E103: Beyond Social Media: Build an Audience You Can Actually Reach

What would happen to your creative business if Instagram suddenly stopped showing your work, your Etsy traffic dropped or your account disappeared into the algorithm abyss?

Social media can still be brilliant for helping new people discover your art, products and ideas—but it was never designed to carry the full weight of your business.

In this solo episode, Kaylie explores how artists, handmade sellers, digital creators and creative educators can build a calmer, more resilient marketing system that doesn’t depend entirely on constantly posting.

She introduces a simple three-layer visibility system.

You’ll also hear practical examples of how this system can work for artists, makers, digital product sellers and creative educators—without building a complicated funnel or trying to be everywhere at once.

Take Kaylie’s free two-minute quiz to discover how exposed your business may be to an algorithm change and receive one clear recommendation for what to strengthen next:

https://spellweavercreativestudio.co.uk/borrowed-vs-owned-quiz/

If this episode helps you look at your marketing differently, follow the podcast, leave a review or share it with another creative business owner.

Transcript

Kaylie Edwards: [00:00:00] Hello, lovelies. It's Kaylie, and welcome back to the Creative Juggle Joy. Today, I want to talk about something I think a lot of creative business owners are quietly worrying about, or not so quietly worrying about. What would happen to your business if Instagram suddenly stopped showing your content?

What if your Etsy traffic dropped? What if TikTok changed direction again? What if your account was restricted, hacked, or simply disappeared into the algorithm abyss? Would the people who follow you still know how to find you? Would they know how to hear from you? Would they remember what you offer? And most importantly, would you still have a way to turn that audience into actual customers 

Because social media can still be brilliant for visibility, but it is not stable enough to carry the whole weight of your creative business [00:01:00] anymore. And before anyone panics, I'm not going to tell you to delete your Instagram, throw your phone in a lake, or start communicating with customers by owl.

This isn't a social media is dead episode. It's about recognizing that social media is only one part of a healthy marketing system. The goal isn't to abandon visibility, it's to stop confusing visibility with business security. For a long time, social media has been presented as the way to grow a creative business.

If you need more sales, post more. If you, if your launch isn't working, post more. If you want more people to discover your art, products, or services, post more. Post reels, post stories, post carousels , use trending audio, show your face, create behind-the-scenes content, engage for half an hour before posting and half an hour afterwards.

And apparently, if you're still not making sales, you simply haven't pointed at [00:02:00] enough floating text while limp sy- lip syncing your business trauma under a ring light. It's bloody exhausting. And for artists, handmade sellers, designers, illustrators, you name it, social media is rarely the only job.

You're also making products, creating artwork, photographing it, uploading listings, answering customers, packing orders, writing emails, managing your website, and learning new software, or, and doing your accounts. Trying to remember whether you're actually eaten lunch

Then you're expected to become a full-time content creator on top of everything else. It's no wonder people are exhausted and burnt out or quit and go back to working for someone else. A recent Creative Boom stu- survey of 882 creative professionals found that 69% had experienced burnout in the previous 12 months And [00:03:00] research from Patreon has also found that more than seventy percent of creators on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube describe their monthly income as unpredictable.

So this isn't just a marketing problem, it's an energy problem, and for many people, it's becoming an income stability problem too. Social media still has an important role. It can help new people discover you. It lets you share your process, personality, products, and ideas. It can create conversations, introduce you to collaborators, and help you reach people you would never have met otherwise.

But the platforms themselves now make it very clear that following someone does not guarantee you'll see their content. Instagram doesn't have one single algorithm. Different parts of the app, including Feed, Explore, and Reels, have different ranking systems. TikTok itself also recommends content using mixture of signals based on people's behavior, interests, and interactions.

[00:04:00] That can be fantastic when the system puts your work in front of someone new, but it also means that having followers is not the same as being able to re-reliably reach those followers. That is an important difference. You can have five thousand people following you and still launch something that barely gets seen.

