3 Social media skills NO ONE needs (and are crippling your business)
“Is AI really just like a calculator? Not really. But it is a tool. And how we use tools in a creative space like coaching and entrepreneurship matters.”
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
3 Social media skills no one needs
Setting your professional social media boundaries
Social media is supposedly THE tool to use for connection and organic growth and yet is simultaneously one of the most inauthentic and unsafe spaces in our culture today. What skills do you need to use social media as a tool while still showing up as the unique unfettered individual that you are? And how do you do that with getting canceled?
I’d like to thank my coaches Jeni Barcelos and Sandy Connery of Hey Marvelous and the ANdshespoke podcast for the inspiration for this topic. They got me thinking about what I had learned over the last few years from social media. What value had I gotten from it?
I have had a love hate relationship with social media from day one but when you are looking to scale an online business it seems like a necessary evil. I’ve learned some things over the last 4 years though that have given me a little less anxiety and a whole lot more backbone when it comes to using social media as a tool. I’d like to share some of those things with you including 3 specific social media marketing skills that no one needs no matter what business you’re in.
Before we get into those I want to address why women seem to have such a hard time with promoting themselves anywhere, not just on social media.
Patriarchy.
No I’m kidding although there is subconscious good girl programming that comes into play. The real reason though is because women tend to equate their businesses with themselves as people. They tend to see themselves as their business, as their job. There is no separation so if you’ve been raised to NOT talk about yourself because it’s bragging and conceited (as many women have), to not go after what you want because that’s aggressive or bitchy, of course you’re going to have a hard time marketing.
If that sounds like you, then part of your work is to start to detach yourself from your business. It’s not you, you’re not it. You run it. You created it. But you are not it. In the fitness industry and wellness in general, that can be tricky. We ARE the teacher or coach. It's what we do and we are the brand, and it’s a lot of relationship building so things can get personal. This is what I mean when I talk about the body brand nation.
But really, when you’re marketing, you’re promoting your business, not yourself. Even if you are wearing all the hats. It’s a subtle but important mindset shift that can lead to a lot more courage when you’re putting yourself out there.
OK now that that’s out of the way. Let’s talk about social media marketing. The organic kind. Not paid ads. That’s a topic for another podcast.
The dream, the holy grail of solopreneurs everywhere is organic growth without shelling out cash hand over fist to meta and google. You become a viral sensation, a thought leader and influencer and people just beg to give you money hand over fist. But most of the time that’s not how things go.
We’ve all done a google search where the entire first page is sponsored ads. It’s frustrating. And then there’s the social media feeds where every other post is an ad. And all you want to do is find your people. To serve your people. Well I guarantee they’re as frustrated as you. Because they’re looking for you too and that’s the whole point of SM isn’t it? To connect people? After all, you didn’t become a coach to try to game the algorithms.
Insert Hard eye roll here.
So how should we be using social media? Maybe the better question is how should we NOT be using social media?
Here’s what I wanted to share with you today. These are the top 3 skills that I learned the hard way about social media marketing. These skills are absolutely unnecessary and could very well change the social media landscape for the better. IF we stick together.
Skill number one
How to self censor -
this comes from both the sm communities themselves and the sm overlords with their arbitrary community standard algorithms and lack of humanity.
The pandemic showed us this. If you mentioned the C word in any post there would be a redirect to the CDC or some other health organization to “correct” your thinking. Talk about Orwellian. Any posts that questioned any of the so-called science were removed or blocked as misinformation. Including opinions. Which can’t be misinformation because they’re opinions. Opinions are not facts and I don’t believe you can be held responsible for whether or not other people can tell the difference. Since no one actually had correct facts because no one actually knew what was going on at the time, that is a very telling pattern of behavior. Controlling information is the first step on the path to totalitarianism.
Then there was the BLM riots and again were shown what they wanted us to see and nothing more. There were black outs and boycotts all over social media platforms. And you could watch the lemmings fall one after the other.
I’m not making any judgments about what actually happened today nor should you because we have more information now than we did then. My comments today are specifically related to social media and its effect on our culture and on our businesses. The outrage at the time spread like wildfire through social media. One reason for that was that there was a lack of factual evidence being shared, lag time if you will. So it was all emotion. Emotion will hijack reason every time.
