[00:00:00] Josh: Hey friends. Welcome in to the show. This is episode 206. It’s just me with you in this episode. And I wanna share some thoughts on a question that I either get a lot, or I actually just saw recently in my Divi web designer’s Facebook group. If you don’t know, I started a, a Facebook group back all the way back in 2016 for Divi web designers. I still, uh, oversee that group. I’m not terribly active in it now, but I do oversee it.

[00:00:26] Josh: So I see a lot of questions in there. And the question I saw just recently was do I need social media to grow my web design business? Again, I hear so many variations of this question and I, I find myself talking about it a. So I wanted to dedicate an episode to that. So in this episode, I’m actually gonna give you two sets of tips. I’m gonna give you a set of tips for growing your web design business.

[00:00:50] Josh: If you do not wanna do social media, which you don’t have to, that’s the really exciting part, but if you just wanna do a little bit of social media, I’m gonna give you a set of tips that I’ve learned on that front, because that’s more of the route that I have taken being a guy who’s not all over the socials and I’ll tell you about my setup as well.

[00:01:09] Josh: Uh, maybe I’ll do that before we dive into these tips to give you some context, but let’s start with the quick answer. Do you need social media to grow your design business? Quick answer is no, you do not have to have social media. Now we live in a world where outta sight out of mind is very true.

[00:01:29] Josh: So you do need to have some sort of presence, whether that presence is in person or whether it is through email, whether it is through social media channels, whether it is through anything else, networking, whatever it is, you do have to have some sort of presence. So when I say, no, you don’t need social media.

[00:01:46] Josh: It doesn’t mean that I’m saying you don’t need to market your business. You have to market, you have to be visible in front of your customers wherever they are, the benefit of social media. Is that you can be in front of people as much as you want. And it is a constant reminder that you are there and you can share how you help.

[00:02:06] Josh: This actually brings me to the, the idea of just marketing in general and advertising. And so one of my favorite shows my wife and I love madman. Uh, I, we both like it for various reasons. One of the reasons I love the show of admin is mainly because of the advertising age of the sixties. I find that fascinating and I, what was interesting is, uh, just a little, I guess, uh, backstory on advertising.

[00:02:33] Josh: The fifties for the United States was such a boom in consumerism. That’s really, I think, as we look back, I mean, I’m no expert in this, so I don’t, you know, I know a little bit about what I’m sharing, but if you look back advertising really, really exploded in a new way with TV in the fifties, advertising was very different previous to that because it was on print mediums and movies and, and a few other things.

[00:02:57] Josh: But once the, the TVs hit, the household advertising took a, a whole, whole new interesting phase. What is extra interesting about that is the idea of like constant advertisements and a lot of people. There’s one episode where a guy and madman says, well, advertisements don’t work on me. And I’ve learned because I used to have that mentality that advertisements 100% actually do work on you.

[00:03:22] Josh: In fact, I just got a bunch of, uh, chubby shorts for, uh, Chubby is a brand. It’s not because of a chubby person. Uh but, uh, how did I hear about chubby? I got ads and I started seeing them. And then I found out that they had Jurassic park, swim shorts, and I was like, oh, well, count me in now. My wife really likes how I look at, look at ’em so I’m in, but it started because of advertising and I just got hit with some social media ads. The next thing I know I’m interested and now I really love ’em.

[00:03:51] Josh: So it does work long story short advertising does work. So I wanted to preface that by saying again, I’m not saying to not market your business, but I am saying you do not have to be on all the social media channels or technically you don’t need to any social media. For example, I have a lot of colleagues, many of whom who have been on the podcast, who I’ve found out have like no social media presence.

[00:04:15] Josh: My number one favorite example of this is Paige Brunton. Uh, Paige was on the podcast back on. Let’s see, let me look back real quick. Uh, back on 180 or 168. So we talked about content ma uh, excuse me, if I could talk on this episode, we talked about content marketing strategies that fit your fit, your personality. That was back on episode 168. If you wanna go revisit that, but was what was extra interesting about page is that she is not on social media at all.

