I feel like I’ve been talking about focusing on your target audience not the algorithm for most of 2026 (algorithm < target audience); and I recently sat down for a zoom coffee date catch-up with Nicola Davidson on a similar subject – social media paralysis.
Nicola runs The Success Formula and is a business strategist, brainstormer and overall hype human for women in business (see also the S Club community), we’ve collaborated on workshops and events in the past and have had a coffee date catch-up before (I spy a cool trend here …); and as we were chatting about showing up online recently, the conversation kept returning to a phenomenon so many small business owners experience – particularly in the noisy run up to Christmas and year-end – social media paralysis.
We have all been there. You go onto Instagram (insert your social media app of choice here) with every intention of posting for your business … but the moment you open the app, you are hit with content and distractions (the good, bad and indifferent kind). Before you know it, you are minutes deep down a social-media-rabbit-hole, start second-guessing your ideas and questioning whether your post is polished or clever or “hook-able” enough … overwhelmed by self-doubt, you put your phone down and end up not posting at all. Saying to yourself, you’ll do some more work on it and do it tomorrow …
If this sounds familiar, I want to be perfectly clear about this next part: this state of paralysis happens to all of us! It happens to small business owners, solo founders and yes, it even happens to seasoned marketers and strategists like Nic and me. We believe that normalising (and acknowledging) this feeling is the first step toward overcoming it. Or at the very least moving past it to post anyway.
The panic-posting trap and the fictional “They”.
When social media paralysis sets in, it can sometimes trigger an endless cycle that keeps business owners trapped:
- panic and throw out a random post: feeling guilty about being quiet online, you panic and publish a completely random piece of content just to get something out there
- watch the post fail: the post fails to gain traction or connection because it was thrown together out of guilt, lacking any tie to your core business strategy or target audience
- give yourself a hard time: you internalise the lack of engagement as a personal failure, convincing yourself that you are bad at social media or that your content isn’t good enough
- go quiet again for weeks: you take that perceived failure as an excuse to retreat, finding yourself weeks deep in some kind of unplanned social media break before the guilt builds up and the cycle starts all over again
Through the work Nicola and I do with business owners in Scotland, we see this cycle time and time again and there’s a behavioural pattern underneath this panic-post spiral that feels like it comes from a fear of judgment, a hesitation in trying to please a fictional “they”. We worry about what they will think, whether they will find our content “cringe”, or if they will judge us for putting ourselves out there.
I mean who are they anyway? These “they” critics are fictional or entirely irrelevant to your business goals. They are not your target audience and giving power to a nameless “they” only stops you from making moves. The people judging or cringing are not your target audience, no one I have ever worked with as a dreamy ideal client has ever found my online marketing cringey or judged me for it.
Are you creating before you consume?
If the first step to breaking the cycle of social media paralysis is acknowledging it, then the next step is action; you’ve got to put some boundaries in place around how you use social media.
The platforms are designed and built to capture your attention, it’s their job to distract you and facilitate mega-content-consumption. Expecting yourself to resist that built-in design without a clear system is pretty much a losing battle. One simple question I often ask myself is “are you creating before you consume?”. Or a little self-reminder: “create before you consume”.
Creating before you consume is a pretty simple action – before you open social media, pick up your phone with a clear intention to post your content first. Do not open the explore tab, do not check your main feed, do not look at notifications until your piece of content is created and published. I mean it reads as a simple action, but see above paragraph for the obstacles …
Awareness and acknowledgement is part of the recovery process right?!
It is easy to fall into “procrastination dressed up as productivity” too – scrolling through feeds under the guise of “inspiration” or “marketing research” only to end up taking a trending idea, trying to force it to fit your brand and feeling drained in the process. Not to mention a little sad as it didn’t “perform” the way you felt it should have (target audience beats algorithm remember …).
