The number of entrepreneurs talking about burnout, saying they have a love-hate relationship with social media or wishing they could just opt out altogether, but worry about possible negative consequences just keeps growing, but it’s undeniable that social media is a part of our lives, and the marketing of our small businesses. 

I have certainly been struggling in my relationship with social media and so have a number of my female solopreneur clients, so I dedicated it was time to chat with an expert whose insights I value. 

Today’s guest, Andrea Jones is a social media strategist who's been navigating the digital landscape for over a decade. Her perspective has evolved beyond the traditional focus on audience growth to prioritizing meaningful connections and community building.

With a passion for creating genuine relationships, Andrea brings a unique perspective to this conversation about the role of social media in entrepreneurship.

If you’re feeling the weight of a “complicated” relationship with social media, this episode is a must-listen.

It’s time to reclaim our power and transform our social media presence into one that feels satisfying, sustainable, and aligned with our personal and professional values, and this thoughtful conversation just may help you take the first step. 

Key Takeaways from the Episode:

🎙️The difference between engagement and connection in social media, and why genuine connections cannot be manufactured.

🎙️ How to navigate social media as a business owner by creating tangible, real, and response-style content that resonates with consumers.

🎙️The negative impact of overexposure to social media and how to alleviate social media burnout by prioritizing non-scalable actions 

🎙️The importance of recognizing your own goals and values, separate from the social media platform's goals.

Mic Drop Moment: 

“And, for me, personally, the things that bring me joy are not the ones that  I can scale.” Andrea Jones

Mentioned by our guest in this episode:

Travis Brown:  https://www.instagram.com/travisbrown/

Want more of Andrea?  Here’s literally everything: https://onlinedrea.com/everything/

If you are ready to transform your relationship with your business, from “complicated” to clarity, this is a perfect time to work with me through my Boss Up Breakthrough framework.  My framework has just been updated to put more emphasis on implementation, so we make sure you get, and stay in momentum. 

I’lll help you Boss Up your boundaries, your offers, your pricing, and your marketing strategy and remove anything that keeps you a best kept secret.  We will also make sure you are including mental wellness in your business plan so that you’re not just successful on the outside, but aligned with your values, and priorities on the inside.  

Want to know more?  Schedule a free consultation here: https://bit.ly/calendly-free-consultation

Not quite ready to work with me, but wonder what it would be like? Grab my private podcast,  “Show Up Like a Boss”.  It’s free, and you listen to it in the same podcast player where you hear this show.  It’s kind of like a backstage pass to working with me, includes 10 clips of me coaching and tips for how to apply the strategies to your own business and life.  Check it out:  https://bit.ly/show-up-like-a-boss

To put these insights to work in your relationship with social media, ask yourself this question:

• How do you choose to address the challenges posed by the pressure for continual growth and scaling in business? 

H: So, Andrea, I have been wanting to have this conversation with you for the longest time because you have been doing social media, running a social media agency, commenting on social media and producing lots and lots of your own content for, I think, a decade now. But something I've noticed is in the last couple of years, your perspective has been evolving. And most of the people that I follow on social media, are still talking about audience growth, building an audience, the importance of drawing people to you and making an audience of them. But you have evolved into a perspective that if all we're doing on social media is creating an audience, we're missing kind of the point. We're missing the opportunity because there's so much more meaningful opportunity there that an audience doesn't hit, can we talk about that?

G: Yes. This is one of my all time favorite conversations, so thank you for having me on the show to talk about this. I actually think a story would work really well here, and it's the story of how I met my husband. Have I told you this before?

H: I know this story, and I love hearing it again.

G: So I've been doing this professionally for 10 years, but I've been creating content online for over 20 years and one of my projects was a YouTube channel that I would create. It was kind of like about my life sort of situation, and I collaborated with my husband on a video, he wasn't my husband at the time. I was collaborating with a lot of people at the time, and this to me was the beauty of the internet. As a very introverted, quirky, shy gal in Atlanta, creating videos in my bedroom, in my mom's house as a, you know, university student, it was a very awkward time for me, and it felt like a a great outlet for me. So fast forward a few years, I'm creating these content videos. I collaborate with my husband, we connected, I thought he was hilarious, and then we just kept talking. And the caveat to all of this is he lived in, Toronto, Canada, and I lived in Atlanta, Georgia.

