Can You Run a Business Without Social Media?

A client of mine told me recently that she gets physically nauseous whenever she thinks about posting on social media. Not anxious, not annoyed. Nauseous. And when I asked if she was serious, she said: "I'm completely serious. I just don't want to do it."

‍That conversation is the reason this panel exists.

‍Because I think a lot of small business owners are somewhere on that spectrum. Maybe not nauseous, but exhausted. Or posting consistently and hearing nothing back. Or quietly wondering if the algorithm is even worth their time anymore, and feeling guilty for thinking it.

‍So I brought three people together to ask the question out loud: can you actually run a business without social media in 2026? And if so, what does that look like?

‍Here is what Susan Trumpler, Jen Jones Donatelli, and Astrid Bracke said.‍ ‍

The playbook changed and most people are still running the old one

‍Susan Trumpler is a reformed social media evangelist, her words. She spent years teaching women entrepreneurs to show up on social media to attract clients, and somewhere along the way she started questioning whether it was still working.

"The playbook changed," she said. "The one that said you have to post to meet people, you have to run funnels. It's all changing."

Her first question when someone tells her they are scared of disappearing without social media is simple: how has it been going for you? Are you posting and getting engagement? Are the people you want to reach actually seeing you?

Because if the answer is no, the fear of leaving is protecting something that is not working anyway.

"Your fear about not being visible," Susan said, "is really that you are not visible, or you're not visible in a way that people are engaging with you."

That reframe changes the whole conversation. The question is not whether to leave social media. The question is whether social media is actually doing the job you think it is.

You do not have to wait to be discovered

‍Jen Jones Donatelli spent nearly twenty years in media, working across feature films, nationally syndicated talk shows, and publications including Glamour, TODAY, and Business Insider. Now she teaches small business owners to get that same kind of visibility for themselves, without a PR firm and without a big budget.

Her premise is that most small business owners think press is for someone else. Someone with a bigger story, a more interesting angle, a more established brand. And she spends most of her time dismantling that idea.

What she has noticed about the clients who actually land press and podcast spots is not that they have more credentials. It is that they stopped waiting for someone to find them and started putting their own story in front of the right people.

She also made a point that stuck with me: when you do land a placement, treat it like the resource it is. Share it in your newsletter. Reference it in your outreach. Use the whole thing. A press mention that quietly disappears is a missed opportunity, and the relationship with the host or editor is worth tending.

People can feel you in 3D through an article or a podcast appearance before they ever reach out to you. Every placement builds a more complete picture of who you are before someone hits your website.

The two-week break she is still on

‍Astrid Bracke runs her small business mentoring practice on three words: slow, gentle, and profitable. She left social media in 2021 when she got fed up and took what she thought would be a two-week break. She has been on that break ever since, deleted her Instagram account, and has built a successful business in the years since.

Her work now is specifically in newsletters, Substack, and marketing without social media, which means she has lived the experiment her clients are considering.

Her approach to newsletters cuts through a lot of the noise around email marketing. When she talks about consistency, for example, she goes back to the actual definition of the word.

"Consistency is about quality, not frequency," she said. "The social media world hijacked the word and turned it into a posting schedule."

That one sentence reframes what a lot of small business owners think they are supposed to be doing. A newsletter that goes out once a month and is worth reading every time is more consistent, in the truest sense, than one that goes out every week and says nothing.

On Substack specifically, she sees it as a different kind of platform from a traditional email list, because it has its own discovery ecosystem built in. People can find your writing there without you driving all the traffic yourself. For a small business owner who does not want to depend on social media, that matters.

The question underneath the question

One of the threads that ran through the whole panel was the difference between being findable and being visible, and whether the two are the same thing.

Findable means that when someone is already looking for you, they can find you. Your website shows up. Your name comes up in a search. But findable only works when someone is already in motion toward you.

Visible means people encounter you before they knew they were looking. A podcast interview, a press mention, a newsletter someone forwards to a friend. Visibility puts you in front of people who were not searching for you yet, but recognize you when they appear.

A business can be findable and invisible at the same time. Great website, good SEO, no new people discovering you. Visibility is how you break that ceiling, and none of the channels Susan, Jen, and Astrid teach require a social media algorithm to work.

What to do this week

All three panelists landed on the same starting point when I asked what someone could do right now.

Take inventory of where your clients actually came from. Not where you think they came from. Go back through the last ten clients or customers and ask yourself how each one found you. Referral, press, a podcast, a newsletter, an in-person event, a Google search. Write it down.

Then do more of what is on that list and less of what drains you.

That is not a revolutionary idea. But most small business owners have never actually done it, and the answer tends to surprise them. Social media is rarely the top source. Word of mouth, existing relationships, and search tend to show up far more often than anyone expects.

If you want to hear the full conversation, the replay is on YouTube. Susan, Jen, and Astrid each go deeper into their lanes, and the Q&A at the end pulls out some of the most practical moments of the hour.

Watch the replay here: https://youtu.be/AlfIyMW89Js

FAQ

‍Can a small business really grow without social media? Yes, and many already do. Word of mouth, search, email newsletters, press, and podcast guesting have all been building businesses longer than social media has existed. The key is choosing the channels that match how you actually work and sticking with them.

‍What is the first step to marketing without social media? Trace where your last ten clients came from. The answer usually points directly to the channels worth investing in, and it often has very little to do with social media.

‍Is a newsletter worth starting if nobody knows who I am yet? Yes, because a newsletter is how people get to know who you are. The list grows alongside your visibility, not after it. Starting small is the point.

‍What makes Substack different from a regular email list? Substack has its own discovery engine, which means people can find your writing there without you driving all the traffic yourself. For a small business owner stepping back from social media, that built-in discoverability is worth considering.

Want more of this kind of small business strategic thinking in your inbox? Join the Thinking Ahead newsletter →