You can have a post receive thousands of views without generating a single sale, and you can have a much smaller audience that buys regularly because they understand what you do, trust you, and know how to take the next step. A big audience can help, but a reachable audience is more valuable I think of social media a little like setting up a stall in someone else's venue.

You've created your lovely products, you've got your tablecloth, signage, display stands. You've spent ages arranging everything so it looks beautiful, but you don't own the venue. The owner can move the entrance. They can change the opening hours They can start charging people to reach [00:05:00] certain parts of the market.

They can place another stall directly in front of yours that has competing products. They can decide which visitors are sent down your row, and they can redesign the whole layout without asking you. You can absolutely still have a very successful stall there, but you probably wouldn't want that venue to be the only place where your customers know how to find you.

That is the issue with relying entirely on Instagram, TikTok, Etsy, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Spoonflower, Creative Market, or any other platform. These tools can be incredibly useful, but when one platform controls most of your visibility or income, your business becomes vulnerable to decisions you do not control Another part of this is that followers do not automatically become buyers.

And I know it's easy to believe everything will suddenly click into place when you reach a certain number. "Once I get to 1,000 followers, I'll start making consistent sales," or, "Once I reach 10,000 [00:06:00] followers, people will take me seriously.

Once my audience is bigger, I'll launch the course, collection- membership or digital product. But follower count on its own doesn't tell you whether people understand what you offer, need what you sell, trust you, can afford it, know where to buy it, or are even seeing your posts. People usually need a journey.

They might discover you through a reel, Pinterest pin, marketplace listing, podcast interview, or recommendation. Then they need somewhere to learn more about you. They need to understand what you make, who it's for, and why it matters. They need opportunities to hear from you again, and eventually they need a clear and easy way to buy from you.

Social media can start that journey, but it often cannot carry the entire journey on its own The three-layer visibility system. This is the way I think about it through three layers. The first layer is borrowed attention, the second is owned [00:07:00] attention, and the third is converted trust. So let's break this down.

Layer one, borrowed attention. Borrowed attention is where people discover you. That includes all the social media platforms, YouTube, Etsy, online marketplaces, search results, podcast appearances, collaborations, craft fairs, markets, press features, guest workshops, and word of mouth. Some of those channels are algorithm-based, some are marketplace-based, some happen offline, but they all bring people into your world.

This is why I'm not telling you to stop using social media. Borrowed attention is useful. The problem starts when we expect that first layer to do everything. We expect one Instagram post to attract someone, educate them, build trust, explain the offer, and convince them to buy. Sometimes that does work for people, but it is not a reliable business system.

Borrowed attention should [00:08:00] be the doorway. It should not be the entire house. Layer two, owned attention. The second layer is owned attention. This is where you invite people into a closer relationship with your business. The most obvious example is your email list. It can also include your website, your blog, your podcast, a customer database, a membership, a private community, a wait list, or another direct way of contacting people with their permission.

I use the word "owned" carefully because we never completely own any technology. Email providers do change or update. Websites need hosting. Inbox systems are evolving, but your email list is portable. If you decide to change email platforms, you can always export your subscribers and move them. You cannot download all your Instagram followers, for instance, and take them somewhere else.

That makes email one of the strongest foundations available to small businesses [00:09:00] A 2024 international consumer survey found that 69% of respondents preferred email as a communication channel from brands. And Constant Contact's 2026 small business research found that 41% of respondents expected email to be their most valuable marketing channel that year.

But email is not magic simply because a message lands somewhere near somebody's inbox. It works when the content is relevant. It works when people know why they joined your email list. It works when you help them tell stories, make clear offers, and stay in touch consistently through sorry, consistently enough that they remember who you are.

And email is changing too. Email itself is also evolving. Apple Mail now automatically organizes messages into categories such as primary, transactions, updates, and promotions. Apple Intelligence can summarize emails and highlight [00:10:00] messages it considers important. Gmail is also adding deeper AI features, including email summaries and natural language inbox search.