So the power of the Internet brought us together, and that is the point to me of social media. And, like, fast forward 10 years later, we have, 1 kid with another on the way, and it's just like such a beautiful thing that came from 1 conversation that happened, you know, 11 years ago on in the social media. So I think the idea that social media the result of it is to build an audience feels almost ego driven. Whereas the early days of social media felt more about connecting to 1 person, having 1 conversation and so that's really what I've leaned into a lot of in the past couple years. When I think about the value of social media to me, it's meeting people like you right? Like, you and I met through social media and so that's really to me the value of it. It's not about audience, but it's about community. And community to me is a two way conversation, an audience is, you know, shouting it out with a megaphone.

H: And you know what, this is so true, Andrea, whether you are on social media for as a content creator to promote your business, there are people who do this in a really skillful way where they attract people to them and the others are shouting at them and they're probably running in the opposite direction. What why do you think so many people are still promoting this idea of creating an audience. Because clearly, there's media and then there's social media. And if there's social media, it shouldn't just be posting something and leaving it there. Like, get a billboard, there's supposed to be some sort of exchange. There's supposed to be some sort of back and forth and what is the purpose of that connection right? Why do you think it's so still I mean, we're talking 20 years. 20 years later, so many gurus, consultants, coaches, media coaches are still talking about audience. It seems perfectly obvious that there's a better way to make use of this technology.

G: Yeah, it is and I think it's human nature, and you probably know this more than I do. But, when I think about a different industry, like, take the health industry, health coaches talking about, you know, lose 20 pounds in 20 days or whatever they're knocking out here right? Our brains are attracted to that instant gratification, and we're romanced by the idea of it right? We're like, oh, that sounds lovely and I think social media can feel the same. It sounds good on paper to go, I want 10,000 followers.

That's my goal, right? That's my goal, 10,000 followers. It sounds great, but it's not sustainable. It's not healthy to chase that as an individual person and I think it can be really detrimental to building connections because any connection you make is not enough. So, like with the health industry, losing 1 pound, it's not enough. You have to go to the 20 or why are we even focusing on pounds anyways? Why don't we focus on living a healthy life right? So it's like those Questions or a lot of the questions that I have for social media and marketing at large.

It's, you know, really digging into why do we want audience growth in the 1st place? Well, because it's being sold to us as the magical pill that will change everything about your business when the reality is that little magical pill works for a half of a percent of people and the rest of us are just giving money to the person who invented it, because it's a little bit of a snake oil situation. And I'm saying that as someone who deeply cares about social media, I'm very passionate about it. I love it as a tool for connection, but it's not about that shiny audience growth number at the end of the day.

H: Girl, you are singing from my in book because truthfully, most of the people that I work with as a business coach have spent thousands, sometimes many thousands of dollars chasing after, and I use the same terminology you do, the magic pill. Why? Because we are socially and culturally conditioned to want easy, fast, fun, basically passive results that are gonna blow our mind and rock our world. So whether someone's selling us, you know, wrinkle cream or weight loss or, you know, dating advice, whatever it is, we are socially and culturally conditioned to expect it to be easy, fast, fun, ridiculously successful with almost no effort on our part. And even though we know in our minds, if it sounds too good to be true, it freaking is. We still fall for it because we have been trained to do so, and your brain gives you that little squirt of dopamine when you hit the buy now button.

Then we have to justify what we've done with the sunk cost fallacy. Well, I have to keep doing it because look at how much money and time and energy I've already put into doing it. I have to keep doing it, which is why I think most of us have a relationship with social media that's, let's just say, complicated. We love it. We hate it. We don't wanna be with it, but we can't leave it. And, you know, for something that was supposed to be fun, it sure feels like almost like abusive to so many people I talk to.

G: Oh my gosh. Yes, I often describe it as it's, a toxic situationship. It's almost like that, you know, ex boyfriend who always comes calling back and but never quite lets you meet his parents, you know? You're not you're not getting that close and I do think social media is that way because a lot of us just follow along with the whatever the app tells us to do and without really analyzing what their goal is. So let's take Instagram for instance. We log in, if you start creating an account, it's instantly telling you what to do. Put your photo here, create your profile, post here. Oh, look, you got engagement. Let's get more and so we start chasing that because that's what the app tells us to do.

