#48 – 24 Mar 2023
You feel tired.
You feel run down.
You are questioning, is this all worth it?
Welcome to the dark side of engagement
I’m finding out how toxic social media engagement can be.
As “new accounts” looking to grow, we are told by growth gurus that we need to comment on 30+ accounts a day to get noticed and gain followers.
Those numbers quickly stack up if you are trying to grow on multiple platforms.
If on three social platforms, does that mean you should be aiming at 90 comments a day?
That doesn’t sound fun.
Not an appealing lifestyle, is it?
Then there is all the reciprocal commenting with other creators “like-for-like”. You comment on theirs, and they comment back on yours and so forth.
So the next day, you not only have to write another 30 comments, but you have up to 30 comments to respond to.
It quickly becomes a living hell.
Creators not administrators
We signed up for this game to CREATE.
Not to become a busy administrator.
We want to add value, make an impact, and have creative space to explore.
Not be filling every free second with frantically pandering to the social media gods.
You might be wondering:
Why bother with multiple platforms?
Well, just last week, a creator friend had the terrible experience of Instagram suspending his account with no communication as to what he had done wrong! And sadly, the support to get him out was non-existent. At this point, he has given up on reviving that account and is now restarting it from scratch.
Devastating!
Could you handle that?
Just thinking about it makes me so angry!
His takeaway from that experience:
BUILD AN EMAIL LIST.
I have spoken in a previous letter on the importance of an email list to capture your true fans off social media. An email list is more valuable as you own it. And it’s direct communication with your audience. Priceless!
An email list is your saving grace if all that hard work showing up and building a following goes down the drain.
And we should also diversify our risk to the extent we can manage. We shouldn’t be relying on one platform.
Especially when it can all be taken away in an instant.
Content repurposing and scheduling apps make it easy to create once and then post on multiple platforms. This process used to be a mountainous task, but not in today’s creator economy.
Or platform changes can severely impact your business. Kieran Drew spoke of this last week, how recent changes to Twitter have dramatically affected his newsletter growth:
I need to de-risk.
I don’t like being on social media any more than necessary. But if Elon can reduce the growth of my newsletter business by 50%, I’m being a terrible entrepreneur.
To build anti-fragility, I’m beginning to diversify.
I’m starting on Linkedin this week.
I’m also learning about Instagram.
Until now, Kieran had solely relied on Twitter for traffic to his creator business.
There is more than just engagement
Then you have to post new content.
And you get a bunch of new DMs that need responding to.
Wow, that quickly got out of hand!
This is my pain right now.
And I am asking, do I really want to play this game?
As I found out how fickle most of those comments really were.
We had a lousy week in our family with a sick kid.
I was barely struggling to keep up with life.
Let alone get onto social media and smash out a bunch of random comments on posts.
So I stopped commenting and responding for most of the week.
And my engagement quickly dropped right down.
So the realisation hit, most of the people commenting on my posts, were only doing it if I reciprocally commented back on theirs.
They don’t really care about me or my content.
Is this the kind of game I want to be playing?
Is this the kind of audience I want to be building?
It’s unlikely those people will become clients or customers.
They are just trying to promote themselves on my account shamelessly.
Then the dark side of this is that I feel pressure to respond and engage with these people I don’t even know, and it eats into my family time with my baby son.
I think this is where I tap out.
Something’s gotta change.
The way we are working isn’t “working”
What would it look like if it were easy?
Tim Ferriss
Why would we simply endure the essential activities when we can enjoy them instead?
Greg McKeown
Part of the reason we become solopreneurs is to build a better lifestyle for ourselves.
And we want to do fewer things we hate.
We want the autonomy to structure our days how we want and pursue work we find interesting.
We don’t want to build another prison like the 9-5 we just left.
No, we want freedom.
And the digital economy presents this opportunity.
Another point was triggered by listening to Rick Rubin speak on Dan Carlin’s podcast.
If we are constantly rushing about, busy, busy, always engaging, then we are sacrificing a piece of our best selves.
A chunk of energy is being consumed in that engagement that could be better spent on other things:
- A creative project, perhaps our life’s work
- Time with family
- Solitude
I am wondering if it is all worth it. Sure, you may grow faster with all the hustling. But at the expense of your best work, family time and mental wellbeing?
That’s a hit I don’t want to take.
