to see you do it so that you can show up with confidence, consistency and ultimately authenticity. Without the guilt, without Overthinking and without making it a big deal. My goal for this episode is to see you move forward, to help you build momentum and ultimately help you rediscover why you're showing up there in the first place. I think it's important that we start by acknowledging the misconceptions around walking away. I think a lot of people feel this pressure to announce their departure or even announce that they're coming back after a season and then feeling like they have to explain themselves. Now, I have absolutely been there. I have absolutely done the post about why I've been gone and I'm excited to recommit and yada yada, we all have done that post, I promise. But I need you to know what the average experience actually looks like for your audience. Most people simply aren't aware that you stepped away. Your most loyal fans and clients and customers they probably are. But we're talking 2% of the people that follow you online have any idea that you walked away. As sad as it sounds, the majority of people aren't thinking about you. They don't even know that you're gone. Your content just simply stopped showing up in their feed. But when you come back, most of them are going to assume that their algorithm readjusted and they're seeing your content again. And why do we need to feel this pressure to make them think any differently? Honestly, with the return to social media, I don't want you to be thinking at all about what anyone else thinks of you. That's not helpful in this season. Instead, I want you to be far more concerned. Not worried, but concerned about you creating a new routine, a new habit, a new way to show up more consistently so that you can ultimately build momentum. The people that you see growing a following or getting traction from the work they're putting into social and having that ultimately convert into revenue, the majority of them, it is far more about consistency than, you know, a debate on quality or, you know, this pressure to, like, have everything be perfect. And so they're going to have these massive gaps. Consistency does a lot of things, but especially on social. It helps the actual social media platforms trust that you're going to be there and continue to pump content into their platform so that they can make more money with advertisers, because ultimately that's what it's about for the actual platform. They are going to reward the people that show up, not necessarily the most frequently, but the most consistently because those are the people that are ultimately making them the money. And you creating content is a lot More like building a muscle. Like, sure, you can get weak there, but the more you do it, the more you consistently create and show up and write and film and post, it's going to get easier. It does. Every single time. And I know from all of these years in business that consistency is what's going to help you build momentum. It's going to make it feel more fluid, more a part of your routine. It's going to come to you far more easily. It's going to take less of your time, and you're going to get better results from it. So that's the goal of where we're going from here. But the biggest hurdle you're going to face if you've been away, regardless of for how long, is it's really, really, really, really easy to get in this habit of starting and stopping over and over and over and over again. You know, whether you show up for three days and then you're gone for two weeks, or you show up for a month and you're like, creating content every single day and really pumping it out, and then you disappear for six months. Regardless of how much you put on the gas or how much you fall off the bandwagon, if you start that habit, that's far more sticky than you continuing to show up. And so breaking through that and acknowledging that previous pattern is going to be really essential to you feeling confident in your ability to continue. Now, if you've done that or you're doing that and you're already in that pattern currently, I don't want you to sit here and beat yourself up. Like, you looking at that and saying, oh, my gosh, I suck, or like, this isn't working, or no wonder or whatever. You continuing to have all that negative rhetoric, like, it is not helpful. Ultimately, that time is gone and other people created content during that time and you didn't, which means they likely got more traffic than you did. And that is what it is. But, like, you can't go back. So why are we so focused on what we haven't done? I want you to be focused on what you're actively doing and how you're going to make that sticky. And perhaps the most important way to, like, ultimately have that work out in your favor is that you need to enjoy the work that you're doing. You need to enjoy the process of creating content. And some of you are like, but I don't like writing, or I don't like video, or I don't like. Okay, how can we get to a point that you understand what is required for you to show up and you can enjoy parts of it. Because of how you've accommodated yourself, you're not going to love all of it. I don't know a single person that loves all of it. Well, that's not entirely true. Obviously, there are creators out there that, like creating the content itself, is the lifeblood of their entire business. But for the majority of small business owners, content is just a means to an end. It's the way you get in front of people, it's how you get that visibility, it's how you grow traffic, but it's not the actual business. Now, if you are a creator and this is your business, then you probably love it, and I love that for you. I don't necessarily see that as true for the majority. And I want you to figure out a way that you feel comfortable, confident, you feel like you have a rhythm, and you know how to show up. Now, I can't speak for all of you, but I know something that has helped me get back in touch with the desire, I suppose, more than anything else, is really reconnecting with why. Like, why do I want to show up? Why do I want to show up consistently? Why do I want this platform to grow? Why do I want people to pay attention? And, you know, I think there's some parts of this that are universal and we've talked about many of them already. We've talked about its ability to build awareness, visibility, organic traffic to sales channels. But it's also your ability to build community and create connection and have real conversations with ideal prospects and ultimately clients. Social media is such a huge gift. Like, I think about what business was like pre social media, and that wasn't that long ago. It wasn't that long ago in our lifetimes, pretty much every single person listening. Social media didn't exist in your childhood. Like, there were the beginnings of it, for sure, but, like, for a lot of you, MySpace didn't exist until middle school or high school. Facebook didn't exist till high school or college. Like, Instagram was what, 10, maybe 15 years ago. Like, this is new in the world of business, but it is such a massive gift to small businesses. There is no other way on the planet that I'm aware of anyway, that you can reach this many people this consistently for free. For free. Prior to this, if you wanted to reach this many people, you were paying gobs of money to produce a commercial and then gobs more to put it on national television. