No Engagement on Social Media? It's Time to Get Real and Connect
In this live session, Sarah Williams addresses the common love‑hate relationship small‑business owners have with social media and argues that a genuine, strategic approach is essential for business survival, especially during the prime shopping season. She begins by polling the audience on their favorite platforms, noting a split between personal preferences (e.g., TikTok) and business‑focused platforms (e.g., Facebook). Sarah then asks participants to imagine their business without social media, highlighting how many would not exist without it. The core of the talk is a step‑by‑step framework for turning social media from a box‑checking chore into a growth engine: 1. Audit your accounts – review the last 30‑90 days, list the top five posts by engagement, and identify patterns of what works versus what doesn’t. 2. Prioritize quality over quantity – focus on one intentional, value‑adding post per day rather than multiple low‑impact posts. 3. Show up personally – share behind‑the‑scenes, lifestyle moments, or authentic snippets (e.g., feeding chickens) that let the audience feel a connection, because people buy from people they trust. 4. Engage with comments – reply to comments gradually throughout the week to keep posts alive in the algorithm and create conversation longevity. 5. Leverage live video – live sessions generate high engagement; responding in real time fuels the algorithm. 6. Choose the right platform – analyze which platform yields the most views/engagement (Sarah notes TikTok outperforms her larger Facebook following) and double‑down on that channel. 7. Clarify your bio – ensure a 6‑year‑old could understand what you do, making the value proposition instantly clear. 8. Commit to a new platform this fall – experiment with a platform you’re less active on, repurpose short‑form video, and avoid over‑editing to stay authentic. Sarah wraps up with a concrete to‑do list: audit accounts, identify top‑performing content, create one high‑quality daily post, engage with comments incrementally, and launch onto a new platform. She emphasizes that content quality, personal connection, and consistent engagement—not sheer volume—will drive sales and sustain businesses in the upcoming holiday season.
Chapters
Good morning, happy Monday! Today we're going to talk about social media, and a lot of us have a love-hate relationship with it, but I'm going to tell you that it's important for our businesses, and we've got to stop posting just to post. We got to get real, we got to use it to our advantage, and we have to start creating quality content. So that's what we're talking about today. I want us to get social on social media. And sometimes we just get in this habit of doing things, like we just— I'm so guilty of this as well. Like, I just get in the habit of, gotta do this, I gotta do this, I've got to do this. We're business owners, we have a million things on our plates every single day, and we get into this habit of just checking off a box. And social media is one of those boxes that we check off, and we've got to stop it. And we're gonna talk about it today because we're in the prime shopping season, and I want us to take a really good look at what we're doing and why we're doing it. So good morning, everybody. If you're watching, let me know in the chat, if you were to talk, if you were to pick a platform that is your favorite social media platform, what would it be? Drop it in the chat for me. I would love to take a look at what you guys are using. What's your favorite platform? That's where we're going to start today. I'm going to come to the chat and say hi to everybody as we're getting going this morning, and then I'm going to give you some clear action plans on what you can do to take a look at your own social media today so that you can build some momentum on that going into the fourth quarter. Good morning, Lexi. Good to see you. Good morning, Rebecca. Hey, Jonica. Good morning. I see I'm, I've got a mix of like Facebook and YouTube. So that already gives me some context about social media. Um, some of you watch every single week on YouTube, some of you join me on Facebook, and there's different reasons that you do that because one, that's the platform that you're on, or that's the platform that you're most comfortable with. Hi Katie! Um, and so I want to know in the chat, which is your favorite platform for social media? So Candy says Facebook. Lexi says right now it's TikTok. Um, Tay says Instagram. Jonica says Facebook. Brandy says Instagram. Becky says Facebook. We've got an Instagram. We've got Facebook. TikTok. Okay, this is interesting. I wanted— I want to dig into this today. Uh, my personal favorite is TikTok, but for business it's Facebook. We're going to talk about that specific topic today as well. Nikki says Facebook. Takiyah says probably Facebook, but it's connected to my Instagram, so I do both. Okay. Antoinette says Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook and YouTube. I get most interactions with Instagram. Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. Good morning, Shakira. Good morning. Okay, so let's talk about it. So if you were going to pick your favorite platform, I love the idea that I like TikTok, but I, my business is Facebook. So I want you to think about where would your business be without social media right now? I want you to think about it really deeply. Where would my business be right now without social media? I don't think I'd have a business. Um, when I look at this particular business, my coaching business, I wouldn't have a business without social media. If I look at my retail business, um, I would probably tell you that my business would be dying. Um, my retail business would be dying because there's only so much foot traffic you can get in with a brick-and-mortar store. And so without being online, I think that my brick and mortar store would be dying. There would be no way that I could cover the overhead and continue to get new subscribers and new customers. And so I really want you to sit with that thought today because we have a lot of mixed feelings about social media, right? Like we have this love-hate relationship with social media and I think that we love to hate it. But when you really think about where would your business be if you didn't have social media, many of us here would not have a business. And many of you that are struggling to get your business going is probably because you don't have a social media presence. Monica's saying this in the chat, I don't have a social media presence and that's why I need to get going. How do we get our product? How do we get our service or product in front of people if we don't have social media? It is vital to our business. Old days, Sarah, back in the old days, like, this is going to date me, but in college, the internet, the Facebook thing was just, you know, it was just coming about. We still learned about magazines and newspaper, print, billboards, TV commercials. That was my marketing classes when I was in college. We didn't have digital marketing. So social media makes it so easy for us to get our stuff out there and in front of the right people, yet we love to hate it. Why is it that we love to hate social media? So here's what we're going to do. We got to get over this. We got to stop telling ourselves we hate social media. We also have to take it off of our to-do list as a box-checking item of our day. You've heard me talk about this over and over again, but marketing is our number one job as small business owners. We have to be marketers. If we're not marketers, we don't have a business. Social media is the best place to market our business, yet we love to hate it. So here's the first thing that I want you to do, and I need you to just step back from your business, take your little business hat off, all the things I got to do today, all the things that are going on this week. I need you to take that hat off and step back and look at your social media. Becky says it feels like so much work, work for crickets. What are we doing on social media? The first thing that I want you to do is I want you to audit your accounts. Now, we talked a lot about this last week in my mastermind. I also had a great session on Friday with Scale Your Box, and I believe tomorrow inside Launch Your Box I'm going to be auditing social media accounts. So this is very relevant into what we have going on in this community. I want you to step back and I want you to look at your social media accounts. Go over and audit your Instagram account. We audited my Instagram account, um, with Scale Your Box on Friday. It's not good, y'all. It's not good. And that's why I have no engagement and that's why I'm not growing. I am literally posting to check off the to-do list for the day. Post, post, real, post. Boom, done. But when I actually go back and look at the engagement, the views, the likes, the follows, I'm getting nowhere. So why am I doing it? This is what Becky's saying. Why am I doing it when it's crickets? Because I'm not doing what's working. I want you to audit your accounts. I want you to go back 30, 60, 90 days. And I want you to just make a list. You could do this on a spreadsheet, you could do this on a doc, you could do this on paper. I want you to look at your top 5 posts from the last 30, 60, 90 days. They're going to jump out at you. They did me. I want you to look at your top 5 posts from the last 30 to 60 days. What are they? What are they talking about? Why are people engaging in that post, but they're not engaging in other posts? That's your first step. We've got to figure out what is actually working for us. And then we've got to look at what is not working, because what we're doing right now is we're doing a whole bunch of stuff that's not working just to check off our to-do list for the day and move on. But why? If it's not working, stop doing it. If it's not working, move on. Spend your time building better content versus the, the quantity of content that you're producing. Here's what I want you to look at. Am I just posting 2 or 3 times a day to say that I posted 2 or 3 times a day to be consistent, to do the things that Sarah is telling me to do, but I'm not actually getting any engagement on this? If that is— if that is yes for you, if you're like, oh my gosh, that's me, Sarah, I need you to stop it. I need you to pull back from what you're doing, and I would rather you focus on quality over quantity. Okay? What content are people engaging with? And I want you to start there, and