The Social Media Myth
I recently attended a social media intensive class. I loved it. I loved the person who hosted it (Amie McNee) and I thought how she approached the subject was brilliant. We’ll talk about Amie and her viewpoints later on in the piece. But first I want to make an unpopular (or perhaps it’s becoming more popular) assertion.
Needing to be on Social Media is a myth.
It’s a myth that is perpetuated in all corners of our life and in so many different ways. It’s a myth that keeps us attached to our phones, to our “numbers,” to our curated lives. It’s a myth that has become dangerous in so many ways. Some of these dangers are obvious (as studies have shown). Some are so embedded in our cultural and societal behaviors, we don’t even realize we’ve become victims to it. So in this article, I’m going to attempt to bust the social media myth as much for myself as for you, the reader by focusing on two of the most important aspects of the social media myth that have come up in my experience and the experience of students and clients I engage/interact with.
You Need Social Media for Your Business
This is the one I hear most often and one that I’m guilty of repeating. I’ve long wished to be off social media but never pulled the trigger because I believed social media was a necessary evil as an entrepreneur. I thought (like many others) that social media was something I just had to “deal” with in order to run my business. Then, I started getting newsletters from some of the business owners and companies that I respect most about removing social media from their marketing plans. Some decided to only post minimally while others decided to pull the plug completely. This fascinated me. This upset the status quo that I believed. And whenever someone is rebelling against something (you knew I was going to find a way to interject that, right?), I tend to listen to what they have to say.
What I discovered in doing a deep dive into what these business owners were doing/saying around social media was the argument against the myth that we need social media in our lives and businesses.
Mini Case Study
Leonie Dawson
One of the first people I really saw attacking the myth of social media was one of my favorite business owners — Leonie Dawson. Leonie is incredibly transparent and authentic with her audience and customers. She holds nothing back and it’s one of the reasons I love her and her products. She’s talked, in detail, about this decision to get off social media for her business and I think she was surprised herself how much it didn’t affect her bottom line or sales. She has a great recap of her first 12 months off of social media that I think will give you an inside look as to how someone successful is pulling it off:
Michelle Rohr & Secret O.W.L. Society
I have loved watching Michelle Rohr grow in her business and as a business owner. I’ve been following her since her early days of creating printables for planning and journaling and the pivot she made to creating digital products. Her collaboration with Aimee to create the Secret O.W.L Society is such a beautiful example of a successful business collaboration venture as well. Anyway, that’s all to say that I’ve really respected and studied how they’ve developed their business over the years which is why I was surprised when Michelle decided to take the business off social media altogether. She dedicated an episode of their podcast to this very topic and how as scary as it was to take the leap — she realized in the end that her numbers did not suffer at all and she felt better about life and business. You can listen to that episode here:
The Reality of What it Takes to Uplevel Yourself - Secret O.W.L. Society
Wandering Aimfully
I have been a member of the Wandering Aimfully membership for many years now. Even before that, I followed one of the creators, Jason Zook, and his amazingly creative and out-of-the-box ways to run a business. One of the things I love most about the Zooks’ and what they’ve created with their business is honesty and truth-telling. Just like Leonie Dawson, they are transparent about their business and how they’re running it. Their courses, products, and teachings have evolved over the years to be more person-centered than most businesses will ever be. That’s why I’m a loyal fan. And recently, they made the big leap we’ve been talking about — pulling out of social media. They decided to approach it as an experiment. What would happen if we didn’t use social media at all for 6 months? What would our numbers look like? What would happen to our loyal customers? In a newsletter recap they recently sent out to subscribers, (I HIGHLY recommend you get on their list — their newsletters are some of the best around!) they posed this question:
If you’re not using social media consistently, how can your business get seen in 2022?
To which they answered:
“We’ll be 100% truthful in saying it’s MUCH easier to take a break from social media after we’ve built up an audience on email and through podcasting. These days, if you really are starting from scratch, it’s enticing to use social media to get visibility quickly.
But this is also why we go back to the tried and true tactics of articles, SEO, and email list building. Because you CAN grow an audience using those means without social media—it just might take longer.”
