Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

I’ve climbed over 17,000’ since April 19th. This is in preparation for a half-marathon that I’m running in 12 days.

What the hell does this have to do with the Social Media Escape Club?

It’s practice.

It’s why I’m not telling you to delete your social media accounts today.

If you want to live a life without social media stealing hours of your day, start by deleting the app(s) from your phone.

That’s practice (you can reinstall them later if needed).

Try logging out of the accounts on your computer.

Practice (I logged out of LinkedIn today).

Turn off your phone, as Cody Cook-Parrott writes about in ‘Hope and Flowers’:

I know that my ability to earn is directly related to my ability to rest. Not just rest but to turn off the phone, to communicate with less people, and have less screen time. To read, to write, to really be without the phone. To turn the phone off. How many times can I type – phone off. Phone off. No phone. The phone is off. When was the last time you turned your phone off?

NOTE: there’s no need to reply and tell me you can’t do so because you’re caring for someone or you’re waiting for an important call from your doctor—I get it.

Experience being unavailable.

How does it feel when no one can reach you? Maybe journal those feelings. Record some audio of your experience, or a video. You don’t need to share it, but come back to it in a week and reflect.

As you live your life away from social media an hour at a time, you’ll discover that things don’t usually crumble. You don’t disappear.

As you practice being away from social media, you might miss something, so adjust accordingly. If a friend usually DMs you, tell them you’re taking a break tomorrow, and you can be reached via email or text.

If they resist, focus on those who respect your decision not to use services that negatively impact your mental health (I’ve absolutely done this).

Some things you can do in an hour instead of using social media:

1. Go for a long walk, bike ride, or sit next to a lake
2. Share a meal with a friend
3. Read a book or a magazine
4. Send a nice email to someone whose work you admire
5. Call a friend and discuss art, movies, breakfast recipes, etc.
6. Contact someone in your field about working together on a project
7. Stare into space, the void, the darkness of time

One of my favorite things to do is take the photos, witty remarks, and hot takes that I used to post on social media and send them to a few friends instead or turn them into a blog post.

The spontaneous bits you’d post on social media can be the source material for your next newsletter, text to a pal, Discord group, or next live Zoom hangout with good people.

Like Professor Pizza of Axe Slasher said in one of our ESCAPE POD hangouts, “why should I give my best material to Twitter?”

Is it beyond comprehension that people at social media companies think of ways to make us dependent on their services? Could they actively be building a narrative that your participation is necessary?

First, consider the bait and switch: They got all of us to set up our profile pages for free and rewarded us with tons of views and likes. Eventually, we abandoned our websites, blogs, and email lists, and then they throttled our reach unless we paid to boost our posts or spent more time on their platform, uploading an un-ending stream of “content.”

Second, even if you don’t use their platforms to promote anything, you likely fell for the DM functionality to keep in touch with friends and family. But what if you get locked out of your account? What if your friend gets their account suspended for some random reason? What happens when one of your parents gets scammed and can’t log in?

If you lose touch with people you care about, you’ll figure out how to reestablish the connection quickly, usually by phone, text, or email—three pre-installed apps on every smartphone.

Remember – many people are paid well to keep you locked into their ecosystem. Escaping the world of social media ain’t easy, but that’s what Social Media Escape Club is here for.

I ran 1,105 miles in 2020, which took me around 200 hours.

Scrolling 33 minutes daily on your phone adds up to about 200 hours a year, too.

A friend told me recently that they want to start a newsletter, but they don’t want it to become a large time investment.

I told them that their next newsletter “is already written.”

Re-purposing the content you’ve already posted (on social media) means less time thinking about your next email newsletter, and gives you a jump on the creative process.

Once you have everything copied and pasted into your newsletter, you can make expand on some of your ideas, or include some other photos that you didn’t share on socials.

Most of us thought nothing of posting daily to social media, sometimes multiple times per day or per hour when an awards show was on or during a major sporting event.

Most of us have years of archival material to draw from, all tucked away in our social media channels.

Your posts only reach a fraction of your followers. Probably 90% of them never saw any of this material in the first place, so don’t feel bad about re-using your own material – it’s your material!

What could you do with just 30 minutes per day that might benefit you a year from now?

