Welcome to episode number 335 of the Mindful
Marketing Podcast. Every December, I bring to
you episodes of podcasts that I've been featured on as
a way to share some of the work that I've been doing all year
and to walk the talk. I don't record new
episodes for this month and instead repurpose ones that I think would be
very helpful for you. And this week, I am thrilled to share an
episode from the ADHD-ish podcast for business owners hosted
by Diann Wingert. I joined Diann to discuss one of my
favorite topics, rethinking the way we use social
media. In this episode, we dive into why chasing audience
growth might be missing the point and how focusing on
meaningful connections can completely transform your social media
strategy and keep your sanity all while doing it.
Diann and I talk about how our personal and professional lives intertwine
with the way that we engage online and why it's okay to leave
platforms that no longer serve you. It's a real and honest conversation
about making social media work for you and on your terms.
But that's not all. Let's tune into this episode for practical
tips, candid reflections, and maybe a little validation if you ever
thought there's gotta be a better way to do this. This is
the ADHD-ish podcast. Let me know your favorite part.
So Andréa, I have been wanting to have this conversation with you for the
longest time because you have been doing social
media, running a social media agency, commenting on social
media, and producing lots and lots of your own content for, I think,
a decade now. But something I've noticed is in the
last couple of years, your perspective has
been evolving. And most of the people
that I follow on social media are still
talking about audience growth, building an
audience, the importance of drawing people to you
and making an audience of them. But you have
evolved into a perspective that if all we're doing
on social media is creating an audience, we're
missing kind of the point. We're missing the opportunity
because there's so much more meaningful
opportunity there that an audience doesn't hit.
Can we talk about that? Yes. This is one of my all time
favorite conversations. So thank you for having me on the show to talk about this.
I actually think a story would work really well here, and it's the story
of how I met my husband. Have I told you this before? This story, and
I am not hearing it again. So I've been doing
this professionally for 10 years, but I've been creating content online
for over 20 years. And one
of my projects was a YouTube channel that I would create.
It was it was kind of like about my life sort of situation.
And I collaborated with my husband on a video. He wasn't my husband
at the time. I was collaborating with a lot of people at the time, and
this to me was the beauty of the Internet. As a very
introverted, quirky, shy gal in
Atlanta, creating videos in my
bedroom, in my mom's house as a, you know,
university student, it was a very awkward time for me,
and it felt like a very busy a great outlet for me. So fast forward
a few years, I'm creating these content videos. I collaborate with my husband.
We connected. I thought he was hilarious, and then we just kept
talking. And the caveat to all of this is he lived in
Toronto, Canada, and I lived in Atlanta, Georgia. So Mhmm. The power of
the Internet brought us together, and that is the point to me
of social media. And, like, fast forward 10 years later, we
have, one kid with another on the way, and it's
just like such a beautiful thing that came from one conversation
that happened, you know, 11 years ago on
in the social media. So I think the idea
that social media, the result of it is
to build an audience feels almost ego
driven. Whereas the early days of social
media felt more about connecting to one person,
having one conversation. And so that's really what I've leaned
into a lot of in the past couple years. When I think about the value
of social media to me, it's meeting people like you. Right? Like,
you and I met through through Exactly. Social media. And
so that's really to me the value of it. It's not about
audience, but it's about community. And community to me is a two way
conversation, and audience is, you know, shouting it out with a
megaphone. And you know what? This is so true, Andréa,
whether you are on social media for as a
content creator to promote your business, there
are people who do this in a really skillful way where
they attract people to them and the others
are shouting at them, and they're probably running in the opposite
direction. Why do you think so many people are
still promoting this idea of creating an
audience? Because clearly, there's media and then
there's social media. And if there's social media,
it shouldn't just be posting something and
leaving it there. Like, get a billboard.
Yeah. Right? There's supposed to be some sort of exchange. There's supposed
to be some sort of back and forth. And what is the purpose of that
connection? Right? Why do you think it's so
still I mean, we're talking 20 years. 20
years later, so many gurus,
consultants, coaches, media coaches are still talking about
audience. It seems perfectly obvious that there's
a better way to make use of this technology.
Yeah. It is. And I think it's human nature, and you probably know
this more than I do. But, when I think about a different
industry, like, take the health industry, health coaches talking
about, you know, lose £20 in 20 days or whatever
they're knocking out here. Right? Our brains are attracted
to that instant gratification, and we're
romanced by the idea of it. Right? We're like, oh, that sounds
lovely. And I think social media can feel the same. It
it sounds good on paper to go, I want 10,000
followers. That's my goal. Right? That's my goal, 10,000 followers.
