Stop Guessing: Close Your Marketing Blind Spots Fast

Most solopreneurs don’t lose because they lack hustle. They lose because they’re confidently wrong about something basic—what works in their market, what their audience cares about, or what “good marketing” actually looks like.

That’s the uncomfortable point behind Seth Godin’s question: are entrepreneurs professionals? In fields like law or medicine, you don’t get to call “being intentionally naive” a strategy. You do the reading, learn the standards, copy proven methods, and only then earn the right to innovate.

This matters a lot inside the Small Business Social Media USA series, because social media rewards consistency and clarity—not vibes. If you’re a one-person business, you don’t have a team to catch your blind spots. So you need a system that forces feedback, learning, and reality checks.

Professional solopreneurs do the reading (and then they test it)

A professional approach is simple: learn what’s already known, then validate it in your context. The amateur approach is to assume that effort and authenticity will carry the strategy.

Social media is full of this trap. Someone posts daily, “shows up,” shares their journey, and expects customers to appear. Sometimes it happens (the startup lottery Seth mentions). Usually it doesn’t—because attention isn’t the same as trust, and trust isn’t the same as conversion.

Here’s what “doing the reading” looks like for a solopreneur running marketing without a department:

• You learn baseline best practices (positioning, offers, funnel basics, messaging)
• You study what already works in your category (formats, hooks, proof types)
• You run small experiments (not big rebrands) to see what your audience responds to
• You keep receipts (saved posts, swipe files, metrics notes) instead of relying on memory

Authenticity isn’t a substitute for competence. It’s what makes competence believable.

If you want growth on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or YouTube, you don’t need a “secret.” You need to stop treating marketing knowledge as optional.

The 3 blind spots holding your solopreneur marketing back

Blind spots aren’t personality flaws—they’re missing information. And missing information is fixable.

1) You’re marketing what you sell, not what they’re buying

People don’t buy your service. They buy the outcome.

A CPA doesn’t sell “tax prep.” They sell sleep, risk reduction, and no scary letters from the IRS. A career coach doesn’t sell “1:1 sessions.” They sell a better job offer and confidence in interviews.

On social media, this blind spot shows up as content that’s technically accurate… and easy to ignore.

Fix it this week: rewrite your bio and your three most common post hooks so they start with the outcome.

• Instead of: “I help small businesses with social media.”
• Try: “I help service businesses turn posts into consult calls—without posting every day.”

2) You assume your audience is paying attention like you are

You think about your business all day. Your audience does not.

Most small businesses underestimate how many exposures it takes for someone to recognize a brand, understand what it does, and trust it enough to act. In advertising research, the old “rule of 7” is a simplified idea, but the principle is correct: repetition builds familiarity.

On social media, that means:

• You need a tight set of repeatable themes
• You need consistent language for your offer
• You need to say the “obvious” stuff more often than feels comfortable

Fix it this week: pick 3 content pillars and repeat them for 30 days.

Example for a local service business:

1. Before/after or proof
2. Simple education (“what to do when…”)
3. Objection handling (pricing, timing, fear, confusion)

3) You confuse “posting” with “marketing”

Posting is an activity. Marketing is a system.

If you’re doing small business social media marketing in the US, your system needs at least four parts:

1. Attention: content that earns a stop (hook, relevance, timing)
2. Trust: proof, authority, clarity, consistency
3. Conversion: an offer + a clear next step
4. Follow-up: capture, nurture, and a reason to come back

If your posts never point to a next step, you’re relying on luck.

Fix it this week: add one “conversion post” per week. Not a hard sell—just a clear CTA:

• “Comment ‘checklist’ and I’ll DM it”
• “Book a 15-minute fit call—link in bio”
• “If you want my template, send me ‘template’”

How to uncover what you don’t know about your market (without a team)

You close knowledge gaps by building feedback loops. Solopreneurs need lightweight loops they’ll actually run.

Use the “3 sources” rule for audience insight

Don’t trust a single source of truth. Use three:

1. Direct conversations: sales calls, DMs, intake forms
2. Behavioral signals: saves, shares, profile clicks, email replies
3. Market evidence: competitor comments, reviews, FAQs, category language

Your job is to find patterns in the words people use.

A practical method I’ve found reliable: keep an “exact phrases” doc. Every time someone says:

• “I’m overwhelmed by…”
• “I tried X and it didn’t work…”
• “I’m worried you’re too expensive because…”

…paste it. Those phrases become your best social media hooks.

Run small experiments with a 2-week cadence

Most solopreneurs either change nothing for months or change everything in a weekend. Both are mistakes.

Try a simple cadence:

• Week 1: test one variable (hook style, content format, CTA)
• Week 2: repeat the winner and tighten it (better example, clearer proof)

One variable at a time. That’s how professionals learn fast.

Build a personal “best practices” library

Seth’s point about professional fields is really about memory. Professionals don’t reinvent the wheel because they know the wheel exists.

For small business social media, your library can be tiny:

• 10 saved posts that consistently perform in your niche
• 5 CTA patterns you know you can deliver on
• 3 proof formats (screenshots, mini case studies, before/after)
• 1 page: your offer, your audience, your promise, your differentiator

If you can’t explain your differentiator in one sentence, social media will punish you with confusion.

What “professional social media” looks like for a solopreneur

Professional marketing is calmer than amateur marketing. It’s less frantic because it’s built on standards.

Here’s a realistic, non-burnout weekly plan that fits a one-person business:

A simple weekly social media plan (3–4 posts)

• 1 proof post: a result, a win, a client story, a before/after
• 1 teaching post: a checklist, a process, a mistake to avoid
• 1 point-of-view post: your stance on a common myth (with a reason)
• Optional 1 offer post: who you help + what happens next

Then add:

• 10 minutes/day responding to comments and DMs
• 1 hour/week reviewing what got saved/shared (not just likes)

This is how you get consistent growth without pretending you’re a content studio.

The “duplicate effective methods” rule (without becoming generic)

Seth calls out “eagerly duplicates effective methods.” Some solopreneurs hear that and panic: “But I want to be original.”

Originality is great. But originality without fundamentals is expensive.

Duplicate what works at the level of structure:

• Hook types (problem/solution, myth-bust, quick win)
• Proof placement (early, specific)
• CTA clarity (one action)

Then make it yours with your stories, your examples, your voice.

A quick self-audit: are you acting like a pro or playing the lottery?

If your marketing depends on luck, you’ll feel stressed all the time. Professionals reduce stress by reducing variance.

Use this checklist:

1. Can you describe your audience in one sentence without using “anyone”?
2. Do you have one primary offer that’s easy to explain?
3. Are you collecting voice-of-customer phrases weekly?
4. Do you have a repeatable content system (not just inspiration)?
5. Are you tracking the right signals (saves, replies, clicks, consults)?

If you answered “no” to 2 or more, you don’t need more motivation. You need more inputs—reading, feedback, and testing.

Where to go from here

A professional solopreneur doesn’t treat ignorance as a brand identity. They treat it as a temporary condition—and then fix it.

If you’re working on small business social media marketing in the USA, your edge isn’t posting more than everyone else. Your edge is learning faster than everyone else, then applying what you learned with discipline.

So here’s the question I’d sit with this week: what’s one thing your audience knows about your market that you still haven’t bothered to learn?