I would rather grow slowly but develop a more profound and impactful body of work.
What if I took that 3 hours of daily engagement and better spent it on my honing my craft:
- Reading
- Writing
- Coaching
That would pay a lot more dividends in the long run.
So anyway, what I have uncovered here is a massive dilemma for new creators
- We feel pressure to “grow” – why? Is this necessary for your goals?
- We need traffic to our products and services.
- As solopreneurs doing almost everything ourselves, we don’t have time to spend all day on social media without burning out and sacrificing our physical and mental wellbeing and family/friend times.
- As new creators still figuring out and building our business, we can’t necessarily justify the costs of social media or community managers.
Plus, we never actually “own” that social media audience.
It could be taken away at any point.
Imagine if:
- The platform goes under, or a government blocks it.
- We get banned for saying the wrong thing.
- The crowd moves onto other platforms.
That would suck after all the hard work we put in.
Obviously, the platforms play a crucial role in generating traffic to our work, and I am not writing them off here.
I am just drawing attention to the costs of spending too much time on them.
Yes, we need to show up daily, but at some point, a line is crossed, where we stop gaining value from them, and they start extracting value from us.
The 80/20 rule comes to mind.
I was chatting about this with a fellow creator friend, Jen.
I think we need to be mindful of the 80/20 rule in our approach to social media.
You may have heard of the Pareto Principle, commonly known as the 80/20 rule:
For many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes.
Wikipedia
In the 19th century, an Italian man, Vilfredo Pareto, uncovered that 80% of his pea pod harvest came from 20% of the plants in his garden. His curiosity led him to investigate and discover this “principle” applied to other scenarios in life, such as wealth. He found that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by roughly 20% of the people. The principle was found to be generally true in other industries and companies.
And so now we generally say:
80% of results come from 20% of inputs.
So how can we apply the Pareto Principle to engagement?
Well, 20% of your actions get 80% of your results.
If you are looking to grow, you might find you get 80% of your growth from 10 comments daily on 10 big accounts.
So spending another 3 hours commenting on small accounts is an ineffective use of your time.
It’s just making you miserable.
Recognise where the value is.
Make a plan.
And, for goodness sake, stick to the bloody plan!
Too many times have I drifted off into oblivion, and next thing, hours have gone by.
Where did the time go?
No.
We aren’t playing that game anymore.
This is where a countdown timer becomes your best friend.
I recommend buying an actual kitchen countdown timer. They are dirt cheap online.
Sure, you could use your smartphone, but that is another distraction waiting to happen.
That phone can become a thief of your deep work time blocks, robbing you of your best work.
A little timer is an excellent investment.
I’m using mine all the time now.
Less productivity, more creativity
If you want to become more creative, become less productive.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I swear I am not lazy.
And I don’t “hate” productivity.
But I sense a movement happening.
People are waking up to the trappings of constant productivity.
And they are coming around to the mysticism and possibility of creativity – the muse!
People finally recognise there is merit in doing nothing.
It’s where the dots are connected, and exciting ideas happen.
You know the light bulbs of insight don’t go off in your head while:
- Frantically commenting on social media posts.
- Writing a paper on a deadline for work.
- Crunching the numbers in a spreadsheet.
No, they happen when we least expect it.
Usually while:
- On a walk.
- In the shower.
- Doing the dishes.
The best insights happen when we aren’t “working”.
And given we are in an age where we are competing against AI robots, our edge is no longer our productivity.
They will smash us out of the park every time in that domain.
But our creativity is where we can bring a unique flavour.
That is our edge.
To stand out online, you need interesting and unique ideas.
You must create space in your day to allow those ideas to happen.
I don’t know about you, but I feel more human when not locked into a robot routine.
I like the meander around, ponder ideas, and go backwards and forwards to see where I end up.
And this is what makes me, me.
It’s my unique edge.
I can land in places other people don’t because of my unique style.
The productive person would have been onto the next thing on their to-do list.
But because I randomly decided to go for a walk and put on a podcast.
I landed on a special topic that is rich for exploration.
And this wouldn’t have happened by being rigidly structured.
Sure, I lose a lot in terms of productive output.
But I gain something new and different.
And in a world of sameness, different is good.
So it seems wrong to sacrifice that in the name of productivity.
What are you sacrificing because of your current working style?
