My Favorite Social Media Platforms
Like most of my college friends, I created a Facebook profile to connect and post dumb things on their walls. I also get those handy reminder notifications of my cryptic status updates.
Now I’ll spend maybe 10 minutes on Facebook per week and that’s being generous. There’s tons of reasons why but I don’t get much value from the platform anymore. I barely see anything from people I’m connected to.
The only way to keep my sanity as a business owner is focusing my energy on platforms I enjoy that will make a difference in my creative business. Here’s my two favorite social media platforms for my business.
Threads
I can only imagine what the early days of Twitter were like since I didn’t have an account. It seems like Threads is the closest to this vibe.
Unlike other platforms, it’s a lot less visually noisy and overstimulating with no ads and videos popping up to compete for your attention.
It’s just text with some photos and GIFs in the mix. This makes it easier to show up and engage with as myself.
When I started doing social media for my business, I felt the need to put on a virtual business suit and a different persona when showing up online.
That wasn’t how I acted in real life, so why was I doing that on social media? I was trying to look “professional”.
On my account and in my comments, I’m engaging as my weird, authentic self. Since I’m spending so much time here it’s also growing faster than my Instagram. This isn’t really a surprise since I’m basically ghosting Instagram right now.
It’s also easier to organically find people to connect with on the platform. I can’t say how many people I’ve found just from the comment section. It feels like “the good place” for social media at least for now.
The Al Gore Rhythm also seems to work better than other social networks. It actually shows you what you’ve searched for and interacted with. This is why Threads feels “safer” than other platforms. There’s less of a chance to see totally irrelevant or harmful content.
If all of this sounds awesome and your vibe check out Threads and find me if you want to say hi!
If you created a LinkedIn profile after graduating from college and basically forgot about it, me until a few years ago, then you might think the platform is still “professional” aka “boring”.
That all depends on who you follow, connect and interact with. Just like any other social media platform, finding the people who are creating content or posting insights you care about goes way further than condemning the whole platform.
My LinkedIn connections and presence were pretty run of the mill until I decided to shake things up. There are so many people on the platform, almost a billion with a b!, making connections there is a no brainer.
Networking has always been a bit of a dirty word for me. It seemed like it was always boring, surface level communication with people just pitching their services at you with a clammy handshake. Yikes! No thanks.
Then I started adapting networking to work for me. I like to engage with people online for a pocket of time, usually 10 to 20 minutes. People are more open to coffee chats and learning more about you on LinkedIn too. Most of my coffee chats started with a LinkedIn DM.
Honorable Mention: Pinterest
Oh, Pinterest. What started as a way to collect pins for my wedding has slowly morphed into a colossus.
I know that pinning is important but I always forget. This is my reminder to pin.
Social Media FOMO is real
You want to be everywhere so that potential clients will find you but having a profile on every platform isn’t a good use of your time if you hate using it. (mic drop)
This is how I feel about Instagram. I used to love Instagram but the infinite scroll and content not being shown to your followers just makes me not like the platform as much.
Social Media Advice*
*If you want it.
Pick one or two platforms that you enjoy and grow them. The easiest way to figure this out is what platform do you like hanging out on and are any of your clients there?
When you have the capacity, or hire someone, expand to another one. Even posting the same content across multiple platforms can be a pain. I used to do this and I still do occasionally.
I thought this type of content marketing was great. And it was until I grew tired of it and burned out.
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