Three Shifts to Help You Find Clients on Any Social Media Platform
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen to the podcast episode covering this same topic here → The Quietly Disruptive Business Podcast
In our last blog post, we looked at why the algorithm isn’t the villain, and why the real difference between founders who find clients on social media and those who don’t isn’t the platform or the content, but how they use it. Today I’m giving you something practical: three shifts in perspective that will change how you use any social media platform to find and connect with the right people. This isn’t a content calendar or a strategy template. It’s a fresh way of thinking about what the platform is actually for and how you can use it your own way.
Shift One: Stop Sounding Like Everyone Else and Write for the Client You Actually Want
You are unique. Your business has a specific offer for a specific type of client. Your content needs to reflect that. I’m not saying you need a content team churning out slick material — I’m saying your content needs to be written by you, for your ideal client, about the specific thing they’re experiencing.
We can all spot AI-generated content a mile off now, and templates, formulas, and swipe files have created a world where many founders sound exactly the same. That’s why generic advice content — the kind any copywriter could have written — disappears into the noise. A LinkedIn profile copywriter posting about how to improve your profile in five steps reaches everyone and resonates with no one in particular. But if they posted about how to add humour and humanity to your LinkedIn profile without sounding like you’re trying too hard, that stops a very specific person — the founder who’s been staring at their corporate-sounding profile for six months, knowing it needs to change, waiting for someone who gets it.
Your content is a signal. Written for a specific person about a specific problem, in a voice that is unmistakably yours, it tells the right client that you understand them — and that you’re the person they’ve been looking for.
Shift Two: Stop Waiting to Be Found and Go Find Them
Posting content on its own is a broadcast. It’s a billboard, a shop window. It showcases who you are and what you do. But the piece most founders miss is that you also need to find people to see that billboard — and start conversations with them about it.
Every social media platform is a directory. Think of the Yellow Pages — that enormous book listing every business and contact you could possibly want to find. Social media platforms are exactly that, except they’re free and you have access to millions of people at the click of a button. The shift is seeing the platform not just as somewhere to post, but as a directory of people you can start conversations with.
And I don’t mean pitching. I don’t mean jumping into someone’s messages and telling them what you do. I mean being curious. Creating connections. Networking. If you love working with founders in the tech industry, you can find them on social media and start a conversation. Ask them about their business, what they struggle with, what it’s like in their corner of the world. Offer to meet up for a coffee — virtually or in person. People do business with people, and that starts with making a relationship. Relationships start through conversation and connection, and you have the ability to create as many of those as you like.
If reaching out to someone you don’t know feels like a big step, come at it from a different angle. Use social media to find out where those people are — what events they’re attending, what networking groups they’re part of, where you can meet them in person. The information is all there. A quietly disruptive founder uses it to their advantage.
Shift Three: Use the Platform the Way That Works for You
This is the one that ties everything together. We get sucked into believing there’s one correct way to use social media, and we’re terrified to step outside those imaginary lines in case everything crumbles. But as a founder, you get to make the rules.
If you want to post once a week because you loathe social media but know you need some visibility, post once a week. That’s enough. If you hate social media entirely and just want to use it to find people and then meet them at in-person events, do that. If you want to use it to discover people online and then build the relationship in real life — which is exactly what I do — do that. You don’t need to follow anyone else’s advice if it doesn’t fit you or your business. There is always a workaround, always a different way. It just takes a little creativity and a willingness to look at it from a different perspective. It feels a little rebellious, honestly. Which always makes me smile.
Three Shifts, One Principle — Do It Your Way
Be you in your content and write it for the client you want to help. Instead of waiting for everyone to come to you, go and find them — it’s that dance floor analogy again: if you want to dance, go and ask someone. And use the platform in whatever way works for you, shaking off what everyone else has told you about how it should be done. You can do business and marketing any way you like. The only rule is that it has to work for you.
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone partners with Quietly Disruptive founders to build businesses that change their corner of the world, on their terms. If you started your business because you believed things could be done differently, and you're ready to make that vision real, she gets it. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom and in person, she's done this work herself, more than once.
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