IF HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US ANYTHING AS BUSINESS OWNERS, IT'S THIS: SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT DEPENDABLE!!
If there is one think you can ABSOLUTELY depend on with social media outlets, it's this:
THEY WILL CHANGE THEIR SH*T UP AND THEY WILL DO IT RIGHT WHEN YOU GET TO LOVING HOW THINGS ARE GOING
History does not lie - have you ever seen a social media outlet not flip the house upside down and create anger and annoyance in business owner land? Here are a few examples:
They presented us with business pages ... LOVE THEM, they said ... USE THEM, they said ... GROW YOUR BUSINESS, they said ... we all did. It worked!! It was incredible!! And then: WE'RE CHANGING IT, they said ... and then came FACEBOOK ADS and we all went:
F**********CK
Here was the issue there: we were all into it when it was working and many of us became dependent on Facebook to spread the word of our awesomeness! We let other things sorta slip ... we may have stopped blogging as much, we may have stopped networking as much or spending real time with real people ... this was the first REAL social media outlet adjustment and none of us were ready for it.
Remember the good ole days of Pinterest?? When you'd 'pin' from your blog or website and people would actually SEE IT on their feed? Your traffic would increase, your pins would get thousands of repins ... if you were a member of an affiliate program you could pin with your code and rake in thousands of dollars ... and then they decided that they didn't like people benefiting off their FREE SERVICE ... we, the ones who built Pinterest up with all our images ... and they said: not gonna happen anymore ... and we all freaked out.
... meh ... Twitter is really just a pride thing. I'd say it really only matters if you have over 10,000 followers and even then it doesn't do much for a business owner IMO ... I have over 30,000 Twitter followers and I've never had a single person say: I found you on Twitter! Moving right along ...
Currently, I'd say Instagram is still semi in the 'nice zone' ... they changed things up a bit and are continuing to make small and annoying changes here and there, but it's still semi dependable. We are all getting CLIENTS from Instagram and we are LOVING IT ... am I right???
But what has history taught us??? History ^^ has taught us that social media ISN'T SAFE!! Don't trust it! So why are we??
If you aren't making moves in your business to make it more successful because you don't need to based on your Instagram success, then I say: tsk tsk ... if you are raking it in because Instagram is doing amazing things for you, then please re-read the above. Businesses can come crashing down when social media waves their un-magic wand and it's not fun.
I went through all of the changes listed above as a wedding blog editor and it sucked huge. We all watched our traffic dwindle and ad sales come to a screeching halt ... it was super scary.
My point?? Don't depend on social media. Ever!! Use it as much as you can, but never ever forget the value in things that can be dependable:
your relationships and keeping them strong
your talent and making sure you are constantly stretching yourself creatively
your brain and making sure you are learning and staying up on the current trends
your website and making sure it's working for you both visually and on the backend (seo and ueo)
Don't walk away from this thinking: oh, I should just stop using Instagram as much ... in fact, walk away feeling the opposite: USE THAT SUCKER UNTIL THEY DECIDE TO TAKE IT AWAY ... but at the same time keep up with everything else that you can semi-control.
Blog as much as you can.
Be involved in as many styled shoots as you can.
Make sure your website is mobile optimized and looking amazing for visitors.
Get your work published.
Advertise in places that you feel support your target market.
Take workshops and workout your creative muscles.
It's important not to get stuck in one feed for too long ... it starts to feel too easy. And what do I always say???
NEVER GET COMFY IN BUSINESS!!!!
XO~ Heather
