Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
Key Takeaways
- Social media strategy for solopreneurs suffers due to focusing on impressions and reach over meaningful engagement.
- Audit your relationship with social media: measure time spent consuming versus creating content.
- Get clear on what your content’s job is: awareness, engagement, or sales, and tailor it accordingly.
- Think about your unique perspective and share genuine insights rather than following trends.
- Post less frequently but with more intention, focusing on quality interactions over quantity.
Feeling guilty for not posting enough, anxious about your engagement dropping, or quietly relieved when you had an excuse to skip social media this week? This episode cuts through the noise around algorithms and reach to help you figure out what your content is actually supposed to do – and how to make it work for your business.
Key moments
[00:50] The real reason reach and impressions are down – and why it matters less than you think
[02:42] Why a post with 200 impressions can outperform one with 10,000 – a real example from Anna’s own feed
[04:10] The doom scrolling trap – how you’re getting all the costs of social media with none of the benefits
[05:16] Why passive consumption damages your confidence while active creation does the opposite
[05:40] Tool obsession – why no platform or AI tool will fix an underlying clarity problem
[07:06] Step one: audit your relationship with social media before you touch your content strategy
[07:26] Step two: get clear on the specific job your content is supposed to do
[08:37] Step three: lead with genuine point of view, not what you think you should say
[09:10] Step four: post less, think more – and why one real post beats five filler posts
[09:46] Step five: measure the right things – DMs, conversations and actual enquiries
Key resources
- Access the free diagnostic: A free 10-minute assessment to get a personalised report on what’s working, what’s running on autopilot, and where the real leverage is in your business. Find it at onestepoutside.com/diagnostic
- Book a free call with Anna: onestepoutside.com/call
1:1 Coaching & Mentoring
For experienced founders and independents who want a trusted thinking partner – not a programme or a group, but direct, personalised work at the level you’re actually operating at. Anna works with a very small number of clients at any one time.
Why your social media strategy isn’t working
Okay, so today I wanted to have a bit of an honest conversation about social media – and specifically about the pressure that so many independents I work with put on themselves. Because I hear the same thing constantly: “I know I should be more consistent” or “oh my gosh, my engagement has dropped, the algorithm has changed, nothing’s working anymore, what do I do?”
And I really want to push back on some of that – not to let you off the hook, or the algorithm off the hook for that matter – but because I think we’re asking the wrong questions.
The algorithm isn’t the problem: why impressions are the wrong metric
So let’s start with the thing everyone is panicking about right now: reach and impressions are down on LinkedIn, Instagram, everywhere. The organic reach that worked two or three years ago just isn’t what it was. And yes, that is true. Platforms change, algorithms shift. And the reality is that more people are posting more content, which means the competition for attention is real.
But what I want to challenge is the obsession with impressions as the metric. I remember this from my content marketing days in corporate – it was the same thing. At the time it was banner ads, which sounds absurd now, but we had these big celebrity banner ads and everyone was obsessed with click-through rates. But that wasn’t the goal. The goal of the banner was to raise awareness of the campaign, the celebrity, the new products, the new sub-brand, whatever it was. So if your goal is awareness, you can’t measure that through click-through. Likewise, impressions are useful if you’re looking to reach more people and grow your audience – but they’re not so useful if you’re wanting to sell.
From my own experience – a few weeks ago when you listen to this, though hopefully I’ll have done it again – I put out a post that got a couple of hundred impressions. And I could hear that little voice: “oh my gosh, it’s failed, it’s flopped.” By any conventional measure of social media performance, that’s a bad post. But it led directly to a DM from someone who wanted to work with me. And that was the goal of that post. I knew putting it out there consciously that it was a bottom-of-the-funnel post, a sales conversion post. “This is what I’m seeing with a client I’m working with right now – does that resonate?” It was very much not something that somebody would openly comment on or share. It was something I wanted to lead to a DM. And it did. That was the whole point.
So I really see that the people who are most frustrated with social media right now are the ones who’ve been optimising for the wrong thing. If they’re chasing reach, likes and follower counts, they’re missing the actual job that the content is supposed to do – which is to get the right person to raise their hand. That’s what we’re trying to do, right? Build a business and hopefully sell something.