Sometimes though, part of your social media strategy is in fact consuming content, so I recommend using some time-blocking in your calendar for that and literally setting a timer on your phone for 10 minutes to do the search-and-scroll. Social-media-rabbit-holes are encouraged and allowed for this one.The second that timer goes off though, stop scrolling and drop that phone like it’s as hot as pizza straight from the oven.
Safeguarding your time with timer-boundaries helps make sure that inspiration-gathering doesn’t turn into a two-hour doom scroll that chips away at your confidence and productivity.
Grounding content in strategy over algorithms.
Creating content (and running a content plan) designed for your target audience is much better than the algorithm. You are speaking to real, actual people who have real problems you can solve, not trying to impress an automated algorithm!
You do not need hundreds of thousands of followers to run a highly successful (and profitable) business, you need the right people (target-audience-right) in your online community. For instance, when Nic posted about The Success Formula Club’s recent “Roll With It” networking event – a roller disco meet-up for women in business in Aberdeen City and Shire, she didn’t need a global viral video; she just needed to reach the local women in business to buy those tickets.
When you break your goals down to tangible numbers speaking directly to real people, posting becomes far less overwhelming. It’s also important to remember that no single post has to carry the weight of your entire business strategy, your content exists within a broader ecosystem where every post plays a role in a larger campaign. One post might educate, another might build rapport and another might sell – all to the same key message.
This is probably also the place to talk about you and your personality in your social media strategy. Unless it is in fact your brand, I’d recommend you stop trying to build a hyper-polished brand grid out of fear of looking “unprofessional”. When business owners strip away their personality and thought leadership to look “corporate”, they leave a massive YOU-shaped hole where the good stuff used to live; so show up as your real self across all platforms – including LinkedIn – professionalism and work ethics do not require you to strip away your personality and showing up authentically is precisely what draws the right clients (hello target audience) to you.
Social media trends and selling without “the ick”.
When planning your social media and creating content, make sure to distinguish between short-term tactics and long-term strategy:
- Tactics: using trending audio, clickbait titles or controversial engagement hooks.
- Strategy: knowing who you are, what you are building and how your offer solves your target audience’s problems
If a trending tactic makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to use it – using an algorithm-chasing tactic that alienates your actual ideal client completely defeats the purpose of marketing your business (strategy beats algorithm). When you focus on building genuine relationships and earning your target audience’s attention first, asking for the sale becomes a natural next step rather than a pushy intrusion.
I know most of us struggle with a fear of selling, worrying that talking about our products or services will seem annoying, but to be honest, if you run a business, you are a salesperson by default – and there is nothing wrong with that! Your target audience and prospective clients are actively looking for solutions and waiting for your help, refusing to talk about your services is doing both them and your business a disservice.
To help you a bit more in this selling-area, you can set up your social media profiles to “sell while you sleep,” try:
- draft a brilliant bio – who you are, what you do, who you help and exactly how someone can buy from you
- streamline your links: stick to 1–2 key links max, anything more than two clutters your profile and confuses prospective buyers
- make the most of app-features: keep your Instagram Highlights up-to-date and utilise pinned posts on Instagram or featured posts on LinkedIn and Facebook to highlight your core offers
Coffee Date Takeaways.
This was a big conversation for sure – don’t let that put you off, Nicola and I might talk a lot but that’s because we go into examples and case studies along the way, fundamentally there are key themes to all of our conversations and to build a social media presence that drives real business results without causing overwhelm, think about it in terms of these core pillars:
- business direction: know exactly what you are building, why you are building it and what success specifically looks like for you and your business
- authenticity: show up as your unedited self across all platforms rather than stripping out your personality
- target audience: understand who you are speaking to so you can focus your marketing efforts on your ideal clients
When these three elements align, your marketing stops feeling like a forced performance and starts working as an effective tool for growth.
Still stuck? Reach out via my contact page or my Instagram for support and make sure you follow Nicola on Instagram to stay in the loop for our 2027 collaboration plans!
