Why Your Social Media Isn't Working (And It's Not What You Think)

If you've ever looked at your social media and thought "I'm posting, I'm showing up, so why is nothing happening?" this episode is for you.

Philippa digs into the pattern she sees again and again when working with chiropractors on their visibility. The shared posts. The coffee cups. The Canva graphics. All of it technically counts as posting. None of it is actually working the way you want to. And there's a very specific reason why.

The good news? Social media isn't broken. You just might need to shift the way you show up.

This episode covers what practitioners are actually doing wrong, why safe content is keeping them invisible, and what patients/future practice members are genuinely looking for when they scroll past your profile. 

Spoiler: it's not a well-designed graphic.

There's also a Spice Girls moment. You've been warned.

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About Philippa:

Philippa Wilmot is a chiropractor of 16 years and the founder of ChiroVisibility, a membership community helping chiropractors build real visibility through social media and marketing that actually feels like them. In 2026 she was recognised by Women in Chiropractic with the Impact Award - "an exceptional chiropractor creating IMPACT in the lives of others." She's also the host of the ChiroVisibility Pod, where chiropractic finds its people.

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Transcript

The Pattern Behind “It Doesn’t Work”

Why Safe Content Gets No Results

What People Actually Need To See

Small Shifts That Build Trust

Audit Your Feed And Show Up

Community Invite And Workshop Plug

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the Chiropisibility Podcast. I'm Philippa, and today we're getting into something that I honestly could talk about forever. Because it comes up every single time I start working with a new chiropractor. Every single time. It's about social media, but before you roll your eyes and skip to the next episode, I promise you this is not the conversation you think it is. Stick with me, this gets good. I want to talk to you today about something that comes up again and again, and I mean again and again, whenever I start working with chiropractors on their visibility. It is the thing that honestly I find the most frustrating, the most fascinating, and weirdly the most useful thing I've come across in all the time I have been doing this. And it starts with social media. I know, I know, I can already hear some of you saying not social media again, but bear with me because this is not the conversation you think it's going to be. So when I first started teaching about visibility, social media was where I began. And the reason is really simple. It's free, it's fairly easy to use, and it's one of the most powerful tools you have available to you for building genuine connection and authentic presence online. And those two things, connection and authenticity, are not just nice ideas. They are actively what AI Search is looking for right now. I will come back to that in another podcast, but for the moment, just hold that thought. So I started teaching social media. I was enthusiastic about it, probably annoyingly so, and the response I got almost immediately from a significant number of people was it doesn't work, it's rubbish, I've been using it for years, and it's totally useless. Now here's the thing about me. I am, I'll be honest, a little bit nosy. And when people tell me something doesn't work that I know does, I want to understand why it doesn't work for them. So rather than take their word for it, I went back to their accounts and I had a look. And what I found was genuinely interesting because what I was looking at in account after account after account was a really clear pattern. A pattern that once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. And the first thing I noticed was a lot of shared content. Posts shared from other people's pages, other organizations, other sources, which on the surface sounds reasonable, right? You're keeping your feed active, you're sharing useful things, but there is a problem with that. In fact, there's more than one problem. Shared posts tell your audience almost nothing about you. And beyond that, Facebook in particular, and most other platforms actively suppress shared content in favour of original posts. So not only is it not building connection, it's also being quietly buried by the algorithm. The second thing I noticed was pictures, lots of pictures, coffee cups, views out the window, the occasional inspirational quote on a background that I have to say was a little bit over-engineered and not necessarily reflective of those people. And there is nothing wrong with any of that. But picture after picture of things that have no particular relevance to you, no particular connection, they're not your practice or your or your future practice members, it doesn't tell anybody anything about who you are. And the third thing I noticed, which was really the most telling, was what wasn't there. There wasn't much original content, things actually shared and created by the person themselves, their thoughts, their voice, their perspective, and their face. That was almost entirely absent. In fact, I go so far to say as when I looked through those accounts, I struggled to find who was behind them at all. So here is what was happening. These practitioners were using social media, technically, they