It sounds great, but it's not sustainable. It's
not healthy to chase that as an individual person.
And I think it can be really detrimental to building connections because
any connection you make is not enough. So, like,
like with the health industry, losing 1 pound, it's not enough. You
have to go to the 20. Or why are we even focusing on pounds anyways?
Why don't we focus on living a healthy life? Right? So it's like those
questions are a lot of the questions that I have for social media and
marketing at large. It's, you know, really digging into
why do we want audience growth in the first place? Well, because it's
being sold to us as the the magical pill that will
change everything about your business, when the reality
is that little magical pill works for a half of a
percent of people, and the rest of us are just giving money to the person
who invented it, because it's a little bit of a snake oil situation.
And I'm saying that as someone who deeply cares about social
media. I'm very passionate about it. I love it as a tool
for connection, but it's not about that shiny audience
growth number at the end of the day. Girl, you are singing
from my end book because truthfully,
most of the people that I work with as a business coach
have spent 1,000, sometimes
many 1,000 of dollars chasing after and I use the
same terminology you do, magic pill. Why?
Because we're we are socially and culturally conditioned
to want easy, fast, fun,
basically, passive results
that are gonna blow our mind and rock our world. So
whether someone's selling us, you know, wrinkle cream or
weight loss or, you know, dating
advice, whatever it is, we are socially and culturally
conditioned to expect it to be easy, fast, fun,
ridiculously successful with almost no effort
on our part. And even though we know in
our minds, if it sounds too good to be true, it
freaking is. We still fall for it
because we have been trained to do so. And your brain gives you
that little squirt of dopamine when you hit the
buy now button. Then we have to
justify what we've done with the sunk cost
fallacy. Well, I have to keep doing it
because look at how much money and time and energy I've already
put into doing it. I have to keep doing it, which is why
I think most of us have a relationship with social media that's,
let's just say complicated. We love it. We hate it.
We don't wanna be with it, but we can't leave it. And, you
know, for something that was supposed to be fun, it
sure feels like almost like abusive to so many people
I talk to. Oh my gosh. Yes. I I often describe it as
it it's, a toxic situationship. It's almost
like that, you know, ex boyfriend who always comes
calling back and but never quite lets you meet his parents,
you know. Yeah. You're not you're not getting that close. And I do think
social media is that way, because a lot
of us just follow along with the whatever the app tells us to
do Mhmm. And without really analyzing what their goal is. So
let's take Instagram for instance. We log in. If you
start creating an account, it's instantly telling you what to do. Put your
photo here. Create your profile. Post here. Oh, look. You got
engagement. Let's get more. Mhmm. And so we start chasing that
because that's what the app tells us to do. We see everyone else doing it,
so we keep doing that without stopping to think, you know, what's in
this for me? Why am I doing this for me? How is this nourishing
me? And so I think part of it is recognizing
that Instagram, their currency is at your attention,
and they're selling ads. So once we can, like, pull
back, you know, the the Oz curtain and
see the real person behind the curtain there, we
can recognize that, oh, this is Instagram's goal. My
goal doesn't have to be the same as Instagram's goal. So then we
can ask the question, what is my goal? Why am I here? What
benefit does that have this have on my personal life, my business life? And
that can really be illuminating and help you decide how you wanna use the app
instead of letting the app decide for you. And, you know, you're
talking about really being mindful, intentional,
strategic, And that requires a level of critical
thinking and self awareness that we completely
bypass when we're just following the
herd, when we're just doing what everyone else is doing,
when we're paying a course, a program, a coach
to say, just tell me what time of day to post. Just tell
me how many characters. Just tell me how many hashtags.
Just tell me what length should my Reels be. And so
many people are just desperate to be given a
formula. Just tell me what to
do. For me, when someone hires me to help them
with their business and they say, okay, look, just tell me what to
do, like word for word, and I'll do it. And I'm
like, honey, I'm not for you. Because you're gonna end up
with something that you hate because
you had no investment
in choosing it. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I think that's one
that you're absolutely right. We're just doing what everyone else is
doing and what we think we're supposed to do. And we've been told it works
without asking ourselves the most important questions.
Why am I even here? What are my
goals? How do I know when I'm reaching them? How
do I feel when I reach them? How do I know when
enough is enough? Will enough ever be enough? Like, we're
just bypassing all that really important critical thinking.
