How to Quit Social Media Forever + Still Grow Your Online Business (Yep, You Can!)

Last Updated on November 16, 2022

Want to quit social media forever but worried about how it will affect your business? We hear from a lot of entrepreneurs who are exhausted by daily posting and not seeing returns on the time they put into social media — but they mistakenly believe they don’t have a choice. But you do! Here’s how to grow your online business AND quit social media.

I’ve got an important message for you today that might sound revolutionary, even impossible to believe. You might even shake your head, thinking I’m completely out of touch…but bear with me, because I’m going to prove this to you: 

You do NOT need social media to create a successful business. 

It is 100% optional (and probably not even as effective as you’ve been led to believe), even for online businesses. 

You are allowed to quit social media forever, and your business does not have to suffer. Meaning: you don’t have to choose between being on social media and having a growing, abundant, consistently profitable business. 

In fact, you might even find that NOT having social media and using other, more reliable ways of increasing organic traffic to your website, will actually give you MORE of what you want. More clients. More sales. More meaningful connection.

Despite what all the big marketing gurus like to tell you (mostly because they have something to sell you), social media is not necessary for running a successful online business. 

Can social media be a fantastic tool? Totally! 

Are there all sorts of people making crazy money on social media? Yes, there are! 

But there are just as many downsides to social media (maybe more) and way more people just spinning their wheels and wasting their precious time on social media than there are big success stories. 

Is social media important for business? Well, it might be important for YOUR business, if you choose to use it and you use it well. But I’ll say it again: social media is NOT MANDATORY for a successful online business. 

If social media is working for you, and you love it, I’m not here to convince you to quit social media forever. As I always say: if it’s working, and you love it, then great. 

But I will ask: Even if you’re making some money using social media … do you actually love it? 

Because a lot of entrepreneurs don’t even entertain the possibility that you can have both money and enjoyment. They assume that activities that drain them, or make them feel awful, or aren’t in alignment with their values or desires are sometimes just “the price you have to pay” to be successful. And I will challenge that assumption all day long. 

Look, I understand that social media is not all bad. 

But if you’re like me and just don’t like it … if you find yourself thinking at least a few times a week, Ugh, I wish I could just quit social media forever … if you want to find other effective ways to promote your biz and sell your services or products that feel great to you .. then this post is for you. 

I’m just here to present the facts, and an alternative for those of us who don’t feel so great about how social media affects our lives, and would like to use it less, if at all. 

The Ugly Truth About Social Media As A Business + Marketing Tool 

We hear from a lot of marketing gurus about how critical social media is for running a successful business, especially if it’s online. 

But what’s the reality? Is social media important for business? Is it all it’s cracked up to be?

1. The content you share on social media has a SHORT shelf-life.

In an eye-blink (less than 24 hours, in most cases) your latest post/Live/reel/whatever is old news and everyone has moved on. It can be an exhausting cycle when you pour hours (days even!) into the tiny piece of content you share on social media only for it to become irrelevant moments after you publish it.

2. Social media employs impossible-to-keep-up-with algorithms.

If you’ve spent any time trying to leverage social media for your business you already know the algorithms are constantly changing and sometimes a complete, unsolvable mystery. 

One day you’re riding high on your Instagram horse, sharing beautiful photos and witty captions, getting tons of likes and new followers, and then BAM! Instagram changes everything and you either spend hours and hours (sometimes days!) crafting the perfect reels, or get completely buried and forgotten. 

Worse still, you wake up one morning to realize no one is seeing your posts anymore, and you have no idea why. These moments are enough to drive just about any business owner to quit social media forever. 

3. Your ROI with social media is often dismal.

There is technically no cost to get started on social media — that is, the platforms are free, so it seems enticing for new business owners. But social media success requires a HUGE investment of your time (or paying for someone else’s time) and, depending on your business, may require substantial investments in equipment, props, travel, etc. 

I’m not telling you to NOT invest into your business — you absolutely must spend money to make money. But I am telling you to make smart investments that will result in bigger returns, and social media is typically not the smartest investment. 

4. You don’t own, or have any control over, your social media accounts. 

There are countless stories of social media accounts being deleted, or shadow-banned, out of no-where, for no apparent reason, with no explanation or apology and nothing left for you to do but rebuild. 

Imagine having over 25k Instagram followers, bringing you a ton of revenue, and one day you wake up and your account is just gone. Poof! In my interview with Shaunda Necole she shares her story of how that happened to her and how she recovered from it. 

If you’re relying on social media as your main source of clients/revenue, your business could completely dry up, pretty much overnight. 

The Even Uglier Truth About Social Media + Your Wellbeing 

There’s an even more compelling reason to quit social media forever, and that’s the negative impact it can have on your mental, spiritual, and physical health. 

Multiple studies have found a strong connection between heavy social media use and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. 

Some of the ways social media negatively affects our wellbeing:  

1. Highly-curated selfies (and those damn filters!) lead to unrealistic beauty standards and lack of self-confidence. 

We compare our real-life-no-makeup-working-from-home-in-our-pajamas selves to the very-much-staged, touched-up, professional photos we see on social media, and we instantly feel less-than. This is especially difficult for women on whom there is more pressure to live up to certain beauty standards, but men suffer from this comparison trap, too. And the weird thing is that it actually doesn’t matter if you know that it’s filtered or staged; your brain still sends the message, Not enough.  

