Social media psych out!
Last year, I was lucky enough to secure speaking engagements from contacts who follow me on LinkedIn. They'd email me through my website or message me on LinkedIn and the rest is history. The thing is, I never had a clue that any of those people followed me on social media. They didn't like my posts or comment on them. It was a bit of a learning lesson for me: you really never know who's watching!
But now I wonder. Because in the last two weeks, I had an eerily similar conversation with two different people. The first person confided in me that she is almost afraid to like or comment on posts because that engagement essentially endorses ALL of the poster's content, even if she doesn't know about it or disagrees with it. She also said she's hesitant to like or comment on posts because she might "miss" someone else's posts and then cause hurt feelings, like "Why did she like Person X's posts but not mine?" She considers social media somewhat stressful for that reason. Color me intrigued.
Fast forward a week and I reconnected with someone I haven't spoken to in several years. He told me he LOVES my JMT Speaks content and has followed me from the jump. Good thing happened over the phone because I was catching flies after hearing it. I had zero clue this person even knew that I started this business two years ago. Then he told me that he doesn't like or comment on any posts because he doesn't want it to look like he favors someone's content over another person's content. To quote Yogi Berra, it's like deja vu all over again! <Insert brain exploding emoji here.>
I've never had these feelings about social media. My consternation is usually along the lines of: "Have I posted recently?" or "Why doesn't LinkedIn let me upload a video directly from my phone?!" (Seriously, what's UP with that?!) So I've been mulling this over.
My approach to social media has always been... say it with me... authenticity. I post what feels right in the moment and if it sticks, great. If not, well, Big Hair, Don't Care. I enjoy putting my content out in the world. So, I personally don't get upset if someone "misses" a post or fails to comment on one. People are busy. Maybe they're watching, maybe they're not, but I don't do it for the likes.
Conversely, my thought is that if someone gets upset because I "missed" one of their posts or didn't comment on it, then I simply can't control that. If I see a post and want to like it or comment on it, I will. If I don't like it or have a comment, I don't press like or comment on it. And if I don't see it at all, welp, I can't control that either. I'm busy, too! And who knows how these algorithms even work?!
So if you're out there psyching yourself out over social media, maybe you'll consider taking a page from the Big Hair, Don't Care playbook. Trust me, you'll be your authentic, confident self... and the rest will fall into place.
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