[00:04:47] Josh: For those of you who might remember the episode, she built a six-figure web design business, all online through Blogging. And she is a square space person. So she learned that that was a niche that she was able to capitalize on. And all she did was consistently blog. So it was SEO related. And that’s a primary example of somebody who, especially, I feel like most women in particular feel like they have to be on Instagram and all the socials in order to, to grow their business.

[00:05:17] Josh: Paige is a great example of somebody who did not go that route and is thriving with zero social media. Now, there are some examples of people who have limited social media too. I just recently had Jenny Blake on the podcast who talked about free time. My gosh, what a good episode that was back on episode 1 95 if you haven’t heard that one.

[00:05:36] Josh: But Jenny’s interesting because she has very little social media. That is just not a, a big part of what she does. Her thing is being an author and different strategies and coaching and consulting. She is not big on social media. She, she does have a basic social media presence, but she’s not posting every day and she doesn’t have a team of social media people.

[00:05:55] Josh: So jenny Blake is a great example of kind of doing it on a very, very basic level. And then some people will do it on a level where maybe they just choose one channel and that’s all they dedicate to, for example. Um, let’s see. I think this episode is gonna be coming up before you hear no, no, she was just on recently, uh, Lindsay Halsey, who is, uh, the co-founder of, um, Pathfinder SEO.

[00:06:19] Josh: And when I asked her, do you want people to go to any social media platforms? The only thing that she does is LinkedIn, which coming from an SEO, person’s probably not a shocker. She’s wor working with people who are serious about business, and she found that most of her best clients and most of her best, uh, type of leads are coming from LinkedIn. So what does she do? Just LinkedIn.

[00:06:41] Josh: So there’s a few examples to say that you don’t need to be on social media at all. If you don’t want to. Like Paige, she’s still marketing through blogging and through her email list as well. I meant to mention that Jenny Blake is barely on social media and has other avenues of making her presence known.

[00:06:57] Josh: And then there is somebody like Lindsay from Pathfinder SEO who just dedicated herself to one type of channel. So I just wanted to throw a few, a few examples out there to you. Before we dive into these two sets of tips to show that there’s a ton of different ways to grow your business without being constantly on social media.

[00:07:16] Josh: Here’s a really important thing to remember, especially for you as web designers, you do not need that many clients as a web designer. And as you grow your web design business, as you learn to be more valuable, the really cool thing about web design is that it is much more a quality over quantity type of business.

[00:07:36] Josh: I personally love that. I would so rather work with like 25 great clients who are paying me anywhere between $5,000 a year and $10,000 a year. And boom, you got a quarter million dollar business right there. If you, even, if you have a couple dozen clients paying you really well, but even if you just have mainly projects that are like 2,500 bucks and you have hosting and maintenance, you can get up to 50 clients and that’s still very manageable with just you or a small.

[00:08:02] Josh: And you don’t need to get new clients every week. So that’s the beautiful thing about this with that idea in mind, I’ve found that social media, if you just need a handful of clients or a couple dozen clients or more social media is more there for social proof and to help land those clients or to keep those handful of clients engaged with you.

[00:08:22] Josh: So you don’t need to promote your stuff to the masses. You don’t need to be a air quotes influencer. And before we dive into these tips, My setup just to be transparent was barely any social media. When I grew my web design business to six figures, do you wanna know what I had back then? This was, let’s see, I hit six figures in 2016.

[00:08:44] Josh: My social media setup was a little bit of Facebook. That was it. I, I did have a LinkedIn, but I like never used my LinkedIn. That’s kind of something I wish I would’ve pursued a little more. However, at the same time, I still grew a six figure business and was able to achieve life balance and, and was able to scale my agency and start teaching.

[00:09:03] Josh: With just some bar, like barely posting on Facebook. So that’s all I had. What I used my Facebook for was mainly for posting results in sharing new projects. That’s literally, basically what I used my, my Facebook for, I never really got into too much marketing or content marketing or, or content. Or educational stuff on there was mainly just showcasing work.