We see everyone else doing it, so we keep doing that without stopping to think, you know, what's in this for me? Why am I doing this for me, how is this nourishing me? And so I think part of it is recognizing that Instagram, their currency is at your attention and they're selling ads. So once we can, like, pull back, you know, the Oz curtain and see the real person behind the curtain there. We can recognize that, Oh, this is Instagram's goal? My goal doesn't have to be the same as Instagram's goal? So then we can ask the question, what is my goal? Why am I here? What benefit does that this have on my personal life, my business life and that can really be illuminating and help you decide how you wanna use the app instead of letting the app decide for you.

H: And, you know, you're talking about really being mindful, intentional, strategic, and that requires a level of critical thinking and self awareness that we completely bypass when we're just following the herd, when we're just doing what everyone else is doing, when we're paying a course, a program, a coach to say, just tell me what time of day to post. Just tell me how many characters. Just tell me how many hashtags? Just tell me what lengths should my reels be and so many people are just desperate to be given a formula. Just tell me what to do, for me, when someone hires me to help them with their business and they say, okay, look, just tell me what to do, like word for word, and I'll do it.

And I'm like, honey, I'm not for you because you're gonna end up with something that you hate because you had no investment in choosing it. Like, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. And I think that's one that you're absolutely right. We're just doing what everyone else is doing and what we think we're supposed to do and we've been told it works without asking ourselves the most important questions, why am I even here? What are my goals? How do I know when I'm reaching them? How do I feel when I reach them? How do I know when enough is enough? Will enough ever be enough? Like, we're just bypassing all that really important critical thinking.

G: Yeah, and it goes so much farther than social media as well. All of those questions are important in every aspect of our business. So, you know, when I think about revenue goals, for instance, chasing after that feels very similar to chasing after audience growth goals. You have to stop and ask yourself why, what's required to get there, and am I willing to do what's required to get there? So, for example, I was looking at my data from this past year, looking at the post that worked really well. And, one of the posts that worked really well was a little bit of like a trendy, you know, here's what's happening right now on TikTok. It's one of my highest viewed posts. And I thought to myself, I could absolutely go down this road. I could attract more, quote unquote, audience.

I could bring in more people, but I don't want to be caught up in chasing the, nuances of all the updates of all the platforms anymore. And just by releasing that, I'm like, oh, I don't so I don't have to create content just because it performed really well for me. How about we create the content that really resonates with me and actually brings me the people that I want to work with, right, and not the people who are also constantly chasing all the updates, and they're here today, gone tomorrow kinda thing. So it's kind of like diving deeper into the question of, yes we can look at all of these data points and say, here's what works, here's what doesn't. But at its core, do you want to do that? Does it benefit the direction that your business is going? If you can't answer that question confidently, then it may not be the strategy for you and that's what I found for me looking at this year.

H: You have developed a tremendous amount of expertise in guiding people to do social media mindfully, being on the right platforms for them, for their goals, for their values, using their talents in the way that they want to. And you have long said because I've been a member of your membership. You have long said you don't need to be everywhere. You don't want to be everywhere. You will not show up skillfully everywhere. Like, don't do it and I still did it. I would I was paying you to guide me and to lead me and to teach me. And you were very clear with everyone and, you know, the Savvy Social Group.

Don't try to be everywhere, it doesn't work. And I realized that, wow, this is this level of conditioning and this level of fear and FOMO, and just a fundamental distrust in your own intuition is so pervasive like, I know better, and I still did it. Now you'll be happy to know that I did start pulling myself off of various platforms 1 at a time, but it was actually painful. And I think this is really quite perverse and I'm fessing up to this with you, because I know I'm not the only one.

And I know that being honest and vulnerable about the things that we do as business owners helps other people to know they're not alone and they're not crazy. But it's such a powerful force that, you know, we're in business by ourselves. Many of us, small business owners, small agency owners, solopreneur, all the decisions rest on you. You're quite literally where the buck starts and stops. And we all think we're not doing enough, we're not doing the right thing. We're not doing enough of the right thing. And so having the presence of mind to be more intentional, to be more mindful, and to practice a constraint, this is no small thing.