What these things showed us was that if you don’t say the right thing in the right way at the right time your account will be frozen, blocked or canceled. You’ll be trolled or canceled or “pulicly vilified. Not a problem unless this is your livelihood. So don’t step out of line. Don’t disagree. Stay in your lane. It turned all social media platforms from the public square into Blue bubble echo chambers.
That brings me to skill number 2.
How to virtue signal.
Virtue signaling is an important skill on social media if you don’t want to get canceled. Here’s how to do it effectively. Say something inflammatory but make sure that it requires no commitment or action by you to make it happen. I saw a few of these recently over the 4th of July. One in particular was from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream about and I quote”The United states was founded on stolen indigenous land. This 4th of July let’s commit to returning it.” OK is Ben & Jerry’s going to give back their land? I’m not hearing about that. Or a couple years ago one of the FB Ad coaches I followed convinced half of Instagram to stop running FB ads for week because of some horrific story on the news. All that did was cripple those businesses it didn’t change anything for the people involved.
Of which that tweet triggered a boycott that cost the company 2 billion $. And of course make sure you follow the crowd with all boycotts and blackouts.
Skill number 3
How to play small:
The first 2 skills set the scenes for playing small because they put invisible limits on your messaging. That can show in behavior and choices you make about where you put your time and effort.
Wasting time on unimportant things, like pretty pictures,I can’t tell you how many times I’ve disappeared down a canva rabbit hole to find the perfect image. Or using a bunch of extra words to be politically correct make people feel “safe” only to realize that all those words only make your message unclear. Creating posts instead of making real connections.
The fact is social media platforms are the most unsafe places in society no matter what words you use. Social media by it’s nature is an army of trolls. There is courage in anonymity. If you don’t get a thick skin quickly your intentions around social media can get flipped.
But no matter how good your intentions are you can not take responsibility for what anyone else feels. This is coming from trauma informed space. You can’t keep others safe. You can only take responsibility for yourself. In real life AND online.
How do you counteract this new subconscious programming?
First find an awareness that it’s happening. Then grow a backbone and establish strong personal and professional boundaries around what you’re going to say, how you’re going to say it, and how you’re going to engage. And lastly create some meaningful connections with yourself and others IRL.
These are the ABC’s of resilience by the way. They can be applied personally and professionally.
I want you to think about what was the last thing you learned from your social media feed that had any value? Mostly I learn stuff I don’t wanna do. I follow a lot of trainers and instructors and every once in a while they share some sequence I haven’t seen before. But I don’t use them because the people on IG make things look easy and a lot of those pictures are staged.
There’s a place for social media. I use it to vet people and businesses. It can be a decent website substitute. It’s a digital business card. It can amplify your reach to a larger audience maybe. And it can build some “know like and trust value" around your business.
Trust is a fragile thing. I don’t actually know anyone who hasn’t had their social media account hacked. But there is no direct correlation between number of followers and number of customers. I have a small following and I’ll share that I have restricted or blocked half of them. And I feel fine about it. Because of that risk, be very conscious about how much of your precious time and effort you put into your posts. Backup all your content. All of your precious intellectual property. It’s a real gut punch when that stuff gets stolen or wiped out.
I teach and coach real people in the real world and if you’re one of those people I want to work with you. I want my clients to be involved in and make a difference in their communities in tangible ways. Self censorship, virtue signaling and playing small aren’t gonna get you there.
What is gonna get you there? Getting real clarity about who you are and what you bring to the world through your dream business and finding the courage to show up everyday as who you really are no matter what. And if you need help with that or social media boundaries, batching content or any other solo business mindset issues keeping you up at night go to Savagegracecoaching.com/clarity and book a call with me to get started. And speaking of social…if you’d like to connect check out my Savage grace coaching FB page Instagram @realsavagegrace and my new page The Loft Yoga + Wellness
Nd of course you can find links to all of those in the show notes at savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin
Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
Savage Grace Coaching is all about bringing resilience and burnout recovery. Especially for overwhelmed entrepreneurs, creators and coaches in the fitness industry.
Schedule a free consultation call to see if my brand of actionable accountability is right for you and your business.