Companies do a great job selling us on the idea that Social Media outlets help our business by keeping us in touch with our client base or introducing us to new clients- but what about all of the ways that it might actually be hurting a business? See if you fall into any of the social media traps that are more harmful than helpful for your business....
1. Wasting Time
Have you ever opened your phone, Facebook feed, instagram feed, pitnerest feed, snapchat, etc. first thing in the morning, or during a break in the afternoon to think you were just going to spend a quick minute checking in to see what everyone was up to, only to find yourself endlessly scrolling and eventually wasting an entire hour looking at nothing particularly important? How many emails could you have answered in that time? How many solid work tasks could you have completed instead that would have actually helped your business, rather than mindlessly looking at whatever other people post?
2. Feeling Less Successful
Even though we all know how deceiving social media can be with regards to only showing the highlights of someone's life, we still end up finding ourself fall into the trap of jealousy by comparing our real life to someone else's social media stream. For many people, these comparisons aren't empowering and motivating, instead they feel self-defeating and irritating because we "think" someone else is doing better or living a cooler situation based solely on their social media stream. If you can't stop yourself from having those feelings, than the only solution is to cut off the source of that jealousy until you can do the inner work to return to the social media stream with more clarity and confidence. Constantly comparing yourself to others does nothing helpful for yourself or your business, unless you're using it as positive fuel and examples of how you can move yourself forward.
3. Expecting Social Media to Bring Clients
Social media may appear like a great place to connect and stay in touch with clients, but how many of your social media followers are people who are really paying you for your work? Too often someone thinks that if they just do all the right "social media" things, they'll bring in more clients, and that's not alway the case. Social media may have a global reach, but your business may only have a local reach, and if you're too busy connecting with people who aren't going to hire you in a another part of the world to take time connecting with people in your local area who can actually hire you, than you're expecting social media to do the work that you should be doing in person with networking events and local face-to-face connections. Look at your actual sources of income and where those clients came from - nurture those connections first and foremost before investing heavily in social media.
If you've ever felt like you're drowning in the social media lives of others and not fully living the beautiful life you have, it may be a good time to take a social media vacation by removing all those social apps from your phone to see how differently life feels when you aren't trying to keep up with what everyone else is doing. It's amazing how much more of your own reality you can start to appreciate when you aren't comparing it to everyone else's social media reality. You may even find that you may actually want to connect with people more in person, to see what's real and true for them at a person-to-person level rather than a "what I want the world to think about" level. If you've never tried a social media vacation, it may be time to really step back and consider how taking a break may actually be more helpful to your business and life than always being tied into the stream.
Anne Ruthmann is a professional photographer in New York City. With over 11 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, and now architecture and interiors, she spends any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems. Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook... but only if you aren't taking a social media vacation... ;-)
1. Wasting Time
Have you ever opened your phone, Facebook feed, instagram feed, pitnerest feed, snapchat, etc. first thing in the morning, or during a break in the afternoon to think you were just going to spend a quick minute checking in to see what everyone was up to, only to find yourself endlessly scrolling and eventually wasting an entire hour looking at nothing particularly important? How many emails could you have answered in that time? How many solid work tasks could you have completed instead that would have actually helped your business, rather than mindlessly looking at whatever other people post?
2. Feeling Less Successful
Even though we all know how deceiving social media can be with regards to only showing the highlights of someone's life, we still end up finding ourself fall into the trap of jealousy by comparing our real life to someone else's social media stream. For many people, these comparisons aren't empowering and motivating, instead they feel self-defeating and irritating because we "think" someone else is doing better or living a cooler situation based solely on their social media stream. If you can't stop yourself from having those feelings, than the only solution is to cut off the source of that jealousy until you can do the inner work to return to the social media stream with more clarity and confidence. Constantly comparing yourself to others does nothing helpful for yourself or your business, unless you're using it as positive fuel and examples of how you can move yourself forward.
3. Expecting Social Media to Bring Clients
Social media may appear like a great place to connect and stay in touch with clients, but how many of your social media followers are people who are really paying you for your work? Too often someone thinks that if they just do all the right "social media" things, they'll bring in more clients, and that's not alway the case. Social media may have a global reach, but your business may only have a local reach, and if you're too busy connecting with people who aren't going to hire you in a another part of the world to take time connecting with people in your local area who can actually hire you, than you're expecting social media to do the work that you should be doing in person with networking events and local face-to-face connections. Look at your actual sources of income and where those clients came from - nurture those connections first and foremost before investing heavily in social media.
If you've ever felt like you're drowning in the social media lives of others and not fully living the beautiful life you have, it may be a good time to take a social media vacation by removing all those social apps from your phone to see how differently life feels when you aren't trying to keep up with what everyone else is doing. It's amazing how much more of your own reality you can start to appreciate when you aren't comparing it to everyone else's social media reality. You may even find that you may actually want to connect with people more in person, to see what's real and true for them at a person-to-person level rather than a "what I want the world to think about" level. If you've never tried a social media vacation, it may be time to really step back and consider how taking a break may actually be more helpful to your business and life than always being tied into the stream.
Anne Ruthmann is a professional photographer in New York City. With over 11 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, and now architecture and interiors, she spends any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems. Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook... but only if you aren't taking a social media vacation... ;-)
I agree social media is sometimes exhausting, but it is also one of the easiest way to push work out to public viewing as a photographer... I like Behance.net but then there are also a lot of high quality photographic work and other media out there that makes me feel less successful. A tricky balance indeed.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the article - do you find other social media-like sites like meetup useful?
ReplyDelete