[00:09:24] Josh: So yes, going back, I probably would’ve had a completely different strategy, but it just goes to show you, you can do this without getting hus on social media. And for those of you that were like, well, Josh, it was like six years ago. Is, is it the same now? It 100% is the same. It’s just that our attention is divided more on these different platforms.

[00:09:44] Josh: So you really need to focus on where you can get your client’s attention. So this leads me to the tips for you who do not wanna do social media. So I’ve got five tips and a bonus for those of you who are just you, you don’t even want to touch Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all the, all the things, no social media, which I don’t even know if you could consider LinkedIn social media.

[00:10:07] Josh: We’ll, we’ll wrap that into that bucket here, but it’s not really. It’s not a social platform. It’s more of an online networking platform, which I actually love. Um, if I ever get back into LinkedIn, I think I’ll probably love it because it isn’t so distraction fueled like, um, influencers on Instagram or politics or whatever it is on Facebook. Um, Twitter, same thing. Like. You don’t have to be on those LinkedIn is, is a little bit different from the quote unquote social aspect. But for the sake of this, we will link that in.

1) Utilize Blogging

[00:10:34] Josh: But anyway, you need to get people to somehow know you’re there. So what’s the best way to do that. If you don’t wanna do social media, number one blogging. Yes. You heard it here on the web design business podcast, blogging and 2022 and beyond is still such a valuable form of present presence building without getting into social media. It’s SEO. It’s all about SEO.

[00:10:58] Josh: If you want people who are look, this is the beautiful thing about blogging, by the way, if you are blogging on a regular and consistent basis and you are providing good articles that are maybe tagged and keyworded for the robots on a key tur on a keyword phrase, but you, you write like a human to a human, you will get results. And if you can target that locally in your area, you can even get better results. Or if you wanna blog and go national, I’ve talked a lot about just search SEO, go to Josh hall.co/podcast and search SEO.

[00:11:31] Josh: You’ll get a ton of tips. Uh, you can do long form keywords for like SEO related terms for your potential clients. But anyway, I don’t wanna take us off on SEO, tangent, but blogging is still the number one way to bring people to you without social media. The beauty about that is because people are looking for a service they’re looking for like web designer near me or WordPress web designer, or best web designer in my case, Columbus, Ohio, for example.

[00:11:59] Josh: And you can get people going to your website side note this is how I, me and my family, we just recently hired some painters to paint several rooms in our, in our new, our new house. Um, I we went, we talked to a paint shop and then they gave us some recommendations. I actually tried to reach out to one and it was a nightmare experience trying to get, I never heard back.

[00:12:20] Josh: And so I just Googled, I Googled painters near us. I found one, guess what? They had a nice website. Ding check one, check two. and then I submitted a contact form. I liked how they kind of weeded out the cheap buyers. They said they focus on quality and not budget. Uh, and then I heard right back and it was a smooth process and we hired them to do our painting.

[00:12:40] Josh: So the, the thing is though, I’d never heard about them on social media. It was all through organic SEO from their blog and from their SEO presence. That is a biggie again, Paige Brunton primary example of this, a worthwhile episode to go back to after this one is episode 1 68 with her, where she dishes out her entire content marketing strategy, social media free.

2) Educate

[00:13:02] Josh: Now, number two, on that idea of like blogging or what, however you wanna go about this is to educate. You can share what you know, and you can share what you are learning without being an influencer and having to be on camera all the time. In fact, you can educate your clients and your soon to be clients without even being on camera.

[00:13:21] Josh: You can, you can create a PDF guide on basics of SEO or basics of website conversions, or setting up your Google, my business, whatever it is you can educate. And you could also do, like what I used to do, which was basically just a screen share. So I wasn’t on camera. It was very low pressure. I had a blue Yeti microphone and that was it.