That doesn't mean email is suddenly useless. It means lazy, irrelevant emails is becoming less effective. Simply having an email list is not enough. We need to give people a reason to open, read, click, reply, and stay subscribed. That means useful welcome emails, relevant content, clear subject lines, thoughtful segmentation, personal stories, helpful links, and simple offers, and emails that sound as though they came from a human being and not an over-caffeinated sales robot It also means we shouldn't obsess only over open rates.

Privacy features can make open data less reliable. So clicks, replies, sales, inquiries, and conversions often tell us far [00:11:00] more And then layer three is converted trust. The third layer, this is where people go from knowing about you to becoming a customer, a collector, a client, a student, a member, subscriber, or a repeat buyer.

This layer includes things like welcome sequences, nurture emails, product pages, workshops, launches, sales pages, sales emails, follow-up messages, so text, or maybe in the WhatsApp, post-purchase emails, and clear next steps. This is the bridge many creative businesses are missing. They have the followers, they may have engagement, they may even have an email list, but there is no clear journey from, "I found you," to, "I understand you," to, "I trust you," to, "I'm ready to buy."

You don't need an enormous complicated funnel with 47 tags, 12 automations, and a flowchart that looks like an underground railway map. You just need a [00:12:00] clear path. A creative business example that I one I picked is Bonnie Christine. Bonnie Christine is a useful example of this. She teaches service pattern design and has built a hugely successful creative education business and product business

, with licensing her patterns. But her growth didn't come from relying on only social media. According to Ca- case study, Bonnie had around 4,100 email subscribers in 2017, but only s- about 6% were opening her emails. After creating a stronger nurture sequence, her list grew to roughly 7,900 subscribers within six months, and her open rate increased significantly.

She later grew the list much further by creating genuinely useful free resources that were closely connected to her paid offers That is the key. She didn't just collect email addresses for the sake of having a big number. She built a journey. Useful content attracted the [00:13:00] right people, email nurtured the relationship, then her paid offers became a natural next step.

It wasn't simple... S- sorry. It wasn't simply post more and hope. It was teach, build trust, nurture, and then offer Another example is artist and educator Chris Legaspi is another really interesting example. According to his ca- case study, he had built an audience through blogging, YouTube, and email before taking a long break b- because of burnout.

Even while he was less active, some of that older content and those systems continued to bring people into his world. When he later re-engaged his email list, he was able to generate thousands of dollars in a matter of days. The important lesson isn't that YouTube is better than Instagram or that email is better than everything else.

It's that he had created assets with a longer shelf life. A reel might disappear from people's attention within hours. A [00:14:00] useful blog post, YouTube video, podcast episode, lead magnet, or automated email sequence can continue working for months or even years. That is what I want more creative business owners to start building, marketing that doesn't evaporate the moment you stop posting.

What this looks like for different creative businesses. Let's make this practical. For an artist, borrowed attention might be Instagram, Pinterest, local expos- exhibitions, or art fairs. The owned layer could be an email list where people get studio notes, first access to collections, or invitations to new print releases.

The converted trust

The converted trust layer might be a launch sequence, collector preview, or clear shop page. For a handmade seller, discovery might happen through Etsy, markets, Instagram, or recommendations. The bridge could be a QR code at the store or a card inside each parcel or early access [00:15:00] to seasonal collections.

The email list then helps turn a one-time buyer into a repeat customer. For a digital product creator, discovery might come through Pinterest, blog posts, YouTube tutorials, or carousels. A helpful free resource can lead people onto the email list, and a welcome sequence can then introduce templates, workshops, courses, or memberships.

For a creative educator, social content might provide quick tips, but deeper learning and trust can happen through email, podcasting, workshops, longer form videos, and community. The platforms can be different. The principle is the same. Help people discover you. Give them somewhere to stay connected, and then make the next step clear The question I want you to stop asking is, "How can I post more?"

And start asking, "How can I create a steadier path for people to find me, trust me, and buy from me?" Because the answer may not be more content. It might be connecting the content you [00:16:00] already have. Maybe people watch your reels, but you never tell them about your email list. Maybe people buy from your Etsy shop, but there is no invitation to stay connected.

