262: Social media is changing... buckle up!

Social media is changing - but isn’t it always? I recently got my Instagram account taken down, and I want to talk about it.

But remember, we are on BORROWED land… I want you to protect yourself and your business from these channels you have 0 control over. 

Welcome aboard flight CQM222 (our LAST flight), I am your pilot, Mariah - you have your ticket to good content marketing in hand. 

While on this flight the flight attendants will be here to assist you to get off the content creation hamster wheel and onto a new way of marketing to help you live a more freedom-based lifestyle. 

Each week you will be given a new stamp in your passport and by the end of the 90 days you will be on your way to explore the world of Content Marketing as a solo traveller.

This is week twelve - get ready, it is going to be a wild ride!

 If you LOVED this part of your trip (the episode), make sure you share this with your friends!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET YOUR TICKET TO GOOD CONTENT MARKETING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

✨The 3 things you can do to future-proof your marketing 

✨How to not be at the mercy of an algorithm 

✨Why you need a holistic content marketing plan   

SHOW RESOURCES 👇

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is your pilot speaking. My name is Mariah and welcome to this special series of the content queen podcast. You have boarded flight CQM 222 and you have in your hand your ticket to good content marketing. This is our final part of the journey of this 90 day trip. So I hope that you've got all the strategy and learnings to help you enter 2025 with the direction on how to create content that is unique to you and your business.

While on board, you would have had complimentary access to all the learnings that will help you attract your new passengers and grow your audience to expand your trip. If you're new here, there is all the episodes you can go back and listen to. The flight attendants were here to assist you on your journey to help you get off the content creation hamster wheel and onto a new way of marketing to live a freedom based lifestyle.

So each week you had a stamp delivered to your passport and now that we're at the end of the 90 days, it is time to end the journey.  If you are visiting, welcome. If you're returning home, welcome home. I love when they do those.  But now it's time for you to explore the world as a content marketer, as a solo traveler.

But let's do the final episode.  Hello, welcome, let's chat. Social media is changing and it's time to buckle up and I want to share something with you.  I wasn't going to share it, but it seems like I have to, I'm still in the thick of it and I wasn't really open to sharing it straight away because I'm a person that does really need to learn.

While I'm an oversharer, I do want to learn it first so then I can share from a place of like lessons. But it appears that I have had a few emails and messages over the weekend  wondering where I am. So I have to share.  But basically I  got banned from Instagram.  Well, I think it was caught up in something that happened with a client and it just appears that on the tail end of it, my account has been banned.

I've done nothing wrong. There's been no breach of the guidelines or someone has reported my account. I'm not 100 percent sure.  I have contacts who have contacts that are helping me through it and hopefully I will get my account back. One of the first things that um, I wanted to do was just to, well I also wanted to do this anyway from like a security perspective, but move clients away from meta like onto a more content queen based meta.

So I have done that, but I want to talk about it. I actually wrote this episode before this all had happened because my client had been going through The breakdown of her multiple Instagram accounts. So this was top of mind, and it's a risk.  So,  I'm okay. It is just an Instagram account. It's a very important message of why you don't put all your eggs in one basket, and you have a diverse content marketing strategy.

Because, yeah, of course I was upset when it happened. I was more upset about like, oh my god, how does this happen when like, I didn't do anything wrong, and then of course I was able to move through it. Yes, it's annoying because I can't go on Instagram when people send me stuff. Yes, I had built two pages to a total of 5, 000 followers, but it's okay.

It's just a social media account. It'll be fine. I know I'll get it back because I have literally done nothing wrong, but I wanted to share the story of what happened to Mitch and I before all this. So yeah, it's been quite an interesting year, 2025, but  a couple of weeks ago, we were leaving Vietnam to head to the Philippines.

Now we knew we had overstayed our visa by one day because  I had booked the flight for the 26th and I didn't realize that our visa was ending on the 25th. We found that out as soon as we arrived to the country and I was like, oh my god, what do we do? Once we got to one of the major cities, I went, we went and saw immigration and they told us it's fine.

You just pay the fine at the airport. It's about 60 US dollars. And I said, you know, I love Vietnam. I want to come back with this impact, you know, and re entry to the country. And they said only if you do it multiple times. It's like  fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice.  No, shame on you, shame on, whatever, you know, you get it.