[00:13:39] Josh: And I created education videos on how to use Google analytics, how to grow your business through your website. That’s how I got started with quote unquote content marketing, no social media, just education. So don’t put so much pressure on yourself. When you hear about educating your clients, because you could do this in a number of different ways.

[00:13:57] Josh: Uh, you could do, you could do it on your blog. I would recommend doing that. You can post your education stuff on social media, which we’ll get to for the tips, if you wanna do a little social media, um, but you can educate in a variety of different ways. The other thing you can do, which kinda leads into number three here.

3) Network in Person

[00:14:14] Josh: To network in person, do not forget about the power of in person networking, especially since you don’t need that many web design clients as a web designer to get to six figures and beyond now, this is where education can come in because you could have resources on your website that will get picked up via Google.

[00:14:31] Josh: And a bonus tip I’ll get to later is to make videos of this that are searchable. But when you’re in person, you can say, listen, I’ve had a lot of resources on helping you with like the basics of SEO. And if you get their information, you can email that to them. You can literally take such an organic approach.

[00:14:48] Josh: And yes, this is time consuming. This is not something at scale, but if you take the effort to educate your potential clients, they will often become your best clients or better yet. They’ll become your best sales force. And they’ll be like, listen, I don’t need these services right now, but I have an uncle Bob who has an automotive shop who is in dire straits of a website.

[00:15:10] Josh: Talk to them, you know, your stuff, you just got a hot lead boom. You could land a $2,500, $3,500 contract like that. Hope you heard that snap. Uh, so education, whatever that looks like in person, blogging, whatever it looks like. And again, with this idea of networking in person, I can’t stress this enough.

[00:15:28] Josh: especially I know for those of you, who are you feel like you’re an introvert. I don’t want you to lock yourself in that. Bubble. And then that category, because you can be introverted, but you will get much more comfortable as you do something over and over again, just like I did networking, but there’s meetups, there’s BNI groups.

[00:15:46] Josh: There’s other networking organizations where you can meet people in person and you don’t have to do social media. That’s how to do it. That’s literally how I built my business was a little bit of blogging education and networking. That was it. Now you can network online too. This is kind of like a 0.3 or three point a I guess, or 3.1.

[00:16:06] Josh: Um, you can go into certain groups online, whether it’s online communities like my web design club, for example, it is not social media. It is a community. There’s a very big difference between joining a Facebook group, which is getting into social. Whether you like it or not, a Facebook community is going to bring you right into the social media realm where you probably don’t wanna be, if you don’t wanna do social media.

[00:16:29] Josh: So this is where online groups, whether paid or unpaid, um, forums and other things like that, you could be a big, big benefit, or it can really benefit you if you wanna stay off the social media aspect. So networking in person, person, and online.

4) Build an Email List

[00:16:44] Josh: Number four, here is something that I did not do that I wish I would’ve done. I’ve talked openly about this, a lot, being a big regret of mine, and that is not building an email list. The cool thing about BI building an email list is you can do this, like Paige talks about in episode 180, uh, 1 68. You could do this in a variety of different ways, but if you build an email list from your current clients, you can sell over and over and over to them and you can upsell to your current clients.

[00:17:11] Josh: And for people who opt in, whether it’s a PDF guide or remember how I talked about education materials, maybe you have a, like a little training. You don’t even have to be on video, but you could do like a basic webinar training that people sign up for to get your tips on Google, my business or SEO or conversions, whatever it is, even if it’s 10 people over the course of a few months, that’s 10 people who you can nurture.

[00:17:35] Josh: And you can sell to if one person out of the 10 people who sign up for your little training moves forward with a $5,000 website, that is a $5,000 asset that you just created. If two people sign up for a $5,000 suite of services, then what you made with this training and you got on your email list is now worth $10,000.

[00:17:56] Josh: And if you keep on doing that, you can see how that awesomely spiral into to growing your business. And again, it’s quality over quantity. I don’t expect you to be getting hundreds of people on your email list. Uh, if you’re just networking to, to a few, or just getting a, a few quality people in your client’s sphere.