A post that reaches 10,000 people who will never buy from you is worth way less than a post that reaches 200 people and makes one of them think: “huh, that’s exactly what I need to hear.” And I heard the same thing from a client just a few weeks ago – she put out a post and immediately got someone saying: “hey, I’ve seen your post and let’s talk.”
The doom scrolling trap: how social media is costing you without paying you back
The second pattern is something we all fall into too, which is the doom scrolling trap. I see this constantly with clients. They tell me they hate social media, they find it draining, demoralising, a waste of time. And then when we look at how much time they’re actually spending on it, it’s hours. And it’s not even posting – it’s scrolling, comparing, watching everyone else’s highlight reel and feeling worse about their own progress.
So they’re getting all the costs of social media – the anxiety, the comparison, the time – without any of the benefits, because they’re consuming rather than creating. And the research on this is pretty consistent: passive consumption of social media is what damages your well-being and your confidence. Of course it does. Active creation – putting something out into the world, having a real conversation, getting a genuine response – tends to do the opposite. It’s really energising when it’s real and you get that interaction and response.
So the problem isn’t social media again. It’s the relationship you have with it – and specifically the habit of using it to compare yourself to others rather than to actually connect with them.
Why no tool or platform will fix an unclear content strategy
The next one is the tool obsession, and it isn’t just social media. I want to zoom out a little bit because the same pattern shows up with every new tool or platform. I’ve seen it recently with Daniel Priestley’s Score App, with AI tools, with email marketing platforms, fancy CRM systems. The big one right now is AI. Someone discovers a new tool, invests in it sometimes significantly, and then expects it to solve an underlying problem that the tool was never going to solve.
A tool is always going to amplify what’s already there. If you have clarity on what you’re saying, who you’re saying it to and why they should care, then yes, the right tool can help you say it more efficiently to more people with better results. But if you don’t have that clarity, no tool is going to fix it. It just helps you produce unclear content faster and at greater expense. I have clients – and I’ve done the same myself – who’ve spent thousands on software they barely use. And the reason they barely use it isn’t that the software is bad. It’s that they jumped to the tool before they even knew what question they were asking, before they’d solved the underlying positioning and messaging problem.
So the question is never which platform. It’s always: what do I actually have to say, and is it genuinely useful to the person I’m trying to reach?
How to build a more intentional social media strategy as a solopreneur
Okay, so what all of this comes down to is being far more intentional about what content actually looks like. I come from a content marketing background, so I started out being super strategic – but even I very easily get caught up in different channels, algorithms, comparison and so on. It’s really important to come back regularly to: am I putting out content intentionally, to the right people, in the right places? And does it feel good for me?
So here’s what I’d suggest.
Step 1: Audit your relationship with social media
First, audit your relationship with social media before you even look at your content strategy. How much time are you spending consuming versus creating? What does your mood look like after 30 minutes of scrolling versus 30 minutes of writing something you actually believe? My goodness, it’s quite different – and the data is probably pretty clear.
Step 2: Get clear on what job your content is supposed to do
Second, get clear on the job your content is supposed to do. Is it to build awareness with new people? To stay warm with existing connections? To generate direct inquiries? To establish credibility in a specific area? Different jobs require different content. And most people are trying to do all things at the same time and doing none of them well.
I watched an interview recently with Grace Andrews, who was head of brand strategy at Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO. She’d stepped aside and was building her own personal brand, and she was really clear: goal number one, get a book deal. Goal number two, get more speaking gigs. Goal number three, hit 100,000 YouTube subscribers. And for each of those, she had steps and milestones for how she was going to get there. That’s where it starts – the bigger goal of what am I trying to achieve? I had a colleague who wanted to grow his LinkedIn profile because he wanted to sell courses. To sell courses, you do need volume – and so that was his intentional focus. But you have to get clear on what you’re trying to do with each piece of content in each channel.
Step 3: Think about what you actually have to say
Third, think about what you actually have to say – not what you think you should say, not what’s trending. Do you genuinely believe something that most people in your industry don’t? What do you see in your clients that they can’t see in themselves? What frustrates you about the conventional wisdom in your space? That’s where the good content lives. Your point of view, your philosophy, what you stand for – that’s what’s going to attract people who share your values and will get the best results from your work.
