85. Rethinking Social Media as a Doula (And Why Most Advice Fails You)

If you’re wondering how to stand out as a doula without posting more, chasing trends, or burning out on Instagram, this episode breaks it down.

I’m sharing the truth about my own content creation journey: the batching, the accountability pods, the 5–10 hours a week spent on reels...and why none of it directly grew my doula business.

This conversation will help you rethink doula visibility and shift away from outdated social media advice that keeps birth workers stuck.

Inside, I cover:

• Why consistency alone won’t help you get clients
• The real reason doulas blend in online
• What families actually look for when choosing a doula
• How to clearly communicate what makes you different

Standing out isn’t about being louder.
It’s about being clearer.

If you want honest feedback on your positioning and messaging, book a clarity call here.

Struggling to grow your doula business? Tired of chasing pregnant mothers online? Imagine effortlessly attracting your dream clients and reaching the mamas you're meant to serve!?

⬇️ START HERE ⬇️

FREE Assessment: Why Your Doula Biz Is Stuck Under 10K Months
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Learn more about Six Figure Doula

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Because so many of the doulas in my world are very, very concerned about adding to the overwhelm, adding to the fear-mongering. If that's you, I see where that's coming from. What we need to offer then is clarity so these moms can take a deep breath. Welcome to the Six Figure Doula Podcast. This is where confidence becomes currency. If you're a birth worker who's ready to stop overthinking, stop undercharging, and start leading like you mean it, then you're not here by accident. Every week we talk sales without the ick, money without shame, and building a business that actually holds you and your clients. Welcome home, Doula. Happy, happy Tuesday. All right, can we just talk for a second? I gotta, I gotta talk about this. So, as you probably already know, I missed my podcast drop last week. And you would have thought that I had committed a federal crime, the way that my brain spiraled out about it for days. And I was like playing this loop in my head that was saying things like, Wow, Lisa, you're inconsistent. Your followers are going to unsubscribe from your show. You tell your clients to be visible and now look at you. So there was all these like mental gymnastics, like Olympic level mental gymnastics going on. And here's what I recognized today, actually. It took me a while, but here's what I recognized was actually happening. I was knee deep in sales calls all week, in Telegram, in WhatsApp, voice notes, in my private VIP one-on-one delivery, hot leads at my fingertips. I was having real conversations with real women making real decisions all week long. I was not intentionally hiding from the consistency. I was not, I can honestly promise you, slacking or falling into a rut or procrastinating. I was out there serving in my element. And just in case, you know, you're new here and you don't really know like the back end of my business, I am a solopreneur through and through. There is no content team, there's nobody editing this podcast, there is no VA batching my life for me. It is me and only me. So when my business requires me to be inside, inside the business, inside the conversations, that is where I go. And the wild part is that my one-on-one clients, my VIP high touch clients, they actually hand me content every single week. No questions asked. So their fears, their consultation wins, their DM screenshots, the objections they're getting thrown, their holy shit, I just signed someone at my highest price moments. That is so much better, in my not so humble opinion, than any case study that I could manufacture. So even though I was in the weeds in the best freaking way, I was working inside my business this week, last week, rather, I was actually gathering the exact material that lets me work on my business as a CEO in a much deeper way. And if you are listening to this, wondering, like, can I really have five-figure months without a team? Hell yeah. I'm doing it. And I want to be as transparent as possible. But it's it's it's not the beautiful batching days and color-coded content calendar that so many are out there preaching. And I'm not knocking it, but it's not for me. Sometimes it looks like being fully in the room, on the calls, full energy, in the fire, trusting that serving pays. So, all in all, if you missed me last week, that is why. Now you know, now you know why. And if you didn't even notice, which let's be real, that's very likely, and humbling as well, and a really good reminder that that sense of urgency is not always truth. And we need to constantly check ourselves within our priorities every day, hyper focus. How can we exercise restraint? How can we follow the money? Because the money leads to the impact. All right, let's get into today. Now that that is off my chest, I want to talk today about how to stand out as a doula in a crowded market. And first, I need to kind of paint the picture of what content creation looked like for me for a very long time. It was not effortless, it was not intuitive. And it 100% definitely was not making me money. And at one point, I did the thing that so many of us do. So I went and I bought the course. And then I bought another course, and then I created that beautiful spreadsheet. You know the spreadsheet, like color-coded with the content pillars and the posting days and the hooks and the reels and the stories and the calls to action. And I batched content like a very responsible business owner. And I blocked time in my schedule and I recorded things in big chunks. And then I would fall off the wagon. And instead of asking myself why that kept happening, I decided the problem must be my own accountability. So, what did I do? I went and I took it to the next level and I created an accountability pod just for content creation. And the three of us held each other to this very completely unrealistic cadence of content creation. And we were posting constantly and we were staying visible and we were showing up no matter what. And it would work for like, I don't know, two weeks and then life would happen, or I would get tired of it, or it would start to feel super forced and heavy as shit, and I would fall off again. If I actually add up the time of planning it out and batching it and doing the recording and the editing and, you know, simplifying and strengthening the captions and joining the accountability pod and consuming content about content, I was easily spending five to ten hours a week on social media. Five to ten hours. The part that really matters though is not once did a reel bring me a client on its own by itself. Not once did I go viral. And never did I feel like Instagram was growing my doula business bottom line. What it did do was make me feel behind constantly. Like I was the worst when it came to consistency. So it was, it was me. I was the problem. And that's when I started to really, really dig into this, like on a personal level, and I realized something really important, which that the problem here had nothing to do with my work ethic. It was the way that I was thinking about social media entirely. And that's what I want to address today. That is the heart of this episode. So 100%, I am not like shut this episode down right now if you are looking for batching tips. That is not what this is about. This is 100% about rewiring how you think and feel about social media inside your current business