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When is staying off social media the soundest strategic decision for your client?
Social media is almost an automatic part of most strategies I develop for my clients and, in most cases, it is an absolutely necessary element. But this is not always the case, especially when working with high-net-worth individuals (HNWI). A client, a performance coach working with elite football players, came to me for a full repositioning project. The goal was to move the business into the luxury category and to attract the top players. The repositioning involved several elements, but my most controversial recommendation was to abandon social media and avoid the strategy most performance coaches adopt (showing videos and images of work with clients and publicly recording the process).
The reasoning behind this decision was rooted in understanding how professional football players select their coaches and how much privacy is valuable to them. It was clear from the start that reaching the most elite athletes and the ones that are already established required word-of-mouth and not an Instagram post. In this case, the lack of a social media presence was as much a business decision as a branding one. It was used to signal a greater power balance between my client and their potential clients. It was also part of the service branding, as privacy was embedded in all elements of the performance coaching service packages.
This social media strategy (or the lack of it) worked. It was part of the broader overhaul, but players consistently said they loved that there was no social media presence. It reduced their feeling of being used to advance someone else's career, gave them confidence that they could work and progress in private, and, most importantly, made the business appear exclusive and selective in who they work with. As with other luxury brands, this perception of exclusivity and belonging to a "club" eventually drove demand. And no social media was needed to achieve that.
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HOT TAKE: Your social media links do not belong in your website header
Think about it...Someone finds you on Instagram, clicks through to your website, and then you immediately give them a shortcut right back to Instagram?
That sends them backward through your client journey!
Your website header should guide visitors toward the next step:
✨ Explore your services
✨ Learn about your offer
✨ Join your email list
✨ Book, buy, or inquire
You can still include your social links in your website footer or blog sidebar. Just set them to open in a new tab!
But that valuable space in your header? Use it for a clear call to action that helps turn more visitors into leads and clients.
Do you currently have social media links in your website header? No shame 😉 Tell me below.
currently working on a new project, and it reminded me why the strategy phase is probably my favorite part of the whole process.
whether it’s for a website or a full brand identity, i love going beyond the brief and trying to understand the business as deeply as possible.
the client call, the brief, the old website… those are just the starting point.
then comes the fun part: researching, asking questions, digging deeper, understanding how the business works, who they sell to, what they stand for, how they communicate, and why people should choose them.
sometimes, you even discover things the client knows internally but hasn’t fully articulated yet, or things they’re simply not communicating clearly enough.
that’s what i love about strategy: taking all that information, finding the patterns, and bringing clarity and structure to everything.
honestly, this might be my favorite part of the whole process.
How do you usually hand that research back to a client, a straight brief or something more visual like a strategy deck? And do they ever push back when you point out something about their own business they hadn't fully articulated?
