The advent of social media changed human life forever, and COVID-19 took our digital world and made it even more of a staple for modern life. People can’t go out and do their normal activities, see their friends, or conduct business how they always have.
We’re now forced to use social media to navigate the social world, and it can be tricky to do sometimes. We’re going to explore the idea of using social media in life and business, giving you a social media tip or two that could help your experience.
Hopefully, you’ll be a little better equipped to enjoy the benefits of these services while avoiding their downfalls.
Let’s get started.
Social Media Tip Guide
Now, we know you’re probably already on social media and have been for a while. The ideas we’ll look at today can broadly apply to each platform, and they’re more of a playbook for social media in general rather than an exploration of any site in particular.
It’s important to take a step back and look at our social media behaviors and usage. In reality, these services emerged into life and have been jammed in our pockets and our minds ever since. There was no training, no set of guidelines, and, seemingly, no problem.
Hopefully, this can be a little respite from your feed that gives direction.
Identify Your Social Media Needs
What is it that you’re going on social media to achieve?
Do you want to keep in better touch with your family and friends? Do you want to promote your business and sell a product? Are you there strictly for entertainment, and if so, how much entertainment do you want to take in?
If you don’t identify what it is that you’re trying to do, you might end up spending far more time using social media aimlessly than you would otherwise want to. It’s like a person who goes into a casino to sit at a slot machine with no idea of how much money they plan on spending.
The thought of money never crosses their mind, and they end up spending their rent money in an afternoon. Now, it’s different when it comes to social media, of course. In this case, it’s our time.
A quick glimpse at the average time we spend on our phones per day might have us wincing. Be sure you are using social media intentionally because there are thousands of curated rabbit holes for you to enter.
Understand the Benefit and the Harm
It would be too simple to say that social media is bad for society. It’s absolutely a good thing in a number of ways.
Lost family members are reunited, old friends can reacquaint, enlightening information is spread, and beautiful art is exposed to the world. All of these things are happening on a daily basis, and the billions of people on social media can attest to that.
The ease of communication that social media allows, alone, is enough to justify its use for most people.
On the other, hand, though, there are some elements of powerful social media sites that can be troubling and invasive. It’s interesting to think that our feeds are curated to our personal interests, habits, curiosities, and friendships. They’re formed in a way that engages us the longest and keeps us scrolling.
Extremely intelligent AI is interpreting all of the data we give online to do this. That means the images you engage with, how long you look at them, our location, our history of use, and our habits back from the time we first start using social media.
This information is collected and used to engage us for as long as possible. Couple that with the fact that our brains produce dopamine when we get a notification, get likes, or experience some metric of social connection online.
In this way, social media has a deep knowledge of us as well as a finger on the pulse of our neurology.
Isolate Methods of Connecting
With that doom and gloom, it’s key to realize that there are absolutely ways to experience connection through social media without getting addicted to it.
The first one is to only go on these platforms when you have an intention. For example, your old friend Mark pops into your head and you want to say hello. You could reach out to him, put the phone down, and await a response.
Instead of scrolling through your feed, you could actively search for the friends you’re interested in and see if there’s anything new on their profile. When you don’t have a particular reason to sit on your phone but you still want to, try to seek out information outside of social media.
If your feed provides a good source of connection, consider scrolling for 30 minutes a day, or whatever you feel is an appropriate amount of time.
Utilize Key Features
If you’re an artist or a business person who’s feeling the threat of COVID-19 on your business, explore the different advertising options that social media provides.
You can promote your art or your product on these platforms for very cheap with only a few instructions. Additionally, you can reach thousands of people with very specific interests and demographics. That’s one of the positives about a platform that collects so much information.
The algorithms used in social media platforms can identify individuals who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer without charging you an exorbitant fee to do so. In most cases, you will only be charged for precisely the amount of engagements you receive.
So, if nobody clicks on or likes your advertisement, you don’t pay. If you have thousands of people liking your stuff, you can select a budget that won’t get exceeded. It’s as simple as that.
Plus, you can just market your content that’s already made. You don’t even have to conduct a huge ad campaign if you don’t want to.
Trying to Make It Online?
There’s a lot of interesting stuff happening in the digital world today, and you’ll be better able to navigate it if you understand how it works. We’re here to help you move forward.
Explore our site for a social media tip when you need one, digital marketing insights, and much more.
