🙅 Social Media is Not a Strategy
It is not Marketing.
It is not Advertising.
It is not a Tool.
Social Media is Accelerated Friendship!
When we hear the words social media, our brain focuses on the technology, the buttons, the media part. We skip over the most important elements: the relationships, the people, the social part.
The true power of social media lies in this simple formula:
Social media is not good or bad; it just mirrors and magnifies the good😊 and the bad😳 in relationships: It can spread gossip and negativity like mean girls wearing pink on Wednesdays, or it can share encouragement and hope around the globe like Humans of New York. It just depends on what is in the heart of the user. Careful that your thumbs don’t launch words of mass destruction.
🤔 How can it happen that two people do the exact same things on social media, but one person’s posts flourish while another’s struggle? This is because they started with different relationship equity, and the differences can exist both in the quality of their relationships, as well as quantity of them. The technology part amplifies the relationship part, not the other way around.
Don’t compare your social media journey with someone else’s: It is a myth that we all start with zero followers. One person begins their account with overflowing relationship equity, while another is relationally bankrupt. Each person will have different experiences and growth patterns.
When you start a new account (like me beginning this Medium account with this first post), your challenge is to transfer equity into that new platform. The number of followers is irrelevant: Followers can be bought, faked, and they mean nothing. Influence is what matters. Influence is earned.
👉 People over the age of 40 think they are at a disadvantage using social media, but this is just a bad 💩 mindset. The opposite is actually true. Age typically means more relationship experience and, hopefully, positive equity. One of our goals at Adventure Social is to teach people a more thoughtful approach to social media. Teaching the buttons is easy; being a good human — not so much.
My 👧🏻 daughter asked me the other day what I did for a living. I replied “I am a translator.” She asked, “What languages do you speak?”
“I speak nerd.” ~Dad
I translate technical jargon into the way people feel. For example:
- A like = a high✋ five
- A comment = a conversation (people fall in ❤️ love over conversations)
- A share = 👏 word of mouth
When someone gets a notification that you like their photo, they don’t read it as “@johnerikthinks likes your photo”. They read: “I am important. I matter. Someone noticed me.”
Today, use social media to be a good friend. That is how you create true influence. Don’t be marketing, don’t be advertising, don’t be a tool.
Always your friend,
John-Erik 🤓🚀
This is my first Medium story. If you enjoyed these thoughts and you would like to hear more, I would pretty much be your 👫 BFF if you would recommend this story by lovingly pressing the heart ❤️👇at the bottom of this story.
What are some ways that we can be a good friend on social media? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this story and your ideas on how to accelerate friendship by replying 💬👇below.
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