[00:18:13] Josh: So building an email list and keeping consistent with it. Again, this is, if you’re not doing social media, I almost dare to say, if you’re not gonna do social media, you have to have an email list. I’d say you have to have an email list anyway, but you have to have to have to have one. If you don’t do social media, because otherwise, where are people going to be familiar with you?

[00:18:35] Josh: Like, yeah, you might be in a networking. Um, they might find you on, on SEO if they search for something, but in order to keep top of mind, you gotta email them. You don’t need to bug them. You don’t need to hound them and you don’t need to constantly sell to them. I need to do an episode on email marketing eventually here, which I will, I will put that on the list after this.

[00:18:53] Josh: Um, but just be consistent with emailing there once a month, once a quarter, at the least with updates, trends, success stories, all the things that could then be used to ups. But again, you gotta stay top of mind on dealing with an email list.

5) Get Referrals

[00:19:08] Josh: And then finally referrals. The, one of the biggest underrated aspects of getting more business, especially if you don’t wanna be on social media is you can call it a number of different things, but all call it, referral marketing. And this is basically just asking your current clients for referrals, and there’s a number of different ways to go about this. Uh, what episode? Uh, hold on, let me look back. I should have had these pulled. Uh, I had, uh, let’s see, as referral marketing. Was that 1 8, 9, 1 79. That’s right uh, with Steph Wharton, go back to episode 1 79.

[00:19:51] Josh: And I talked with an awesome online entrepreneur step Wharton about how to get clients through referrals. Now you could do this through social media, by like tagging them and having them, you know, share their assets. But there’s a lot of strategies we talked about in that episode in 1 79. About how to get referrals without doing any social media.

[00:20:10] Josh: So that’s another one that’s worth going back to is episode 1 79, but either way you can use your current client base, whether it’s through email, whether it’s through, um, strategy calls, or just mentioning it when you’re talking to them or in networking groups. One reason I loved my networking group is it was an intentional, weekly time to say here’s who I’d like to work with. If you 20 people know anyone in this category, let me know. And they send you referrals. That is my gosh. It’s gold. What a great way to go. So referral based marketing.

Bonus – Don’t Forget YouTube

[00:20:40] Josh: and then finally a bonus tip here before we move on to some tips for those of you who do wanna try just a little bit of social media is don’t forget about YouTube. YouTube is not social media. That’s one thing I love about it. I guess technically there’s a social aspect to it with comments and there’s the community tab. I don’t know how active that is for most channels and most people, but this would go back to like education because YouTube, you can be very hands off with like the social aspect of it and you can simply post your videos on what you know on YouTube and that will get you traffic.

[00:21:15] Josh: And at the very least it’ll look amazing for potential clients who go to your website. And even if you just have three videos or six videos or, and my in my world, I think nine looks really nice on a page. You could have nine videos, sharing, little things about what you know about again, anything SEO, conversion, Google analytics, whatever. Website tips, whatever it is, have those on there and you will look awesome.

[00:21:40] Josh: You will look like, you know, what the heck you’re talking about, even if you’re early on in your journey, but for those of you who are further along, definitely just take, take a week, figure out some education materials, get those out there. And then don’t, don’t neglect YouTube as an SEO source because that is a massive, massive way to grow your brand by creating one video. And letting it do work for you over and over and over again in the future. That’s how I built my, my brand@joshhall.co.

[00:22:07] Josh: So it’s what I recommend. Those are the tips for not doing social media. We’ll recap those shortly, finally, really quickly for those of you who do have interest in doing a little bit of social media, but you’re just terrified of being that influencer that has to dance on camera and point at things and do things 24 7. You don’t have to do that again. You do not need to do social media if you don’t want.

[00:22:28] Josh: but if you do number one, start with one platform, don’t feel pressured to get on. Like somebody also recently I saw. Said that they just don’t want to ha or they asked, do I need to be on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and all the platforms? No, absolutely not. In fact, you’ll do way more harm than good if you stretch yourself out, trying to appease all these platforms.

