Social Media for the Long Game

I hear about a lot of people who consistently use social media for a lengthy period of time and come to discover that it can be a pernicious distraction from more important things like researching and writing a dissertation. Consider Cal Newport’s research on this in his book, Deep Work.

Personally, I have noticed that when I am away from my phone or computer, and ultimately away from the barrage of messages that come across the multiple social media platforms I manage, I feel like a different person. I’m less anxious. I’m more mindful of those who are physically present. And, I tend to be much more thoughtful and creative.

Yet, social media is such an important part of the way we connect and communicate in the modern world, it seems hard to imagine a life entirely disconnected from the online world. And, now that e-commerce is one of the biggest and fastest growing markets on the planet, and remote work is becoming a new normal for a larger number of people, it seems to be more important than ever to have a robust social media presence. Even though it might help us be better people and do better work, I’m not convinced most people could or would just stop using social media outright. Especially for a person in my vocation, a social media presence is paramount for successfully connecting and communicating with customers and clients.

Fortunately, not all social media platforms are created equal. I’ve recently discovered some tools that, along with the right amount of planned neglect, will allow someone like me to foster more meaningful and less distracting engagement on social media. Additionally, this platform will address another important dynamic in social media that I will only briefly mention here, that of ownership of online intellectual property. In other words, who owns the content and intellectual property if a person is blocked or canceled on social media? This is an important conversation for another day, but it seems this newly-discovered tool has an answer for that as well. 

In the new year, I will continue to write my longer content at scottpostma.net but share shorter, more socially-oriented, content on my new micro.blog, scottpostmawrites.com. I’ll continue to use Instagram for a while but will mostly abandon Facebook—except for some content that gets automatically cross-posted. There is also a feature on micro.blog for cross-posting to LinkedIn as well, but I’m not sure whether that would be conducive for the social media long game.

Some of the great features that sold me on micro.blog are:

• A place to post short snippets of text, images, and audio as well as long form.
• A simple and clean content delivery system for photos, text, and podcasts.
• A community timeline (like Twitter) along with a personal blog stream (like WordPress) where you can reply, share and repost.
• Photo and image curation similar to IG.
• The intentional absence of the mainstream social media vitriol.
• The option for a personalized domain name.
• A handy and simple newsletter signup and delivery feature.

Come by and take a look if you’re interested. And if micro.blog is not your thing, let’s still stay connected.

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