(First Post) What are your attitudes towards social media?

[Sweeetland]

Hi Guys

First of all I'd just like to give a big thank you to MJ, your book is absolutely fantastic and I'm only half way through!! I've struggled to put it down since starting it a few days ago.

So over the past year or so I've been interested in the 'fastlane' ideology (as I now know it to be) and as a result, I have significantly changed my attitudes towards social media.

I've been a heavy user of Facebook and Twitter, like most people my age, however now I only use Facebook for work purposes (nightclub promotion). With Twitter, I have un-followed all my friends and I now use it to keep updated with the latest news about things that I am actually interested in (no tweets etc). I find twitter is great for that.

I noticed too much of my time was taken up scrolling down news feeds, reading stuff I don't care about and posting stuff nobody else cares about. Initially I just planned to cut down on the amount of time I spent on these sites but it has been so successful that I don't use them at all now.

so I'd like to get the thoughts of my fellow fastlaners, where do you guys stand on this matter?


Please note: I mean from a personal perspective, SM is usually an integral part of most businesses.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

where do you guys stand on this matter?

The same as you. The only reason why I'm on these things is because they are POWERFUL tools and they are where my audience is. If you want to create value and convince folks of that value, you have to go where your audience is. I don't see my audience chilling out in my living room.

Social media is also a great medium to move product at little to no cost. It's almost like SEO was in the early 2000's.
Also see:

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/why-facebook-is-a-joke.53079/

 

[KJM]

I agree, you can waste so much time reading social media new feeds. Useful if using for business but not for personal time.

 

[tafy]

Personally I think facebook is good but I dont use it except the chat section to talk to a few individuals now and again

Twitter sucks imo as your just filtering through spam, maybe I need to cut off the spammers. Most businesses has their twitter on autopilot pumping out the same text and pics daily (Hotels atleast) Since I am following a tonn of hotels I find it absolutely fricken useless at the moment.

My wife used to use twitter and was addicted for like 6 weeks then she quit as it was just posting into nothing so to speak, she uses a lot of facebook for baby pics and shit and they all comment on each others stuff.

Am I the only one that thinks Twitter sucks?

 

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[Hucryn077]

I'm no millionaire but let me tell you this. Best thing I did was to delete the Facebook app from my phone! I just kept the page management app for my business page. I have so much extra free time now that I can spend in matters that are actually important to my day to day running of my business. No crazy updates, no candy crush crap, no sad soppy stories makes ones day alot more productive.

 

[James Turchetto]

Social Media is fantastic except for the one thing MJ points out in his book, you're not in control of your own destiny, if Facebook or Twitter want to ban your account or you get hacked 99% of the time there's nothing Facebook or twitter will do to help you that and things like facebook reach where they decide how many can see your posts means you're never truly in control of the audience. Me and a friend had an above experience in the last couple of weeks and lost twitter accounts that would have made us revenue for years to come, maybe someone had a vendetta we don't know but we lost a lot of our money making streams $300K+ year money streams.

I'm almost starting from scratch again as I was too dependent on one niche to make my income, but it's come at a good time for me as I'll take a lot more inspiration from the book than I was doing. I'll make sure to have multiple revenue streams built now so I'm never as dependent as I have been in the last year or so.

 

[Sweeetland]

There's no doubt that a presence within social media is necessary for most businesses. However, questions have to be raised when a business' sole existence/main source of income is built on these platforms. In fact, any business that is built on another business is susceptible to the hosts changes. Be it, changes in rules, bankruptcy etc...

I've heard horror stories of very successful ebay businesses having restrictions placed on them because of a few negative reviews.

I mean this with the best of intentions @James Turchetto even if you diversify with multiple revenue streams, should Twitter go bust tomorrow, so will you. Obviously it easy for me to say this with no source of income (yet).


Anybody else personally use social media?? (i.e. not for business purposes)

 

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[DennisD]

I don't get to SEE many of my friends because I'm always working on my biz, so it's my little social escape when I need it (maybe 20 mins a day total?) It's a tool to keep in touch with my buddies, the same as email or cell phones or whatever.

Honestly, I don't even see how it can be a problem.
I always have so much on my to-do list I CAN'T spend too much time doing nonessential tasks.
If you're wasting time on social media, it's not social media's fault.

 

[James Turchetto]

There's no doubt that a presence within social media is necessary for most businesses. However, questions have to be raised when a business' sole existence/main source of income is built on these platforms. In fact, any business that is built on another business is susceptible to the hosts changes. Be it, changes in rules, bankruptcy etc...

I've heard horror stories of very successful ebay businesses having restrictions placed on them because of a few negative reviews.

I mean this with the best of intentions @James Turchetto even if you diversify with multiple revenue streams, should Twitter go bust tomorrow, so will you. Obviously it easy for me to say this with no source of income (yet).


Anybody else personally use social media?? (i.e. not for business purposes)

As I said it was laid out pretty clearly in MJ's book that such things can and will occur and you're susceptible when these moments arrive.
It didn't even require twitter going bust for me to be in trouble which was the point of my post @Sweeetland
Things out of my control led to a massive revenue stream being destroyed. And I'm experiencing exactly what you suggest right now, and you're not wrong in your 1st paragraph at all, but when things are nice and comfortable you don't worry about such consequences (now I always will do) when I reinvest in social media in the next few weeks.

I'll be trying some other marketing methods as well though that aren't reliant on my ownership of a social media audience, among some other possibilities I can look into, if anything this bad bit of fortune means I'm forced to re-evaluate the way I make money online and can look at more reliable methods that mean I'm in more control, not that other factors won't mean something similar happens again of course.

I use social media for following up on news & current events, sports accounts and the odd friend but that usage has gone down from the time where online was just a platform for escape rather than for prosperity.