Looking to dump Facebook, X, and TikTok? This is how to build a brand without using social media

These days it feels like we’re stuck in still water, our minds submerged in toxic muck, flailing our arms in inauthentic looping conversations. Self-talk is like a silent scream of the hateful social media comments (now with even less moderation and more algorithmic manipulation) we are bombarded with day after day, believing information only to realize almost too late, that it was all a complete lie.

We just cannot pull ourselves away from social media. It calls to us deep from the wild, before we dream, when we wake up, while we are on the toilet, in the garden, on the train. We look for entertainment, recipes, morbid curiosities, checking up on our friends, and traveling. And then, just when we finally put our phones away, and stop scrolling, we get pulled back to the abyss by the inescapable and dreaded bleep of endless notifications. If you are like me running a business from your phone, you are stopped dead in your tracks by two-factor authentication.

I needed to clear my mind and test the social media self-discipline I’m always nagging my three sons to have. I couldn’t afford to cleanse myself using that trendy total silent vipassana experience I’ve been reading about lately.

My experiment asked an urgent question: Could I run Birk Creative, my advertising agency, continue to build my professional brand, and find and earn new business, without my iPhone and Pixel, with little—if any social media engagement—all from a rudimentary flip phone?

There was a time when interpersonal relationships and real-time conversations were standard operating procedures. You could share stories with a stranger on the bus, and discuss the headlines in the newspaper written by real journalists and investigative reporters. At the bookstore or record store, the worker behind the checkout counter loved to read or discover new music, so you would share your love of a new book or album coming out by your favorite author or band, and it felt good to share a smile, a laugh and find a common connection with another person.

And then there was the golden age of sales. When you could find a new customer or reach the CEO of some amazing company profiled in the business section of the newspaper, just by picking up the phone and cold calling. Half the time you’d call, you’d get a receptionist or a VP, and they would be excited to ask how you found them, excited for the attention, and they would hear your pitch and take your meeting.

I can see the before-and-after impact of social media on my creative life. My agency’s work was mostly print design—and it was colorful and vibrant, everything was created by a human (or art directed) by me, from the hand lettering to the illustrations, the photography, and the photo retouching all the way to the production layout on my annual reports. Even the music I made with my band Utah Carol was analog, with sounds from a vintage Hammond organ recorded on a cheap microphone.

Before the term “creator economy” had been coined, my productivity as a creative was off the charts without social media. My ingenuity and prowess as a business person were tested daily, I had incredible new business wins, all because I created real-life experiences with real people. I discovered and interpreted real-world “data” that my mind trapped and poured into my imagination.

So, one morning, I abruptly disengaged my “smart” phone and replaced it with a basic flip phone. I figured it would force me to relearn how to get back to real-life human-centered experiences.

It took a week for me to unwind my smartphone from cellular service. (For anyone who wants details about the process, send me a DM on LinkedIn, because the process was ridiculous and I would rather be covered in honey, left to die in the wilderness somewhere attacked by red fire ants than go through that process again).

Along the way, I discovered many strategies I can implement to grow my brand and business that don’t require social media. It does require old-school tactics that some may find confusing. It might even sound awkward to use the words “go back” because, in a recent U.S. election, we swore we are not going back.

Here are powerful strategies you could redeploy to build your professional brand and still bring relationships, networks, and eventually customers to your business, that keep you off creativity-snatching social media.

Carry your laptop not your phone

Laptops do not engender an immersive experience. You are still in the world around you, not dissimilar from a television. The screen is larger and more inviting to explore worlds beyond Instagram and TikTok. There are also more ways to research and learn things with a keyboard, monitor, and notepad right next to you.

While on your laptop, place your phone in a lock box or the glove compartment of your car. Avoid anything that requires 2-factor authentication. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself back with your phone in your hand.

Go outside

Walk around, look up without a phone, and strike up conversations. Not just anyone, of course, but find opportunities to engage. At the airport or on an airplane, there are certain cues that you can pick up from the body language of someone that lets you know they may be open for conversation. In that conversation, quickly pivot to talk about your business, talk about your ideas, and be very clear about what you’re looking to build or to do.

Don’t start talking and not tell people what you want to build, share, or what impact you’re looking to have on people with your business. A retiree once told me he built his company by never being afraid to ask for business. It’s hard to ask for things on social media. Social media lies, and you are more compelled to lie when you use it.

Look for volunteer opportunities

Or apply to board positions. Develop relationships on those boards and network like your business depends on it. When you investigate board positions, ensure that the work that they’re doing aligns closely with your deep passion. Are the people affiliated with the board the kind you want to hang out with?