G: Yeah and it's a huge decision to make and when you said FOMO, that you nailed it. Because it really does feel like, being invited to a party, stepping through the door, and then going, I'm gonna leave early right? Before the DJ even get started or whatever the case may be. So it feels a lot like leaving a party before it's even started, and we feel like we're missing out on something huge. Because that's frankly, what marketers have told us is that you are gonna miss out if you don't participate in this platform. I'm a huge champion of people leaving platforms. I left Twitter this past year, ex formerly known as Twitter and, I got a little flack for it from some of my marketing colleagues. And I was like, I just don't see a space here for me anymore and frankly, I haven't for quite a long time. The transfer of ownership just was the nail in the coffin for me.

So I think that feels like we have to justify it to not only the world around us but to ourselves because we're missing out on something huge, when in reality, we're actually opening up more doors for opportunities. So one of the things my coach said to me, and I'm sure you say this to your clients well is what are you missing out on because you are committed to this other thing that Is completely unsatisfying to you right? Like, what are you opting out of because you've opted into what staying on Instagram or whatever it is that you're staying into. And sometimes removing the mental weight and the time commitment of being on that platform opens up so many other opportunities that you can then explore with that freed up time and mental freedom. And so I think that's part of it too is, you know, yes, we've been sold a bill of goods that that we should be everywhere and be all things to all people, but it's not possible. And the brands that you admire who appear like they're everywhere typically have a team that's running it behind you.

H: And usually a pretty big team and some of them have a different team for each of the different platforms. Yes, objects, in this mirror may be closer than they appear, or they may be a lot further away and have no bearing on you and your micro business or micro agency. I wanna swing the conversation back a little bit in the direction of connection versus engagement. I know lots of times we use these words interchangeably, but I'm be really curious to know because we're very like minded on this. How do you use the term engagement versus connection when you're specifically talking to entrepreneurs like us who use social media to market their business?

G: Yes. So I think engagement can feel surface level, and it typically is a statistic that, again, the apps give us. So, I keep using Instagram as an example because with a lot of my students and clients, it tends to be the sticking point for a lot of folks. But Instagram has this fake notification that says 80% of people have engaged with this post or this post has gotten 80% more engagement. And the goal of it is to get you to open the app again so that you're scrolling again so that you're in their app again. And if you actually run the numbers, it's not 80% increase in engagement. So engagement is a metric the app uses to say, hey, people are signaling that this post is important. Could be a like, could be a comment to me, that's very surface level. It almost means nothing. I see how it plays into the algorithm and obviously, it does help for more people to see your post.

Connection to me is a deeper conversation and connections for me also mostly happen on what I call dark social or maybe like the underground of social, which is typically in a DM, so direct message. So it’s not something that's visible to everyone or public conversation and so that's really where the connection point comes far from me. And connection goes beyond a simple comment on someone's post, it goes a little bit deeper into actually getting to know that person. And I think this is a lot like building any relationship in the real world, dating relationships, friend relationships. It's not 1 conversation, yay, we're best friends now, right?

Like, usually, it's years of micro interactions that builds a relationship with someone, and it can't be manufactured. And so that's the thing that is super important to me about social media connection is it's a series of those micro interactions that builds relationship with that individual person. And sometimes when I talk about this to my business friends who, like you mentioned, want the path. They want the answer sometimes they say, okay. Well, give me a spreadsheet where I can track all of this and, as much as I love a spreadsheet

H: Yes, you do. I know that.

G: I love a spreadsheet. I don't there's no way to track this part of it. I'm sorry, once you start tracking it, to me, it's all it's like tracking audience growth. There's something that diminishes the value of each individual relationship when you start combining them and adding and subtracting and calculating, okay, I talked to this person 2 weeks ago, so I would reach out to them again, it doesn't feel genuine. So there are ways you can organize yourself, obviously, to keep track of conversations. But it's really about those collective micro interactions that build connection with people and the surface level like or leaving a comment doesn't really leave space for that deeper connection.

