Social media sharing costs you nothing; stop behaving like it does
Lots of choices, choose wisely
I see both on social media and driving around lots of martial arts studios popping up these days. Like the small fitness studio trend, it caters to the need for flexibility and maximum value over ‘might want’ amenities of larger franchises. (BTW LA Fitness, Bally’s, WTF? For the price difference LifeTime is the clear winner)
I believe it more fundamentally speaks to the reality that people would rather:
- Own something small than be a higher paid peon
- Risk everything than work another day for corporate America
As someone who hit eject on corporate life with no backup plan, I sympathize with both motivations.
However, a lot of people who use social media such as Facebook or Twitter privately don’t necessarily comprehend how it works in promoting their small business. Here’s a few thoughts:
- You can follow best practice without pretending you’re a massive corporation. A constant, professional feed, A/B tested ads, etc…should all be informed with the fact that you’re a small business, and unless you run something with over 500 members, there’s no point in presenting like you are. It just seems fake, especially if you don’t have an international focus.
- Yes, everyone is competing for eyeballs, but for a small business even more important is convincing search algorithms you matter. While it’s gotten significantly more complex, sharing, quoting, and linking on social media is still the easiest way to generate organic dialogue and buzz around what you do. How awesome do you have to be to not be subject to the realities of the like economy? You’re probably not there.
It costs as much energy not to hit the button
- Related to the above two points is not only promoting yourself. It’s just poor citizenship, and people notice. Like the guy who under tips at a restaurant or doesn’t compliment the baby, the silence is deafening. If you only post things of direct benefit to your business, even when peers care about the content, they will be too busy being mildly annoyed at you to boost it. It takes as much effort to pass over the ‘Like’ button as hit it, and if people know that about you, guess what they’ll do with your stuff?
- You’re paid to provide your members with information. The days of closed door training and secret oaths are largely behind us, and isolation by silence in the information age relatively feels like you’re keeping them in your bubble, and it just feels…off.
- Sharing related feeds, posts, and information allows you to have a robust, consistent feed without having to generate all the content yourself. Of the people who appear most in my feed, over half is re-posting. This can get annoying when its garbage, but when it’s not, it’s fine.
Social media sharing/liking does not diminish your position, it only enhances it. It’s in fact the opposite of zero-sum; aside from going viral, you really only have a shot at non-linear growth by consistently helping everyone else. There’s some Nobel prize in economics related to that…