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I Think appreciating the fact that I get to live in a time where my business has the ability to reach more people more consistently without investment of anything but my time. And not to say that you couldn't reach people with just your time before, obviously, you could go put flyers on cars or go to a networking event or fly to a conference. All of those things are possible. And many of those things are still strategies that people use to this day. But if you are the kind of business that has the ability to completely work from home to work completely online, work with your clients remotely, social media is literally your biggest gift. And so I want you to feel excited about taking advantage of it. Now, I do think it's important that we acknowledge that there is an element of you having to play the game. Every single app has its own things that they want from you, how they want you to show up, certain kinds of content that they favor. And there's definitely like these unspoken cultural norms that if you were to go too far outside of that prescription, perhaps, that it won't work. However, there are always, always exceptions to the rule. For example, Reels tends to be on Instagram, the easiest and best way to reach the most non followers. But I have absolutely seen people double down on their strategy. One guy, for example, his entire shtick is that he tweets something and then posts a screenshot of it on Instagram and then repurposes that into longer form posts on LinkedIn. And this is like every day, like literally clockwork, like every single day. And you're not gonna see a video from him, maybe ever. But he has chosen a way that he knows he can do over and over and over again. And he does it well. And so because he does it well, it's working because it's uniquely him. And not to say that, like, screenshotting a tweet is an original idea. It is not. I am very, very, very well aware of that. But I want you to be thinking about, yes, it's going to be the easiest road to lean into what that particular app favors in terms of content. But if you absolutely hate it, you're never going to create that consistency. And so I do need you to figure out what is going to be the thing that you feel good about that you're willing to show up consistently in. Because the moment that this feels performative, you're either going to question your integrity, which I have absolutely seen people do, or the actual validity of the content you're creating. And if you distrust yourself, then you're definitely going to slow down or stop. You just are. You just absolutely are. You have to trust yourself. You have to feel good about what you're putting out into the world. I keep seeing it happen. You're caught in a loop, waiting for that perfect moment, overthinking every decision and comparing your progress to the curated realities of others online. I've been there too, and I made a shift that changed absolutely everything. It simplified my approach and allowed me to start trusting my intuition again. Truly, everything changed. My business doubled, then doubled again. I rocked $300,000 launches, enrolled over 10,000 students in a single course, and finally started showing up in a way that felt effortless and aligned. Now I'm sharing those exact tools and strategies in my new three part workshop series, Mindset Reboot. Right now you can grab it for just $11. Hurry. Visit creative templateshop.commindset to find out more. Hiring with Indeed. Your search is over. When it comes to hiring, don't go searching for the 1. Just meet your match with Indeed. Get unparalleled access to job seekers with over 350 million unique monthly visitors globally according to Indeed data and an extended reach through Glassdoor. I love that Indeed makes it easy to hire when we've hired. In the past, the process was flex of unqualified applicants. With Indeed, we can target the right candidates for the right position, leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day. Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences, so the more you use Indeed, the better it gets and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.comstrategy hour, just go to indeed.comstrategy hour right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indee on this podcast. Indeed.com strategy hour terms and conditions apply. Need to hire you need Indeed. Now I don't want you to confuse the like feeling comfortable with this dynamic of pressure that we may have because of who's watching. Because I absolutely, absolutely know that many people, myself included, carry fears because they feel like too many people that know them, quote unquote. Like in real life, pay attention to their content and they don't want to get a rise out of people. And so they're avoiding certain subjects, saying specific stories or stating certain claims because they don't want the people that see them at the grocery store and at church and in the car pickup line to know and like I get it. I get it. There's this element of building a business where you're often left to prove that you're the expert, that you know what you're doing, that you have a track record of getting results. And when you're showing those results, especially if you live in a more conservative part of the country, that makes people uncomfortable. But why are we letting other people's comfort dictate where we can go? This is your business. This is your livelihood. You proving your expertise in whatever way is appropriate for the particular industry you're in, that is part of your job. And if you were to like walk into their 9 to 5 job and sit across from their cubicle, they'd probably be uncomfortable too. But you just have a unique weird thing that you do for a living, which is honestly amazing. They're jealous. More often than not, they're jealous. And so I get it. You're never going to get completely away from the caring about what other people think. Anyone who tells you that you can completely let go of that, I think they're full of it. I think they're absolutely full of it. You caring is because you love other people, because you want them to also be successful. You care about them too, not just yourself. But at what point are you self sacrificing for their comfort? I really need you to sit with that. Like, at what point are you self sacrificing for their comfort? Also, I saw this quote, kind of unrelated, but kind of not now. I think we've all kind of like heard the phrase of like, pouring into others and like giving of ourselves. And some people talk about being glass half full, glass half empty, whatever, but I saw