Patreon: Social Media Feels Overwhelming and Impossible

Will someone please take it from me?

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I need a social media person, y’all. 

I’m just saying – there’s a reason that social media has become a massive industry. Three of the four day jobs I’ve had, we’ve staffed someone specifically to handle social media posts. Not branding as a whole, mind you, JUST the social media accounts. When I was at Lyft, we had an entire team dedicated to social media – literally, an office of roughly 15 people JUST replying to tweets and creating content all day. 

And, really – SoBros Network needs that, too! It’s an exhausting part of what we do that I don’t think people on the outside looking in realize. These days, brands have to pretty much maintain a constant presence online in order to grow. You have to create engaging content, and then engage with the people engaging with your engaging content. It’s nuts – it’s overwhelming and exhausting. And, to be honest, it’s probably not that good for you – there’s some actual research on that that I’ve read but can’t link to off the top of my head (#Journalism). 

So, there’s a reason that companies create entire positions based off of this. It’s hard work – not only are you worrying about engaging with your followers and creating content, but you have to stay on top of the ever-changing algorithms. 

I just don’t have the time to do anything more than the bare minimum on top of all of my other responsibilities. 

The ‘social media problem’ is one that I know is important to solve, but it’s also frustrating, and in my seven years of doing this, I’ve learned several things that I’ve adopted into the SoBros ‘social media philosophy,’ if you will. 

1. Going viral doesn’t mean shit – You guys have probably read this or heard me say this a million times. We’ve had stuff go viral several times and it just doesn’t lead to dollars. Maybe you pick up a few new followers, but by and large, it doesn’t do shit beyond inflating your impressions for a day or two, and then it’s right back to business as usual. The key seems to be in a position to curate the viral content so that it’s always coming up on your feed. 

2. Your feed can turn spammy and invasive in a hurry – Maybe this isn’t the right mentality to have, but I like to look at our feed about once a day just to make sure it doesn’t look like we’re over-promoting our stuff. Particularly with the hashtags – you can’t just be hashtagging every little thing. For one, social media algorithms have advanced to the point where they can detect whether or not content genuinely aligns with the hashtag used or not. For another, it pisses me off to see mismatched shit like that. For instance, I see restaurants all the time using the hashtag #Nashville when posting pictures of their hot chicken – but, when I click on the profile to see where it’s at, these are restaurants that are in Toronto and Detroit. Maybe just use #NashvilleHotChicken? Instead, they’re using a script that throws together 50 hashtags and pastes it into the post. That kind of thing just looks desperate, like you’re screaming to be noticed, and it can create a negative user experience. I just avoid that shit, even if it does mean a few less impressions. I operate under the idea that our social media feeds are spaces for things that we enjoy. So, I don’t want for SoBros Network to invade that experience.

3. Metrics are garbage – They really are. We create all of these data points, but the truth is that there is no way to determine how many people you have out there that are genuinely impacting your business other than just the eye test…keeping an ear to the ground, and paying attention to who is interacting with your brand the most. Even impressions are whack – like, you can’t even download monthly reports on Instagram…you just have to open your insights and manually add up the number of impressions for each post for ‘the last 28 days.’ Yep, they don’t even give you a ‘September 2020’ option. It’s as inexact of a science as you could imagine, yet we use these numbers to sell billions of dollars in advertising. It just seems a little crazy to me.

I decided to just trust in the content that we create, allow it to speak for itself, and if people like it, they’ll share it or they’ll engage with it. I’m playing the long game – I want people to discover SoBros Network organically, and I don’t want it to look like we’re desperately trying to go viral. That’s why I curate our feed carefully – you won’t see a lot of RTs and posts that aren’t actual content on the SoBros Network feed. 

It’s a love/hate kinda thing – I recognize its importance, but I think it can be really bad for people. It’s something that, as the EIC, I wish I could delegate to someone who could solely focus on that kinda stuff. Maybe one day.

Rooster and I did an episode of Phone It In on social media way back when. You can dive into that here if you’re so inclined. 

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD and #BeBetter. “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley

Check out the SoBros Shop. Become a Patron. Give us money for no reason. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter @SoBrosNetwork. Watch on YouTube.

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