Social Media and How It’s Mean To Ya
When people talk about social media platforms, they often speak with a positive vocabulary. They’ll use words like connected, informed and professional. Although in many cases these words are appropriate for describing social media, a lot of the times they leave out the ugly words like addicted, absorbed and reliant. Social media is extremely important for technological advancement, though it’s side effects are creating an obsessive world of cyborg sheeple. Instagram may seem like it was a gift to mankind, but sometimes what seems like a great gift just ends up being a big ol’ lump of coal.
With programs like Hootsuite and ViralHeat, it’s now possible to see all of the statistics that go into your social media profile. You can track who is talking about your business, what your engagement levels are, how many people have clicked on your links and so on. These functions are very useful when running a successful social media account, but they can also be extremely overwhelming. You may think that there is no harm if you’re social media account is doing really well, but those are the accounts that actually get hit harder. When you get positive results with your likes and engagements, all this is doing is feeding your addiction. Every time you get a like or a new follower, you’re given a hefty boost of confidence. But what happens when the average amount of likes you get drops, or when some of your followers stop following you? I’ll tell you what happens, your self worth sinks to an all time low. The worst part is that your self worth doesn’t go back to where it was before, it sinks even lower. When you start to lose likes and followers, you begin to ask yourself questions like “Why did they unfollow me? What did I do wrong?”. We are so absorbed in our social media profiles that it’s starting to take over our lives. Our social media profiles are just an extension of our body and soul, and whenever components start to leave, we take it personally.
However, using social media for a business is a completely different ball game. When you’re producing social media content for a business or corporation, you’re not personally attached to that account. You’re getting paid to post anonymously which means you’re not losing followers over any personal differences. They may not agree with the morals of you’re company, but where you work is not necessarily a reflection of who you are. Also most businesses have a social media team, meaning you’re not alone. If your ship starts to sink, you’re all going down together. In my opinion, using social media as a business is the only time you should focus on the metrics of your profiles. Otherwise I think it’s best to just live your life and not worry so much about how your social media accounts are doing.