someone push back on it and they're like, the quote isn't about pouring. The quote is about your cup runneth over. And I. E. You're really only supposed to give to other people your overflow. You are not supposed to be self sacrificing. Like, you do not need to give up who you are or what you're about or what's required for you to live or thrive, to help or make other people comfortable. It's not required. You aren't gonna have the energy to love and care and put that out into the world unless you are focused on you first. And part of that is being willing to be a little loud online. It just is. It's part of your job. You signed up for this. Now I'm so grateful that I have built a business that gives me the ability to have this level of flexibility where I can set it down, where I can let my social media just lay there until I pick it back up because I have other things at play. I have reoccurring revenue. I have a team that supports me. I have other channels, like my email list, where I can reach out to people to ultimately make sales. I am not fully reliant on social media to make my business run, but it is the thing that helps me attract new people into my world, build visibility, build awareness, ultimately build new leads. And so it is important, but it's not the only thing that's important. I built a business to provide me the flexibility so that I could always prioritize my life ahead of my work. Because I watched so many people in my life, myself included, put themselves in positions where they were bending over backward and had to show up when they absolutely had their heart in another place. The last few months for me have been incredibly challenging, personally. You know, seeing someone you care about in the hospital is one thing. Seeing them to the point that they can no longer communicate and then it feels like whiplash when they recover. Like, it is just so, so, so much. I am so grateful to see just how much improvement my dad has had. But that doesn't change the weeks that I was barely at my desk, barely able to show up, and I did what I needed to do to keep my business running. And I'm grateful for that. And then it was like I was like just over the hurdle of what was some of the hardest parts of it. And I finally felt like, okay, he's finally out of the hospital. He's finally in assisted living. I have cleaned out his apartment. I've gone through all his things. Like, we are at a point where it's going to slow down. And then I had planned. It was an emergency, thank God. I had planned surgery. And, you know, I knew going into it what it would require. I knew I needed time off. I knew I would need to have the ability to do absolutely nothing for at least a period and then have a period beyond that that is a little more chill. But that was all timed. That was all part of the plan. The thing is, showing up online, there are going to be things that you pre plan for because you know it's coming. You know it's around the corner, like maternity leave, for example. I have seen so many people execute flawlessly this plan to keep things running when they step away for something like that. But the majority of people that stop, slow down or step away, it's because it was the unexpected life stuff that they couldn't have predicted. So I'm going to assume for the majority of you this is inevitable. There is going to be some point in your business where you do not have the ability, capacity, mental bandwidth or time to show up because you are a small business. Maybe it's just you and a handful of team members. The majority of you do not have a whole marketing department backing you up. And that's okay. I want you to be able to set it down. I actually think that's a gift. As crazy as it sounds, sure, making it all seem like life is a bowl full of cherries all the time, I think that sounds good in theory. But you truly walking away and coming back to it, it's what makes you human. You are a human that has a real life and you have other priorities. That said, I am here to recommit with you. Any time away wasn't failure. It was just part of your life. It was part of your story. And you can pick up where you left off. Showing up online, creating content, it can be such a rewarding and powerful tool for growth, especially when it's approached with intention and consistency. This isn't about creating five posts a day or showing up every single day for the next six months or whatever. It's not about that. I want you to start small. I want you to stay focused. I want you to remember why you're doing it, and I want you to celebrate progress. No matter how slow it feels. I'm here to help build momentum together. I'm excited to recommit alongside of you now. I do think one of the things that has made this infinitely easier for me is having a plan, like, is having the tools in place to make this happen. And everything that I do on a regular basis on Social is actually pretty much exclusively on Instagram. I have very intentionally chosen to to really nail down one particular platform. And I have packaged up everything that has worked for me over the last year and allowed me to build consistency and allowed me to step away and have it still continue to provide for a period of time. And I put all of it inside my Instagram profit playbook. So if you want to see more about that, you can go to bossproject.com courses. And if you've been thinking about a co op membership, know that that program is available inside. So you're welcome to check out all of the other assets that are also included in the co op. If you head to creative templateshop.com/membership. But if you're looking for a plan of what to implement, what to say, how to get kind of over that hump and like have actual templates to make this easier. You're going to get so much content inside of that program and even more templates and scripts and graphics inside of the co op. So I encourage you to check that out and know that that's a resource for you. I cannot wait to see what you create. I can't wait to see what you recommit to. And if you just need me to send you a little voice memo of encouragement, don't hesitate to reach out. You can find me over on Instagram. Head to Boss Project, my personal profile. Abigail says is linked in the profile. Come send me a message. I would be happy to cheer you on, know I am in it with you and I'm excited to see all that this does for you in the future. Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs to hear it and post on social. You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me at Abigail says and OSS Project so we can share it. Okay. Second favor to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from bossproject. I'd love if you'd join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.com signup to make sure I have all your contact details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me if you'd leave a rating and review. It not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring on quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.