We are talking social media!
I love social media. I love the creativity that it allows. I love the resources that are available through it. I love the ease that it allows of connecting with almost anyone on the planet. Hello, literally message your number one ideal client, as soon as you finish this podcast. You can reach out to almost anybody, when it comes to social media. The opportunities that it affords are a little mind boggling.
Now you\’ll find me posting primarily on Instagram. I have two accounts. @IamAndrewSharp and @sharpteambetterbydesign, one is more personal and the other one is more business connected. I\’m also on Facebook. Not as much as I am on Instagram. I have my personal account there. Andrew Sharp, you\’re welcome to track me down and friend me. I\’d love for you to say \”hi.\” You can also find Sharpteam Better by Design business page there and I\’m not as active on Facebook. Instagram just tends to be a little bit more natural for me. But plans in the future are to ramp up and do a bit more engagement based on some things that we have coming.
So I\’ve gone back and forth a bit this year on having two different accounts on Instagram. I kind of wasn\’t sure should I keep my personal one? Should I turn into a business one? And I\’m using two accounts and for now it seems to be working pretty well. You can always build a business brand and then also have a personal account or personal brand that feeds into your business. So there\’s quite a few people doing that.
For me, both of my accounts are small. You can go check them out. Not a ton of followers. And so I right now, in primarily posting on my @SharpteamBetterbyDesign account. And that\’s primarily because my intention is to connect with people interested in what I\’m doing in business. The other account really kind of came from just friends that I know, people that I\’ve connected with, that sort of thing, not necessarily business related. I do crosspost on them, though, and come up with different ways to engage that seem to make sense.
Now, I have always been really intentional about keeping a very curated social media account. I believe, as we\’ve talked about here in the podcast, that the words that you use, the things that you put into your head, very much shape the world that you live in, the world that you create.
And so because of that, I am very focused on having high vibe accounts with positive, encouraging and inspiring messages. At the end of last year, though, something was feeling a bit off to me and I found myself comparing what was going on in my business, what was going on in life with these other accounts.
Now, I understand Instagram is very much just a snapshot of whatever is going on or of small parts of people\’s lives or even kind of curated lives sometimes. Right. Like there\’s all different ways that that stuff shows up. But because I had this curated account, the intention of it was that I would feel inspired. And I found that instead of being inspired by others success, I was feeling a little bit of tinge of jealousy that I wasn\’t maybe where they were. And I didn\’t like how it felt.
Over and over I saw different people and they just looked like they were crushing it and had the best way to do things. It was like the old way was no longer what I needed. It was time to try this new thing and it was over and over and over. New thing, new direction, new thing that needed to be added into my business. And I started to feel a bit of overwhelm creeping in like what I was doing wasn\’t going to work. It stopped feeling like a fun place to be. And more of a reminder of how many choices that I have to make all the time.
And so I took some action. I went from following close to five hundred accounts down to just under fifty. And today\’s podcast is what I learned from doing it.
I\’m grateful, first of all, that I did it. It was something that was really eye opening. And while I did it for purposes of how I was feeling, the end result was that I actually have a bit of a better understanding as to how Instagram works, and I feel like I can actually utilize it more efficiently, more effectively. And so hopefully you, after listening to this, will get some insights or some kind of a takeaway that you\’ll be able to do the same.
Most accounts are not posting as much as we think
So number one, and I think this actually ties into the reason that I cut back so much on my Instagram account was that I realized most accounts are not posting as much as we think or as consistently as we think. This was actually really, really freeing for me to see this. It was a reminder that sometimes the biggest competitive advantage is found simply in showing up consistently. Why is that? Because for humans it can be hard to show up consistently. And so while it was freeing to see that others are not showing up all the time, it was also encouraging to say, \”hey, if I want to be seen, if I want to be found, if I want to connect with people for business here, I just get to show up consistently.\” And so that was really cool to see.
What served you before doesn\’t have to keep serving you
The next thing that I want to talk about is recognizing that what served you before doesn\’t have to keep serving you. I had said that I closely curated my content, my feed. And this was probably a little bit less true than I thought. I had five hundred accounts that I was following. Many of those I unfollowed, they simply didn\’t post anything anymore. You know, we circle back to point number one. Not everybody is posting as much as we think they are. And it wasn\’t that any of the content was bad, per say or anything like that. It just didn\’t have the same impact that it was having.
And so if there is some account that doesn\’t interest you anymore, feel free to unfollow it. Or in the case of being on Facebook, you can just snooze somebody for 30 days, that sort of thing.
The algorithm
The third point is that the algorithm on Instagram, it really does play a big role in what is going on. I would know for a fact that multiple counts had posted to their feeds, yet I was only shown a small portion of those daily.
Now, there\’s not actually anything wrong with that. It\’s simply something that we need to be aware of because then we can adjust where we can. Things that you can do to help your audience, you can remind people to set notifications for your account so that when you do post, they get a little alert on their phone. It also is helpful to utilize stories because they do actually get shown sequentially, which is what Instagram used to be like way back in the day. And so it\’s actually a huge benefit to put things up on stories. Obviously, the the downside is that they\’re gone in twenty four hours. At the same time they do show up for people. There\’s not as much of the algorithm kind of curating people\’s feeds there. And this leads me to the next point.
Video is king on Instagram
Video is always king on Instagram. And we\’re seeing this more and more so with Instagram Reels being given so much priority. Video just in general, it gets shown more than pictures from feeds. And as I\’m sure you\’ve experienced it, it\’s just more engaging. So if you\’re scrolling through and you see some movement happening, there\’s a greater chance that you\’re going to stop and watch it than it is that you\’re going to keep flipping through on static pictures. Right. This is also why reels are simply gaining so much popularity at the moment. There\’s nothing wrong with this. It\’s just recognizing that there is this opportunity that is available for you and that you have this chance to really capitalize on it. It\’s kind of a cool thing.
The importance of engaging with people
The fifth point that I want to highlight is the importance of engaging with people. Right. Drop a comment, respond to people, send a word of encouragement, whether that is on their daily posts or whether that is through their stories, whatever it is. As much as this sends just good energy to others, it factors into how the algorithm will actually view your account too. It Recognizes that, hey, you\’re an active person on this platform. And the whole point of any of these social platforms is for people to engage with each other. So not surprisingly, when you engage with the people, that behavior gets rewarded, right. You can kind of play into those things and you get the benefit of it.
The whole point of it is to create ease
Now, these were all really helpful lessons for me to better use Instagram, to better use Facebook in places. But ultimately, when it comes to business and it comes to technology, the whole point of it is to create ease, to relieve stress or tension of something. And a lot of cases with social media, it\’s marketing. Now, if you are feeling the opposite, if you are feeling like these things are causing stress or tension or those types of things, it might make sense to do a little bit of decluttering. And this can come in the form of either unfollowing accounts or cutting back on what you\’re doing, or it may come from being more intentional about when and how you create content.
We\’ve talked about batching content on the podcast before where you take one day out of your month, create all the content, schedule it, and then out it goes. The other thing that you can look at is simply outsourcing the responsibilities.
There is a ton of value and opportunity in being a business and in posting on these platforms and engaging on these platforms. So if you can find a way to utilize the technology but do so in a way that doesn\’t cause stress or doesn\’t cause tension, boom, you are winning in incredible ways.
All right, everybody, I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Snap a picture of you listening to this episode, throw it up into your stories and tag me @SharpteamBetterbyDesign. I would love to hear your biggest take away from this one. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a fantastic rest of your day.
Show Notes
What happens when you simply unfollow almost all the accounts in your Instagram? Listen in and find out what I learned from trimming out who I follow.
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