So basically we show up at the airport.  Picture this, it's like 3. 30 in the morning. We get up, we pack our bags, we order an Uber, we get to the airport. It's about 4 when we arrive. I think our check in was about 5. So  we're like, we wanted to be there early, wanted to be like one of the first in line. We sat, we watched some TikToks, Mitch FaceTimed his dad, like we were just waiting.

So then when The line started happening, we joined the line, we hand over our passports, and the first thing that the woman saw was when she was handed the passport, Mitch's first page had a tiny tear in it, which is never usually noticed, and we didn't even really notice because it usually sits fine, and we don't even know when it happened anyway.

She notified us that his passport was torn, and we had said yes, we're sorry, like, um, You know, we can't really do much about it. Anyway, then she noticed our visa. She's like, your visa's expired. I can't do anything. Please go and see immigration and remove yourself from the line. And we said, yeah, we understand.

We actually spoke to immigration. We just assumed we'd come here first. And she said, no, I don't want anything to do with you. Basically, go and see immigration. Immigration was closed. So I'm like running around the airport trying to find someone. Like, please help us. We need to get on this flight. Our flight was at 8 a.

m. So, finally, they were doing a change of shift, someone had told me. So, we get to immigration, this really lovely gentleman, we explained our situation, we explained we had been to this exact counter a week before, or a week and two days before, and he explained to us what we needed to do.  He looked at us, he looked at the board for a really long time, and then he stamped it and wrote the date, and I said, okay, like, here's the money for the fine, and he said, no, I'm not going to fine you because you're only four hours.

You know, five hours past the, you know, 12 a. m. deadline. Oh my god, thank you so much. Like, you know, that money. Yeah, it's always nice to get money back. Thank you so much. We go and join the line. So we're in the line, and all of a sudden one of the guys says, go see that guy at that counter. And that was the guy that was sort of notified that our passport, we had a torn passport and our visa was out of date.

Anyway, he makes it known to us that this is an issue, and that he needs to contact Singapore and the Philippines because we were, well, technically I had to just contact the Vietnam Airlines in Singapore because we were going via Singapore. We stood there for like an hour and a half. We nearly missed our flight.

Well, maybe, yeah, it was a bit an hour to an hour and a half. He was contacting them and I think he was quite frustrated with us. And the one thing that I said to him was,  look, I know it's early, I'm tired, you're tired, I'm really sorry, like, you know, whatever. Anyway,  I was really trying to keep it together, because usually I stress in these sorts of situations.

In the end, I did keep it together. Mitch signed, you know, basically a declaration saying he would not sue Vietnam Airlines if  we get to Singapore and they reject us. Anyway, I'm feeling really shit at this point, to be fair. And a wave of emotions came over me. I just released. I started crying. This was after he'd given us, you know, it's okay, fine.

And he's like, the old parent thing. Now, what are you going to do when you get to Singapore? And if they reject you, we're going to call the Colombian embassy. Okay, good. He just wanted to check that we knew what we were doing anyway. So  he noticed some distress in me. He gets his colleague to Fast track us through security like you wouldn't believe so we did we made it to our flight.

It was all fine But then we're stressed right? We've got to make it through Singapore and the Philippines. So we get to Singapore Everything's basically automated But then when we did get to the kiosk the woman just grabbed his passport and swiped it and said enjoy your flight There was no issue at all in Philippines.

They checked his passport They asked him a hundred questions about what he's doing there because he tends to get that and he gets through Which was such a relief because I was oh my god, so stressed But then, on one of the flights, it made me realize, like,  you sort of forget when you go to different countries, you are following their rules and regulations.

Like, when we're because we've been doing this nomad thing for such a long time, we when we get somewhere, you know, we stay in an Airbnb,  we cook our food, we try and, like, live a life normal, right? Like, we don't  It, we don't feel like tourists all the time, like whilst when we do the tours and stuff we do, but sometimes it just feels like our Monday to Friday.

So, you forget there's all these rules and regulations of another country, but it makes you feel like you have no control. The fact that I thought Mitch was gonna get stranded in either Singapore or Vietnam made me feel like, oh my god, we have literally no control over this. And it's the same with channels like social media.

Me getting banned, like, if they decide they don't want to give my account back, I can't do anything. Yeah, I'll have to make a new account or whatever. But I'm in a borrowed space. And when you're visiting another country, you're essentially just like, you're not a permanent person. You're following the rules and regulations of another country.

