Looking to dump Facebook, X, and TikTok? This is how to build a brand without using social media
I know there is a way to build a professional brand without using or being on social media! I’ve got a plan for you!
These days it feels like we're stuck in still water, our minds submerged in toxic muck, flailing our arms in inauthentic looping conversations, our own self-talk is like a silent scream of the hateful comments we are bombarded with day after day, believing information only to realize almost too late, it was all a complete lie. We just cannot pull ourselves away from social media. It calls to us deep from the wild, before we dream, when we wake up, while we are on the toilet, in the garden, on the train, for entertainment, recipes, morbid curiosities, checking up on our friends, traveling. And then, just when we finally put our phones away, stop scrolling, and we think we may have swam ashore, we get pulled back down to the abyss by the inescapable and dreaded bleep of endless notifications and if you are like me running a business from your phone, you are stopped dead in your tracks by two-factor authentication.
I needed to find to way clear my mind and test the social media self-discipline I’m always nagging my three sons to have. I couldn’t afford to cleanse myself using that trendy total silent vipassana experience I’ve been reading about lately.
My experiment asked an urgent question: Could I run Birk Creative, my advertising agency, continue to build my professional brand, find and earn new business, without my iPhone and Pixel, with little—if any—social media engagement all from a rudimentary flip phone?
There was a time when interpersonal relationships and real-time conversations with real people, in real life, was our standard operating process. You could share stories with a stranger on the bus, and discuss the headlines in the newspaper written by real journalists and investigative reporters. At the bookstore or record store, the worker behind the checkout counter loved to read or discover new music, so you would share your love of a new book or album coming out by your favorite author or band, and it felt good to share a smile, a laugh and find a common connection with another person. You could be sitting on a park bench, strike up a conversation with a stranger, no matter how old or young, and they wouldn’t immediately think you were going to rob them.
And then there was the golden age of sales. When you could find a new customer or reach the CEO of some amazing new company after reading a report in the business section of the newspaper, just by picking up the phone and cold calling. Half the time you’d call, you’d get a receptionist, or a VP, and they would be excited to ask how you found them, excited for the attention, and they would hear your pitch and take your meeting.
Before social media invaded our species, I can see the before and after of my creative life from my company Birk Creative. My agency’s work was mostly print design—and it was colorful, vibrant, everything was human and hand created (or art directed) by me, from the hand lettering, to the illustrations, the photography and the photo retouching all the way to the production layout on my annual reports. Even the music I made with my band Utah Carol was analog, with sounds from a vintage Hammond organ recorded on a cheap microphone.
The word “creator” hadn’t even been coined yet! My productivity as a creative was off the charts without social media. My ingenuity and prowess as a business person was tested daily, I had such incredible new business wins, all because I created real life experiences with real people. I discovered and interpreted real world “data” that my mind beautifully trapped in all the right places, which poured into my imagination and out came incredible creativity.
So, as I continued to ruminate in my current sad disposition, one morning, I abruptly disengaged and deprecated my "smart" phone and I replaced it with a basic flip phone. I figured it would force me to relearn how to get back to real life human-centered experiences. It took a week for me to unwind my smart phone from cellular service, and for anyone that wants to know the down and dirty details about the process, I’m happy to share. Just send me a DM on LinkedIn, because the process was ridiculous and I would rather be covered in honey, left to die in the wilderness somewhere in South America, and attacked by red fire ants than to go through that process again.
But in the process, I discovered that there are many strategies that I can actually implement to help my brand and business grow that don't require social media. It does require going back to old school tactics that some may find confusing. It might even sound awkward to use the words go back because in a recent U.S. election we swore we are not going back! That being said, there are some powerful strategies you could redeploy to build your professional brand and to still bring relationships, networks and eventually customers to your business, that keep you off creativity-snatching social media.
Carry your laptop with you, and not your phone. Laptops do not engender an immersive experience. You are still in the world around you, not dissimilar from a television. The screen is larger and more inviting to explore worlds beyond Instagram and TikTok. There are also more ways to research and learn things with a keyboard, monitor and notepad right next to you. The experience of using a laptop versus a phone for business is not as isolating. While on your laptop, place your phone in a lock box or the glove compartment of your car. Avoid anything that requires 2-factor authentication. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself back with your phone in your hand.
Go outside of your workplace, coworking space, coffee shop or wherever you are working. Walk around, look up without a phone and strike up conversations with people. Not just anyone, of course, but find opportunities to engage in conversations. At the airport or on an airplane, there are certain cues that you can pick up from the body language of someone that lets you know they may be open for conversation. In that conversation, quickly pivot to talk about your business, talk about your ideas, and be very clear about what you're looking to build or to do. Don't start up a conversation and not tell people what you want to build, share, or what impact you're looking to have on people with your business. A retired business person once told me he built his business by never being afraid to ask for the business. It’s hard to ask for things on social media. Social media lies, and you are more compelled to lie when you use it.