Yeah. And and it goes so much farther than social media as
well. All of those questions are important in every aspect of our business.
So, you know, when I think about revenue goals, for
instance, chasing after that feels very similar to
chasing after audience growth goals. You have to stop and ask
yourself why, what's required to get there, and am
I willing to do what's required to get there? So for
example, I was looking at my data from this past
year, looking at the post that worked really well. And,
one of the post that worked really well was a a little bit of like
a a trendy, you know, here's what's happening right now on TikTok. It's one
of my highest viewed posts. Mhmm. And I thought to myself,
I could absolutely go down this road. I could attract
more quote unquote audience. Mhmm. I could bring in more people,
but I don't want to be caught up in chasing
the nuances of all the updates of all the
platforms anymore. And just by releasing that, I'm,
like, oh, I don't so I don't have to create content just because it
performed really well for me. How about we create the content that really
resonates with me and actually brings me the people that I want to work with,
right, and not the people who are also constantly chasing all the
updates and they're here today, gone tomorrow kinda thing. So it's
it's kind of like diving deeper into the question of, yes, we can look at
all of these data points and say, here's what works, here's what doesn't. But at
its core, do you want to do that? Does it benefit the direction that your
business is going? If you can't answer that question confidently, then
it may not be the strategy for you. And that's what I found for
me looking at this year. You have developed
a tremendous amount of expertise in guiding people
to do social media mindfully.
Being on the right platforms for them, for
their goals, for their values, using their talents in the way
that they want to. And you have long said, because I've been a member of
your membership, You have long said you don't need
to be everywhere. You don't want to be everywhere. You
will not show up skillfully everywhere. Like,
don't do it. And I still did it.
I would I was paying you to guide me and to lead
me and to teach me. And you were very clear with everyone
and you know, the Savvy Social Group. Don't
try to be everywhere. It doesn't work. And I I realized
that, wow, this is this level of conditioning
and this level of fear and FOMO,
and just a fundamental distrust in your own
intuition Yeah. Is so pervasive. Like,
I know better, and I still did it. Now you'll be
happy to know that I did start pulling myself
off of various platforms one at a time. But it was
actually painful. And I think this is really quite perverse. And
I'm I'm fessing up to this with you, because I
know I'm not the only one. And I know that being honest and vulnerable
about the things that we do as business owners helps other people
to know they're not alone and they're not crazy. But
it's it's such a powerful force
that, you know, we're in business by ourselves. Many of us, small
business owners, small agency owners, solopreneur, all the
decisions rest on you. You are quite literally where the buck starts
and stops. And we all think we're not
doing enough. We're not doing the right thing. We're not doing enough of the
right thing. And so having the presence of mind
to be more intentional, to be more mindful, and
to practice constraint, this is no
small thing. Mhmm. Yeah. And it it's
it's a huge decision to make. And when you said FOMO,
that you nailed it. Because it it really does feel like
being invited to a party, stepping through the door, and then going, I'm
gonna leave early. Right? Before, you know, before the
DJ even gets started or whatever the case may be. So it feels
a lot like leaving a party before it's even started,
and we feel like we're missing out on something huge. Because that's
frankly what marketers have sold us is that you are gonna miss
out if you don't participate in this platform.
I'm a huge champion of people leaving platforms.
I left Twitter this past year, ex formerly known as Twitter.
Mhmm. And, I got a little flack for it from some of my
marketing colleagues. And I was like, I just don't see a space
here for me anymore. And frankly, I haven't for quite a
long time. The transfer of ownership just was the nail in the coffin
for me. So I think that feels like we have
to justify it to not
only the world around us, but to ourselves because we're missing out on something
huge, when in reality, we're actually opening
up more doors for opportunity. So one of the things my coach said
to me, and I'm sure you say this to your clients as well, is what
are you missing out on because you are
committed to this other thing that is completely unsatisfying to you?
Mhmm. Right? Like, what are you opting out of because you've opted into
what I'm saying on Instagram or whatever it is that you're staying into.
And sometimes removing the
mental weight and the time commitment of being on that
platform opens up so many other opportunities that you can then
explore with that freed up time and mental freedom.