You are entering someone else's space. And that's what it feels like when you're on social media and things like getting banned or rejected happens. I have not experienced this before. So,  I've never felt out of control on social media. So it's a really good learning experience of like,  I've got to play by their rules.

If Meta want me to verify my account and pay the 20, that's what I have to do. If one day social media decides to charge everyone,  that's what we have to do. We have to play their game.  And this isn't to scare you, this is to prepare you.  Because when you realize that social media isn't the only way to grow in your business, then you can, you don't have to become a slave to it and you can become  inspired and empowered  to make the right decisions for your business, to move it forward in a way that's aligned to you.

So I'm going to show you three ways or take you through three things you can do right now to prepare yourself so that if these things happen, you're already on top of it. But like, as I said, Yeah, it's shit. I've lost Instagram. I've still got a mailing list. I've still got LinkedIn. I've still got a TikTok account, which I could pay more attention to.

I've still got this podcast. I've still got so many options networking. Like there's not just social media, but I'm, I am a little bit worried for the businesses that only rely on social media.  So yeah, whilst in 2020, I was tempted to take that route to become just an Instagram real, not just, but you know, an Instagram real or Instagram mentor.

And. You know, just work in that space. Part of me was like, no, because that doesn't align to me. I'm about holistic content marketing strategy, and that is a hell I'll die on. And now that this has happened, my business isn't completely closed down  and there's still so many things that I can do.  So the first thing that I want you to think about is the connection with your audience.

Understand how they consume.  Platforms change. So even with social media, you know, the landscape feed has changed on Instagram. We're now seeing more long form videos, short form video, like we're always being thrown at us. They're always throwing things at us of what they're changing,  but it doesn't matter what the algorithm is doing.

It matters that you understand your audience and how they engage. There are some clients that will watch a 20 minute video. So why would I say to  someone?  Don't do long form video because it's dead if their audience is actively engaging in that.  This is what you should worry about changing. The engagement and how your audience consumes, not how the algorithm has changed.

For example, I have a client on TikTok, and a lot of their videos are more longer form. And by longer form, like, they're not those quick 10 second trends. They're more detailed, more educational, and it's just about understanding what the audience wants to hear.  And what they engage with, not, Oh, there's a trend.

Let's jump on it. But then on the other hand, I have another account that's different. It's so different. You can't fit in a box with this and you can't put your audience in a box. So please spend some time understanding what your audience likes to consume,  who they are, because it doesn't matter what platform it is.

You can reach your audience in so many different ways. If you just understand them a bit better.  The second one is connecting with your vision. What are your goals?  Where do your customers come from?  Why do you use social media? Connect with your why. There is so many answers in this. Understanding my why with my retainer clients and how I serve my one on one clients meant that I don't have to show up on social media to get business from that platform.

That is not where my retainer clients, some of them don't even follow my Instagram, some of them don't even know that my Instagram is not there. They wouldn't know. And some of them don't even need Instagram to market their business.  So,  why do we think that there's only one way to make money, which is showing up and selling on social media?

It's because of the noise that is currently happening on social media.  It's currently the people that are telling you how much they earn from posting on social media, which I would argue is not true. True.  100%.  Maybe there's parts of it. Probably they run ads. Probably they do many other things. They've built their network, but they're not telling you that because they sell the dream of posting on social media a post and earning 10, 000.

It's not a reality.  Imagine if we didn't need social media to make money. How would you show up?  I show up so different.  And I'm continuing to evolve that. But understanding Your business is so important in this. It's not about  people showing up and telling you how much money they make on social media.  A presence can be served in so many different ways.

Building personal brand, building trust, building connection. It doesn't have to be about making money.  And then the last one is optimize your channels, reflect on the right channels for you and your audience right now and adapt.  But also  we can adapt to how the platforms have changed, of course, but always check in.

So this client of mine that we, has been banned and had the account deleted. We think we're going to get it back because nothing has actually happened. I'm not really sure what is going on, but we are working with it.  Evolve and change it. Um, we decided to create a content strategy that was very different.

Again, we had, I've worked with her for the last four years. We've had, we have a website, blog, podcast. All of these different accounts, LinkedIn, a healthy email list. All of these things that we can. Draw to and we've decided to double down on different channels and start a few new ones because that's okay, too.

