You’re struggling with clarity, not content.
You've tried content. You've tried social. Nothing sticks. The problem isn't your execution — it's that you're trying to market a business you haven't fully defined yet. Without clarity on who you serve and why you're different, every post becomes a guessing game. This article won't give you another framework. It will show you exactly why organic feels impossible right now — and what's actually missing.
The truth is, you do need to be making content and being active on social media, even if only a little. (This concept will hereby be referred to as doing “organic” for the rest of this article.)
“But Joshua, you literally just acknowledged my problems with marketing and getting new customers. If I do need to market my business, then tell me how.”
I hear you. If I give you an impersonal “framework” with steps, funnels, and bullet points - that isn’t going to be helpful. That’s only going to feed into your cycle of overthinking and lack of action.
So I won’t tell you how, but I will tell you why you need to be doing organic and I’ll help you understand why it all feels hard right now. That’s what this article is about. Read it all the way through to solve these frustrations.
The Importance of Organic
First, let me double down on what I said earlier: you need to be doing organic content.
Yes, there are some qualifications to this statement:
Content doesn’t need to be the primary way you market your business
Getting results from organic will usually be slower than any other method
Organic will probably require more time and effort than other methods
However, you still need to be doing organic. Why? Because organic is the only method that markets your brand for you, passively.
After you post something, you never need to touch it again (though you can certainly choose to do so). However, it will always be there for your audience to see. It’s the only method of marketing that is set-it-and-forget-it.
Your approach to organic doesn’t have to look like TikToks, Instagram Reels, or other fast-paced short-form formats. The way you show up online will be specific to your audience and your business.
However, making sure that you’re actively doing organic does two things for your business:
Organic has compounding returns.
Like I mentioned, organic has the ability to be set-it-and-forget-it. Post something once, and it always exists to promote your business.
How effective your content will be at selling for you overtime will be dependent on the content you post and the platform you post it on.
There are certainly brands that post content and consistently edit and revise over time. But the key is that this isn’t a necessary component of organic, it’s optional.
So for solo entrepreneurs or business founders who are spread thin, organic fits in nicely for how they can afford to market their business.
If you are spread thin, don’t worry - organic doesn’t need to be a your primary method for marketing your business. In fact, most of the time it shouldn’t be for lean teams and busy founders.
However, think of organic as a catalogue. As you post, your building that catalogue, often this is slow and overtime. But the results are exponential. So organic rewards consistency.
And you hear about organic all the time, it’s what I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Other people you see having so much success using Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc. are doing organic marketing. And the 100k+ followers they got “overnight” almost always take 2-3 years of consistent content.
Think of organic content as a trust fund. The earlier you start and the more consistent you invest, the better the return.
2. Adds legitimacy to your brand.
Imagine this: your ideal customer visits your website. They love everything they see. Your messaging speaks to their specific goals and obstacles.
They are convinced your business is the solution to your problem. As one final check, they visit your social media just to make sure you’re legit and not a scam.
Tumbleweeds blow by. You haven’t posted in over a year and alarms go off in the customers head. “Is this person still in business? Will they even respond to me if I reach out?”, they ask themselves. They see a competitor who looks more active online, the customer chooses them.
Even worse if you’ve never posted or have no social media presence at all.
Staying active on social media gives potential customers a level of certainty that you are a human being and that you’re not a waste of their time.
Staying active doesn’t have to look like posting everyday, every week, or even every month. But it does have to look consistent. Would you buy from a business who’s last Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. post was 11 months ago? Or would you think they’re no longer in business?
Bonus: Organic has the ability to positions you as an expert to your target audience. This depends on the type of content you post but usually any educational or explanatory content will have this effect.
The Root Issue
Now that we’ve established why you should be doing organic, let me tell you why you’re facing so much difficulty on knowing what to post or how.
It’s because you lack clarity about your actual business.
If you find yourself just winging it or having trouble deciding what you should post, it’s because you don’t have clarity about either, or both, of these things:
Your Audience
Your Positioning
These have some overlap but they aren’t exactly the same thing.
Understanding your audience is the first step - who you serve and how you help them.
It’s important that you really grasp who your specific audience is. If you say that your audience is “everybody” that really just translates to no one in particular.
So when you create content geared towards everyone, you’re creating content geared towards no one in particular. Unspecific marketing is ineffective marketing.
However, when you do have a specific audience you’re targeting, it becomes much easier to know how you should be marketing and what you should be saying.
For example, let’s pretend I’m an accountant for real estate agents selling residential homes in Philadelphia.
I know that the real estate agents I target will be active on Instagram since they’re selling residential properties, likely showing photos and videos of houses to potential buyers. Therefore, the primary platform I’d market my services on would be Instagram. I’d likely post educational content and case studies showing agents how they can avoid complications in real estate tax law, maximize deductions, and manage cash-flow. I’d use LinkedIn as a secondary platform, even though I wouldn’t need to.
But to maximize the amount of content I create, I’d post short impactful text-based posts to LinkedIn. I’d analyze which core ideas got the highest engagement and use those concepts to create Instagram reels and carousels. I’d post once a week on LinkedIn and Instagram. I’d thoughtfully comment and engage with content posted by agents in Philadelphia and try to start conversations in DMs. That would be my whole organic strategy for my first 6-12 months of business. It’s that simple.
Do you see how I can only come up with this strategy if I’m super dialed in on a specific audience though? Real estate agents in Philadelphia who sell residential properties, that’s specific. Not, real estate agents or even real estate agents in Philadelphia.
And because the target audience in this example is so specific, I know exactly what to say in my marketing because I can think of my audience’s specific goals and pain points. I know how exactly what to say because I know exactly who I’m talking to. This wouldn’t be the case if my target audience was “anyone”. The more specific your audience, the better.
Your positioning is a bit harder to nail down but still necessary.
Your positioning just describes what your unique position is in your market. It describes where you fit among your competitors and the alternatives your customer has.
Two quick questions to answer to identify your positioning:
Why should a customer buy from you instead of anyone else? If your answer is 'quality' or 'we care more,' that's not positioning — that's what everyone says.
Who are you not for? If you can't answer that, you're trying to be for everyone — which means you're memorable to no one and you have no target audience.
Going along with the above accountant example, my answer to these questions might be “1) I utilize deductions for my clients that competitors miss and I have extensive experience with residential property tax law & 2) I’m not for agents who sell less than $200k in real estate per year.”
By answering these questions for myself, I’m given tools to use in my messaging in the case of question 1 - I know what to say to communicate that I’m different. And question 2 helps me filter out my target audience to ensure that any conversation I have with a potential customer is aligned - so I might say in an Instagram reel: “POV: You sell $250k/yr in real estate and you’re still missing out on these 3 tax deductions”.
Again, do you see how clarity and specificity makes it easy to do organic?
If this sounds like you — if you know you need to market but can't figure out what to say — the issue is upstream. Rooted in Strategy is a 90-minute session where we get clear on your audience, positioning, and messaging so you actually know what to post.
