Authors Without Social Media Can Succeed: What Three Years of Writing off Social Taught Us
This post was adapted from Writing Off Social: The Podcast, Episode 97. You can listen in here!
Three years ago, Writing Off Social began as a humble Facebook group — yes, a Facebook group, we see the irony — called “Building Your Platform Outside of Social Media.” We had maybe 130 people in it, give or take. From there, it grew into a podcast and a beta course in 2023, and since then it has expanded into a full coaching package, an Exit Plan, a Podcast Guesting Masterclass, and The Reset, a guided social media break available in two formats: an email series and a brand-new hard copy journal on Amazon*. Along the way, we’ve appeared as guests on multiple podcasts, taught writers in eleven different online writing groups, led workshops at two in-person conferences, recorded 97 episodes, and interviewed more than 50 guests!
We’ve officially been working with writers for four years now. That feels like a very big deal to us. So today, we want to share what has surprised us most and the biggest lessons we’ve through this journey.
The Biggest Surprise: The Coaching Experience
If you had told us when we launched that we’d end up offering coaching — and loving it — we would not have believed you.
When we first launched The Course Beta Group, we didn’t even call it coaching. We called it The Course because we genuinely thought it was a course. It was the end-of-course survey responses that finally convinced us we were actually offering a high-touch coaching experience. Our reaction was something close to wait, whhaatt?
In three years of coaching, however, we’ve been surprised to learn that the number one struggle for the writers we work with isn’t strategy. It’s overwhelm. Smart, intentional, deeply faithful women are getting distracted, discouraged, and thrown off course — not because they lack talent or direction, but because the relentless wave of advice being thrown at them daily. So much of our coaching has turned out to be reminding our students what they set out to do, helping them see that they are doing better than they think, and encouraging them to stay the course.
Through that coaching, we’ve also learned one of our most important encouragements is: Give it time. We used to recommend six months to a year before evaluating whether a strategy was working. Now we say a full year of real effort, minimum. The social media mindset that you just need to find the one perfect post and watch it explode has trained us all to abandon things too quickly. That’s not how sustainable growth works.
What We’ve Learned: Three Big Takeaways
1. Content Is Still King
After 50+ guest interviews with industry experts, acquisitions editors, and working authors, the message has been remarkably consistent: Content is still king.
Whether we were speaking with Will Parker Anderson, Mary DeMuth, Thomas Umstattd Jr., Laura Wifler, Lauren Groves, or Jane Daly, the answer was the same — if those first few pages don’t hook them, the marketing plan doesn’t matter. Great writing is the non-negotiable foundation.
And from the marketing side, the number one thing that sells books is still word of mouth. Friends telling friends. Which raises the obvious question: what compels someone to tell their friend about a book? Great writing.
If content is King, then collaboration is Queen. We’ve seen this play out again and again — with authors like Sarah Damoff, Susan Neal, and Rachel Allord, with coaches like Elizabeth Andreyevskiy, and with email list builders like Bryan Harris and Grace Thomas. Connecting with others who can put your work in front of their audience — through podcast guesting, guest posts, speaking, book clubs, email swaps — is where real growth happens. One-to-one is powerful. One-to-many is rocket fuel.
But collaboration only works when the work is excellent. People are far more likely to open their audience to you when what you’re offering is genuinely good. If great writing is King and collaboration is Queen, then quality is the foundation the whole castle stands on.
2. It All Comes Back to Your Reader
There is almost no coaching conversation we have that doesn’t circle back to this: Who is your reader? What do they need? Where are they in the real world, and how can you meet them there with your unique answer to their specific problem?
This is the bottom line of marketing. And as an editor, it’s also the bottom line of writing a great book. Nearly every developmental conversation Mary K. has with an author comes back to narrowing the audience, then making sure every word, every concept, every chapter speaks directly to that reader and their need.
But knowing your reader is only half of it. You also have to be willing to say it in a way that is uniquely yours. Are you warm and grandmotherly? Direct and no-nonsense? Funny? Sarcastic? And what about the experiences that feel ordinary to you but are extraordinary to your reader — the decade as a classroom teacher, the work as a spiritual director, the hard-won transition back to home? Those things are your gold. Lean into them. They’re what make your voice irreplaceable in your genre, and pulling them out of our students has been one of the most rewarding parts of this whole journey.
3. It Is Entirely Possible to Be a Successful Author Without Social Media
When Mary K. first left social media, she did it having made a kind of peace with letting go of any dreams of making it as an author. Four years later — after countless conversations with listeners, students, and guests — we are fully convinced that nothing could be further from the truth.
There are countless ways to grow and nurture an audience, build an email list, and sell books. All of them offer a better return on your investment than social media. There is simply no reason to be on social media as an author if you don’t want to be there. You can find a more effective, more life-giving alternative for every single goal you’re trying to accomplish.
We say on our website that what started as an experiment in 2019 is now a proven path for writers. We’ve consulted with industry experts. We’ve tested these methods in our own writing. We’ve coached other writers. And we’re here to offer the support we wish we’d had.
Thank You
It’s been an incredible ride — one we are constantly amazed to be on. As we wrap up this season, we want to extend our deep gratitude to you, our listener. Thank you for showing up week after week, for laughing with us and putting up with our silliness, for sharing your own stories, and for telling your friends about this podcast. Your encouragement has carried us further than we ever imagined, and we can’t wait to keep going.
This post was reformatted from our original transcript by Claude and edited for accuracy by Mary K.
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