Most People Do Social Media Wrong; Here’s What Works

Building a social media brand is a total waste of time – until it isn’t.

As with many activities, there’s a threshold you must cross to begin seeing success in social sales and marketing. Posting every so often is fine if you want to stay marginally connected, but a 10X approach is required to experience real production from your activities. I caught a glimpse of this when I grew my LinkedIn profile to over 11,000 followers and used it to generate new business.

Then I abandoned it.

Social sales and marketing is a lot of work, regardless of what all the gurus tell you. To do it well, you must show up authentically every day and engage in ways that go well beyond the typical “post and ghost.” A thoughtful post is just the beginning. Those who find real success show up in the comments and direct messages. There’s a tremendous return from this activity when it’s done well.

Here’s how I would approach social sales and marketing if I were to start again.

1. Define and Write for a Clear Target

No matter how many times I hear it, I still have trouble niching down. It’s a total curse. I see my product as a panacea for anyone in the world. The problem with this is that when you try to sell you everyone, no one pays attention. Specificity is the key to growth in any medium.

“Be specific to be terrific.” – Anonymous

A clear target allows you to dominate a segment. This could be as simple as golf-loving general contractors. You’re golden so long as you can identify 500 people who fit the description. That number will allow you to connect with each person at least quarterly. Some connections will be deeper than others, and that’s ok.

What most people (myself included) often overlook is that dominating a niche is only the beginning. People from outside that niche will knock on your door when they see what you’re doing for your customers. Why? Because all your competitors are shouting a generic message.

In a world of AI-generated sameness, having a clear target that expresses your personality wins out time and again. The key is to bring that personality to all areas of your writing – from posts to comments to private messages. The worst thing you can do is show up differently across the various channels.

2. Show Up Consistently

Quality is important, but consistency is essential.

I stopped posting daily on LinkedIn back in August 2025. I was completely burned out, and I accepted an assignment that would keep me too busy to monitor my social feeds. I did the same thing in 2021 when I became the CIO for Stayable.

My views and engagement dropped almost overnight.

Social media is a 24/7/365 networking event. You’re only relevant while you’re there. When you disappear, everything goes with it. That’s a big reason I stepped away.

In my line of work, I wanted to spend more time generating content that would appear in search engine results and in AI responses. There’s just too much noise on social platforms for that. That is where long-form content comes in.

Social sales and marketing are intensely top- and middle-funnel activities.

Short posts, videos, comments, and direct messages are terrific replacements for ads, but they’ll never replace high-quality long-form videos and articles for building relationships. Long-form content allows your customer to dive deeply into why and how you operate. It’s where they make decisions that you are aligned with their worldview.

Only DAILY posting, commenting, and messaging can compare, and that’s a lot of work.

3. Get Help

There’s a dirty little secret that most won’t admit publicly.

Most influencers – big and small – have a lot of help.

This help comes in the form of content creation, feed management, commenting, messaging, and more. It’s done in-house, offshore, and with digital tools – AI and otherwise. You’re bringing a knife to a gun fight if you’re not using all the help you can get.

I love using VAs and AIs for these tasks, but how you employ their efforts is important. Nobody wants to feel deeply engaged in one part of your funnel, and completely forgotten in another. Keep this in mind as you design the system.

For now, I’m taking a social media break. I don’t have the time or energy to do it well. However, I may return in the future, but it likely won’t be at the same level that I was operating during my peak audience growth phase. I just have different goals now.