I have a love/hate relationship with social media and content creation.
I hate it because of how addicting, distracting, and potentially poisonous it can be.
I love it because it’s free and helps you build businesses.
The secret to using social media well is two-fold:
1. Less ego, and
2. More clients.
Doing more is rarely the answer. Instead, work backwards and build a strategy to get clients.
In many cases you can leverage social media as part of your strategy. The strategy is not, however, to ‘post more content’.
When we speak about marketing you’ll learn the important of working backwards from the problem, instead of forwards from the solution.
There’s no best way to use social media. There might be a best way to take advantage of the algorithm today. But that’s going to change tomorrow. Long time, it won’t matter.
In my 10+ years online, there’s been 4 platforms that have blown up, grabbed attention, and flamed out (remember Periscope and Clubhouse?) not to mention specific features of platforms you ‘must use’ that became irrelevant soon after (like Facebook lives).
Chasing platforms and/or algorithmic spikes, even if you get it right, is exhausting. It will burn you out.
Also, personally, it’s not how I want to live my life.
I have better shit to do than stressing over what some executive at some silicon valley social media company decides is the best way to addict users today.
People with much smaller audiences, but who provide value directly to their audience, can earn significantly more money by not monetizing attention and instead monetizing the quality of the “trade”.
Instead of thinking in terms of audience size, think in terms of who is in your audience and what value you’re providing them.