and within your personal brand. Because until that shift happens, I can almost promise you, unfortunately, your strategy will not stick. So here we go. If you are a doula, a perinatal professional, and you feel invisible right now, it's 100% not because you are not incredible at serving mothers. We have established that, but it needs to go on record. It's not because families don't value doulas or they don't have enough education around doulas, because I get that a lot. Of course, there is a piece within this line of work where we have to do some educating, but this is not the reason that you feel this way. It's because most of what we've been told about getting visible is actually working against you. I know that is so frustrating to hear because you're out there trying and posting and showing up, and you're so thoughtful and intentional about it. But somehow it still feels like you are talking into that void. The market is not overcrowded. I will say that again. The market is not overcrowded. It's very loud, 100%. And there's a lot of similarities, there's a lot of sameness going on. I mean, you scroll social media for five minutes, you see it. The same topics, the same tone, the same careful language for so many birth workers. I support you wherever you're at, type of energy. And I'm not knocking that, but it's forgettable. It is so forgettable. Families are not confused because they don't have enough information. They are so overwhelmed because everybody sounds interchangeable and they don't know who to trust. It's hard for them to tap into what they're feeling intuitively because of the vanilla. When everything feels like you could just swap each other out, guess what happens? Mothers default to price, convenience, whoever replies first, not trust or alignment, or oh, this is my person. So that, my friends, is the real visibility issue. So posting more cannot and will not fix unclear messaging. Consistency, that thing that I grappled with for so long, will not fix blending in with every other doula. And education alone will not make someone choose you because they have ChatGPT and Google and Threads and like it's endless. Families are not hiring a doula or a newborn care specialist based on who knows the most, who has the most births under their belt, who's done the most overnight hours. I can guarantee they are hiring based on who makes them feel clear, calm, safe in the middle of the uncertainty. That comes from how you think out loud, not how much you teach. We have to start showing that part. So, where do I see so many of us get stuck? Where did I get stuck describing your work like a job description? I provide evidence-based information. I help families feel empowered. Okay. But how? What do you notice first when someone starts talking to you? What makes your internal alarm bells go off? What do you gently challenge that others avoid saying? That is the difference. That is your differentiator. And families really don't need another doula who says they support informed decision making. They need someone who can say, here's what I'm noticing. Here's what usually helps right here in this moment. But if your content never shows any of that, then these mothers have no way to understand why you matter and right now. So let's just like slow this down for a minute and make it really real and tangible. When a mama lands on your page, I can honestly guarantee I could put money that they are not asking. Ooh, what certifications does she have specifically? They are asking, and a lot of times this is subconscious. Does she understand the moment that I'm in right now? Will she help me think when I'm overwhelmed? Will she speak up when I can't? So here's something I would love for you to try, because you know, homework and action and just awareness. Finish this sentence out loud for me. I am the doula that you hire when. If your brain just froze, that's really important. And I'm not shaming you. This is not to make anyone embarrassed. That's information. Most doulas have never been asked to define that. And another thing that keeps so many invisible is trying to be agreeable, trying not to offend. And I get it. Birth work, motherhood, postpartum, so tender, so much emotion, a lot of fear around saying the wrong thing. But the truth is, if your content feels safe to everyone, it will not feel meaningful enough to the right families. I'm gonna reframe this because it took so long for it to sink in for myself. And so I want to give you different ways of really seeing this. You are absolutely not hired to provide information. Let that sink in. Because I know we've got our childbirth education, we've got our prenatals, we've got our postpartum planning, and that feels educational. And to an extent it is, but you are hired to reduce uncertainty. So I need you to ask yourself, what decisions do I help families make faster, sooner? Do you help them trust their instincts, ask better questions, recognize when something isn't sitting right, slow the room down? That is the work. And when your content does that, even on a subtle T, even subtly, I meant, people lean in. So I have had this conversation so much in my group container recently. This has been a real hot topic. And I think what I want to say is that clarity feels like relief for these families. And the reason I bring that up is because so many of the doulas in my world are very, very concerned about adding to the overwhelm, adding to the fear-mongering. If that's you, I see where that's coming from. What we need to offer then is clarity so these moms can take a deep breath. Do not turn off this episode and think to yourself, I have to rebrand everything. I have to reinvent every single piece. No. You do not need to suddenly become like more dramatic. What you do need, though, is to quit hiding behind the vague language. So your Instagram bio, for example, that needs to give me a sense of who you are for and what it feels like to be guided by you. Not every single thing that you offer, not your entire philosophy, absolutely not your resume, just enough for me to say, oh, that's different. And then pin one post that says what you believe. And when you write, try this shift. So instead of explaining, try deciding. This matters more than people think. This is usually where things fall apart. This is what actually helps when emotions run high. That tone alone changes how women, family, birthing people experience you. Standing out, it's it's not a marketing move. It's an identity. It's an identity move. It asks you to stop buffering everything that you say, not waiting for permission. It is asking you to trust that your lived experience actually counts. And that can be uncomfortable because being seen also often means, almost inevitably means being misunderstood. This was the shift for me. It means not everyone will agree. It means you cannot hide behind being nice all the time. The right women do not need you to be perfect, they need you to be crystal freaking clear. And that clarity is kindness. I guess what I want you to take from this, my hope, after revealing all of this around like what I went through and that massive shift that has made such a difference for me, is maybe instead of pouring your time and energy and heart into posting more and being more consistent, maybe, just maybe, what you need is clarity. Clarity around what makes you different, clarity around how you are currently being perceived, around why the right women are not finding you, then that is your cue. That is your cue to jump on a clarity call with me. One conversation, real feedback, zero pressure. You'll find the link in the show notes. I love you.