And so I think that's part of it too is, you know, yes, we've been
sold a bill of goods that we should be everywhere and be all thanks to
all people. Mhmm. But it it's it's not possible. And the the
brands that you admire who appear like they're everywhere typically
have a team that's running it behind you. And usually a
pretty big team. And some of them have a different team for each of the
different platforms. So yeah, yes,
objects, in this mirror may be closer
than they appear, or they may be a lot further away and
have no bearing on you and your micro
business or micro agency. I wanna swing the
conversation back a little bit in the direction of
connection versus engagement.
I know lots of times we use these words interchangeably, but
I'm be really curious to know because we're very like minded on this.
How do you use the term engagement versus connection
when you're specifically talking to entrepreneurs like us who
use social media to market their business? Yes. So
I think engagement can feel surface level, and it
typically is a statistic that, again, the apps
give us. So, I keep using Instagram as an example
because with a lot of my my students and clients, it tends to be
the the sticking point for a lot of folks. But Instagram has
this fake notification that says
80% of people have engaged with this post or this post has gotten
80% more engagement. And the goal of it
is to get you to open the app again so that you're scrolling again so
that you're in their app again. And if you actually run the numbers, it's not
80% increase in engagement. So
engagement is a metric the app uses to say, hey, people are signaling
that this post is important. It could be a like, it could be a comment.
To me, that's very surface level. It almost means nothing.
I see how it plays into the algorithm, and obviously, it does help for more
people to see your post. Connection to me is a deeper conversation.
And connections for me also mostly happen on
what I call dark social or maybe, like, underground of
social, which is typically in a DM,
so direct message. So not something that's visible to
everyone or public conversation. And so that's really
where the connection point comes far from me. And
connection goes beyond a simple comment on someone's
post. It goes a little bit deeper into actually getting to know that
person. And I think this is a lot like building any
relationship in the real world, dating relationships, friend relationships.
It's not one conversation and, yay, we're best friends now.
Right? Like, usually, it's years years of micro
interactions that builds a relationship with someone, and it can't
be manufactured. And so that's the thing that is super
important to me about social media connection is it's it's a
series of those micro interactions that builds
relationship with that individual person. Mhmm.
And sometimes when I talk about this to my to to
my my business friends who, like you mentioned, want the path, they want they want
the answer. Mhmm. Sometimes they say, okay. Well, give me a spreadsheet where I can
track all of this. And, as much as
I love a spreadsheet Yes. You do. I know that.
I love a spreadsheet. I don't there's no way to track this part of it.
I'm sorry. It's, once you start tracking it, to me,
it's all it's like tracking audience growth. There's something
that diminishes the value of each individual relationship when you
start combining them and adding and subtracting and and
calculating, okay, I talked to this person 2 weeks ago, so I reach out to
them again, it doesn't feel genuine. So
there are ways you can organize yourself, obviously, to keep track of
conversations. But it's really about those
collective micro interactions that build connection with people.
And the surface level like or leaving a comment,
doesn't really leave space for that deeper connection. This is
such a powerful distinction, Andréa. And I
think speaks directly to the heart of why so many
people say, kinda like, I hate it,
but I use it. It's like the old Listerine commercial. I hate it, but
I use it because they're just
not getting a meaningful
piece of feedback. I mean, to me, it's like, yeah. I got I got more
likes on this. I got more comments on this. It just somehow
doesn't ever really feel like it matters. And I might be
curious. Oh, this post got a lot more comments, a lot more
likes. Oh, this one got shared. That's interesting. I wonder what it is about
this post. So it'll it'll get my curiosity going.
But it still feels very superficial,
very from an emotional level, from a
human relational level, just
vapid, just sort of like something that would just evaporate
a short time later. And I think because it's not, it's like fast
food. You can eat a bunch of fast food, you can eat so much, you
make yourself feel stuffed and sick. And an hour later, you're hungry
again because you didn't actually eat something
satisfying and nourishing. So in
truth, there really isn't ever enough, is there? It's like you're just
on this endless treadmill for more, more,
more, and yet more of what? More of something that really
doesn't fundamentally satisfy you.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is this is where this
word scaling comes from too, where people think they want
to scale and and get as many, you know,
touch points as possible and repurpose their content as
many places as possible. And I think
there is a danger in that, especially for micro business
owners because, well, frankly, our businesses don't need
it. Right? To to have a successful business, we don't need all of
that. But like you said with the with the fast food
example, it doesn't nourish us. And for me
personally, the things that bring me joy are not
something I can scale. Right? Like, an example is this
week, I had, someone join my community, and I wanted to connect them
with another community member. And I couldn't find her profile,
so I went to Instagram and I sent her a voice DM because we had
just had a conversation there. And I was like, hey, I can't find your profile,
and it was like a total misunderstanding. This is not a scalable
action. Right? Like, most people would say, Andréa, get your
assistant to do that for you. And I'm like, this is not that's not
nourishing for me. Yes, I could have a machine working
in the background to just automatically pair people together or something. I don't
know. But there's something
intrinsically satisfying when I connect one
person to another person, and that to me is a value of community.