H: This is such a powerful distinction, Andrea, and I think speaks directly to the heart of why so many people say, kinda like I hate it, but I use it. It's like the old Listerine commercial, I hate it, but I use it because they're just not getting a meaningful piece of feedback. I mean, to me, it's like, yeah, I got more likes on this, I got more comments on this. It just somehow doesn't ever really feel like it matters. And I might be curious, Oh, this post got a lot more comments, a lot more likes, oh, this one got shared.

That's interesting, I wonder what it is about this post so it'll get my curiosity going. But it still feels very superficial, very from an emotional level, from a human relational level, just vapid, just sort of like something that would just evaporate a short time later. And I think because it's not it's like fast food. You can eat a bunch of fast food, you can eat so much, you make yourself feel stuffed and sick. And an hour later, you're hungry again because you didn't actually eat something satisfying and nourishing. So in truth, there really isn't ever enough, is there? It's like you're just on this endless treadmill for more, more, more, and yet more of what? More of something that really doesn't fundamentally satisfy you.

G: Yeah and I think this is this is where this word scaling comes from too where people think they want to scale and get as many, you know, touch points as possible and repurpose their content as many places as possible. And I think there is a danger in that, especially for micro business owners because, well, frankly, our businesses don't need it right to have a successful business, we don't need all of that. But like you said with the fast food example, it doesn't nourish us. And, for me, personally, the things that bring me joy are not something I can scale right? Like, an example is this week, I had, someone join my community and I wanted to connect them with another community member, and I couldn't find her profile.

So I went to Instagram and I sent her a voice DM because we had just had a conversation there. And I was like, hey, I can't find your profile, and it was like a total misunderstanding. This is not a scalable action right? Like, most people would say, Andrea, get your assistant to do that for you and I'm like, that's not nourishing for me. Yes, I could have a machine working in the background to just automatically pair people together or something, I don't know. But there's something intrinsically satisfying when I connect 1 person to another person, and that to me is a value of community.

It's not about how many individuals can I get to pay attention to me you know? To me, it's about how can I have them to have conversations with each other that aren't centered around me at all? Like, you meet this person go forth and be awesome. I think it kind of feels like, you know, a matchmaker. Like, if your friend's a matchmaker and at your wedding, they're like, I matched you two together. I feel like it's similar to that feeling where it's like, hey, I helped you find your person. And it's not a scalable action and it's not something that I can replicate on demand, but it's incredibly satisfying and so that's, you know, that's part of the connection piece for me too.

H: I love everything about this so much, so much because we've all been influenced by the messages that we've all been hearing. We're part of the same community, female entrepreneurs, we're all hearing, first, it was you wanna make 6 figures, then that wasn't enough. Now we're going for 7 figure, now we're in the 2 comma club. And we don't wanna do 1 on 1 work anymore because that's trading dollars for hours, we wanna scale so we need a leveraged offer that we can scale. And everybody's like, okay, dutiful little sheep going along and then I guess I want this. And unfortunately, people who are socialized as female are told what they're supposed to want, what they're supposed to care about, how they're supposed to behave.

So we're kind of used to it so like, okay, I guess I thought I was doing pretty good because I got I've got to my 6 figures, but now I'm hearing that actually I'm not doing very good at all, so now I gotta shoot for 7. Now I have to grow a team. Now I have to have a scalable offer. And I remember in my former career as a psychotherapist, I crawled up the food chain. You better believe I did, I crawled all the way up. I was a clinical director of a huge agency running multiple programs, many 1,000,000 of dollars of mental health services delivered under my name. And the further and further and further I got away from dealing with individual clients, the more miserable I was. I eventually stepped off the path, I opened a private practice.

I didn't even do couples work or family work. I worked with individuals. Why? Because I could have those micro moments. I could have those deep, meaningful, transformational conversations and connections that changed people's lives and changed me. So I'm really relieved to hear other people I respect as leaders, talking about things that don't scale and why they matter so much. And why we, maybe we don't need to get rid of our group programs and our courses and all that because there's certainly a place for that. But if we think that we should expect satisfaction from superficial transactional situationships and it's not working for us, it's not an us problem. It's a them problem. It is engineered to be superficially and briefly satisfying, so we come back and do it again and again and again.

