For a long time, I thought I was building something on social media. My follower counts were going up, and it felt like people wanted to hear what I had to say. If you’re running a (small) business, social media may seem like the obvious place to get your stuff in front of people. The problem though is that, like with any platform, what you’re building on social media isn’t actually yours.
That issue became bigger as organic reach became less predictable. On average less than 10% of my “followers” will see anything I post. Unless, of course, I pay to “boost” the post or run advertisements. That may work if you have lots of money and lots of time, but most small business owners unfortunately have neither. The rules keep changing and if you’re not careful, maintaining visibility on social media becomes the business.
Instagram alone has shifted its focus from pictures to stories to reels, and if you want any organic attention you better follow the trend.
But, I’m a writer and photographer. I don’t really want to create reels. I also like the concept of “everything popular is wrong”, so if the algorithm tells me to do one thing, I’d rather explore the other.
Everything popular is wrong. ~Oscar Wilde
The Followers Were Never Really Mine
Of course, Mark Zuckerberg can run his platforms however he likes. It just doesn’t necessarily mean I want to participate in them. My mistake was thinking any of this to provide a stable foundation for my own work. It didn’t, and eventually my goal became to stop participating in somebody else’s platform.
I didn’t like having thousands of followers and not knowing whether those people would actually get to see what I published. Arguably, since they “liked” me, they’d want to hear from me. That last part bothered me most.
A follower is a connection, but the platform owns the relationship. I cannot decide that something I’ve written or a picture I’m excited about should reach everyone who chose to follow me on Instagram. The algorithm makes that decision, based on its own interests, not mine.
Build Your Own Platform
Compare that model with a person who visits my website and reads several articles and maybe decides to subscribe to my weekly email. Now we’re talking.
An article I write on my blog today can still be found months or years from now. My books continue to exist whether Instagram likes it or not. My courses all contain deeper content that wouldn’t fit an article or a reel. My own platform gives somebody the choice to hear from me directly, or unsubscribe if they don’t want to hear from me anymore.
The choice should be ours, not dependent on some algorithm deciding what we get to see next. There’s a fun distraction in that for about 15 minutes1 a day, but once we start consuming meaningful content like news and knowledge that way, we’re doomed.2
Giving Social Media a Smaller Job
Social media can be useful for discovering new people and ideas. I may discover an event or local art market to attend over the weekend. For me, it often has more to do with something that’s happening in the offline world, and engaging with that. Going somewhere new, or trying a new restaurant.
As much as I love to write about it, most of my life experiences happen offline. One day we’ll all die, and how much of your time did you spend staring at a screen filled with content, created by people who don’t care about you?
When I’m posting something, it’s usually a clue pointing somewhere else. A story may lead to a longer blog article. A picture may lead to a travel story I once wrote. My social media posts itself don’t contain the entire story. This is effectively reversing the flow, and inviting people to join me on my platform.
I Also Changed My Mind About Self-Promotion
My approach may not look great on a followers dashboard, but I’m going for quality not quantity. Besides, it’s hard to assign a measurable value to how meaningful a piece of content may be for someone.
Small business owners don’t always want to promote themselves online. Social media is already full of tiresome self-promotion. The last thing I want is to sound like everybody else. I don’t want every article to end with “buy my course”. The article should have some content itself, and if people wish to dive deeper they may decide to join one of my courses, or continue reading some more articles. You can decide whether you are interested and want to take action, or not.
“Hey, I made this. If this subject interests you, there is more over here.”
Get Into Action
Similarly, social media should support your business rather than consuming what’s left of your energy after creating (and running) it. Every platform would love if you continue to create free material for them, so they can monetize your content and place advertisements around it. The good news? You don’t need to be everywhere all the time.
I’d much rather continue building my own platform, and writing for those who are interested to hear from me every Friday. Social media has a small place in that picture, but it’s definitely not at the centre of it.
This system is at the centre of my Social Media Masterplan. If you’re done chasing algorithms and ready to create a platform that’s yours, you’re welcome to preview the refreshed course.
Further reading
When is the last time you saw someone publicly change their mind on social media? It doesn’t happen. The endless and instant sharing of opinions illustrates well how everyone’s view of reality is very different, but only polarizes the sharing of opposing opinions more. Algorithms by their very nature will enhance that polarization. Full story here.