I've been hearing this idea more in the last month or so, with all the end-of-the-year reviews coming out.

That idea is:

Reach and engagement on social media is declining.

Even if you’ve focused on building a large audience or following, the percentage of folks who will see your content is much lower than in years past.

​Josh Spector did a breakdown of the percentages of an expert’s followers typically see their tweets.

This was posted back in April 2024. And just as recently as last month, I've heard most big industry names are seeing this engagement decline.

Here’s the highlight of Josh's breakdown (%s show how many followers see their tweets):

I did the math for you.

Only 3,040 followers of Robert Blake’s 95,200 followers see his tweets.

Now 3k is about how many subscribers are in a typical solopreneur’s email list.

And most of us don't have a following of 95k to start with, so our reach would be lower because we're starting with a smaller follower count.

You still with me?

Cool.

Here's my point...

All that energy, and time, and attention that you lavished on that post or video will probably be seen by only a small fraction of the folks who follow you.

Which means it's becoming a colossal waste of time to post on social media.

Consider:

By posting on social media, you’re giving away something that you can never get back (ie, hours of your priceless life) for a return that's not guaranteed (which is a large portion of your audience seeing a post and then deciding to work with you).

It's an unequal trade.

A very unbalanced trade, in my opinion.

And a sacrifice I’ve never been willing to make in order to build a profitable business I enjoy.

This situation begs the question:

Where does it leave you in getting clients?

Because you've been told for years now, that the most proven, easiest way to get new clients is to

A) build an audience on a social media platform

so you can B) sell to that audience.

The “gurus” never tell you the two big problems with that.

First: it's a lie. There are so many ways to get new clients. It’s not just one path.

In fact, building an audience to then sell to is one of the longest paths.

There’s another problem baked into that one. Which is: you’re building your dream empire on land that you do not own.

That is problem #2 ^^^.

Instead, you should be building it on land that you own.

Because any audience that you build on a social media platform belongs to that company.

Not you.

So if that social media platform folds (remember MySpace, anyone?), your audience and followers die with it. Then you're back to square one. Scrambling, anxious, and stressed-out.

The smarter way is to build an audience on land that you own:

Your email list.

Because you take that list of subscribers with you wherever you go. It's an audience you own and it's one that you can reach way more of and in a way that you have control over.

For example, only 30% of your email list is opening and reading your emails?

Improve your subject lines and see your open rate -- and the number of folks reading your message -- grow. Or resend the original email to the folks who didn't open and get a second chance in front of them.

You don't have that control on a social media platform.

And the smarter way to get clients AND grow your email list…

… yes, you can have both at the same time…

… is to use cold emails.

Go out and pitch the clients you want to work with.

If you haven't been using cold emails, you've been slowly killing your business without knowing it.

Here's why:

A cold email is an email sent to a stranger asking them to take a specific action.

That action can be 1) "hey, let's work together with you as my client" or 2) "hey, your audience might be interested in what I do, and vice versa with my audience. Let's team up."

Using cold emails in those two ways makes them the key to open any door you've ever wished would open.

Because then you can pick the clients you want to work with.

And you borrow someone else's audience that already has the folks you want to reach, and then you reach them in a 1:many way.

While your partner’s know, trust, like fairy dust gets sprinkled all over you.

(This is why referrals work so well. At its heart, you're setting up a referral relationship here.)

Which means you're working smarter, not more hours.

Imagine if you had dozens of referral relationships set up that automatically sent you new email subscribers and prospects who quickly turned into clients, because they came to you already liking you, and syncing with your message.

This is the big opportunity of 2025.

I call this system the Cambium Client Model.

It’s been installed inside my business for nearly a decade.

If you’re interested in running a streamlined, profitable agency, I’m looking to bring 6 new digital marketing agency owners into the Cambium Client Accelerator.

This is where I’ll show you how to run the Cambium Client Model -- it gets you clients now and forever, independent of social media and ad spend.

If you want the details on that, click reply and let me know.

You're amazing,

Laura

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