It's not about how many individuals can I
get to pay attention to me, you know? To me, it's
about how can I have them to have conversations with each other that
aren't centered around me at all? Like, you meet this person. Go
forth and be awesome. I think it kinda feels like, you know, a matchmaker.
Like, if your friend's a matchmaker and, you know, at your wedding, they're like, I
matched you 2 together. I feel like it's similar to that feeling where it's like,
hey, I helped you find your person. And and it's not
a scalable action, and it's not something that I can replicate on
demand, but it's incredibly satisfying. And so that's, you know,
that's part of the connection piece for me too. I love everything about
this so much, so much. Because
we've all been influenced by
the messages we've all been hearing. We're part of the same
community, female entrepreneurs, we're all
hearing. First, it was you wanna make 6 figures.
Then that wasn't enough. Now we're going for 7
figure. Now we're in the 2 comma club. And we don't wanna do 1 on
1 work anymore because that's trading dollars for hours. We
wanna scale. So we need a leveraged offer that we can
scale. And everybody's like, okay, dutiful
little sheep going along and then I guess I want this. And
unfortunately, people who are socialized as female
are told what they're supposed to want, what they're supposed to care about, how they're
supposed to behave. So we're kind of used to it. So like, okay, I guess
I thought I was doing pretty good because I got to my 6 figures. But
now I'm hearing that actually I'm not doing very good at all. So now I
gotta shoot for 7. Now I have to grow a team. Now I have
to have a scalable offer. And I remember in my
former career as a psychotherapist, I crawled up the food chain. You better believe
I did. I crawled all the way up. I was a clinical director of a
huge agency running multiple programs, Many 1,000,000 of
dollars of mental health services delivered under my name.
And the further and further and further I got away
from dealing with individual clients, the
more miserable I was. I eventually stepped off the path. I
opened a private practice. I didn't even do couples
work or family work. I worked with individuals. Why?
Because I could have those micro moments. I could have those
deep, meaningful, transformational conversations
and connections that changed people's lives and
changed me. So I'm really
relieved to hear other people I respect as
leaders talking about things that don't
scale and why they matter so much. And why
we maybe we don't need to get rid of our group programs
and our courses and all that because there's certainly a place for
that. But if we think that we should expect satisfaction
from superficial transactional situationships,
and it's not working for us, it's not an us
problem. It's a them problem. It is engineered
to be superficially and
briefly satisfying, so we come back and do it again
and again and and again. This reminds me so much
of the, chat GPT AI conversation as
well. Mhmm. Because it feels in theory, it's
gratifying. But in reality, it creates so
much impersonalization that I
actually think those unscalable personal touches are becoming
even more valuable. Right? Like, we don't wanna talk to robots.
I mean, I don't wanna talk to robots. I want a real person.
And if I'm calling someone and there's an automated message, I'm waiting
to press 0 so I can talk to a real person. Right? And so I
think that that piece of it, especially for, you know, businesses
like ours where we're not, like, mega conglomerates,
that personal touch will actually carry us a lot further.
And as much as people talk about audience and scaling, at
the end of the day, you're constantly going to be chasing that thing.
And if you have a great offer, a great product, great service,
you don't really need a lot of clients to be able to build a referral
network, and then you don't really need all of the marketing to, like, bring in
new clients because your your reputation, you know, precedes
you. I mean, I think that's you know, I know sometimes I
talk myself out of a job with people because they're like, I wanna work with
you MJ. And I'm like, do you really? Do you need this?
And so I think that's part of it is, you know, trying to figure out
where you're going in your business and how social media
truly, truly has an impact on that direction. Because a lot of
us don't need the heavy lift that we're being sold. We don't
need, you know, the daily posting and, you
know, making sure that we, you know, spend hours on the platform. I
think someone said they they posted TikTok 3 times a day. And I was like
Oh, lord. This is not for me. Not for me.