G: This reminds me so much of the, ChatGPT AI conversation as well. Because it feels, in theory, it's gratifying but in reality, it creates so much impersonalization that I actually think those unscalable personal touches are becoming even more valuable right? Like, we don't wanna talk to robots. I mean, I don't wanna talk to robots. I want a real person. And If I'm calling someone and there's an automated message, I'm waiting to press 0 so I can talk to a real person right? And so I think that that piece of it, especially for, you know, businesses like ours where we're not like mega conglomerates, that personal touch will actually carry us a lot further. And as much as people talk about audience and scaling, at the end of the day, you're constantly going to be chasing that thing.

And if you have a great offer, a great product, great service, you don't really need a lot of clients to be able to build a referral network, and then you don't really need all of the marketing to, like, bring in new clients because your reputation, you know, precedes you. I mean, I think that's you know, I know sometimes I talk myself out of a job with people because they're like, I wanna work with you, MJ and I'm like, do you really? Do you need this and so I think that's part of it is, you know, trying to figure out what where you're going in your business and how social media truly, truly has an impact on that direction because a lot of us don't need the heavy lift that we're being sold. We don't need, you know, the daily posting and making sure that we, you know, spend hours on the platform. I think someone said they posted TikTok 3 times a day. I was like…

H: Oh, lord.

G: This is not for me. Not for me. And so, you know, some of these things, like, yes they can work. I can show you the numbers, you're gonna get lots of followers, but does it make a difference to your business, that's the real question and your life.

H: Yes, and your life because I think especially as small business owners, agency owners solopreneurs, we are our business, our business is us. This is not just our livelihood. It is in fact our life. Our life is the moments of how we spend our time, our energy, our effort, our focus, our attention, our passion, our love, our drive. It's how we're spending it and they're precious and few. And the longer I live, the more I realize all of this is so fleeting right and it's the meaningful connections and the communities that matter. I think particularly in our post pandemic culture, there's 2 things I see happening that I'm wondering what your thoughts are 1, a 100% people are longing for connection. They're feeling digitally connected and emotionally disconnected. So we may have 100, thousands of followers, but I think there's an epidemic of loneliness that is probably not talked about nearly enough, and most people don't want to identify with it because there's a sense of shame.

Because, oh, I'm an influencer. Okay, but I also see that many people, while they may be hungry for connection, hungry for community, longing for that, they've become accustomed to a hands all the way off style of communication. So when there is a human being available, they will go with the chat box instead. It's like, oh, no. God, no, I don't wanna talk to a person. Can't I just, like, enter it into some can't you just, like, oh god, no and this is not just like social anxiety, social phobia, whatever, those things are real and I appreciate their impact. But I'm concerned about what I genuinely believe is a loss of social skills and ability and desire to relate when given the opportunity. So, I'm sorta seeing two different things, and I'm wondering what the intersection is.

G: Yes. I have a few thoughts, but I don't know if I have an answer fully because I think we're still in the process of it all right like, I think we're still affected a lot by this pandemic. I too am noticing a lot of people craving connection, and also they're struggling to reach out and, like, make those connections happen. And I think there's a fear of vulnerability there because the connection is two ways. And when we get used to consuming a lot of information, it's very easy to just scroll through TikTok and not have to do anything. You don't have to like. You don't have to comment or share. You just consume. You're just there. That's easy, it's the fast food right? The nourishment comes from interaction, which means making yourself feel vulnerable and I'm saying this from a place of, like, me too.

Yes. This is me and I think the realization hit me really when I was pregnant, with my first kid. And, I started reading all of the books and listening to all of the podcasts. But where I got the best advice was actually asking people, like calling my friend, texting my friends. I joined a, like, a mama's groups, specifically a black mom group too. Like, you know, what are the challenges we're up against and part of that was raising my hand and asking the questions and going, help, I need direction. But now I'm pregnant with baby number two, now I'm realizing the benefit and the nourishment I get from the community is sharing my experience and, like, interacting with the other moms who are now raising their hands saying, help, I'm here, I need support.