I want you to build one piece of content every day that will get someone to engage with you. And it might be like, well, Sarah, the piece of content that's engaging on my social media is me feeding my chickens. I'm not selling anything there. They're not buying anything. Like, how is this relevant to my business? Why are they engaging with you feeding your chickens? Because it's not about the stuff. They want to feel connected to you, and I want you to feel connected to them. Everything we do doesn't need to be salesy. When you feel connected to me in some way, you're gonna wanna buy what I'm selling when I sell it at some point. Are we getting personal or is it just product after product, buy me, buy me, buy me, nothing else is there? We gotta have a mixture. Okay, so when I look at what's working on my social media, It's about the people. It's not about the stuff. But if people engage with me, they buy my stuff. So what if you pulled back your little box checklist and said, I'm not going to post 3 times a day this week, I'm only going to post once a day and I'm going to be really intentional about that post. I'm going to serve my audience in some way. I'm going to get personal in some way. I'm going to show behind the scenes in some way, but I'm going to get personal and I'm going to be intentional about what I'm posting and why. Why do you show up on Monday? Why do you take time out of your day to be here right now? Tell me in the chat, why are you here? You're taking time out of your day to be here right now. So why? What is it about this piece of content that keeps you coming back almost every Monday? To learn, to grow and learn, to learn, to learn, to learn, that weekly boost, encouragement, tips for engagement because you know your stuff. I'm here to learn and improve my business. Motivation. I want to see you and feel encouraged. Motivation to get a kick in the pants and be inspired. We want to be like you. It's dangerous because it's personal. So how do you show up for your audience in that way? Okay, so how do you do this for your business and sell products while you're doing it? Last night I went live on my retail page and did my unboxing, and, um, and it's about 30 minutes, but I am really engaging with that audience, and my subscribers show up every time I do that. And they engage with me because it's personal for them. They want to feel like it's part— they're part of something bigger than just getting a box of stuff in the mail. They want to feel connected to us, yet we don't allow them to be connected to us. We think it's about the stuff. People aren't buying our products because of the stuff. They'll go to Amazon and buy the stuff. They buy our subscription boxes. They're members of our membership because of the connection that they've built with us and the experience that we give them. So is our content similar to that? And I had to take a big look at myself. I'm so busy. We're so busy. We pride ourselves on being so dang busy all the time, right? That we sometimes can't even see what's in our peripheral. I got 5 likes on my Instagram post. I've got 200 views on my Instagram Reels. And we're just— we just keep doing it because we gotta check the boxes. We gotta post, we gotta do Reels. I'm just repurposing the heck out of things, and I'm not connecting over there. I'm not getting personal. I'm not having this conversation over there. And so it just feels like a box-checking activity to me. We've got to get personal. We've got to serve that audience in whatever capacity that is. For me, on my retail page, I need to serve them and help them feel good about their bodies no matter where they're at in life. They might be overweight, they might be underweight, they might be aging, and I provide products that help them feel good about themselves. Why am I not bringing that connection to the forefront? Why am I not talking about that? I'm just saying, buy my cute things. Hey, buy my cute things. And it falls flat every time. 3 likes, 10 likes. I'm not connecting. I'm just selling? What makes you stop your scroll? What makes you listen to a video? What makes you turn the sound on and engage with that video? Because it's something you want to hear. The same reason that you're here right now, because you want to learn, you want to engage, you want to feel seen and heard. We have to do that for our audiences too. It's not all about the stuff. I could come on here every Monday and just sell you Launch Your Box. Join Launch Your Box! Join Launch Your Box! Join Launch Your Box! I don't. That's not what I'm here to do on Mondays. I'm here to serve in whatever capacity that I come up with on a Monday morning. A lot of times I don't know what I'm going to talk about until I'm sitting in the, in the salon getting my hair done on Monday mornings, and I'm like, what am I going to talk about today? What's on my mind today? That's all we have to do with our own content. We've got to create conversations. So here's some practical tips for you. Number 1, I want you to audit your account. Audit your accounts. Go audit Facebook, Go on Instagram, go on TikTok, go audit your accounts, whatever accounts you're on. Start with one because what's working on one may work, may not be working on another. Okay, so I need you to see what's working on which