Leaving social media behind can be a scary concept.

Whether you’re contemplating it for your personal account, for your company, or a community group, the little troll inside your head might be asking: “Will people think I’m a snob? Will they think I stopped caring? Is anyone coming with me?” 

As a company that relies on its customers to run a sustainable business, the most pressing question is: “Well, if we no longer have social media to attract and keep in touch with customers, what takes its place?”

This question is just brimming with opportunity.

For Keap, we thought about our purpose of facilitating connection and debated which avenues furthered that purpose and which didn’t. 

Next, we considered resilience and which channels would make us stronger when times get tough. (Hint: social media outlets owned by a single, advertising-driven private corporate owner with opaque algorithms do not build resilience.)

We also took into consideration our own unique context as a company. Who are our customers? Where do they get their information? What are their needs? What do they care about? What other companies do they enjoy dealing with?

And finally, we thought about what nourished us personally. We knew we didn’t enjoy the slog of pumping out social media feeds that were fated to be instantly forgotten. So we had to develop an affirmative vision of how working to get the word out might also help us grow as people.

Ultimately, we found two broad avenues we wanted to go down. 

The first was storytelling. We wanted to create connection by sharing the stories about what we’ve been learning on this journey, and to do so in a manner that allowed us more space and depth than is typically found on social media platforms. This newsletter is exactly the kind of thing we had in mind!

The second was community. We wanted to grow through long-term relationships. This principle cuts across everything we do. If you’ve been watching us closely, you might have noticed this idea driving some of the recent structural changes to our newsletter. It has also meant rethinking our partnerships and assessing who our natural symbiotic partners really are. (Partnerships is a whole other topic for another time!)

We have by no means figured it all out, but we now have the time to really invest in our storytelling and community. How we grow our business now feels fully integrated into our company's operating system—instead of a separate chore that we tolerate in order to sustain the work that matters. 

Of course, every person and company is different and the lessons we’ve learned may not apply to every journey.

In any case, decoupling can feel too scary if you’re going at it alone. So, get in touch if that resonates with you. I’d love to hear your thoughts and offer my support.  

Until next time,

– Harry from Keap, Steward-Owner