Read this if you’re scared of social media

Imogen Baker
Nov 3 · 4 min read

Recently, two things happened to me that were so serendipitous I genuine wondered if I was in a Truman Show situation and the producers were trying to force a late-season epiphany on me.

I went to a social media workshop at my coworking space and spent a few hours with my colleagues discussing our various gripes with social media marketing. We’re all freelancers and small business owners who grapple with social media to speak to our limited audiences. The sentiment that echoed between us all was that social media feels futile and complicated and expensive. Social media feels like a game that everyone else has a set of instructions to and you don’t. Also, the ground is quicksand on an MC Escher staircase. I wondered who out there knew how to play this game in a way that was legitimate and quantifiable.

The week after, a job came across my desk. I was editing a transcript of a marketing focus group. The participants listed their companies and it was a who’s who of the tech world. They were all big wigs in social media marketing and I was a fly on the wall while they drank beer and discussed the issues they face with their jobs.

The amazing thing was that they had the same problems as me and my colleagues. Sure, they have more zeroes in their budgets but we all asked the same questions: “What does it all mean? Why does it matter? How do we even measure it?” It’s comforting to know that whether you’re posting to an audience of 10 or 10 million, you feel the same basic concerns.

This serendipitous confluence kept returning me to the question: What’s the purpose of your social media presence? Why are we here, poring over Instagram and Twitter when the sun is shining and the world is at the door?

For freelancers and small business people, we get obsessed with performing on social media because it feels like a part of being in this role is about flexing on socials. But for a lot of us, that time is misplaced. As I found out, there are no rules and no one knows what’s going on with social media. But if you’re pouring significant time and effort and money into your social channels and not feeling in full control of it, step back, and take a moment to consider your goals.

Social media might not be the right channel for you. Here’s why:

KPIs are controlled by the platforms

You have an Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter account but you don’t run the platform. You’re playing ball in their league. The social media companies control the vanity metrics of success (such as likes, followers, etc) and we all flip out over them, scrambling to measure our own success by these foreign yardsticks. It’s good to remember that the goals of the social platform often won’t align well with your business goals.

It’s important for your social KPIs to link meaningfully to your real-life goals. Followers, messages, and comments are all good for community building but for most people, getting likes on Instagram isn’t part one of your business goals.

Interactions are heavily automated

How many comments do you get on heavily-hashtagged content like “Great content, friend, I love your stuff. Follow me?” or the generic cry-laughing emoji on a post from last year that is definitely not meant to be funny. Everyone is playing the automation game to try and trick you into reciprocating with a genuine interaction. Try not to get catfished by bots.

Interactions are often meaningless

This isn’t to say all the likes and comments you receive are from bots. But are they meaningful to the progression of your business? Maybe not. The kind of meaningful interactions that will help your are genuine enquiries, curious direct messages, and clicks onto your website where you call the shots. Remember: one direct message from your target audience is worth a million bot-likes.

We all know these things but it’s easy to get lost in the social media pissing contest every now and then. But sometimes, right or wrong or meaningful or not, you have to use social media. So how do you make social media work for you?

Try to enjoy it

The internet is a bloodhound for insincerity. People know when you phone it in and this can breed mistrust. Try to only post content you actually enjoy making and that you’d actually enjoy consuming, if only for your sanity.

Try to connect

Give yourself 15 minutes a day to get onto your preferred platform and comment, message, like, discover, and connect with people you’d actually like to know. Don’t automate interactions if you can help it.

Don’t rely on it

What’s the saying — don’t build your house on someone else’s land? Relying too heavily on social platforms for leads puts you in a vulnerable position. If the platform makes an algorithm change or chokes your reach, you’ll end up having to pay to maintain your marketing channels. Future proof your business by marketing through channels where you have (and will keep) control.

Don’t buy in to unsustainable growth

It’s about quality over quantity, innit? Unless you want to be an influencer, the number of followers you have is irrelevant after a point. The purpose of social media (for most of us) shouldn’t be to watch the numbers go up but to make connections we wouldn’t have ordinarily been able to make.

So I’ll leave you with the same advice I give my clients and, now, myself: there’s no playbook for social media so you might as well have a little fun.

Imogen is a copywriter, strategist, and social media sceptic from Melbourne, Australia. You can watch her not take her own advice on Instagram @imogen_bkr.

Imogen Baker

Written by

I’m a copywriter, strategist and content UXer. I have a journalism degree, a pen license, and I’m ready to rock. ~Melbourne, Australia.

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