Look for organizations you can volunteer at or apply to a position on the board of directors. Develop relationships on those boards and network like your business depended on it. You know the saying “Location, Location, Location” when it comes to real estate? Apply this same mantra to networking. When you investigate board positions, ensure that the work that they're doing aligns closely with your deep passion. Are the people affiliated with the board the kind you want to go hang out with? This is not necessarily the time to challenge yourself and get uncomfortable. Coaches are always whining and telling people that “being uncomfortable is where the growth is!” Well NOPE. Not right now when you are trying to unwind from social media and enter the real world! When it comes to joining a board, make sure the current board members have demonstrated leadership qualities and are connected to brands, organizations, people or companies that are also well-known, powerful, brands (or adjacent to ones) that are doing things that you care about that actually will help your reputation professionally while you contribute to the greater good.
Find (and pay) a graphic designer that can help you take your words, ideas and thoughts (record your voice from your laptop on Zoom or Riverside.fm and transcribe your words using Temi.com), put them in a white paper or better yet, a book. Get your designer to design a cover, get that book published. Or publish it yourself and set up your own little publishing company like what I describe in my video “How To Launch Your Own Publishing Company on Apple Books.”
You whine: But how can I promote my book or white paper if I don’t use social media? Have you ever heard of direct mail by the US Postal Service? They have tremendous solutions using ZIP Code targeting to send out postcards to people in areas that you've decided are the people you want to reach. For example if you're coming from Illinois, your book of advice is about finance, you could find out that the wealthiest zip code in Illinois is 60043. You can target that area, with some other demographic research, and send out postcards that your new book designer you just hired will create. The postcard will promote your book and you can send those cards as direct mail. You will have the designer work very closely with you to create the right message to ensure that the outcome you're looking to get is represented on those postcards. You're also going to use these postcards as a tool to promote your professional brand. None of this requires social media. This is good old-fashioned, knocking on doors, face to face, traditional marketing tactics. Here’s another great resource for traditional custom direct mail solutions, and the company is woman-owned too! https://www.dlh-direct.com/index.php/services. If you are still unable to unwind completely from social media entirely to build your reputation and brand, you can look to programmatic direct mail as a solution. Pebble Post is doing interesting things with digital media. It will cost you a pretty penny, but maybe at least, you can leave all the digital dirty social media work to them.
You still need to have a website, which presents your brand, face, message, voice, who you are, what you believe, what you think, what you want to accomplish and what outcomes you're looking for with the content and brand that you're creating. What should you include on your website you ask?
Your own blog with your thoughts written in essay, poetry or prose, with images or video.
An interview you did on a podcast.
Photos and art work you made.
Clients you’ve worked with and case studies
Affiliate marketing too if you have it. Just place the links in a blog post, so it feels natural to the reader.
Email marketing is a must have, especially when you are building away from toxic environments like social media platforms. Email marketing is not social media and never will be. Emails coming from you and your brand are representative of your voice, your message, your reputation. There is no two-way conversation. No feedback loops. The only hate message you’ll get is an unsubscribe. Your subscribers can take it or leave it. They are in control and so are you. Your message is your truth, and unless you decide to create an AI avatar of your brand, your output from your newsletter is true because it’s really you! There's Beehiiv and Fodesk. Constant Contact and Mailchimp are less personalized and more generic platforms, but they have lower rates of spam reports than all of them for a number of reasons that I will leave for another article. You can also look at a blog platform like Substack to have a direct convo with your audience, but I have yet to figure out how to effectively use this tool.
Church, supper clubs, and conferences are another way to be social without media. Unlike social media, where you can hide and pretend you are big stuff even when you are small, conferences require you to be bold, stand out, and talk to people in real life. If you need to find something to attend that you care about where you can be an expert (which makes it easier to have a conversation), login to Eventbrite, input keywords or zip codes, and find events that are taking place in person, wherever you live. Sure, bring your phone to get contact info. But don’t take your phone to record things and post on social media. That is an act of ego, not business, unless your job is social media!
Delete your social media profiles from your mobile phone. Only keep social on your desktop computer, which is hard to carry around. Remember my #1. As a business owner and entrepreneur trying to grow your brand and your business, invest in talent that can manage your brand for you online. Place the phone in your intern's or your assistant's hand. You can build your brand without social media. And in the long run brand building over time, like kama sutra, versus premature ejaculation, it’s way more lucrative, satisfying and believe it or not, can protect your ego against imposture syndrome.
So it is possible to build a professional brand without using social media. It requires more intentional action online. It requires a significant reduction of consumption and a significant increase in creation. It also requires extraordinary resistance to the addictive and powerful features that have been built into social media platforms. And at the end of the day, if you just can’t let social media go, use what Mark Zuckerberg created for you on Meta: Create your very own AI replicant, and release it on social media, and let it run your brand for you.
Back To Life is JinJa Birkenbeuel’s curated playlist on YouTube Music created for Fast Company.