Facebook Pitfalls – What will they think of me if…
The vicious cycle of Facebook. Have you ever found yourself experiencing something and feeling an urge, or even a requirement, to share it on Facebook? Do you ever have thoughts like:
- “This is awesome news. I should share this on Facebook so that people know I’m doing well”
- “Eww… I didn’t post about that new contract I won yesterday… I better do that so that other people want to work with me”
- “[celebrity name] and I should get a photo together. When people find out that I know her, they’ll think I’m special”
- “No one knows what I’ve been up to for a few days. I need to fill them in…”
- “I’ve got 3 trips in the next 3 weeks. I’m a jet-setter. I should show people the “lifestyle” that I’m living.”
- If I’m absent from Facebook, I won’t make any money
I just imagined those specific scenarios from the top of my head, but I’ve battled with similar ones many times. Social media has turned us into reputation slaves in a way, and as a result we can often feel like if we don’t put it on social media, We won’t matter.
It’s one of the biggest pitfalls of having Facebook, or any mass communication, at our fingertips.
It can derail us if we’re not careful.
I took some time in the past few months to take a step back and look at what my thought patterns were around social media, connections and obligations. On the one hand, I can track some very lucrative business contracts through my social media activity (Facebook in particular) and on the other hand, as a result of that success, I was afraid to fall out of the loop. Even more so, I was afraid of making a mistake, or failing my desire to be perfect.
Until I heard a church sermon about this very thing.
And it pierced me enough to make me consciously rethink the entire engagement.
The first thing I questioned was my motives. I’ll speak all about it tomorrow, but in a nutshell, I had to examine why I actually wanted to use Facebook, on both a personal and business level.
Personally, I wanted to get a snapshot on what was going on with my friends and family. Professionally, I wanted to distribute information quickly and (honestly) gather a community that I thought would validate my reason for being in business. My thinking was flawed in so many ways. (more on this tomorrow)
What about you? Are you brave enough to tell me what your personal and professional motives are for using social media?
