I see quite a lot of companies and individuals bashing away at social communications with what can only be scant reward, if anything. Repetitive and dull Facebook pages with little engagement; blogs with no traffic; Twitter profiles with no conversation whatsoever. And yet they keep going, day after day, week after week, month after month, posting the same, tired old updates and wondering why it’s not happening for them. It frustrates me. Why waste your time doing the same thing over and over again if it isn’t working? Why not make an effort to learn and to understand why it’s not working?
If what you’re doing on social media isn’t effective for you, don’t keep doing it. Change your content strategy. Change your tone. Change when you post, how you post, what you post. If you’re not talking to people, start talking to people. Step outside of your normal routine. Try and view things from a different perspective.
Perception is an odd thing. But once you realise that your social communications activity is filtered through your own perception and you start to understand the nature of not only what you’re trying to achieve, but more importantly, the platform you’re using, you gain the power to affect change. Try and see things through others’ eyes. Your perception is an illusion, and the only thing stopping you from changing your beliefs about social communications and what you can achieve with it is you.
Or, as the boy in The Matrix said: “Don’t try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Realise that there is no spoon and then you’ll see that it is not the spoon that bends, but yourself.”