One of my friends just got pregnant with her first and she was texting me last night and I was saying, oh, just don't read these books at all, they're terrible. You know, here's a resource and we have we I live in Canada, so we have a lot of resources available to us as moms and, parents. So to me, it was extremely nourishing to be able to give to other people. And I think that's kind of the missing piece right now with, like, this crave for community. It's not so much about taking from the community, it's about finding a community you can give to. I think that part with social media and the way it's designed is actually very challenging because it is a lot of consumption.

H: This is so, so, so good and you know, you anticipated my question. I find myself thinking, I wonder if some of these insights were potentiated by you embarking on the path of parenthood because being a parent, bringing new life into the world, enlarging your family, is like a little incubator for really understanding how connection and community actually benefit us. Because you're not only connected to these little humans and to your husband in a new way, but you see the interconnectedness of you and your community, you with other moms, you with other black moms, you with other moms have two kids versus moms have one. It's like your brain can just start recognizing all these connections that are available to you and that you benefit from. And yes, to your point that I hope we all reach a point where we're not just seeking more consumption, or even connection for the sake of meeting our own needs, but our presence as part of an engaged community is not just there for our own benefit.

It is there for the benefit of others. That sort of feedback loop that you are able to help people that other people in the community maybe couldn't because they're drawn to you for some reason, and there's satisfaction in that. There's something on a societal level where we do need to go from passively consuming, consuming, consuming, and never quite being filled and realizing I have something to offer. I may not be an expert in parenting, but I have some experience I can share and how much more meaningful and satisfying that is to someone than all of the books they could read by the so called experts, some of whom don't even have kids.

G: Yes. And I think the challenge with the books is it's like an a to z, like, step by step process. And my experience so far is raising a kid is not a to z at all. So you kinda need more of like an encyclopedia approach where you're like, I just need this particular question answered right now. And you're right that's where the giving part of being a community member, can be very satisfying and I do find ways to do this on social media. I spend more time commenting than creating content. So that's just one of my ways of being a good community member is, you know, finding conversations where I can contribute. And these days, a lot of them actually happen in closed community spaces. This is where the definition of social media gets a little bit fuzzy.

But for example, we're in community together that feels very social to me and that there are people posting and commenting. And I spend more time in those private communities than I do in, like, a public social media community, and I feel way more satisfied from those interactions versus the one on social media. So I don't know what this means for, like, the future of our post pandemic world, but I do think actively seeking out ways we can give as a community member can give us some nourishment versus the, empty calories of consumption.

H: I think it does have something to do with the container. You know, the community that you speak of were both memberships. I'm really satisfied by the connections, the communication, the conversations, that are happening there and how safe it feels because on social media, let's be honest, you can say the most innocuous thing and it can be, you can be like a sitting duck in the shooting gallery. Somebody may just decide to take a shot at you for any reason, no reason at all. And there you are taking heat in enclosed communities, you're gonna be protected by the one who's creating the community. But I'm almost wondering because I've noticed that even people who want to give feedback on a particular podcast episode, they're not leaving reviews now. This is my experience, they're not leaving reviews.

They're DMing me, they're sending me an email. They're going to my website and they're leaving their feedback on the SpeakPipe widget because that's a personal, private, 1 on 1 connection, and I have a reputation like you, I respond personally. You can send me a personal message, you're gonna hear from me. You're not gonna hear from someone on my team and that feels very different. I mean, it's great to get podcast reviews, but they tend to be fashioned and phrased and communicated in a way that's fit for public consumption.

So people really think about what they're gonna they and most of the time, anybody could say it. But when they send a DM or an email, I'm getting really personal, vulnerable, really meaningful feedback like this really spoke to me and I'm gonna tell you why. I don't think they're gonna do that on social. So I think what all of the things that you're saying make so much sense for where we are as a society, where we are culturally, where we are as business owners and the unmet needs that people have that they're really starting to pay attention to and do something about.

