A sustainable content system.
The reason your content feels chaotic, inconsistent and absolutely exhausting is because you are doing more than is humanly possible.
And more than necessary.
Being everywhere is not sustainable for solo business owners. We actually have work to do — we can't be marketing our businesses 60% of the week.
The answer isn't saving more ‘how to go viral’ Instagram posts or building a Notion content calendar. It's taking a minimal viable approach to our content.
Not Every Business Needs a Content Strategy
When I ran my wedding cake business, I barely created content at all.
My leads came from two places. Local industry referrals and largely Google, from people searching "wedding cakes York."
That was it. That was the marketing engine.
I posted on socials for another touchpoint and a portfolio of my work, but it was never to generate leads.
Ten years on, this business runs on SEO and referral too.
I do platform setups — Kajabi builds, Moxie setups. People are typing it into Google and AI. They're problem aware and actively shopping for support. And they find me and book a call.
However… as I move towards broader business systems support, that approach ain’t enough.
Not enough people are typing "systems consultant in York" into Google. They don't know they need or what I do yet. They're not shopping for me like they would an air fryer sadly.
So content brazenly enters the room.
But let’s put her to work before she starts stealing the show.
Content Has One Job
You are a service provider. Not a content creator.
You don't get paid to post. You get paid for your work.
Which means your content has one job: generate leads.
Create awareness, build trust, move people towards working with you.
But somewhere in the influencer landscape, content became this expected performance.
There's something instantly gratifying about posting on social media. That validation loop feels good but it can suddenly start eating up our whole focus.
Most of us are sinking hours into our week dancing for these social platforms for very little return. It becomes a vanity project.
And a few years into business, we find ourselves with this huge multi-platform presence, spread very thin and working unpaid for the algorithm.
For solo business owners delivering actual client work, this being everywhere approach is actively damaging our success with content and ability to be consistent.
Did you just shudder at ‘consistent’? I did.
Please know, as an ADHD business owner myself I have circled my way around all the ‘just try harder’ approaches. Consistency is not a weekly rigid content calendar you abandon after 4 days. It’s compounding action in one direction.
And I believe we need to strip back and do less, better for that to happen.
The Three Things Your Marketing Actually Needs to Do
Strip it all back and there are really only three things your marketing needs to achieve.
Discoverability. People need to be able to find you. This is top of the funnel — getting new eyes on your work. Social media does this well. But so can blogs, podcasts and YouTube. You don't need to be in five places. You need one and to do it really well.
Connection. When someone discovers you, you need somewhere for them to go deeper. Something bingeable. Something that builds trust over time. This is where longer form content earns its place — a podcast, a blog, a YouTube channel. Somewhere people can really understand what you do and how you think.
Nurture. Email. Something you own that isn't algorithm-dependent. A regular email to your list keeps you present with people who are already interested. That relationship is worth more than any follower count.
Discoverability, connection, nurture. That's the whole system.
The Minimal Marketing System
You don't need Substack AND YouTube AND Instagram AND Reels AND TikTok AND Threads AND LinkedIn AND Pinterest AND a podcast AND a blog.
You'd need a full marketing team to do that well (and you don't want to manage a marketing team do you?)
You want a lightweight business that actually works.
So here's the real human version.
Pick one discoverability channel.
One deeper long-form connection channel.
Add email.
That's two channels plus email.
Instagram, blog, email.
LinkedIn, podcast, email.
YouTube, Instagram, email.
Pick the combination that suits how you actually work, how you enjoy creating. That's your system.
And no, we don’t stop there necessarily.
But until that combination feels low effort and repeatable (a system), we really have no business adding anything else to the mix. It’s just diluting and distracting.
Cement that first and let the marketing overwhelm be gone.
Remove the guilt about not showing up everywhere, it was ridiculous to think we could anyway.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Give it six months of going deeper on fewer things instead of spreading yourself thin across everything.
What you'll find is that consistency compounds.
And you’ll have far more impact.
Marketing is always an experiment. But you can't run a useful experiment when you've got twelve variables changing at once.
Silence most of them and get good at the ones that remain.
That's being strategic about where your energy goes.
One More Thing: The Content Solar System
If your content still feels scattered, like you're talking about a hundred different things and none of them quite hang together…. like it’s all a bag of washing.
The content solar system might help.
An idea from Jonathan Stark, who runs a successful daily email list (yes daily, which I haven’t unsubscribed from in 3 years)
It’s a simple but powerful reframe.
The idea is you have a sun. A central theme of your work, or a point of view that sits at the heart of your content.
Everything else you talk about orbits that sun. Different seemingly unrelated topics but all connected back to the same core idea.
This is how you can talk about a range of things without losing coherence. Without needing rigid content pillars or arbitrary themes. It is simply a clear centre with everything pulling towards it.
The generalists (or fellow ADHDers might like this)
Which is how I am writing about content and marketing as a systems gal. No I will not be boxing myself into bland CRM chat thank youuu ;)
STOP FORCING YOURSELF TO ‘SHOW UP’.
You need to strip it back to something much simpler. Something you can sustain and actually get some momentum with.
If that's the conversation you're ready to have, get on my unhinged email list below.