And so, you know, some of these things, like, yes, they they can work. I
can I can show you the numbers? You're gonna get lots of followers. But does
it make a difference to your business? That's the real question. And your
life. Yes. And your life. Because I
think especially as small business owners, agency owners,
solopreneurs, we are our business. Our business is us.
This is not just our livelihood. It is in fact our life. Our
life is the moments of how we spend our time, our
energy, our effort, our focus, our attention, our passion, our love,
our drive. It's how we're spending it.
And they're precious and few. And the longer I live,
the more I realize all of this is so fleeting.
Right? And it's the meaningful connections and the communities that matter.
I think particularly in our post pandemic
culture. There's 2 things I I see
happening that I'm wondering what your thoughts are.
1, 100% people are longing for connection.
They're feeling digitally connected and
emotionally disconnected. So we may have
100, thousands of followers, but
I think there's an epidemic of loneliness that
is probably not talked about nearly enough.
And most people don't want to identify with it because there's a
sense of shame. Because, oh, I'm I'm I'm an influencer.
Okay. But I also see that many people, while they
may be hungry for connection, hungry for community,
longing for that, they've become
accustomed to a hands
all the way off style of communication.
So when there is a human being available, they will
go with the chat box instead. It's like, oh
no, God, no, I don't wanna talk to a person. Can't I just like
enter it into some can't you just like, oh God, no. And this is
not just like social anxiety, social phobia, whatever. Those things are real.
And and and I appreciate their impact. But I'm
concerned about what I genuinely believe is a
loss of social skills and ability and
desire to relate when given the opportunity. So
I'm sort of seeing 2 different things and I'm wondering what
what the intersection is. Yes. I have
a few thoughts, but I don't know if I have an answer fully
because I think we're still in the process of it all. Right? Like, I think
we're still affected a lot by this pandemic.
I, I too am noticing a lot of people craving connection,
and also they're they're struggling to reach out
and, like, make those connections happen. Yes.
And I think there's a fear of vulnerability there
because the connection is 2 ways. And when we get
used to consuming a lot of information, it's
very easy to just scroll through TikTok
and not have to do anything. You don't have to like, you don't have to
comment or share, you just consume. You're just there.
That's easy. It's the it's the fast food. Right? The
nourishment comes from interaction, which means making
yourself feel vulnerable. And I'm saying this from a place of,
like, me too. Yes. This is me. Same. Same.
Same. And I think the realization hit me really when
I was pregnant, with my first kid. And,
I started reading all of the books and listening to all of
the podcasts. But where I got the best advice
was actually asking people, like, calling my friend,
texting my friends. I joined a, like, a
mama's group, specifically a black mom group too. Like, you know,
what what are the challenges we're up against? And part of
that was raising my hand and asking the questions Yeah. And going, help.
I need direction. But now I'm pregnant with baby
number 2. Now I'm realizing the benefit and the
nourishment I get from the community is sharing my experience.
And, like, interacting with the other moms who are now
raising their hands saying, help. I'm here. I I need support.
One of my friends just got pregnant with her first, and she was texting me
last night. And I was saying, oh, just don't read these books at all.
They're terrible. You know, here's a resource. And we have
we I live in Canada, so we have a lot of resources available to us
as as moms and, parents. So
to me, it was extremely nourishing to be able to
give to other people. And I think that's kind of the missing piece right now
with, like, this crave for community. It's not so much about
taking from the community. It's about finding a community you can give
to. I think that part with social
media and the way it's designed is actually very challenging because it is a lot
of consumption. This is so,
so, so good. And, you know, you anticipated my question.
I I find myself thinking, I wonder if some of
these insights were potentiated
by you embarking on the path of parenthood.
Because being a parent, bringing new
life into the world, enlarging your family, is
like a little incubator for really understanding how connection and
community actually benefit us. Because you're not
only connected to these little humans and to your
husband in a new way, but you see the interconnectedness
of you and your community, you with other moms, you with other black
moms, you with other moms of 2 kids versus moms of 1. It's
like your brain can just start recognizing
all these connections that are available to you and that you benefit from.
And yes, to your point that I hope we all
reach a point where we're not just seeking more
consumption, or even connection for the
sake of meeting our own needs. But our presence
as part of an engaged community is not just
there for our own benefit. It is there for the
benefit of others. That sort of feedback
loop that you are able to help
people that other people in the community
maybe couldn't because they're drawn to you for some reason. And there's
satisfaction in that. There's something on a on a
societal level where we do need to go
from passively consuming, consuming,
consuming, and never quite being
filled. And realizing
I have something to offer. I may not be an expert in parenting,
but I have some experience I can share. And how much
more meaningful and satisfying that is to someone than all of the
books they could read by the so called experts. Some of whom don't
even have kids. Yes. And I think the
the challenge with the books is it's like an a to z,
like, step by step process. And my experience so
far is raising a kid is not a to z at all.
