Why Social Media Doesn’t Matter

Let me tell you a story.

Last night you spent 30 minutes doing one of the following:

Trawling through Facebook

Watching a Periscope broadcast from your favorite marketer where all they do is keep telling you to give them hearts

Deep diving into your friends Instagram posts from last year trying not to accidentally like one of them and end up looking like a creep.

No way, Brendan! I’m a hustler.

I don’t waste time, ever.

I’m a super productivity hacker!

If you said any of the above, you may also be a liar.  I know this because I know myself.  I’m the most productive person I know (personally) and I still get caught up in that.

In the next five years, I’m going to look back and probably freak out at how much time I wasted commenting, liking, etc.

It’s not a total waste. It’s a lot of fun and we can all admit how entertaining it is.

Even those of us who built businesses from doing it, like me and you.

We’ll admit that we were just too afraid of missing out to make art, write, and create instead of posting, retweeting, and “hearting it up.”  I mean, how else can I define myself if not for a Buzzfeed list (You’ll never believe #7!) ?

WHY YOU USE SOCIAL MEDIA

The average person uses social media the same way they use Candy Crush, as a distraction.

But you and I use it very differently.  Even I’ve fallen into the trap of using social media to fix whatever I’m missing in how I market myself, my podcast, my brand, my products, etc.

And I cried just the same when Instagram reach started to suck (just you wait) and when Facebook organic reach died completely.  But that was just because I put more stock in those tools than myself.

Social media isn’t the artisan, the artificer (what a beautiful word).

I am.  Social media is my hammer.  My forge.  It makes what I want it to make.

First, let’s talk about followers.

YOU ARE NOT YOUR FOLLOWER COUNT

You listen to a podcast and hear how somebody followed and un-followed people until they had 10k followers on Instagram and you feel like you need to run out and do it. How they used ‘share for share’ to grow to over 300k followers and how they’re making six figures a month.

So, without thinking, you go spend the next 5 days doing the same thing.

Heck, that’s how I got to over 10k instagram followers.

And then Instagram deleted spam accounts and I decided I wanted to actually enjoy my feed instead of following that many people, so I unfollowed everybody.  That, combined with a decision to serve entrepreneur dads, meant my followers dropped.

A lot.

I now sit around 7,000.  And most of them don’t ever engage with what I post.

And that’s because I screwed up.

I focused on quantity, not quality.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

I lost my voice. I had something to say, and then just became part of the crowd.  If you’re focused on your follower count or your Periscope hearts, you are too.

If you’re just sharing quote images on Instagram 20 times a day, are you really unique?  Is this really the best use of your time?

Kevin Kelly says you only need 1,000 true fans to make a living.

One thousand people who buy everything you make.

One – thousand.

Think about it the next time you get follower envy.

(Side note: Your follower count might be a reflection of how awesome you are. Dwayne Johnson has over 25 MILLION Instagram followers because he’s awesome. Not because he uses the maximum number of hashtags on each post.)

SOCIAL MEDIA ENTIRELY OPTIONAL

We often forget that there are alternatives to social media.

I was chatting with a coaching client a while back who was a photographer.  She’d done senior portrait work in the past and had just moved to a new area and wanted to get her name out there.

I could have told her how to run Facebook ads locally targeting other photographers pages or other things either the high schoolers (ok) or their parents (better) would like.

Instead, I went a different direction: I asked her how many high schools were in the area (three) and how  many of them had photography clubs (zero).

I asked her if she’d be willing to give up an hour or two per week to start clubs and teach kids to take pictures in order to get in front of them and their parents. Who wouldn’t?  The marketing does itself in that scenario.

You see, in 2015, you might be better of NOT using social media (How dare you, Brendan!)

Authenticity is what matters most online and in person.  Regurgitating social media memes and quotes doesn’t demonstrate consistency, honesty, or service.  

Want your own personal alternative to social media?  Think about how you can best demonstrate those traits and you’ll have your answer.

I built my company on the internet.  It started as a jiu jitsu gi review blog and then morphed into its own brand, I get asked a lot by people in my niche about starting their own brand or online shop.

And I never let them believe, even for a second, that the platform matters more than they do.

Casey Neistat just said recently that he’s not at all afraid of YouTube dying some day.  I’m paraphrasing, but essentially he said:

Live theater turned into silent films turned into movies turned into TV turned into cable turned into Netflix.  

The platforms change. Quality work does not.  Your work may be better for YouTube than TV (like Casey’s), but that doesn’t matter.

Remember, you’re the artisan.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT THE ANSWER

If you’re banking on your Instagram hacks to build your brand for you, you just lost.

The answer is to spend more time making. More more podcast episodes, more blog posts, or jiu jitsu gis, or whatever it is that you make.

The next time you’re on Periscope, give em an extra ten hearts for me.

I’ll be here, writing.