Why I'm Rebuilding My Crochet Business Without Social Media

Hello, and welcome to the Crochet Business School podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Thomas, and today I want to talk about why I'm rebuilding my crochet business without social media. I built my original crochet business using Facebook, but now several years later, it's a whole different story, and I'm building it up again, and social media ju- isn't part of it So my crochet business has gone over a few different forms from when I started. When I first started out, it was selling what I make.

Um, I mostly sold, like, practical household items like, um, hot pads, baskets, um, reusable, um, cotton pads, shower puffs, that kind of thing. And then I transitioned into being a crochet pattern designer. And both of those, I used Facebook. Facebook was my primary means of growing my business both times, and it did really well.

I hosted crochet alongs. I sold my patterns. I built up my following. I built up my group, and it went really, really well.

And I was on the verge of being able to drastically reduce my hours at my day job to do it full time. Then it all went wrong. Um, my marriage broke down, and it left me In too much of a state to run my business at all. It completely collapsed.

So it meant I was stuck at the day job, and although my income didn't completely disappear, 95% of it did. So it took two years before I was able to come back. It wasn't even a case of being ready, it was just being able to, you know, face picking that up, being mentally able to have the energy to do it. So it wasn't the fact that I didn't want to, it was I just couldn't.

But when I did start to come back, when I did want to get my business up and running again and, you know, making those sales, growing my audience again, I found that social media was impossible. A lot changed in two years. So this was now a couple of years ago. And what social media does, if your account is dormant and you're not using it, it's very, very difficult to revive because the social media, it punishes you from not posting.

And so despite having thousands of followers, very, very few people saw my posts, and on top of that, times had changed, and video was being pushed much, much more. But at that point, although I was ready to get things going again, I wasn't yet able to face doing videos and getting enough content out to really get things pushed. Because if you want to revive an account, not only do you have to do your regular posting, not only do you have to make engaging content, which video is now king, but if you want to increase the people who are seeing your content, you need to push out a hell of a lot.

I did not have the mental capacity to do all that at that point. Like, I can't do this. I don't want to start a brand-new page because I'd have the same problem even b- with a new page. It's like, how do I do this instead?

It's like the realization that what worked for me the first time round was not gonna do it the second time. It just was not happening. You know, you could do other things. You can post two, three, four, five times a day.

You can do the networking. You can do the posting in other groups. That worked the first time round. It does not work now It's now it's not about the frequency of posting so much as the engagement you get per post.

That's how, not just Facebook, but how all social media works now. You have to get people watching those videos, you have to get reactions, you have to get comments, and if you're not showing that you can engage people and keep them interested in your content, then the platforms just go, "Nah, we're not gonna show it to anybody else because it's not interesting enough to keep people here." Because that's the aims of these platforms, is to keep people on their platform and scrolling, and if you, they don't find any interesting content, they may switch off and go do something else But all kinds of other things stopped as well.

Facebook punished people with links in their posts. That has been happening a hell of a lot more than it used to. You used to be able to put in links and it would be fine. Now, if you've got a link in your post, that post is getting pushed down the feed.

It doesn't get seen. Now groups don't allow as much posting and sharing of other content in their group because it's now so linked to identity that you can't allow other people's content in a group, otherwise the group content that people want to get seen doesn't get seen. So there's a, a lot more gatekeeping involved. It's much more difficult to share your crochet, whether it's what you make or patterns or anything, it's very difficult now to find groups to advertise that in.

And networking, the algorithms got wise. It used to be that you could get onto networking threads, team up with several other businesses, go and leave comments on each other's posts and it would give you a boost. The algorithm is now so smart it knows when you're doing this and it will punish you for it. So now you can't network either.

All the tricks that used to work no longer do I'd love to know if this echoes your own experience. Are you finding it difficult to grow your social media with all these restrictions in place? And, you know, th- that switch from social media to entertainment media, that has been a big shift, and it's... means you have to be entertaining, and you have to prove it for the algorithms to take an interest.

And I real- I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna play that game. And so I had to make the decision that social media was not the place where I was going to be able to rebuild my business. So what's the alternative?

The alternative is SEO, and that's Search Engine Optimization. Basically, getting found through Google, getting found in search results. Uh, fortunately, I have a lot of resources behind me. You know, I've been doing this for a long time.