• Learn how to make scenic videos of lakes using a digital camera, Zoom H6 audio recorder, and editing the whole thing in DaVinci Resolve.
• Learning a new technique related to your craft
• Journaling and meditating
• Going for a walk, a bike ride, or go scootering (thanks, Amy Walsh)
• Dancing to your favorite records (R.I.P. mom)
• We think nothing of spending an hour a day on work meetings – what if we spent 30 minutes a day on FRIEND MEETINGS?
• Start a daily 30-minute check-in video call to help everyone stay on track and encourage one another

Sometimes, these things sound like too much, but each day, we have choices: invest in ourselves or create shareholder value for corporate behemoths.

Consider that we don’t think twice about uploading our original photos and text to a platform that sells advertising around our unpaid labor while limiting the number of our friends (or potential clients) who will ever see it, thus incentivizing us to either spend more of our time (a finite resource) on the platform “engaging,” or spending actual money to “boost” our posts so more people might see it.

In a recent newsletter titled “Backstage” (which went out to 10,000+ email subscribers) Tegan from Tegan and Sara wrote about putting out a live album. Maybe release it on vinyl, CD, and cassette, “with a booklet with photos from the tour.”

Then goes on to say:

“Maybe we should hold some stuff back, I suggested, and keep the stories and recordings and photos for that. It would be nice to have images and videos that no one has seen. For social media, for the booklet. Right? Or maybe it doesn’t matter; we share so much content (we = everyone) at this point, who even remembers what’s been posted and hasn’t?”

As I’ve been saying for years, re-use photos from social media in your newsletter because most of your followers never saw them.

 

The Tegan and Sara Instagram has 470,000 followers, and the last nine posts got an average of 3,444 likes, meaning 0.7% of their fans liked any one of those images.

Two of those posts have over 100 comments. That’s 0.213% of their fans that left a comment, and that’s on a good day.

Mind you, Tegan and Sara are a Grammy-nominated indie pop duo who’ve been making music for over 25 years.

I’m not saying don’t be on social media (well, maybe I am); just lower your expectations of actually ever reaching 10% of your followers.

Understand that posting an IG Reel to your 3,500 Instagram followers will probably be seen by just 250 people, and if 1% click a link, well, that’s a solid two people that might see your offering.

A friend of mine deleted his social media accounts in 2017 or so. He’s played drums for 30+ years; that’s all he wants to do, be a musician.

He joined some bands he found on Craigslist, did some recording gigs with friends on the internet, played a lot of local shows, learned a lot of covers, and made a few bucks.

He just wanted to play drums, you know?

We talked on the phone recently, and he told me of a “secret” group he’s in, with a bunch of other local musicians. They meet once a week and jam and hang out.

This didn’t happen overnight, but now my friend is in multiple local bands, and playing drums all the time with great people. He’s never been happier.

All without a Twitter account or posting crowd shots on Instagram stories.

This is what I meant when I wrote, ‘Social media loses power when we build community in other places.’

Tegan and Sara were here before social media, they’ll be here when it’s gone.
The creator economy existed long before Zuck and Musk showed up.
There was a time when we didn’t speak of our work as “content.”

“Make cool stuff, show it to your friends,” says Rick Rubin. Friends, family, fans. You get the idea.

But if a platform doesn’t let you show your cool stuff to your friends, ask if it serves you anymore. If not, it might be time to rethink things.

You can get away with sparse details about your latest album when you’re BEYONCÉ and you’re riding a white horse and holding an American flag.

Compare that to a post I saw recently on a social media platform:

“Just updated my site, and added some extra goodies. Subscribe!”

Updated your site with what? Photos of fish? Paintings of barns? Poems about frogs?

Extra goodies? Videos of balloon animals? Clown sculptures?

If you’re not telling me what I’m getting, why the heck should I click? Or subscribe?

Remember, you’re up against BEYONCÉ, TMZ, brands with social media teams, Netflix, and Mr. Beast.

If all you can muster is “I updated my site,” lower your expectations. The algorithms are cruel, but it’s nothing personal. Is this fair or kind? No. But playing this game is a choice, and hardly anybody wins.

There is hope, though.

When we put BEYONCÉ on one side of the spectrum and “hey, new song” on the other, there’s a vast expanse in between. A whole realm of possibilities.