1) Start Small

[00:22:52] Josh: Number one, because these platforms want different types of content. Well, pretty much everyone wants video now, but you do have to be really intentional about how you format them. Like I’m only on Facebook and Instagram. And there’s reasons for that Facebook, because that’s where I built my brand.

[00:23:10] Josh: I still have a strong presence there. A lot of web designers are on Facebook, but I actually prefer Instagram much more. It’s just a kind of a nicer place. Although I have to say my Facebook is, is not an issue. Like I have amazing people follow me on Facebook. So if you’re on Facebook with me, I don’t want you to feel like you’re, you know, a bad person for being on Facebook.

[00:23:27] Josh: It’s just. Due to the nature of Facebook, it’s more politicized. It tends to, the reactions are different. So it just lends itself to getting more trolls and more spam and, and stuff like that, especially in groups as you very well know if you’ve been in a Facebook group, but anyway, I’ve stuck with two platforms, but I just recently started my Instagram.

[00:23:48] Josh: I stuck with just Facebook for the longest time for Josh hall.co. So by the way, This is a good plug for if you’re on Instagram, go to Josh hall dot coast slash Instagram. Give me a follow and connect with me over there. If you even shoot me a DM, if you’d like I am active. and check all those, if you like this episode in particular, but start with one, whatever you feel is most comfortable for you.

[00:24:10] Josh: Start there. Like if you wanna go LinkedIn, because you feel like it’s more business related and referral related, then start there. But if you like Instagram and you like hanging out there and you enjoy doing some video stuff and you enjoy getting creative, then do I. If you’re just comfortable with Facebook do Facebook.

[00:24:26] Josh: There’s no harm with that either. Uh, I am not TikTok I’ve, I’ve never logged on, on TikTok, but if that’s your thing, go for it. Do whatever works for you. That’s the big. But start with one, start with one platform, get familiar with it, get a system and process for that.

2) Create SOP’s

[00:24:41] Josh: And then eventually you can scale, which kind of puts us to point number two here, which again, if you wanna do a little social media put systems in place by systems, I mean a somewhat of a schedule for content creation.

[00:24:55] Josh: You don’t have to say like every Tuesday at 10:00 AM, I’m gonna post this. You can, I did that for a while and there’s benefits to that, but I don’t want you to, to make social media daunting, like deadline thing for you, but you gotta be consistent. You, you really do it doesn’t mean you have to post every day, but I, I ideally at least once a week, you need to be somewhat present, if you’re gonna do it successfully.

[00:25:16] Josh: So put those systems in place for content creation. You can always bulk create content, like put a bunch of videos and stuff together, like one day, and then schedule that out for the rest of the month. Boom, you got a month full of content there. You can also do things like create graphics that you reuse. I use Canva for that. Now there’s a bunch of different templates you can use to make things easy. Um, but anything you can do to make your life easier. If you’re gonna post that’s the biggie.

3) Hire it Out

[00:25:43] Josh: Now point number three here. If you don’t wanna do it yourself, good news. You can hire it out. There’s so many people who do social media management at all sorts of levels. And I think it was, um, Brennan ARD, who is a, is a pretty high profile online entrepreneur, who I heard in a summit recently say, if you don’t wanna be the one to do social media, hire somebody to. Make you or, or, oh, I just butchered the quote. I don’t think Brennan will hear this, but I’m sorry, Brennan, let me try that again.

[00:26:11] Josh: It was something like, if you don’t wanna be present on social media, hire somebody to make you present on social media. Bam. There it is. It was something like that. , but that’s what I recommend doing, um, is hire it out. And that’s actually funny enough. It’s kind of the process that I’m doing right now is I’ve got a lot of things in place.

