Week 17: Social Media Cleanse...No Seriously!
Funny thing social media, you can love it and hate it at the same time. Love it in the sense that it really helps you to reach out to people, get your name out there and check out your peers as well as your competition. If you ever fall short of ideas, plenty of accounts and posts to keep you inspired. I love the fact that you can really work on the branding side of things and help push your company culture, ethos and image out there. While all this sounds awesome and to some extent has really helped I can’t help but feel it's hindering our progress at the same time. Now i’m not about to do a 180 degree turn and go the opposite way but I do think it's time to shake things up a little. I don’t regret any of my decisions on concentrating on our brand image but It will be naive of me to not evaluate my current situation and my situation is shouting out to let go.
Reason being (the hate part from earlier) it really eats into your time. Plus you get swamped into the whole Social Media Web but not in a good way and now I know why they call it a web you really do get tangled. You will hear all kinds of things like, you should be posting every day, sharing highly valuable data, and tweeting 6 times a day;... really?? So I've decided to detox from the whole thing. What is going to happen if I don't post everyday or share a story or tweet twice instead of 6? Is my business going to collapse? Will I go bust? Will it be catastrophic ? So what were all the businesses doing before the digital mania began? Great businesses were about back then. I am going to trust my own judgment on this one by not listening (yes that's exactly what I said) and claim some of my time back. I tell you what will be catastrophic, me not listening to my intuition...
Honestly, social media is literally a job in itself? And by the looks of it I'm turning this into a career! I feel the business is just becoming pretty with no substance and I am wasting valuable time by scrutinising every post, layout, comment, visuals etc. Now this is not the property business I had in mind. I am so fixated on useless detailing that I'm neglecting the core of the matter. You get so bogged down and tired that number-crunching or deal evaluations are the last thing on your mind as your energy has been zapped by the former. My Instagram does not have to be picture perfect but my deals have to stack up right and this is where I am going wrong. I keep forgetting what business I'm in or at least somewhat confused. I have for this reason simplified things and got my priorities sorted. I don't need to obsess about followers and magnify every sodding comment. I gave my accounts a real good tidy up and only have people who I generally think can add value or inspire. I have streamlined and unfollowed an awful lot of inactive accounts and I am okay with growing slowly organically. I will rather have a few hundred that I'm always engaging with than thousands that I just don't know.
How are you supposed to build any kind of relationship with those kinds of numbers? Have you heard the phrase:
...McDonalds is not in the business of Hamburgers but Real Estate?...
Very powerful words! But the reverse in my case. Keep forgetting I'm in the Property business and ‘not’ social media. Do you relate to this? I will be interested to know. Go do a big digital clear-up I cannot stress how liberating it is.