This my own personal account so far on my social media journey. The year was 2020 During this time a lot of us have taken to the social media route for different reasons, some of us are doing very well at it, a buddy of mine in South Africa has just hit 14 Million followers and its changed his life.
Im sure I speak for all of us when i say that its a HUGE learning curve, success on social media seems to break a lot of normal rules …
So a note to anyone who is wanting to give it a go on any platform, Number one … if you want to take it seriously IT’s HARD WORK … really HARD WORK. There is no rhyme or reason why a video works .. its pure pot luck, You follow rules of what you learn and it still means nothing … Some videos you spend so much time making and you are so proud of you work and then BOOM it crashes and burns … you have no idea why and its soul destroying. Another video you make in a hour or so and suddenly it goes viral, thousands and thousands of views, again you have no idea why … you deconstruct it to put sense into it, you start to follow a marketing business plan and you make the next video following those rules … and it crashes and burns … you have no idea why ….
Getting to you first 1000 followers is normally really hard, and then with luck you may get some traction and the more followers you have, the more you start to get … its like a snow ball …. But then your bubble bursts and you have run out of ideas … you sit at your table thinking, what can i make? you leave it a couple of days and suddenly you see you are LOOSING fans, you need a new video … but what ??? you have a block …..So you make a crap one, something that was not made from the heart, something that was just throw together to fill that void of “I must get a video out”
I myself had been at the Asian Tiktok platform called Doeyin for just over 2 months, I’d gathered 20000 followers and a couple of my videos here in China had made millions of views. I’d learnt so much, mostly on what not to do … I had a long term plan, thats changed now … My original plan was to get to a couple of hundred thousands followers, then monitze the account in some way, sponsors, product endorsement etc … what ive realized now is that number is not enough now … a couple of million. (different platforms vary of course)
Live streaming and receiving tips is a good way for a quicker return, BUT sadly for me living in China Im not able to do that here … I now truly understand this ..
1: Why social media is so dominated by youngsters, they have time on their hands with no responsibility’s, so they can put all their time into it.
2: I know understand why some people come out of the gate strong with great videos and then suddenly start posting garbage and they maybe even turn to exposes … The need to keep getting followers more and more becomes like a drug.
3: whether we agree with any social media stars ethics and mind set on the nature of their videos … We MUST respect the shear amount of work that they have put in.
4: I see now that the problem with a lot of social media negatives is not so much a problem with the posters rather than a problem with the machine. You start posting for what ever your own reason maybe, if you have any success and get followers it becomes important to get more followers. Its a little like addiction, and when you don’t feed the machine with posts, you start to loose followers and thats when your own ethics, quality standards etc come into question … I myself with my 20000 followers, if I don’t post for a couple of days I start to loose approx. 25 followers aday, a friend of mine with half a million followers looses 200 a days … now you may think .. so what? it dosen’t matter … well when you put the hard work in to get them in the first place , it really feels as if it dose matter …. trust me when you have worked so hard and then you see your little counter going down, not up … its a sucky feeling …So to all of my fellow social media posters out there … if you have experienced any of what I have said .. my hat goes off to you and remember you are not alone …
Geno out …..