Make sure the current board members have demonstrated leadership qualities and are connected to brands, organizations, people, or companies that are also well-known, powerful, brands (or adjacent to ones) that are doing things that you care about that actually will help your reputation professionally while you contribute to the greater good.

This is not necessarily the time to challenge yourself and get uncomfortable. Coaches always tell people that being uncomfortable is where the growth is. Not right now when you are trying to unwind from social media and enter the real world.

Find (and pay) a graphic designer

A designer can help you take your words, ideas, and thoughts (record your voice from your laptop on Zoom or Riverside.fm and transcribe your words using Temi.com), put them in a white paper, or better yet, a book.

Get your designer to create a cover and get that book published. Or publish it yourself and set up your own little publishing company like what I describe in my video “How To Launch Your Own Publishing Company on Apple Books.”

You ask: But how can I promote my book or white paper if I don’t use social media? Have you ever heard of direct mail by the US Postal Service? They have tremendous solutions using ZIP Code targeting to send out postcards to people in areas that you’ve decided are the people you want to reach.

For example, if your book of advice is about finance, find out where the wealthiest zip codes are in any state, and with some other demographic research, send out postcards that your new book designer you just hired will create. The designer will work very closely with you to create the right message to ensure the desired outcome is represented on those postcards.

You’re also going to use these postcards as a tool to promote your professional brand. None of this requires social media. This is good old-fashioned, knocking on doors, face-to-face, traditional marketing tactics.

Here’s another great resource for traditional custom direct mail solutions (and the company is woman-owned too https://www.dlh-direct.com/index.php/services).

If you are still unable to unwind completely from social media entirely to build your reputation and brand, you can look to programmatic direct mail as a solution. Pebble Post is doing interesting things with digital media. It will cost you a pretty penny, but maybe at least, you can leave all the digital dirty social media work to them.

Keep your website

It presents your brand, face, message, voice, who you are, what you believe, what you want to accomplish, and what outcomes you’re looking for with the content and brand that you’re creating. Include:

• Your own blog with your thoughts written in essay, poetry, or prose, with images or video. 
• An interview you did on a podcast. 
• Photos and artwork you made.
• Clients you’ve worked with and case studies
• Affiliate marketing too if you have it. Just place the links in a blog post, so it feels natural to the reader.

Email marketing

A must-have, especially when building away from toxic environments like social media platforms. Emails coming from you and your brand are representative of your voice, your message, and your reputation. There is no two-way conversation. No feedback loops. The only hate message you’ll get is an unsubscribe.

You can try Beehiiv and Fodesk. Constant Contact and Mailchimp are less personalized and more generic platforms, but they have lower rates of spam reports than all of them for several reasons I won’t discuss here. You can also look at a blog platform like Substack to have a direct conversation with your audience, but I have yet to figure out how to effectively use this tool.

Guerrilla marketing

Stand on the street corner, and practice your public speaking. Print out flyers with your logo and hand them out like the street musicians or companies that pass out free product samples to visitors on major streets.

Conferences, church, and supper clubs

Another way to be social without media. Unlike social media, where you can hide and pretend you are big stuff even when you are small, conferences require you to be bold, stand out, and talk to people in real life.

If you need to find something to attend that you care about where you can be an expert (which makes it easier to have a conversation), log in to Eventbrite, input keywords or zip codes, and find events taking place in person, wherever you live. Sure, bring your phone to get contact info. But don’t take your phone to record things and post on social media. That is an act of ego, not business.

Turn off music and podcasts in public

Remove the earbuds. You will be amazed, shocked, and maybe even delighted by the conversations you’ll hear and the things you’ll notice because you are present. Run and workout to your thoughts, but also watch and listen to the people around you. Like a baby, you can learn so much by observation.

My favorite thing to do is do what Apple does with their “privacy settings” on their phones: I eavesdrop on other people having loud conversations on their phones. I find this entertaining when I’m at the gym or in transit, but it also gives me creative ideas.

Say hello to older people and strike up a conversation

Older generations have remarkable insights on all kinds of topics. They were born way before cell phones and computers. The old saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Delete your social media profiles from your mobile phone

Only keep social on your desktop computer, which is hard to carry around. As a business owner and entrepreneur trying to grow your brand and your business, invest in talent to manage your brand online. Place the phone in your intern’s or your assistant’s hand.

You can build your brand without social media. It requires more intentional action online. It requires a significant reduction of consumption and a significant increase in creation, collaboration, and tried and true human-centered networking. It also requires extraordinary resistance to the addictive and powerful features built into social media platforms. And if you just can’t let social media go from fear that you will lose everything, deploy what Mark Zuckerberg created for you on Meta: Create your very own AI replicant, release it on social media, and let it run your brand for you.

Back To Life is JinJa Birkenbeuel’s curated playlist on YouTube Music created for Fast Company.