So you kinda need more of like an encyclopedia
approach where you're like, I just need this particular question
answered right now. And you're right. That's where the
giving part of being a community member, can
be very satisfying. And I do find ways to do this on social
media. I spend more time commenting than creating content.
So that's just one of my ways of being a
a good community member is, you know,
finding conversations where I can contribute. And these days, a lot of
them actually happen in closed community spaces. This is
where the the definition of social media gets a little bit
fuzzy. But for example, we're in a community
together that feels very social to me, and that there are people
posting and commenting. And I spend more time in those private
communities than I do in, like, a public social media community.
And I feel way more satisfied from those interactions
versus the one on social media. So I don't know what this
means for, like, the future of our post pandemic world, but
I do think actively seeking out ways we can give as a community member
can can give us some nourishment versus the,
empty calories of consumption. I
think it does have something to do with the the
container. You know, the community that you speak of that were
both memberships. I'm really satisfied by the
connections, the communication, the conversations, that
are happening there and how safe it feels Yeah. To
because on social media, let's be honest, you can say the
most innocuous thing. And it can be
you can be like a sitting duck in the shooting gallery. Somebody may just decide
to take a shot at you for any reason, no reason at all. And
and there you are taking heat. In enclosed communities,
you're gonna be protected by the the one who's creating the community.
But I'm almost wondering because I've noticed that
even people who want to give feedback on a
particular podcast episode, they're not leaving
reviews now. This is my experience. They're not leaving reviews. They're
DM ing me. They're sending me an email. They're going
to my website and they're leaving their feedback feedback on
the SpeakPipe widget because that's a personal
private one on one connection. And I have a reputation
like you. I respond personally. You're gonna send me a personal message,
you're gonna hear from me. You're not gonna hear from someone on my team. And
that feels very different. I mean, it's great to get podcast reviews,
but they tend to be fashioned and
and phrased and communicated in a way that's fit for public
consumption. So people really think about what they're gonna say. And and most of the
time, anybody could say it. But when they send a DM or an
email, I'm getting really personal,
vulnerable, really meaningful
feedback. Like, this really spoke to me and I'm gonna tell
you why. I don't think they're gonna do that on
social. So I think what all of the things that you're
saying make so much sense for where we are as a society, where
we are culturally, where we are as business owners, and the
unmet needs that people have that they're they're
really starting to pay attention to and do something about.
Yes. Yes. And I think the do something about is the key
here because when we don't, we continue
on the path that we're on, which means we're posting all of the places and
we're feeling this, like, resentment of having to be on
and available for all of these, frankly, strangers.
And this is where I
see so often business owners completely give up and they
delete Instagram off their phone forever Mhmm. Without really
stopping to analyze, you know, what's in it for me. They're just
like, I'm done. I'm burnt out. I need out out of this
toxic situationship. And so
this kind of analytical process could be very helpful to figure
out if if you do need out. If you do need out, yes, absolutely take
it. And there's still space to have meaningful
connection on social media. And oftentimes for me, it's a starting point
or it's just a continuation of a conversation I had someone somewhere else
with someone. But it's that one to one conversation that I love the
most about it. You mentioned a moment ago, Andréa,
that, commenting more and
posting less. And that's I'm
creating this whole less but better, for
2024. It makes a lot of sense if you are
engaging with other people's content. You are making a contribution
to a conversation that someone else started instead of hijacking the
conversation and say, hey, but but wait, this is what I have to say. Or
or hey, look over here. Or hey, listen, I wanna tell you this thing. It's
like, no, you're making a contribution to a conversation that someone else
already started. So posting less and
commenting more is naturally a way to create
more connection and possibly community because sometimes other
people start then commenting on your stuff. What are some other
simple but strategic ways that we can start
taking these little steps and then kind of measuring the result
of how it feels to do so. Yes. Yes. I'm a huge
fan of commenting over posting. And I like to comment as if I
were posting. Right? So it's not just, you know, congratulations
or nice pick or, you know, well done. It's really you know,
if someone's asking a question, pausing and taking a moment to reflect
and see how you can contribute to the conversation. Yeah. It takes
some time, and sometimes I only get one comment out,
in a day. Some days, I'm on fire, and I'm like, oh, I know what
I'm gonna say for all of these things. So that that's one of the things
