Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

We work to impress algorithms in hopes they’ll share our stuff, when we should be working to impress our readers so they’ll share it with other humans.

And Dr. Julie Kellogg reminds us; “AND, we must ask people to share our work.”

Even Seth Godin asked readers to share his original ‘Unleashing the Ideavirus‘ PDF back in the year 2000.

I spoke with Steph Benedetto of The Awakened Business today, about focusing your precious time on things that actually work.

Taking an hour to make a video to post on Instagram that 95% of your audience will never see might not be the best use of your time.

• Replying to some emails might take just a few minutes and net you bigger results
• Getting in touch with people who do the things you’re seeking to do
• Sending notes to people you admire might open some doors.

Posting on social media is easy and quick and gets you off the hook – “hey, I did something today!”

But sending one email to somebody is hard, because the person might not write back, or they might let you down.

One is a lottery ticket, but the other has better odds. You don’t need 10,000 likes, you just need a few good people in your creative orbit to change your life.

Social media apps are addictive by design. It’s built to keep you on the their site, in their ecosystem, for as long as possible every waking moment.

Instagram made $69 billion from us last year.
We made nothing.
Our attention is an asset.
Our imagination is their profit.
We create the value.
It’s time to send the bill.

The Meta Invoice creates an invoice to send to Mark Zuckerberg and company, saying:

“Meta Invoice takes the visible traces of your activity — posts, time, audience — and turns them into an invoice for the estimated value you’ve created for Meta.”

Link via Laura.

Did a surprise Substack Live today on a whim. Just me, a webcam, and my cat (Blue) losing his mind in the background. OBS melted down half the time (I have no idea what I’m doing), but here’s some threads worth pulling out:

Serving the people who already showed up

I keep saying this because it never stops being true: Notes is just social media. Chasing the feed means a few winners and everyone else shouting into the void. The only sane move is making your best work for the folks who already subscribed, not every stranger on the internet.

Why I nuked every platform except substack

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn — all deleted. The only “social” thing I use now is Substack Notes, and even then it’s more of an on-ramp to my newsletter.

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The biggest thing about getting away from social media and staring at our phone is remembering that things weren’t always like this.

The iPhone was launched in 2007, not even a decade ago, and we’re exhausted.

This new behavior came about by major companies (the unholy trinity) spending billions of dollars to instill the belief that we must be connected with everyone at all times.