I've built up a lot of content that can get found on Google. My Etsy listings get found on Google. Ravelry listings get found on Google. I've got a YouTube channel, all gets found on Google.

I've got blog posts, they can be found on Google. But, and the big but is, if they are properly optimized. That means getting, um, titles, descriptions, metadata, um, in the content itself, having all that properly optimized so that it can get found, and that's what my content wasn't. I would post the links on Facebook.

I would s- put the links in newsletters. That's how people found my content. But although I still have my newsletter, I don't have my social media now. So I still have my Facebook group, but that's still not massively engaged.

I don't post on the page anymore because what's the point? So having removed social media, how do I now get found on Google to get my business properly back up and running? And, you know, it's no small thing making that decision to walk away from social media. It's the quickest way of building a business.

At least it was. Not so much now. But building it through getting found in search results, it's slow. It's really, really slow, and it takes time because you've either got to create the content from scratch, or you've got to optimize what you have.

Neither of them are quick And so it's been a long slog trying to get all my content optimized, and I'm still doing it. But I also know that it's working. I've accepted that I'm playing the long game, and by optimizing, going through all my old content and getting it ready so that it can be properly found in search results, what I'm doing is making sure that I'm here for the long term, that over time, the traffic that I get to all these different things, my blog, my YouTube channel, my Etsy listings, my Ravelry listings, all of that will increase over time mean, it's, it's a very hard sell to tell people that don't do social media, do SEO, and actually, it doesn't have to be either/or.

This comes down to what you prefer. Now, if you enjoy making videos and being on social media several times a day and putting those posts out, then great, it will work perfectly for you. But I'm not minded that way. I'm not really an outgoing person.

I'm quite introverted, and I find social media quite draining, so I just cannot put out that kind of content. But what I can do is sit in front of my laptop for several hours and optimize away of my different listings. That, for me, is the better option It's a very slow process because SEO, it takes time. You know, getting the things right is easy.

Getting all the things into your titles, your descriptions, and everything that you need is not that difficult. The hard part is having the patience to wait to see the results, because it can take months. It takes time for these search engines to register that you belong on their front page of their search pages. It takes time for them to get to know your site, that you're not a spammer, that you are someone who is trustworthy, and to serve up your content in their search results.

It's not quick But because I'm in this for the long term, this is my business. I'm not getting rid of it. I'm not backing off. This is what I want to do, and it has been for a very long time.

So for me, this is worth that time and effort to put that work in and make sure that I get found through the search results. Now, the benefits of this is that I'm no longer reliant on going to find my customers. Now, when it's social media, you have to go find people. You have to, you know, get social in groups to get to know people, and they get curious about you and start asking questions.

You have to go post links to new videos. You have to give them the links to your latest, um, product that you want to sell. You have to put yourself in front of them all the time with new content, so they get found in the feed, and it's called the feed because you have to feed it constantly. But you are constantly putting content in front of people hoping to get seen, and they'll go, "Yes, I want to click on that."

When it comes to search engines, it's the opposite way around. You put the content out there, and it's there. It can be found for years to come, and then when someone puts the right search term into Google, they will get sent your content. So instead of having to constantly serve this feed so that, you know, you can get seen by people and you can, you can find your customer, people find you, and they find you with intent when it comes to SEO.

So it's - although it takes time to take effect, it's a much - it's much more suited to me, to the introvert, because you don't have to put yourself out there as much. You've gotta create good content. You've gotta create trustworthy content. But as long as you do it right, you'll get found in the search results, and over the long term, it's much more reliable because you don't have to show up every single day.

You don't have to show up every single week as long as you're putting out consistent content. You don't have to do this performance to engage people and entertain people like you do on social media. It's - to me, it's a much more relaxed way of doing things, and it suits me brilliantly My personality type means I can no longer make a business work on social media, but I can make it work through SEO. The times have changed massively from when I first started.

I've accepted that, and I'm now looking at what my s- alternative is, and the alternative is getting found through search results on platforms like Google, and do that by creating content that will live for years. It's evergreen and can get found. This is my alternative, and it's what's going to work for me. This is the type of thing that I am teaching in The Blueprint.

It's the type of thing that I talk about on my Substack. So if you do want to hear more about how you can grow a crochet business without social media with evergreen content, then come and follow me on Substack. My account is free to subscribe to, and it's crochetbusinessschool.substack.

com. The link is in the show notes. So thank you for listening, and I shall see you next time for the next episode.