that really helps for me. I also use, social
media as a discovery tool. So
oftentimes, when I'm looking for new partnerships or
new podcasts to listen to, I start with social
media. And so I use it as almost like a research tool,
which I also find very satisfying. And then if I find
someone who I do resonate with and connect with them,
I'll also probably send them a direct message and tell them a little bit
about why I connected with them. I used to teach
a strategy about, you know, try to connect with 10 people a
day, 5 days a week, but honestly, it can't
be that calculated. You you lose some of the
magic of it when you start calculating it out that way. So I typically look
at, you know, what do I need in my business and reach out and build
connections that way. And the only examples I have are ones from
years ago, because the connections I'm making now are gonna take years before
they kind of incubate. But one of my favorite
examples of this, is a guy named Travis Brown. I was
looking for a podcast editor, and I was reaching out to a bunch
of people on Instagram and saying, hey, I'm looking for a podcast
editor. Do you wanna connect? And he was one of the
people who I connected with, had, you know, the consultation call, ended
up hiring him, and then we became friends. And it's like we we've gone
to conferences together. We share updates about our kids, because
he's got 2 kids. They're a little bit older than mine. So I've been
asking him, like, parent of 2 kids questions, you know. He's now
pivoted to work we work in the same field now. He started in podcasting. Now
he's more in social media coaching. And so all of
that came from an Instagram DM. And I'm speed talking through
it, but it I met him in 2018 because
that's when I launched a podcast. So 6 years ago, can I
do math? It's it's been a minute. So
when I think about the value of some of
these micro interactions, they take a long time to to incubate.
So commenting as a post, sending
meaningful connections through research Mhmm.
Those are the 2 my 2, like, favoritest ways to
navigate social media as a business owner because it removes the pressure off
of creating content. But the third way I'll give you, if you do
wanna create content, screening content that's a response to something
happening in your community. And, again, this is very challenging because I used to
teach, a 5 pillar of content method. I
remember. Yes. I'm easing away from because it
doesn't fit how we navigate social
media. It can be very helpful for beginner business owners,
to have those pillars. But where we see the most success right
now is when you have a client conversation and you
feel impassioned about something, and if you like writing, you write about
it. If you like speaking, you record yourself talking about that situation,
because it's tangible. It's real. It's something that's actually happening in your
business. Or maybe it's a response to something that's happening in your
industry, in the world around you. Like, that response style
content generally seems to work the best because it doesn't feel
orchestrated. It doesn't feel planned. It doesn't feel like you have an
agenda. And as consumers, we kinda can like, we know what an
ad looks like, and you know what we do with the ads on YouTube? I
cannot wait to press skip. So the same thing
is happening on social media. When we can think about creating content that's
a response, it it feels less like someone saying buy my
thing and more like someone saying, hey, I have this idea. I'm
starting a conversation. So those are the the the little
things, little big things that you can do, to be
mindful about how you approach your social media actions.
I loved this idea about
creating content that's a response. Because my mind
is saying, well, sure. That makes sense. It's like
q and a. You're closing the loop.
Someone has a need. Someone has a question. Someone has a problem.
And you're responding to it. So you're meeting their need.
You're meeting your need for creating content. And chances are
someone else has that need. And you're also creating
a like a closed loop. Like this it's
it's as close as possible to a conversation without being
a conversation. It's an asynchronous conversation.
And that is, of course, gonna feel more satisfying and
probably gonna make it a whole lot easier to create content
that way. Because most people I know say, oh,
I can't do like solo episodes or just sit down in front of
my screen and write out a blog post. But when someone
asks me a question, then I can go to town. Okay.
People are asking questions. You just need to find those questions and answer them.
I love it. Absolutely. I love it too. And it it you're right. It does
make it a lot easier. You can actually create content a lot faster because you're
not having to, like, think of something from thin air. This has
been one of the most satisfying conversations I've had in a long
time because it really speaks to
not social media on the superficial level, but really
the bigger picture level of our culture, our
community, how we as humans relate to one another.
And if you are feeling like social media is something
you wanna dump, you wanna run away from, you wanna break up
with. If you need to do that, do that.
But maybe you wanna consider some of the things that Andréa
and I have been talking about as an alternative to see if
you can't transform your relationship with social media into one
that is both satisfying and sustainable.