Are We The Sum Of Our Social Media Reach?
Every day, more and more people are looking at the good old “side hustle” as an escape from the 9 to 5 slog.
Yet, at the same time, people want to be mindful of their time. Mindfulness meditation is all the rage, minimalism is the new cool thing. It’s hip to live minimal, to be able to get up and go, bring your business with you in your backpack. A true digital nomad.
There’s just one problem. Social Media.
It’s a problem in so many facets of life. Kids are addicted and it’s having adverse effects on their mental health. Adults are spending upwards of 5 hours a day on their smart devices, that’s about 76 days a year, or 11 weeks.
We dream of living big, but having little. But how are we to find the time to accomplish these outstanding achievements? How are we to channel our inner entrepreneur while we’re wasting 5 hours in front of our phone’s a day?
That’s practically a second full time job. It stands to reason then, that just cutting out Social Media would free us up to channel our inner CEO.
But whoa there sailor, there’s sirens a-callin’. What good side hustle, what good business, could one person hope to run from a laptop without a big pool of potential customers to sell to? Very few I would imagine, 1 in a million maybe, if even. Unless you’ve a revolutionary project that people are going to ape shit over, you’re fresh out of luck.
However…
Social Media gives us access to the world. A vast sea of potential purchasers. All of a sudden we can market our product globally. We have a global platform to promote our writing. Our applications can be distributed in nearly 200 countries. We can self publish books, film documentaries, hell, we can just sit in front of a camera and talk about our lives and throw a few ads on it.
We could make a viable side hustle out of anything! All thanks to Social Media!
But of course… it’s not that easy. You’re just another fish in that vast sea.
You’ll need to have “influence”. You’ll need to have reach. So all of a sudden 5 hours a day doesn’t seem like all that much, when every follower is a potential customer.
To get the people you need to have the reach. To have the reach you need to put in the work, and even then it’s sometimes not enough.
Luck could have it that you, for no reason at all, go viral and next thing you know you’re a bonafide “influencer”. You’re ready to push any product to the masses, making money just by dancing your fingers across a screen. You mention a product, the people come running. Forget about your own products, the big brands are gonna want a slice of that big “reach” pie. Brand deals are your new hustle. Welcome to the good life.
In theory it makes it sound like any of us, with enough effort could live the dream.
But what about those of us who aren’t shot to instant influencer fame? Those of us who have to do the slog of going out and working to amass a following?
Well, let’s be real. It’s not pretty.
Your eyeballs become a commodity to the social media giants. You’re working countless hours ( some up to 76 days a year) trying to build your brand. The effort of this probably won’t bear too many fruits, certainly not for a long time. At least not until you’ve sold your soul to Zuckerberg.
I started writing on Medium a long time after I quit social media for good. Before that I was a solo app developer. I pretty much gave up on that because I refused to get caught up in the toxicity of social media just to promote my work.
Having come to Medium I was accepting that it was a Social Media, but one that I don’t consider toxic. I figured maybe I would try my hand at writing and since it’s already a social media, I wouldn’t have to get my hands dirty with any other platforms.
Well I was wrong.
Pretty much every successful writer on here has Twitter, Email lists, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, hell even online courses or books that they’re trying to sell. Everything that made me want to hang up my solo programming tool belt.
It’s lead me to ask this single question of myself.
Am I just too stubborn to play the game? Is it just that we are in fact the sum of our social media reach?
I want to share my experiences and make people think, like my fellow writers here have made me think and question things. I don’t want to get tangled up in the toxicity and falseness of social media, I don’t want to end up luring people in with the intention of selling them junk.
Does that mean I can’t live the digital nomad dream? Is there such a thing as an analogue nomad?
If yes, where can I sign up?
