Relating with social media

I know Instagram has lots of faults. I’m not going to sit here and pretend it’s perfect. But what got lost in the “I’m Leaving Social Media” discourse is that shunning a platform like Instagram does not make the job of growing a following, a business, an email list, a publication any easier.

A succinct elevator pitch for your newsletter is much more marketable than being a whole person who communicates their ideas via blog. That said, some people, including me, market their blog as a publication dealing in existentialism and philosophy and the chronicles of life in the world today, which leaves room for your perspective to change as... See more

Because self-promotion sucks. It is actually very boring and not that fun to produce TikTok videos or to learn email marketing for this purpose. Hardly anyone wants to “build a platform;” we want to just have one. This is what people sign up for now when they go for the American dream — working for yourself and making money doing what you love. The... See more

It’s hard to break away when everyone else is going in one direction.

I used to work with a client who followed many of these coaches. Her feed was FULL of fantasy marketing and after a while, whether you like it not, that gets to a person.

Not least because of the echo chamber effect of social media. Once you follow one of these grifters individuals, your Explore page is full of them.

And when I say it gets to a... See more

Few, if any, of this moment’s apparently unstoppable tech platforms will survive for long. The people on them will eventually leave—when they’re forced to do so by the continuous degradation of their experience, or because they’re forced to do so because their governments put the hammer down, as Brazil recently demonstrated—or sometimes when they... See more

The most successful social media accounts today are rich. They’re thick with engaging content. They innovate on the constraints of the medium. They are wildly inspiring to me.

I never get the feeling that they’re saving their best stuff for their website or email subscribers. They make remarkable content and put it on social media for people to... See more

But social media platforms have trained brands to be thirsty for metrics that aren’t always of real value because it’s in their interest to give the impression of continuous growth . You have 500k followers on Instagram! But an awful conversion rate. You have had 1.2 mil views on your video! But struggle to turn one-time customers into anything... See more