[00:26:28] Josh: I’m enjoying what I’m doing on Instagram and everything. But I am finding myself when I do the posting. I’m spending way too much time. I just figured out recently what a reel is versus what a post is. Like I’m like 80 years old when it comes to figuring out Instagram and stories and real and everything. So I need some help. That’s kind of what I’m doing right now. Transparently is you’ll probably see me a lot more so up on social media, but I’ll probably ironically be spending way less time doing it, cuz I’m gonna hire it out.

[00:26:56] Josh: So that’s the trick. If you want to do social media, but you don’t want to do social media, start hiring it out. Even if it’s just one post a week, pretty much anywhere you’re in business, it’s gonna be worthwhile because you’re gonna recoup that cost. When it comes to figuring out what content you wanna create, this is a whole nother episode, but then it’s like, well, gosh, once a week, that sounds great manageable.

4) Types of Content

[00:27:17] Josh: But like, what do I talk about? Well, the biggest thing is the educational stuff. So if you are educating your. Your clients, you can do that through social media. A lot of my students are doing a great job at this. My gosh, I think about Lisa Williams with Jolie designs who has a lot of educational content.

[00:27:34] Josh: Jamella Jones who’s been on the podcast. Both of them have been on the podcast. Um, they’re sharing like tips on what to do about building your website. Um, I think about uh, Kayla Walters, who, uh, is doing a really good job at good cheer design, who was on recently, who is sharing educational content, but also doing a really good job at showcasing like work and things like that.

[00:27:57] Josh: Um, my gosh, I have ton of examples of folks who are really killing it on social media and sharing what they know, uh, on the YouTube front, uh, Richard Perza, who is one of my awesome students from the Czech Republic. He’s sharing a lot now on social media, but it all leads back to his YouTube videos, which are educational.

[00:28:14] Josh: Long story short educational content is the, is my favorite way to go about it. Cuz there’s no pressure. You don’t have to feel like you’re selling. You don’t have to be an influencer .

5) Be Personable

[00:28:22] Josh: Now, however you do still wanna get personal on social media with the level of comfort you feel like being personal, but then you can also mix in sales material. So, um, I actually took a lot away from amy Porterfield’s course who I was so excited to have on the podcast back on episode 180 5, and we talked about this. She has a course called list builder society, and I think I can share in that course. That she has a different, like I said, of different type of content, educational content, there’s personal content there’s sales.

[00:28:53] Josh: Now there’s more that she shares in the course. I personally like to group it into three different categories, educational personal in sales. So educational content is like how to stuff. Tips personal would be like, here’s what’s going on recently. Just recently I shared openly, uh, about my daughter having a cleft palate surgery.

[00:29:13] Josh: So I shared that on social media. Now some of you may not feel comfortable getting that personal. I totally understand that I have my limits with how personal all get, but it was a big thing and I talked about it. So I was happy to share, uh, that we got out the hospital on surgery went well. So that was the personal thing.

[00:29:28] Josh: And then of course there’s sales, which you gotta be careful with. You don’t wanna be too salesy on social media, but if you are launching a new service, don’t be shy about that. Especially if, you know, what’s helping people, like if you’re gonna launch a new branch of SEO services, let the world know. And as long as it’s mixed in with educational personal content, you’re gonna do wonders with that.

[00:29:50] Josh: And I will. Um, that course, that list biller society course really helped me even at a more, I guess, advanced stage of, of my career. I went back to the basics and it helped me kind of reaffirm my social media game plan and stuff. So if you are interested in Amy’s course list biller society, I am happily an affiliate for that.

[00:30:07] Josh: You can go to Josh hall.co/l B S like list builder. I highly recommend it. It is a, uh, a very affordable course for what you’ll pick up. And my gosh, it’s like a 1 0 1 on online marketing. Highly recommend that. Anyway, mix your content up.

[00:30:22] Josh: And then finally, the last tip for doing some social media is to just be, you kind of goes back to the one platform situation, like do what you enjoy. If I like, when I got on Instagram, I was like, I’m not dancing. In front of a camera, I’m not doing it. It, I would lose all of my students rightfully so it’s not gonna be pretty, um, Have I tried some other things. Yes. Do I have a long way to go? Absolutely. But I’m trying to just do the content that I enjoy.