G: Yes, and I think the do something about is the key here because when we don't, we continue on the path that we're on, which means we're posting all of the places and we're feeling this, like, resentment of having to be on and available for all of these, frankly, strangers. And this is where I see so often business owners completely give up and they delete Instagram off their phone forever without really stopping to analyze, you know, what's in it for me? They're just like, I'm done. I'm burnt out. I need out of this toxic situationship and so this kind of analytical process could be very helpful to figure out if you do need out. If you do need out, yes, absolutely take it. And there's still space to have meaningful connection on social media. And oftentimes, for me, it's a starting point or it's just a continuation of a conversation I had someone somewhere else with someone. But it's that one to one conversation that I love the most about it.

G: Yes, I'm a huge fan of commenting over and I like to comment as if I were posting right? So it's not just, you know, congratulations or nice pick or, you know, well done. It's really you know, if someone's asking a question, pausing and taking a moment to reflect and see how you can contribute to the conversation. It takes some time and sometimes I only get one comment out, In a day. Some days I'm on fire, and I'm like, oh, I know what I'm gonna say for all of these things. so that that's one of the things that really helps for me. I also use, social media as a discovery tool. So oftentimes, when I'm looking for new partnerships or new podcasts to listen to, I start with social media. And so I use it as almost like a research tool, which I also find very satisfying.

And then if I find someone who I do resonate with and connect with them, I'll also so probably send them a direct message and tell them a little bit about why I connected with them. I used to teach a strategy about, you know, try to connect with 10 people a day, 5 days a week, but honestly, it can't be that calculated. You lose some of the magic of it when you start counting that way. So I typically look at, you know, what do I need in my business and reach out and build connections that way. And the only examples I have are ones from years ago because the connections I'm making now are gonna take years before they kind of incubate. But one of my favorite example of this, is a guy named Travis Brown. I was looking for a podcast editor, and I was reaching out to a bunch of people on Instagram and saying, hey, I'm looking for a podcast editor do you wanna connect?

So commenting as a post, sending meaningful connections through research. Those are my two, like, favoritest ways to navigate social media as a business owner because it removes the pressure off of creating content. But the 3rd way I'll give you, if you do wanna create content, is creating content that's a response to something happening in your community. And, again, this is very challenging because I used to teach, a 5 pillar of content method that I'm easing away from because it doesn't fit, how we navigate social media. It can be very helpful for beginner business owners, to have those pillars. But where we see the most success right now is when you have a client conversation and you feel impassioned about something and if you like writing, you write about it.

If you like speaking, you record yourself talking about that situation, because it's tangible, it's real. It's something that's actually happening in your business. Or maybe it's a response to something that's happening in your industry, in the world around you. Like, that response style content generally seems to work the best because it doesn't feel orchestrated. It doesn't feel planned. It doesn't feel like you have an agenda and as consumers, we kinda can like, we know what an ad looks like and, you know, we do with the ads on YouTube, I cannot wait to press skip. So, the same thing is happening on social media. When we can think about creating content that's a response, it feels less like someone saying buy my thing and more like someone saying, hey, I have this idea. I'm starting a conversation so those are the little things, little big things that you can do, to be mindful about how you approach your social media actions.

H: I loved this idea about creating content that's a response because my mind is saying, well, sure, that makes sense. It's like Q and A, you're closing the loop. Someone has a need, someone has a question, someone has a problem, and you're responding to it so you're meeting their need. You're meeting your need for creating content and chances are someone else has that need and you're also creating a, like a closed loop. Like this it's as close as possible to a conversation without being a conversation. It's an asynchronous conversation. And that is, of course, gonna feel more satisfying and probably gonna make it a whole lot easier to create content that way. Because most people I know say, oh, I can't do like solo episodes or just sit down in front of my screen and write out a blog post, but when someone asks me a question, then I can go to town. Okay, people are asking questions, you just need to find those questions and answer them. I love it.

G: Absolutely, I love it too. And it you're right, it does make it a lot easier. You can actually create content a lot faster because you're not having to, like, think of something from thin air.

H: This has been one of the most satisfying conversations I've had in a long time because it really speaks to not social media on the superficial level, but really the bigger picture level of our culture, our community, how we as humans relate to one another. And if you are feeling like social media is something you wanna dump you wanna run away from, you wanna break up with, if you need to do that, do that. But maybe you wanna consider some of the things that Andrea and I have been talking about as an alternative to see if you can't transform your relationship with social media into one that is both satisfying and sustainable.