were posting technically, but the way they were using it was almost perfectly designed to produce no result whatsoever. And so, quite understandably, they had decided that social media didn't work. But social media wasn't the problem, the way they were using it was the problem. Now I want to be really clear here, because I don't say this to be critical. I say it because once you understand why they were using it that way, it becomes a much more interesting and a much more compassionate conversation. Because this is the thing I've come to understand. Having worked with a lot of practitioners now and seen this pattern over and over, the way people tend to use social media when it isn't working, the shares, the random photos, the Canva graphics, all of it serves a very particular purpose. It is safe. Sharing someone else's post is safe. You haven't put yourself out there, you haven't said anything that could be questioned or challenged, and you haven't had to be seen. Posting a picture of your coffee is safe. It's pleasant, it's innocuous, it doesn't really mean anything. And hiding behind a Canva graphic, that is the ultimate safe option. The graphic looks professional, it's got your logo on it, it says something useful, and you, the actual human being, the person that matters, you're nowhere in sight. Now I understand this, I genuinely do. Putting yourself out there is uncomfortable. Posting a video where people can see your face and hear your voice and form an opinion of you is uncomfortable. Being seen is uncomfortable, especially when you are very aware that you are trying to attract people and you feel a little bit like you're performing, a bit like you're selling, which some of us find deeply unpleasant. So you find a way to be present without really being present, and it feels like a reasonable compromise, except that it isn't. And here is why. Shall I tell you what they want, what they really, really want? And yes, if you had a Spice Girls moment there too, we're probably on the same page. The people who are looking for you, your people, the people who need what you offer, they're not scrolling through social media looking for a well-designed graphic. They're not searching for a shared article from a chiropractic organization, they are looking for you. They want to know what you sound like, they want to know how you explain things, whether you're warm or matter-of-fact or funny or calm. They want to see your face and think, yes, that is someone I could sit in a room with. They want to feel they know you a little bit before they ever walk through your door. Because what they're really looking for when you get right down to it is to feel safe. Think about that for a second. They're coming to you with a pain or with a worry or a concern or something that's been affecting their life for a while. They're putting themselves in your hands quite literally, and before they can do that, they need to feel that they can trust you, that you're a real person, like you're their kind of person. And a Canva graphic just doesn't do that. Only you can do that. And the irony, the beautiful, frustrating irony is that the practitioners who are hiding behind safe content because they're worried about being judged or questioned or not liked are withholding the very thing that would help someone feel safe enough to book. I've worked with a lot of people on this now and I've seen the shift happen, and it is genuinely one of my favourite things to watch because it often starts as quite a small change, just one video, one post written in their actual voice rather than their professional voice. One moment of being a little bit more human online than they were yesterday. And the response is almost always not what they fear. It's people saying, Oh, I feel like I know you now. It's long-term patients sharing the post and saying, This is exactly what my chiropractor is like. These inquiries from people who say, I've been following you from for a while and I just felt like the time was right. It's not the algorithm, that's connection, and you can't automate it, you cannot outsource it, and you absolutely cannot achieve it by sharing someone else's post from behind a coffee cup. So if you're one of the people who has decided that social media doesn't work, I gently invite you to go back and have a look. Be a bit nosy like me. Look at what you've actually been posting and ask yourself honestly: does this content let people see me? Does it allow them to hear me? Does it give them any reason to feel like they know me? And if the answer is mostly no, then social media hasn't failed you. You just haven't really shown up yet. And when you do, it tends to be a very different story. So there you go. Social media isn't broken, you just might not have found your way to show up on it yet. And that is very fixable. If this episode gave you a little nudge, I'd love to know. Come and find me, tell me what you're going to try, or better yet, come and join us inside the Cara Visibility community where we work on exactly this kind of thing together. All the links are in the show notes. And one more thing before I go. By the time this episode lands, Cairo Visibility Live, my one-day workshop, will be open. Spaces are limited, so if it's been on your radar to come and catch up or spend some time learning more about this, now is the time. All the links are in the show notes. And thank you for being part of the ChiraVisibility pod where chiropractic finds its people.