2. FOMO! Knowing what everyone else is up to all the time — especially when they’re only sharing the good times — can lead to a constant sense of discontentedness with your own life. 

The fear that you’re missing out on certain things can impact your self-esteem, trigger anxiety, and fuel even greater social media use — keeping you in that addiction cycle and making it even harder to quit social media. 

3. Social media use can lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness. 

According to one study, participants who used social media for more than two hours a day were twice as likely to report perceived social isolation than their peers who spent less than 30 minutes a day on social media. The same study found that participants who visited social media platforms 58 or more times a week were three times more likely to experience perceived social isolation than those who visited social media sites less than nine times per week.

4. Cyberbullying — it’s not just mean high schoolers. 

Bullies, trolls, a-holes — whatever you wanna call them, they are an unavoidable feature of social media. As much as we tell ourselves “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” it’s just not true, and dealing with online attacks can take a huge toll on our mental and physical well-being. Not to mention the massive amount of time it takes to clean up the mess that can be created when someone attacks your online reputation. 

I can’t promise that you’ll be completely safe from this sort of problem if you quit social media, but it’s much less likely that you’ll run across these types of bullies. 

Also, you still might experience trolls on your blog (or other non-social media platforms) but the beauty of building your business on your own website is that YOU control it and you can delete comments and ban people forever much easier on the platforms that you control vs. social media. 

5. Social media use shrinks your brain. 

You’ve probably already seen the research about how overuse of social media has been shrinking our attention spans, but there is new research being done that shows social media is literally shrinking our brains. Like, making them physically smaller. That alone may be reason enough to quit social media forever. 

As an entrepreneur, your mind is one of your most important assets. You need it to keep generating those great ideas! Just like you do for the rest of your body, you should focus on regularly building it up and keeping it as healthy as possible. Not damaging it with unhealthy habits like too much social media. 

6. It’s designed to be highly addictive … and it is.

Social media is designed to keep you addicted, to keep you coming back for more and more, by activating the reward center of your brain. It’s constantly playing on your emotions (specifically fear, lack, the need for constant affirmation, and rage), making it nearly impossible to not be unhealthily affected.

It’s important to remember that we don’t get a pass on any of these risks just because we “only” use social media for business. None of these studies differentiate the intention of the user — use is use. And even if there were a difference, it’s nearly impossible to separate business and personal use on social media. It all becomes blurred and intermingled, and that’s very much by design. 

I Quit Social Media Forever, And You Can Too — A Roadmap

I talk a lot about how I gave up live launching because it was so stressful to me and taxing to my central nervous system. It just wasn’t how I wanted to live my life. I gave up social media for the same reasons. 

I toyed around with less posting, limiting social media time, etc. Then, last year, I made the decision to just quit social media forever. I knew it was the right thing to do for me, but it still felt like a leap of faith. What if all those platforms were right? What if social media is important for business? 

But I did it, anyway.

Here’s how I did it

I put up 9 final placeholder Instagram posts on my profile, all of which direct to my website, blog, main product, or other offerings. So I technically have an Instagram profile, just in case someone is searching for me on that platform, but I use the same posts like a portfolio that directs people to where we want them to go. (If you want to see how it’s set up, you can visit my last Insta post from last year here.)

It shows that I’m a real business. But is serves as our welcome mat. It’s not where we live. 

I want a business built around me, and for me. My needs, my family, my desires, my body, my feminine cycle. A business that works for me and supports me living my best life. Not a business that keeps me in a constant stress cycle and reduces the quality (and possibly length) of my life. 

The result? I haven’t posted (or even looked at) social media for over a year, and my business is growing. 

I’ll share my strategy with you!

The key components to my more-success-with-less-stress formula are designing a digital offer (that is aligned with my values and created for my ideal customer) which I sell through an Evergreen Sales Funnel, and maximizing the reach of my website/blog with a kick-ass SEO strategy. 

With my evergreen sales funnel, my products are technically always available for my customers to purchase, eliminating the stressful feast-or-famine sales cycle of live launching. I use my blog to deliver great content to my audience, and an effective SEO strategy is increasing organic traffic to my site and ensures that I’m constantly attracting my ideal clients into my evergreen funnel. 

If there’s a part of you that knows there’s got to be a better way, listen to your intuition. Trust your desires. The vast majority of things in life are not either/or, but both/and. There’s a way to have what’s best for your wellbeing and what’s great for your business. 

And if you want to learn more about exactly how I quit social media and build a thriving online business — check out my November Live Workshop below ! 

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Social media platforms would LOVE for you to believe that you can’t get by without them, but the truth is, you don’t need them at all. 

There are the two pillars I’ve used to create a successful, blissfully social-media-free online business:

• A digital offer/course that resonates with your ideal customer (and is soul-aligned for you), and
• A website + blog with rock-solid SEO

This November 2nd at 1 pm EST, I’m doing a LIVE 3-hour virtual workshop, How to Build an Online Business without Social Media in 2023.

You’ll learn how you can quit social media forever and STILL have the tools that will show you how to grow your online business.

It’s only $33. Reserve your spot here!

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Frequently Asked Questions About How to Quit Social Media Forever + Still Build Your Biz