So you don't have to always go where someone is telling you to go. Finding the right channels for you might take a couple years, even might take being banned on social media. We don't know where this is gonna go with this client. And when I can talk about it more, when we can share it, we will. We will do a case study on this.

We will 100 percent shout from the rooftops what has happened.  But right now we're, we're going through it.  So thinking about it from the lens of, okay, where is my audience? I had a call, um, with a past client who was telling me, yeah, there's all these channels that I could jump on, but I know this is where my audience is and they're actually not consuming a lot other than here.

And these are the other things that I need to do.  because I've got that presence. A lot of clients hire me to do their social media to help them with their social media is because they need the energy to go out and do other things because they know that's where their clients are.  To think that all your clients and all your opportunities are going to come through one channel on social media is not the full picture.

That's why our content strategy is so important and with this client who we had to evolve. We just sat down, we, we know the vision, we know the audience, so it was so much easier to tweak. If you know that stuff, it's easy, but I, if you haven't done the work, it's, it's  impossible.  But it doesn't take a lot to get it done.

That's why I created Content Bootcamp, that's why I've got this audio guide, to help you with this stuff, because  when social media changes, not if, when, you have to understand that  these channels are borrowed land.  They are not, they don't owe you anything  and you just have to keep working on building that digital footprint.

You'll be so much better off.  So as I mentioned, I had so many doubts in 2020. Should I focus on being focused on social media? Should I niche to one platform and just be really good at it that I've seen a lot of people do very well?  This is the risk of it.  And it's the same thing with your content marketing.

Diversifying your strategy is going to allow you to flourish. When there's certain channels that aren't giving you what you need in your business. And of course, there's other marketing efforts, other business efforts. We don't need to be a slave to these channels, but rather use them to our advantage. We don't have to be in  ownership or in, like, out of control because something else is in control of us.

That's why I can sit here,  talk about the fact that I'm gonna be fine, my business is gonna be fine, my client's business is going to be fine because So this is from day one. We never solely relied on one platform. Now I understand we don't all have lots of time and I know where energy goes, energy flows.

So if you do focus on one platform, you will see a lot of growth. But it's also important to try and spread yourself a little bit, not thin, just a little bit more.  And that's where a strategy can help because we talk repurposing, we get things out there. So even if there is a channel where you go, Oh, I repurposed to it.

It's growing, but probably not as quickly.  As, you know, if I spent more time on it,  because I'm focusing my efforts over here, we can start to switch shift and change. You could make a three month plan to focus solely on Instagram and repurpose to LinkedIn and Facebook and then after three months you go, did that work?

Did it not? Hmm. Let's move on to something else. You have to adapt because otherwise if you just keep doing the same thing,  you might find yourself in trouble  when these platforms change. So,  I'm not trying to scare you. I'm not trying to create more work for you. I just want you to think about it. I'm fine.

I will be fine. Everything will be okay. Just if you do love this episode, don't tag me on Instagram  cause I'm not there. I'm on Tik TOK, but you could still share it and link the episode. I would really appreciate it. Obviously, yeah, I will be back on there. I'm not sure when. Um, just waiting. Just patiently waiting over here.

If you are from Meta or know anyone connected to Meta, please email me. Information at contentqueenmariah.  com Love to chat. Love to talk about it. Um, I'm sure you have so many questions about the band. I know you can't reach out to me and ask me about it. You can email me. I just gave my email. You can follow me on TikTok, LinkedIn.

I'm on so many platforms. There's so many other ways to communicate with me. But be your content queen or king and remember that developing your strategy most importantly and your story develops your business. Thank you so much for joining me on this flight, this last flight of the 90 day campaign. So start, stamp your passport.

Don't forget to tell all your business entrepreneurial friends. You can do this by adding it to your Insta stories still. Popping the link to the episode, sharing it with your friends, business friends, anyone that needs to hear this. If you do rate and review, it does help me spread this message out there, but also get amazing guests.

Obviously, again, we are one platform down, so the more love you spread, uh, the more it'll help us get amazing guests on the show and quality content. So follow us on socials wherever we are at any given time and let me know if there is any topics You want me to talk about i'd love to cover it again If you have any questions if you're on spotify, you can leave a comment.

So ask any questions and I will talk to you soon. Bye.

PodcastMariah MacInnesmarketing, marketing advice, how to be authentic online, business ownerComment