Social Media impacts our lives every day, especially when it comes to our confidence levels. In this episode of my podcast for authors, Happy Write Now, we discuss how the reveal of my social media for authors webinar/course had temporarily brought on impostor syndrome and self-doubt before I brought myself back to my mission.
Below you will find the transcript and show notes for Episode 6 of the HWN podcast. I'm excited to jump on this journey with you! What are your favorite mindset and writing podcasts? Let me know.
Download the Happy Write Now podcast on Apple Podcasts and Castbox.
Original podcast transcript:
Before we get into podcast #6 - I have a message for you. There is room for you wherever you want to go.
Intro: Welcome to the Happy Write Now podcast. I am your host Rebecca Kelsey Sampson, an authorpreneur, fantasy and personal development author, and marketer. When I joined the writing community I saw how difficult it was for writers to say out loud that they were an author. Through Happy Write Now my mission is to help authors fight limiting beliefs, claim their personal power, and take charge of their journey - publishing deal or not. If gaining mindset advice to aid your author life sounds good for you, pull up a chair at the table.
Welcome to HWN, today we are going to be talking about my new course and the turmoil of emotions it has put me through.
It involves the idea of comparison. I KNEW there was a reason why my original episode on comparison mysteriously deleted itself from my computer. It was because I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet in the way that I am now, with a personal story.
On September 5 I revealed the topic of my first online course, Social Media for Mindful Authors. This course has been cooking in my brain for a few months now. Really, years if I think about the journey that I have personally had with social media. If you don’t know my history yet, every single job I’ve had as an adult has involved social media. I’ve always worked in some sort of community management space, both for local and national brands.
Through the years I've seen social media change and witnessed how the mysterious social media algorithms were introduced into these spaces. When content started to shift from chronological, man that upset everybody. Now I honestly do see the benefit in it, but it’s still something that really pushes the boundaries for brands and takes some of the focus away from creating genuine connections. People are spending a lot of time trying to figure systems out and get their posts seen.
I truly believe if you focus on speaking to people in a natural and encouraging way, you’ll do better in the long run and the algorithm will catch up. What you are sharing is a lot more important than the strategy of how you share it.
That’s the big focus on my course, creating online connections that matter. What best practices work no matter what the algorithm is saying, because that computation is always evolving and anyone that teaches how to trick the algorithm is going to have to change their teachings constantly.
But a funny thing happened to me. The second I spoke about my course, I started to doubt everything I was doing.
Impostor syndrome and comparisons started to creep in and I began doubting all that I knew and started looking for and ingesting social media tools from OTHER creators that I weren’t even following. I started to listen to people that I had no connections with, because I had an OH SHIT moment and started to doubt that I knew what I was doing.
I thought, if the most likes I can get on a photo is 150 and my average is around 60 - should I be the person making this course?
Can I teach social media when my author account has less than 2,000 followers?
The answer is yes.
Social media isn’t about the numbers, contrary to popular believe. And I know some of you are probably shaking your heads right now. Some of you may even be leaving this podcast because I said that.
But I’m not going to take it back. If you want to only focus on numbers, my course isn’t for you.
Social media was created so that people could connect with others, keep in touch with family, meet people that had similar interests to them. It wasn’t about collecting avatars.
So while I do on one level hope my numbers grow, it’s not because of the outward number that people see. It’s because of the messages I’ve received. It’s because I have a mission to share and not because seeing a bigger number adds to my value. I know that what I’m doing right now is already valuable. Adding an extra digit doesn’t change that.
And you might argue that having a larger number means you reach more people, and while you could technically be right - that’s not typically the focus of these social media growth courses. The focus is always on how many followers a person has rather than the person behind that number. The focus is on the account as a whole, rather than each follower’s story.
No matter what number of followers you have, when someone tells you that your story has changed their life and that what you are doing has helped them grow stronger and push forward towards their dreams - that’s all that matters. I’m looking to create more of those connections. My mission is to help raise you up, not to raise myself up.
Part of that is because I am a provider. I am the financial support for my family, but also a big part of the emotional support. When I help my family, I feel stronger. So now when I help other writers find their confidence, I feel that similar effect. Helping others is a cornerstone of my personality.
So I’m going to focus on that. And my course is going to help others find what their message is and how social media can play into that. It’s going to help them see their posts differently. It’s going to free them from the chains of growth hacking bullshit.
And part of jumping into this means that I’m saying out loud that I, at least partially, disagree with a lot of the other content I’ve seen. It’s not coming from a malicious sense, because if what you are doing is working for you then by all means keep doing it. But if the strategies that you are following make you NOT want to post because it’s a rigid formulaic non-personal strategy - then why do it? Why spend hours each week agonizing about content creation that makes you unhappy and you aren’t even sure it’s getting the results you want, AKA more people that want to read your book?
So while I may get distracted every once in awhile and compare my social media to others, in the end i know that it’s just noise. I come back to this point time and time again - I’m here to speak to one person only, the person that needs to hear my message at the time that I share it.
It doesn’t matter if my numbers never reach the famed 10K so that I can have the swipe up feature on Instagram. If people care about my message and want to go to a link I’m talking about, they’ll go to my freaking link in bio and be happy about it!
It matters if the people I am talking to, care that I’m talking to them.
So I’m jumping into this course. And if you buy it and tell me that I have helped you have fun with social media again - then this will be a success for me. A MASSIVE success. Because if I tried to reach everybody at once, I would reach no one.
This is the rise of the microinfluencer. Creating a community in a niche is valuable.
I’m speaking to writers that want to focus on their personal development. I’m speaking to people that don’t want to be tortured frustrated artists anymore. I’m speaking to YOU, because you are also TIRED of the bullshit you hear everyday about how you have to post this many times per week and utilize all 30 hashtags, and kill your creativity by posting the same kind of photo all the damn time.
I’m speaking to you. I’m truly happy you are listening to me right now.
And if you want to talk more about social media, my course Social Media for Mindful Authors comes out September 28th. You can find it on here.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening today. To get the most out of HWN, join the newsletter. It comes with author freebies and a Members Only page. Subscribe now at RebeccaKSampson.com/Join
It will be linked in the show notes. If what you heard today resonated with you, please share this episode on social media. Take a screenshot right now and tag me on Instagram and Twitter. My username is @RebeccaKSampson. As you know, reviews help authors and that is no different here. Leave a review on your favorite podcast app to help spread the word. I’ll talk to you soon!
Comments