[00:30:52] Josh: I personally, my here, do you wanna know my Instagram, uh, game plan it’s to mainly share podcast episodes, which we do through clips, little graphics. Sometimes I’ll do a personal video now that we’re settling into my new house. You’ll see me probably do a lot more videos around the house and in my new office and stuff.

[00:31:10] Josh: Which is very heavily, still in the works right now. So, uh, you’ll probably see boxes, but anyway, I’m just doing videos, like sharing what’s up and talking about the podcast. and then if I have any successes or anything like that, that’s a big thing that I’m gonna be doing more moving forward is sharing success stories from clients and students.

[00:31:27] Josh: So you’ll, you’ll see a lot of that as well. Um, but that’s what I like doing. Like I’m not into the pointing videos or dancing videos. I, I just, it’s not my thing. Will I get into some more educational kind of stuff on social media? Absolutely. But often it’s just to say like, Hey, I have a new tutorial on YouTube, uh, or, uh, you know, something in my course or something in the design club or the podcast.

[00:31:49] Josh: So I’m doing what I’m passionate about right now. And that’s my recommendation for you. Don’t get out of your, I mean, get outta your comfort zone, but don’t be someone you’re not on social media. If you’re gonna do it.

[00:32:00] Josh: There you go. Those are some tips. Uh, hopefully you found this really beneficial for those of you who are looking for the answer to the question. Do you need social media to grow your web design business? Short air answer is no, but you can do it on a very, very easy level and a low cost as far as time and investment. Let’s recap those tips real quick. Shall we tips if you do not wanna do social media, number one, blog SEL number two, educate. All the different ways you can educate number three, don’t forget about networking in person and doing things in person.

[00:32:33] Josh: If you’re in a place where you can do that, or if there’s online groups that are not social media, that you can be present in number four, an absolute must. If you’re not gonna do social media is you gotta build your email list and be consistent with it market to them every once in a while. Same thing with all the education, resources and tips and.

[00:32:51] Josh: Number five. Don’t forget about referral referrals. Talk to your current clients, ask them for referrals, a lot of resources on that that will help you on my side@joshhall.co. And then don’t forget about YouTube because even if you get into posting videos, that is a form of SEL and all off of social media.

[00:33:08] Josh: And again, those tips, if you do wanna do some social media, number one, one platform, and then scale number two, put those basic systems and graphics in place to help you make it more manageable. You don’t wanna do it yourself, hire it out, hire some help. Number four mix in different types of content, educational, personal sales, and then finally be you do what you enjoy.

[00:33:29] Josh: Go to the platform that you like being. If you just cannot stand Facebook, don’t do Facebook. Same thing. If you can’t stand Instagram, don’t do Instagram. Um, if you like LinkedIn, go to link, whatever it is do, do you, and just be you with the type of content you create. So I hope you enjoyed this. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[00:33:46] Josh: I’m sure there’s a ton of thoughts you have on social media. I would love to hear those. If you have any other tips, uh, on if you need social media, if you don’t. For that you can go to the post@joshhall.co slash 2 0 6. Share your thoughts there as a comment. I do read those and I would love to hear your biggest takeaway on this as well.

[00:34:06] Josh: If this has helped you, if this has helped you feel like, oh, thank God. I don’t need to be on social media, or I can do it at a very reasonable level. I’d love to hear your thoughts and your biggest takeaway@joshhell.co slash 2 0 6. Thanks for tuning in guys, looking forward to seeing you on the next episode.

[00:34:23] Josh: And got some really fun stuff up ahead on the podcast. So speaking of not social media, keep on tuning into the podcast and subscribe wherever you’re listening. If you haven’t already. And uh, if you do wanna hit me up on social media, hit me up at Instagram. That’s where I’m most active now. Josh hall dot coast, last Instagram.

[00:34:40] Josh: All right guys. Peace.