Step 4: Post less, think more
Fourth – and I know this sounds counterintuitive in a world that rewards consistency – post less, think more. It’s true that if you pump out content, especially when starting out, you get a lot of data and through sheer grit, followers and impressions. But a post that you’ve genuinely thought about, that says something real and takes a position, is going to outperform five filler posts every time. Not necessarily in impressions – but in the thing that actually matters: the right person reading it and thinking, “okay, I need to talk to this person.”
Step 5: Measure the right things
And finally, measure the right things. Not impressions, not likes, but DMs, replies and conversations that started because of something you wrote. And ultimately – though it’s a lag indicator – if you’re getting the inquiries, the sales, the book deal, the speaking gigs, whatever you’re optimising for, those are the metrics that tell you whether your content is actually working.
So if you recognise yourself in any of those patterns – getting caught up in the algorithm, falling into the doom scrolling trap (one of my personal hacks there is putting books everywhere I go – by the bed, downstairs by the TV, taking them with me rather than reaching for my phone – and it is shifting how I’m feeling), the tool obsession – then here’s the summary: one, audit your relationship with social media. Two, get clear on what job your content is supposed to do. Three, think about what you actually have to say and be honest. Four, post less, think more. Five, measure the right things.
Thanks so much. If you want a clear picture of where your business actually stands right now – not in terms of social media impressions, but across the dimensions that really matter – then the free diagnostic is a great place to start. It takes about 10 minutes and gives you something really specific and actionable to work with. Head over to onestepoutside.com/diagnostic.
Organic reach has declined across most platforms, including LinkedIn and Instagram, as more people are publishing content and competition for attention increases. But for most solopreneurs, falling reach is less of a problem than measuring the wrong thing. If your content is reaching the right people and prompting genuine conversations or enquiries, a lower impression count is largely irrelevant. The question to ask isn’t “why are my impressions down?” but “is my content reaching the people I actually want to work with?”
The metrics that matter most for independent experts and solopreneurs are direct messages, replies, conversations that started as a result of something you posted, and ultimately enquiries and sales. These are what indicate whether your content is doing its actual job. Impressions and likes tell you about visibility; they tell you very little about whether the right people are paying attention or taking action.
There’s no single right answer, but the principle of posting less and thinking more consistently holds. One post that takes a clear position, says something you genuinely believe and speaks directly to the right person will outperform five filler posts. Frequency matters less than intentionality. Rather than asking how often to post, ask what you actually have to say – and whether each piece of content has a specific job to do.
The research on this is fairly consistent: passive consumption of social media – scrolling, comparing, watching other people’s highlight reels – is what tends to damage well-being and confidence. Active creation, by contrast, tends to do the opposite. If social media feels draining, it’s worth looking at the ratio of time you spend consuming versus creating. You may be getting all the costs of social media without any of the benefits.
Only if you already have clarity on your positioning and messaging. Tools amplify what’s already there. If you’re clear on what you’re saying, who you’re saying it to and why they should care, the right tool can help you reach more people more efficiently. But if that clarity isn’t there yet, no tool will fix it – it will just help you produce unclear content faster. The more useful question to resolve first is: what do I actually have to say, and is it genuinely useful to the person I’m trying to reach?
It depends entirely on what you’re trying to achieve. Awareness content, nurturing existing connections, generating direct enquiries and building credibility in a specific area all require different approaches. Most solopreneurs try to do all of these at once and end up doing none of them well. Start by getting clear on the one job you want a given piece of content to do, then create specifically for that goal. Point-of-view content – what you genuinely believe, what you see in your clients, what frustrates you about conventional wisdom in your field – tends to be the most effective for attracting the right people.
Start by auditing your relationship with social media before you even think about your content strategy. Track how much time you’re spending consuming versus creating, and notice how you feel after each. Practical habits that help include replacing phone scrolling with reading – keeping books in the places you’d normally reach for your phone – and setting specific, time-limited windows for social media rather than leaving it open throughout the day. The goal is to shift from passive consumption to intentional creation.
