Myth: You Have To Be All Over Social Media

A few years ago, I fell for this myth hard. I felt like the best way to promote and grow my business had to be through social media, right? Anyone can be an influencer now, right? This is how I was going to make my book a bestseller and get more clients than I knew what to do with, right?

Wrong.

I was posting on Instagram a couple days a week, making graphics on Canva, posting on Facebook, making videos to post on both IG and YouTube, using a thousand hashtags.

To be honest, I wasn’t even paying attention to how much time I was spending on all this. I was just so convinced by the myth that you have to be all over social media to grow your business, that I ignored everything else…including whether I was getting any ROI.

Because let me tell you. I wasn’t.

Focus your efforts in one place instead of spreading yourself thin.

If I had to guess, I was probably spending about five hours a week - at least - creating content, editing content, and then posting content. And I was getting maybe a couple followers a week. On a good week at that. And not a one of them became a customer.

Instead what happened was I got burned out. Because I wasn’t enjoying what I was posting and was just chasing numbers that really meant nothing.

Now, don’t hear me wrong. The myth is that you have to be all over social media. That doesn’t mean you should completely ignore social media. You do need to have some kind of social media presence, but it’s simply not true that to succeed as a writer you have to let it consume all your time.

If you’re focusing on getting into marketing or social media management, by all means, work your social media game. Chances are, you enjoy it.

But if you don’t enjoy it? Then don’t stress out about it. Focus on what you do enjoy instead.

If you’re publishing a book, by all means, you’ll need to invest some time into social media and building a following. But first, you’ll need a strategy. I thought I had a strategy when I was doing my social media “stint,” because I was being organized and posting on a regular basis. But being organized isn’t the same as having a strategy. I didn't have a singular direction. I was trying to do five things at once instead of just doing ONE thing.

Also, don’t go it alone — take a course, hire a social media manager, get some advice from someone who is good at social media. And focus your efforts in one place instead of spreading yourself thin.

The more you obsess over numbers on social media, the more likely you are to get distracted from what you should be doing…

As of writing this blog post, I have a whopping 319 “followers” on Instagram — less than how many people I follow. I have over 500 contacts on LinkedIn, but if you’re on LinkedIn, then you know that’s not really impressive.

Frankly, I’ve learned that I like social media best for the content I can consume from it. When I was in sales, I would use it to learn about sales strategies and connect with prospects. As a writer, I use it to follow other writers, learn from them, celebrate successes with them, and hopefully encourage them.

But the more you obsess over numbers on social media, the more likely you are to get distracted from what you should be doing because you’ll be chasing vanity instead of value.

Once I let go of the myth, I had the time to really focus on what I wanted to do, get clients, work hard for those clients, and build my business based on those relationships — not numbers. And it worked.

So if you’re like me and terrible at social media, don’t despair! You can still become a paid writer, a professional storyteller.

Maybe eventually I’ll just hire someone who actually likes social media so we can both win.

But for now, I’m just trying to have a healthier relationship with social media where I set boundaries with how much time I spend on it — enough to get value from it but not so much that I burn out or waste my time.