On Your Radar: The Wonderful Rewards of Being a SMS (Social Media Slut)
Today’s blog post is about being on your radar.
I accidentally became a social media slut in the past few months—I post an average of five status updates on Facebook a day and average about five Instagram photos a week (at my peak I was posting several times a day).
This is a drastic change from my social-media shy days. In the past, for fear of gaining zero likes on my posts—my humor does tend to be a bit off-kilter—I largely avoided flinging thoughts into the social media universe—which I perceived at the time as a merciless pit of judgment.
What changed, then?
It began with a desire to promote my start-up Spylight. Last September, I realized I was very out-of-touch with social media when at a meeting about social media marketing I found myself asking aloud,
“How do I … twitter this?”
I was so #socialmediastupid that I couldn’t contribute meaningfully to brainstorm sessions on growth hacker marketing. Determined not to be left behind, I decided that very evening to make my dormant Instagram and Twitter accounts public (as opposed to lock-down private mode). I was still very much protective of my non-existent public image, but at least I had retrieved my forgotten passwords and was semi-committed to understanding social media.
A few nights later, I was at a dinner party with a soon-to-be good friend Mahbod Moghadam, cofounder of Genius.com. From being Facebook friends with him for only a few days, I had observed in awe that his social media presence was delightfully #onfleek. He utilized Twitter/Facebook to broadcast his stream of consciousness, which in its unfiltered glory was hilariously clever and captivating.
I told him at the dinner party that I risked offending everyone if I were to bare my unfiltered thoughts on social media. (I am indeed aware that my quotidian thoughts are anything but orthodox.) He replied back in his nonchalant way that Someone Rich and Famous had once said that notoriety, combined with a good product, was the key to success.
His words resonated with me, and that very evening I changed my Twitter and Instagram handles to “notorioty” and dived right in.
I will never be as clever, witty, and like-able as someone like Mahbod (who has something like 30K+ followers on Facebook). I don’t have the tits, ass, or artsiness to achieve Insta-stardom either. But after a few awkward months of growth-spurting into S.M. comfortability, I now post online with abandon. I find that I #dgaf about the number of Likes a post or a photo gets. I do sometimes get excited when a random post receives more love than anticipated. But all-in-all, I really dgaf, and I post—or shall I say, share—constantly.
And even though I am not good at Social Media (Aly Moore, my cofounder, really has S.M. down, as you can observe from her very respectable number of followers), being a Social Media Slut has changed my life by putting me on your radar.
People have this idea that I am living it up in LA, as happy as a college drop-out could possibly be, merely because I don’t like being a debby-downer on social media. I do occasionally rant on Twitter — mostly out of frustration towards my needlessly complicated yet still-barren love life—but I keep my posts as happy and playful as possible. Perhaps my demeanor on social media does reflect my demeanor in reality—I tend to giggle and goof off too much for even my own taste—but I am always taken aback just a tad when people remark how blissful I seem to be in LA. (Yes, I am, all-in-all, happy…but I do have my days. I’m probably just average-happy…)
My reputation for being a happy and energetic individual has been an accidental byproduct of my social media prolificacy. But even better than this not-entirely-true reputation has been the flux of messages I’ve received from former ghosts of my past. I find that when you post more often about a breadth of topics — my main themes being Spylight, partying in LA, coffee shops, brunch, and feminism—people reach out when they resonate with even just one particular aspect of your life that they see. And sometimes they just want to offer advice or make connections for you…because you have made yourself visible and are now—whether they like it or not—on their radar. I’ve reconnected with countless people just because I post a lot about the cool and the mundane about my very normal life.
So why doesn’t everyone embrace the most powerful tools they have — their keyboards and cameras—and start posting? Making yourself visible on social media, in my opinion, is just as important as making yourself visible at real-life events and parties. It makes you available; it makes you vulnerable; it opens many doors of opportunity.
I say — go ahead, post with abandon, and dgaf how many likes you get for those dumb posts. The people who actively don’t care will unfollow you, and that will be that. But the people who are neutral about you and your musings will read and observe and perhaps never Like anything you post, but they will remember you the next time they make plans to visit LA and text you about it. And—bam—you will have made a new re-connection.
Just don’t be a debby-downer, and you’ll be fine. ☺
