‘You got the Facebook page set up? Congratulations,’ he said. ‘But beware — it’s addictive.’
And he was right!
It is a special feeling when you click that ‘post’ button and the page starts beeping with notifications of people liking what you shared. Especially the first few times, when you are still a bit unsure of what you are actually doing with posts, and when you’re still finding both your voice and getting acquainted with the technical stuff. It’s like every beep is a confirmation that you did something right, and you can’t help but feel proud of yourself.
And on the other side, you feel down and disappointed when you post something that you think is good, but the beeps just don’t come. You start questioning your judgment of the content, timing and so on.
But if you look at it from a distance, both the feeling of being proud and elated and of being disappointed are not really grounded in something real. They are feedback on how well the post is performing, not necessarily the feedback on an action you did. And in the affect, they can easily trick you into thinking otherwise, and you start adjusting your actions so that the number of likes becomes the single measure of success, and you inevitably start tweaking the content in a way that will attract more likes. And then it’s just a matter of how far you go — do you still stay true to the initial, core message, or do you forego it completely.
And having my background in not posting on social media for so long, judging from what I’ve seen other people do, I think it’s easy to fall prey to the above completely and come to the point where you have two split ‘realities’, one online and one in real life, that become ever more distant from one another.
But when you’re on the inside of it, when you’re listening for that notification beep and your heart feels joy each time you hear it, I think that’s much harder to see. And I think the actual number of responses, or likes, doesn’t really matter — you always compare them with your average, and it only matters if they’re increasing or decreasing.
I got my wake-up call a month or so in. One night, I couldn’t sleep, and I started thinking about a post I’d created the previous evening. It was doing quite well then, and based on my experience, I was expecting it to get more responses overnight and the following morning. And on some unconscious level, I got so excited about that prospect that I wanted a dose of that artificial joy right away. So I crawled out of bed to get the laptop and check it.
Now let’s pause for a second. I left the warm bed and allowed myself to become so woken up that I would have trouble getting back to sleep to see a number on a screen. Yes, it’s a number that represents how many people interacted with my post, but whether it was high or low wouldn’t really change anything for me at that moment. Or for the following day. It was a step in the process of creating an online presence, and yes, we’re aiming to get more responses over time, as we want to tell people about this project we are creating, but it was still just a number, a cold metrics of the content, of what the social media algorithm thought about that content, of the number of people it showed, that were online that moment, and that happened to click on it. Some because they root for us and support us, some because it was interesting enough that caught their eye while scrolling, some maybe because I recently liked their post and were returning a favour.
It’s a number that has so many factors intertwined in it that it’s too convoluted to represent a metric for meaningfulness.
And as such, it’s not something that should touch me on such a personal level. It should not trigger the same feelings as being out with friends, a good book that I read or a hard route that I’ve just climbed.
It’s not to say it isn’t important at all — it is if we want to have a successful Kickstarter. And I’m not saying that none of the responses are meaningful — a lot of them are. Just that we shouldn’t give the number the power to govern our feelings and that we need to look at it objectively.
And I think this realisation was key for me to start establishing what I think is a healthier relationship with social media for me.
I still post. And I still want to get responses. But at the same time, I want to stay true to myself and true to the content. I am not willing to compromise on that just to score likes, and I’ve established enough emotional distance that the number of likes doesn’t drive my feelings. Of course, I’m still happy if my post is getting noticed. But I know that it is a passing thing.
I do, however, adjust the shape I package that content in and the timing to make it better suited for the channel I’m using. Because make no mistake, if you are using an established channel (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or something else that’s not your web page), you are playing by their rules. They, or better, their algorithms have the power to make or break your presence, and it would be stupid to try to defy them. It’s not personal for them, it’s just maths. And you can’t defy maths.
So we took some time to actually google some of those details that allow your content to perform better. Details like, with Instagram, it depends a lot on the hashtags. For LinkedIn, the posts are sorted better if they don’t contain an external link, and you should include a link in the first comment. And stuff like that. I think we’ve only scratched the surface, so I’m not really a good source for those kind of tips, and you should google it yourself or ask someone who is better at this than me. But I’m starting to see patterns and details implemented around, by those who I thought were doing well on social media. So I guess it works.
Over the course of months, my content creation has evolved into something that is a mix of going with my instincts and applying certain concepts that are said to be optimised for the channel. And it will probably evolve further. But I’ve found a little trick of how to remain on what I think is the healthy side of using social media: I put my time into creating content, but once I post it, I log out and take the time to do something in the physical world — I go for a walk, do yoga, wash the dishes — it doesn’t really matter what it is, but it has to be at least 20 minutes long, and during that time, I can’t look at how my post is doing at all. This gives me the opportunity to remind myself that my life is still rooted in the physical world, and it trains my discipline as I don’t allow myself to give in to a moment’s weakness and peek.
I make exceptions to that rule if the content is really important and I think I need to be able to respond at once, or if I’m busy and need to stay at the computer anyway. But I try to implement it as often as I can. And I sometimes take a break that’s longer than 20 minutes. I think seeing the responses in bulk is much less emotional than hearing each individual beep. And one of the best experiences that you can have is if you achieve something great in the physical world, for example, climb that 6c that you’ve been eyeing for a while now, and you feel great about it. And then you look at your post and you go ‘hey, it’s doing okay too!’ And you know that it’s doing so without you wasting the time to count each individual like.
Cheers to finding a healthy balance between the online and physical world!
Nika