platform and let's do more of that and less of the crap that's not working. Let's, let's stop checking the box. Okay, then I want you to really brainstorm. If you made one piece of content every day this week, to serve your audience, to get engagement, and to really, you know, move the needle on social media? What one piece of content could you make every single day? Okay. Darla says, how do you audit them? I just pull them up. I just pull up my feed. You're going to see it tomorrow in Launch Your Box. I'm going to audit some social media accounts tomorrow in Launch Your Box. You'll see how I'm doing it. And then I want you to take a look at your own. Tomorrow. Okay. I want you to audit your account, see what's working, make more of what's working, and figure out how you're going to build one piece of content each day this week to get engagement, not to sell, but to get engagement. Sales will come. Okay. I don't, I'm not telling you not to do product posts. Definitely do product posts. We need those. But how can we engage with that product? Like, I just— I'm going to a Texas Tech football game because it's family weekend at my son's college this weekend, and I thought, let me grab a clear crossbody, let me grab a couple things. I'm gonna do some— I'm gonna do some posts in the stadium. I'm gonna take the product, do some lifestyle posts, share that I'm at family weekend with my son this weekend that's in college for the first time, and I'm gonna create content around that product but in the stadium. So think about that. Think about how you can take your product, put it in your lifestyle, create personal connections, serve and sell at the same time. Okay, then here's the other thing. When we go live, do you see all of you are making comments in the chat here? I've got to respond to them, and I've responded to several while I'm live. But I need to go back and I need to feed the algorithm. Okay, so what we need to do is we need to engage and create conversations. And sometimes it's hard when there's no conversations, when there's no comments, when there's nothing. But when you have comments, we need to engage in those because every time you go back and engage in your comments, it pushes that post back up into the feed. So here's what else I want you to do. I want you to go back to last week. I want you to look at your posts and I want you to start engaging in anything that anybody else has commented on. That's going to push that post back up into people's feed. We need some more longevity. These posts aren't just 5-second posts in someone's feed. We need to keep using this content and keep pushing it back into the feed. So that means if I have a reel, and people are making comments, I need to take time every single day and check my reels from the last week. And I need to go back and I need to comment on those reels. But I don't want to do that all at once. Say I have 14 comments on a, on a video or on a reel. I want to go back and I want to slow play this. Let me go answer 4 of them. Let me create conversations with 4 of those. And then I'm going to come back later and I'm going to engage with 4 more of those. If I just bucket engage with all of those, I don't have longevity. Again, that's short-lived. We have to create longevity with our content. And we do that by pushing it back into our feed. You can have a post from 6 days ago. If you got 3 or 4 comments on it right now and you haven't replied, go reply. You're gonna get more juice on that post today, even though it's short-lived on Facebook and Instagram, right? We're gonna push it back into the feed because we're creating conversations. Okay, so I need you to look for that. And it's hard when you have no engagement. So I need you to stay the course. What can I do to create some engagement? There's no better engagement than a live video. Look at all this engagement that I've created right here. I have so many comments on this, I can't even see them all. All I have to do is go back and answer 5 of those at a time throughout the week, and this video is going to keep popping back up into people's feeds. Okay, whether it's short video, whether it's a static image post, whether it's a live, it doesn't matter. Every time you engage and create conversations on that post, it pushes it back out in the algorithm. So we got to create conversations, but we have to do it slow because if we do it bulk, in bulk, it looks like spam. Okay, so I want you to try it. Now here's the other thing that I want you to do. I want you to commit to getting on a new platform this fall. We are right in the thick of the prime shopping season, and there is probably an audience waiting for you to show up on their platform. And so I have dabbled in TikTok like this much because I don't, I don't want to check that box every day, right? But if I'm creating quality content, and for me I'm going to focus on short video right now, if I, if I'm focused on creating quality content every single day, one video a day Why can't I use that for Instagram Reels? Why can't I use that for Instagram Reels? Why can't I use that for TikTok videos? So I'm going to focus on a new platform because people are out there and I just have to serve differently. I've got to quit repurposing content and I have to actually be showing up and being