Do You Need Social Media to Grow Your Business?

Quick take:

No, you don't necessarily need social media to grow a business. You do need a reliable way for people to discover you, understand what you know, and eventually trust you enough to buy from you. For some founders social media does that extremely well. For others trust gets built through referrals, reputation, search, a newsletter, a podcast, or an existing network.

The mistake is assuming that because social media can build a business, every founder needs to spend their week feeding LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, or X. Someone starts a podcast they're truly excited about, then the creeping content guilt arrives, I should also be posting every day. Now they're recording a podcast and trying to become a daily social media creator at the same time. For someone who doesn't naturally enjoy social media, that's a fairly efficient way to make them resent content altogether.

There's another way to build this.

Yes. There are businesses with minimal social presence that grow through referrals and reputation, consultants get introduced by past clients, specialized SaaS grows through word of mouth in technical communities. That doesn't mean social media is useless, it means it's one distribution mechanism among several.

If you're a wealth advisor, architect, executive consultant, or specialist agency founder, a prospective client isn't deciding whether to spend $19, they're evaluating expertise. They want evidence you understand their problem and time with your thinking before they're ready to talk. That's where long-form publishing gets interesting.

Usually the comparison is about reach or algorithms. There's another question worth asking: what does this channel require me to do every week. Social media rewards some degree of presence, you post, you reply, you notice what's being discussed while it's happening. Some founders love that, checking LinkedIn is something they'd do anyway, and for them social media is a great fit.

But there's another kind of founder who opens LinkedIn and immediately thinks what am I supposed to post today, or tries to record a Reel and spends ten minutes worrying about their face and background. Maybe an architect who'd rather spend the afternoon on a design problem, or a consultant with plenty to say in a 30-minute conversation but no desire to turn every thought into a daily post. Those are different working preferences, and ignoring them creates a lot of unnecessary content.

This is one reason I like podcasts for expertise-driven founders. You can batch them. Record every second Friday morning, sit down at 9:00, record two or three substantive episodes, finish before lunch. The primary contribution is done, and the recordings move through an established system afterward, edited, developed into an article, turned into a newsletter, maybe a few social posts if you want them, everything scheduled.

Founders often design this backwards, building a podcast calendar, a LinkedIn calendar, an Instagram calendar, a newsletter calendar, a blog calendar, and now they have five content problems. I'd rather build one strong source of thinking. Say a 20-minute episode covers a problem you repeatedly see with clients. That recording can become:

Now social media isn't asking for a new idea every morning, it's distributing thinking already done.

Choosing not to make social media the center of a publishing strategy doesn't mean deleting every account. A useful footprint can still exist, publishing when there's something worth sharing, an interesting section from an episode, a new article, a client question.

Neither is universally better. The useful question is which one fits how you naturally communicate and work.

None of these has to exist alone. The question is what sits at the center.

I'd stop designing the entire marketing strategy around something already known to be unwanted. Not by deleting the LinkedIn account, by changing its job. Instead of social media carrying all your visibility, build the chain the other way: expertise into a podcast into a searchable publishing library into a newsletter into selective social distribution.

Now the podcast captures the raw material, the website accumulates the durable version, the newsletter maintains the relationship, and social media distributes selected pieces without requiring a new internet personality. Some weeks that's two posts, other weeks it's none. That's fine if LinkedIn isn't carrying the business.

Think about the last time you posted something. Did you enjoy making it, even a little, or did hitting publish mostly bring relief that the task was over? That reaction is useful information.

Now compare it with talking about your work. Imagine someone asks a truly interesting question about your industry over dinner. Twenty minutes later, still talking? There's probably plenty of content in there, just being extracted through the wrong format.

No. Authority doesn't come from proving you can produce a lot of content.

For an expertise-driven founder, I'd rather see 30 truly useful pieces that show how they think than hundreds of posts written because the calendar said something needed to go out at 9am.

Publishing frequency matters, but only after finding something worth sustaining. If a system makes you hate publishing three months in, the theoretical advantages of that channel don't matter much. Build around something you'll still be willing to make a year from now.

Can you grow a business without social media? Yes. Businesses can grow through referrals, search, partnerships, word of mouth, email, long-form content, podcasts, and existing professional networks. The right mix depends heavily on the business model and how customers discover and evaluate the company.

Is a podcast better than social media for business? A podcast can be particularly useful for expertise-driven businesses where trust and the founder's thinking influence the buying decision. Social media offers faster distribution and interaction. The better primary format depends on how the founder naturally communicates and which rhythm they can sustain.

Can a podcast replace social media? It can replace social media as the primary source of content, though the two can work together. A podcast episode can provide material for occasional social posts without requiring social content to be created from scratch every day.

How can I market my business if I hate social media? Consider building around channels that don't require constant real-time participation: searchable articles, a newsletter, a podcast, partnerships, referrals, and a professional network. Social media can then play a smaller distribution role instead of carrying the entire strategy.

How often should a founder post on social media? There's no frequency that applies to every founder. If social media is a major acquisition channel, consistency matters more. If clients mostly arrive through referrals, search, or a podcast, occasional strategic posting may be enough.

Founder Publishing — Podcast vs. Social Media

If you've felt guilty because you're recording a podcast but still think you should be posting constantly, this episode is about choosing a publishing rhythm that fits how you actually work.