Actions for engagement
- Create a list of 30 accounts to engage with daily (10 small accounts, 10 medium accounts and 10 large accounts). Deciding in advance makes it easy to execute the daily engagement plan.
- Block off a daily timeslot in your calendar for 30 minutes of engaging. It’s easy not to do it if you don’t schedule it.
- Each day in your timeslot, set your timer for 30 minutes and go for it. Work through your engagement list, commenting on each account’s most recent post.
- Once the time is up, stop. And make peace with that. We are playing the long game here, so don’t burn yourself out.
- If you prefer, split the 30 minutes into smaller blocks throughout the day.
Avoid the “like-for-like” reciprocal engagement. Only engage in what you enjoy and feel compelled to contribute to. By keeping it fun, you are more likely to do it.
Schedule two other blocks:
- Responding to comments on your posts.
- DM-ing other creators to build your creator network and potential business leads.
Keeping on top of these daily tasks is essential, or they can quickly grow into out-of-control monsters.
Deep work blocks
I was inspired by Dan Koe’s last newsletter, where he outlined The Priority Ladder for deep work blocks.
Fill your brain in the afternoons with books, learning, and socialisation.
Empty your brain before bed with journaling, planning, and meditation.
Use your brain in the morning with creation, output, and focus.
Dan Koe
So, after all my critique on productivity above, it’s important to note it still plays a key role in our progress.
So we need to make room in our days for both productivity and creativity.
I like Dan’s quote above, which simplifies our day into a creative system.
So I am applying this to my own days going forward.
- Afternoons (input) – allow creative space for true, unstructured exploration.
- Evenings (reflection) – reflect and connect some dots, and prime our subconscious to do more dot-connecting while we sleep.
- Mornings (output) – we bring productivity through structured deep work blocks to smash out our most important work.
Because of the exploration and space we created in the prior afternoon and evening, you will find those creative ideas pouring out of you in these deep work blocks. We get more done in less time.
The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Dan Koe breaks his morning into four deep work blocks, a priority ladder in order of value to maximise business results:
- Vision building – A high-priority project that is based on a future goal. For example, creating your product/service offer.
- High-leverage creative work – Using our peak creativity abilities to complete our high-leverage tasks. For example, writing this newsletter.
- Meaningful and spillover tasks – Meaningful tasks that are essential for our creative work. For example, writing, recording videos, and scheduling social media content.
- Maintenance tasks – Focus on tasks that maintain your products and services. For example, social media engagement that generates growth and traffic. Or email.
As you go down the ladder, the chance of distraction increases. The beauty of this format is you get the most critical, high-leverage tasks done first. And you see, you get your ducks in order – e.g. prioritising your offer before you worry about content.
What is this “deep work” you speak of?
Deep work” is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.
Deep work will make you better at what you do, let you achieve more in less time and provide the sense of true fulfilment that comes from the mastery of a skill.
In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive economy.
Cal Newport
Our attention span is fractured. We multitask and have a billion notifications flying across our screens.
This means that those who can master a practice of deep work are the valuable ones. They thrive mentally and reach higher levels of success because that deep focus is so rare in today’s society.
Do you want a simple way to stand out?
Block off an hour in the morning and do your most important task without distractions.
That is a superpower.
It becomes addictive.
Soon you will be blocking off 3+ hours to do your most important work.
Get most of the work done before the rest of the world is cranking up.
Complete one task before moving on to the next.
Then enjoy a blissful afternoon of relaxing, reading and walking.
That’s what I am aiming for.
Reflection
Why is “growth” necessary? Is all this pain essential? What are your actual goals here? More followers are rarely the answer.
Is your current path sustainable? Mental and physical wellbeing?
Things don’t have to stay the same if they aren’t working.
Make time for creativity & reflection.
Create your own value ladder of deep work blocks.
What are you sacrificing because of your current working style?
If things feel out of control and overwhelming, ask yourself:
- What would it look like if it were easy?
- How could you move from enduring to enjoying the process?
A quote to ponder
There are those who approach the opportunities of each day like crossing items off a to-do list instead of truly engaging and participating with all of themselves.
Our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply.
The pressure to deliver doesn’t grant us time to consider all possibilities.
Yet it is through deliberate action and repetition that we gain deeper insight.
Rick Rubin
Final thoughts
Today’s writing background playlist was the Sound of Silver album by LCD Soundsystem.
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Cheers!