authentic and being myself. And that's all I need. We don't need to overthink it. We could overthink this all day long and feel like we have to have these perfectly planned out posts and videos. But when I went and audited my Instagram with Scale Your Box on Friday, any post that was not pre-planned, authentic, just a picture of me doing something, had the most engagement. Everything that had pretty graphics that was just overly done, couple likes. Maybe a comment here and there. It was sad. It was sad. And here's the other thing: I need you to look at your bios on whatever platform— Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, whatever. If you— if a 6-year-old that read your bio did not understand what you do, you need to update it. Your bio needs to read like a 6-year-old could understand what you do. We get so deep in our business, we just think everybody knows what we do. We need to be crystal clear about who our audience is, who we are for, and what— who our product is for in our bio. Because one post getting in front of the right person, and then they go look at your bio to see if they want to follow you, we can lose them right there because they don't know what we do. Does a 6-year-old know what we do by our bio? That's your, that's your goal. Okay, here's your to-do list for the week. Number 1, stop posting content just to check off a box. Stop posting content to post content. Okay, stop it. If the, if the answer is, should I get 3 posts up today or should I just do 1 really well? The answer is 1 really well, and I'm going to be happy with that all day long. I want you to audit your social media accounts, go back to 30 to 60, 60 days and look and see what your top 5 posts with engagement are. Okay, we got to do more of that. I need you to be posting quality over quantity. Stop flooding your feed with frequent posts and let's get real. What do you like to engage with? When you look back at your social media habits over the last week, what have you engaged with? That's why I love the— I love the comment of, well, I like to be on TikTok, but my business is Facebook. Why do you like to be on TikTok? What are you engaging on on TikTok? That's what we need to be doing. Get personal. You don't have to walk around and show everybody what you're doing with your life all day long. I'm not talking about that. Don't you have to share your meals and that you went for a 30-minute walk or that you're at the gym pumping iron or that your house is a hot mess? Like, you don't have to get that personal. But you got to— people, you got to let people in. You got to let people know, like, and trust you. Okay, we've got to create conversations. You've got to go back and create conversation and keep pushing your content into the feed. This is why quality is better than quantity, because if you have that one quality post every day, you can keep pushing that back in your feed with your engagement. With your conversations. Okay, so go back and comment on things and you're going to see it get some more juice. The problem is our content is so short-lived right now, but we have to keep feeding it back. And then I want you to commit to a new platform this fall. Just commit to it. Maybe it's on a platform you're already on, but you just haven't been doing much with it. Maybe that's YouTube. Maybe that's Instagram, maybe that's Pinterest, maybe that's TikTok. Whatever that is, let's commit to getting in front of new people, new audiences. A little test I did over the weekend was I posted some reels on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, same exact reels. I have about 9,000 followers on Instagram. It's terrible, and it's been like that forever. I gotta work on that. I have 31,000 followers on Facebook, and I have 785 followers on TikTok. Do you know where I got the most, um, views from? Where I got the most engagement from? TikTok. I had 10 times more views on the exact same videos on a platform I have this many people on. Why? I'm about to find out why. So I want you to commit to getting on a new platform, and let's see if we can make a difference in what we're doing and stop just doing things to do it. I'm struggling. I'm struggling to get engagement in both of my businesses, and it's because I've been box-checking my social media. And I really need you to step back from that and take a cold, hard look at what you're doing and why. And let's really focus on some quality content this fall. There's going to be a lot of noise in our feed over the next few months. Our content will be king. Static content, video content, carousel content— we need lots of different content. So I'm not saying one over the other, but I'm very heavy with static images, so I need to lean into video right now, and I need to put it higher on my to-do list than just checking that box at the end of the day. So let's get going. Let's make a difference. Let's make some good content and let's grow our businesses. Because without social media, our business wouldn't be here. 9 out of 10 of you, unless you have a really strong local presence and a brick and mortar, your business would not be here. Stop loathing it and start loving it. Let's go. I'll see you guys later this week inside LauncherBox. Have a great week.
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