Cal Newport
Cal is an outlier in this list of case studies because he actually has never been on social media. And I honestly think that’s a testament to the argument against the myth of social media. Without a single social media account, Cal has managed to become a tenured professor of computer science, has written seven books (most of which are on the bestsellers list), and is frequently asked to speak to audiences with thousands in attendance. Predictably, he believes this success is due to not being on social media, and it's hard for anyone to deny his assertion. He has certainly proven that one doesn’t need social media to be successful — but his ideologies go beyond that one aspect. He champions digital minimalism because it brings out the priorities and things that truly matter in our life. It allows for the “deep work” that has become so rare for creatives and leaders in this day and age. For me — Cal is such a role model for steering the conversation to dispelling myths rather than enforcing them. You can read many case studies of people who have chosen to get off social media and the impact it’s had on their lives on his blog:
Social Media is Great for Sharing Your Work
Yes... and no. Yes, it’s been a viable and wonderful option for many people to share their creative, personal or professional work with others. And yes, there are many accounts that have benefited financially from sharing their work on social media. But the truth is — those are the exceptions, not the rule. And this is the point in which I want to bring Amie McNee’s work into the conversation because though she is very active on social media, she has developed a relationship with it that many other creators have not. And I believe that is because of her mindset and approach to it. She readily acknowledges the issues and problems that are inherent in social media. So she works against those issues/problems. She understands that the myths being perpetuated through social media are harmful and dangerous. So she works to dispel those myths and bring a point of view that you can use social media differently. What I love about Amie is that she offers an alternative approach to social media other than the two polarizing sides: stay on or get off. She’s found the middle road for her and her customers, which I love. Some of the salient points in her intensive were:
The social media algorithms don’t understand art and nuance. The algorithm can’t tell the difference between an image that is artistic or an image that is a selfie... so automatically we set ourselves up to be disappointed if/when we share a piece of artwork (however that looks to you) and it doesn’t show up in someone’s feed and you get zero likes. Your brain tells you that it’s your fault and that your art is somehow “wrong” or “bad” when the reality is — the damn algorithms don’t even know your post is art to begin with.
Wanting to be “seen” or “acknowledged” for your art is NOT selfish or wrong. But allowing social media to dictate the “how,” “when,” and “where,” is a recipe for disaster. Your validation becomes dependent on software that doesn’t really give two shits about you or your art.
You don’t have to have a contentious relationship to social media if you’re willing to accept that it’s a place to be witnessed and connect — not a place to build your business or brand. Essentially, she states that when we place expectations on social media to fulfill that for us, again, we’re perpetuating the idea that social media is necessary for building a business which she disagrees with.
Many creative people use social media as an excuse not to be creating. When someone says, “well I just don’t have time, I have to make sure I do a reel on this day and create a curated post for this day, and post marketing content on these days” they’re missing the point of having a healthy relationship to social media. They’re falling into the traps that the algorithms and myths perpetuate. Because all that strategy and planning doesn’t mean shit if you’re not actually creating anything of substance.
I encourage you to check out Amie and her work because I feel like she is one of the few creators who use social media in a healthy way and is helping others learn how to do it, too. I also think she’s a great example of how you can make social media work for YOU instead of you trying to fit yourself into a box for algorithms or followers.
Conclusion
It’s pretty clear how I feel about social media and yet, I’ve resisted removing myself from it. Of course, this is understandable, given how much pressure is put on entrepreneurs, creators, and online business owners. I’m not ashamed of that. What researching and writing this article has done for me though is highlight the need for re-evaluating my relationship with social media. Maybe getting off social media altogether isn’t the ultimate goal... maybe it’s learning how to use it in a way that works for me without having any expectations of the results that I have no control over? It’s a topic and myth that I think I have to sit with for a while. But it also wakes me up to the reality that so many other people are navigating this myth without knowledge that there are alternatives. That’s why this piece was written. That’s why I want to open up a space for dialogue around it. Because if you have a contentious relationship with social media, you are so NOT alone. You are in the majority — not the minority. And there are other ways. You just have to be brave and courageous enough to do the digging necessary to find what works best for you.
