6 Ways to Build Your Brand Without Social Media

You log onto your favorite social media outlet just as you normally do everyday…no biggie, right? That one that you spend so much time on, building your brand. Always trying to make sure your content is perfect, from hiring a photographer to a make-up artist just to get the right pic to post. From creating the perfect staged scene with branded products to writing the perfect caption every single day. No pressure.

So you log on only to get a message that reads something like, “Your feed cannot be refreshed”, you try again…same message, you close out the app and try again…same message, you turn your phone off and back on because well maybe it just needs resetting…only to find the same message. Your heart drops a little. You check your internet connection, but nothing is working with getting your social page up. You head over to another social media platform to hopefully get the tea. This is where you get your cup full, the gram’ is down. You think to yourself, “wait…what?”…it can’t be, but yeah it is. It’s DOWN. Your heart sinks some more and you wait.

What do you do? Nothing. Nothing you can do, but wait my friend. Wait and pray that when it does come back up that your account is the same or that it even still exists the way it did with all of your posts and most importantly all of your followers.

You honestly don’t know! And that feeling of not knowing and feeling like you have no control over the content you’ve built, all the connections you’ve made, and most importantly what about your audience? How are they going to find you if your account is deleted. For some people their entire business and brand is designed around their audience, so they’d be in trouble.

This should be enough for you to want to start making changes and planning ahead. Since we are friends, I need to tell you, take control! You have options. You’ve seen how this can effect your business and brand. Be that person who can pick up and carry on in the event that something happens to your social media channels. So how do you plan for something like this? You plan now while it’s up. Build your following up and connect so deeply with your audience that you can take them with you wherever you go.

Here are 6 Ways to Build Your Brand Outside of Social Media.

Get Your Own “Self-hosted” Website – The difference in “self-hosted” and a website hosted by a third-party, is you own the website. It’s yours! No one can tell you what to put on it and no one can take it down. You pay a small fee per month for a hosting plan and that’s it. Rarely do hosting companies go down, I’ve not seen one since I’ve been in this industry, so you should be good.

Network! Network! Network! – Attend an event or conference with people in your industry. Be sure to update all your marketing collateral and get creative so that you stand out, especially with your business cards. Have these things in hand and ready to hand out.

Start a loyalty or rewards program via your website – Get people to your website to sign up for your loyalty program so they have something special to come there. If you are an influencer and you work with a lot of brands, have some brands to sponsor a few items that are worthy as bait to get your people to be a part of your program. You can usually do this at little or no cost to you. You may also want to think about a referral program if you have a service or a product based business.

Start a local meetup based on your industry or niche – What’s the one thing that makes you or your product different, build a meetup around that. I can tell you that if you have a good following, getting people to show up won’t be hard. You may want to make your first meetup a chance for them to come out and get to meet you in person. Meetup.com is a very valuable source for creating a meetup. If you wanted to stick to online, consider creating a Facebook group, but for the sake of this post we are talking ways to build outside of social. 🙂

Create and email sign-up! – This is huge! HUGE. It’s the most direct form of communication that you can have with your audience and most small businesses, brands, and influencers miss this opportunity because they are too busy wanting to build on social. Having an email list has been proven to be one of the most powerful ways to reach your people. Just think for a second, how easy it’d be if your social channels were cut, you could just hop on and send an email to your audience to let them know where to find you going forward. Piece of cake, right? Create a sign-up form on your website and while your actively posting on social, bait them to sign-up for your email list. Remember the people who sign-up are your true fans because they are giving you permission to be in their inboxes, so that means they want to hear from you.

Focus on building that 1,000 – Research shows that if you build your first 1,000 true fans, that you are winning! The keywords here are “true fans”. True fans are the ones who will always support you. They are not just customers they have become clients, the ones that return to you for your products or services over and over. These people are so happy with you that they will promote you for FREE and if they promote you for free, they are definitely coming with you where ever you go.

The key take away here is it’s okay to work hard and build your social media channels, but just be smart in doing so. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Sounds cliche, but it’s true! Business has existed way before any social media platform, so sometimes in order to beat the downfalls that may come, you have to adopt some of the old ways and that is to build outside of social media. If you have a good following on social media, your goal is to led them to your own platform, your own website. This way you don’t have to worry about what’s to come if your social media channel goes down. Plus you can interact with them more on a personal level. Never put all your dependence in the social media basket, you don’t own that! Stay focused on creating a great product or service and build your following.

Remember to keep your hustle strong! Thanks for reading!! Let me know of some other ways that you are building your brand outside of social media and don’t forget to share this post.

See ya next Wednesday! 😉