Maybe people listen to your podcast or YouTube channel, but there is no related resource or next step. Maybe you have an email list, but new subscribers receive the freebie but then hear nothing from you for four months. And don't get me wrong, I am guilty of that myself. Maybe you have a website, but visitors need a compass, three coffees, and a strong emotional constitution to figure out what you sell.

I have done this many times. I've gone to a website, and I can't figure out how to get to the products. They're talking about the products, but they haven't got a way of actually going to and buy, or they've made the journey com- really complicated with lots of pages. You may not need another platform. You may simply need a better bridge.

Your [00:17:00] simple next step. I don't want you to finish this episode thinking you now need a blog, a podcast, a YouTube, Pinterest, social platforms, an email funnel, a community, and everything else. Please do not try to build everything at once. Choose one place people currently discover you. Then choose one place where you want to build a more direct relationship, and then create one bridge between them.

That might look like Instagram to your email list, Etsy orders to your customer list, Pinterest to a blog post and free resources, a craft fair to a QR code sign-up page, a podcast episode to a relevant quiz, or YouTube to a welcome sequence a collaboration to a waitlist One discovery channel, one owned channel, one bridge.

That is enough to start. And this is exactly why I've created something to help you work out where your own gaps are. I've [00:18:00] built a free two-minute quiz that shows you exactly how exposed your business is to an algorithm change. It will help you look at whether your audience is mostly sitting on borrowed platforms, whether you have a direct way to reach people, and where the biggest weakness is in your current visibility system.

You'll receive your personal result along with one c- clear recommendation for what to strengthen next. The link is in the show notes, and again, it takes about two minutes, and it should give you a much clearer picture of whether your business is well d- diversified or whether your social media or another platform is currently carrying too much of your business.

And I do want to say this, if you have been relying mainly on social media, you haven't done anything wrong. Most small businesses have, have or are do-- still doing this. Social media was affordable, accessible, and relatively straightforward. For many people, it was the first place they found customers and built a community.[00:19:00] 

It can still be brilliant. The landscape has simply changed. Feeds are more recommendation-led, reach is less predictable, creative burnout is widespread, and platforms are changing so quickly, and people have more content competing for their attention than ever before. We do not need to panic about that.

We just need to adapt. You don't have to burn everything down and start again. You need to gradually create more than one way for people to find you, hear from you, and then buy from you. So to quickly recap, social media is not dead. It's still useful for discovery, connection, and visibility, but it is not stable enough to be the entire foundation of your creative business.

Followers are useful, but they are not the same as reach-- as a reachable audience. And visibility is not the same as security. A stronger creative business has three layers: borrowed attention, where people find you; owned [00:20:00] attention, where they stay connected; and converted trust, where the relationship becomes a sale, inquiry, a membership booking, repeat purchase.

You do not need to create every channel at once. Choose one discovery channel, choose one owned channel, and build one clear bridge between them. The goal is not to be everywhere. The goal is to be findable, reachable, and trusted by the right people. That is a much calmer way to grow And don't get me wrong, I am still trying to find my way.

I've created quite a complicated system myself, and I had to strip a lot of it back and look really clearly at where I'm trying to lead people. And I've had to do that searching myself recently. I hope this episode has helped you look at your marketing a little differently, and not as an endless pressure to create more content, but as a system that should support both your business and your life.

And if you're curious about how [00:21:00] resilient your own business really is, don't forget to take my free two-minute quiz. It'll show you exactly how exposed your business is to an algorithm change, highlight where your biggest opportunities are, and give you one simple next step to strengthen your foundations.

You'll find the link waiting for you in the show notes. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment to follow the podcast, leave a review, or share it with another creative business owner who might need to hear this conversation. It really does help us reach more artists, makers, and creative entrepreneurs who are trying to build businesses that feel joyful, sustainable, and true to them.

Thank you so much for spending your time with me today, and until next time, keep creating, keep juggling, and most importantly, keep finding joy in the process.