Full Episode Transcript

Hey, hey, Erin Kelly here. So this is the last podcast episode of this week. And I thought we could end it on a big puzzle. So in your business, you probably own and also in your life, but in your business, you probably have some big puzzles that you're working through. And here's one from me. And it might be one that you're also struggling with.

So I don't know if you've seen the documentary on Netflix, the Social Dilemma, but is really good, I highly recommend it. And when I watched it a couple of months ago, I immediately so I guess maybe it was like almost six months ago, whenever it first came out. As we were watching it, I immediately took Facebook off of my phone and Instagram off of my phone.

And that's also when Mike and I instituted no phones in the bedroom policy at night, which has been really nice. And we haven't we haven't stopped it's been, it's it's so interesting to me how just having it sitting next to you, even if you have no intention of using it, especially if you have social media apps on your phone. It just has like a constant subconscious draw on you. And that's something that they talk about in the documentary too.

And so that was sort of like the beginning of a crystallization around my feelings for social media. So I'm an introvert, I'm a pretty, pretty big introvert. And I really, really try and pay attention to where my energy is going. And now that I'm a parent, there's our there's already less energy to go around for the outside world. Because kids take a lot of a lot of energy, they have a lot of questions. There's just a lot of interaction. And so as an introvert, I'm already at a depleted battery when I start my workday. And so I have to be really, really intentional about what I'm doing.

And so as my job role has evolved, as our team has grown, my energy tends to be directed towards our team, and making sure that our team can then in a more scalable way, then interact with our community. And occasionally, like, I will, I'll do, like right now we have an Action Lab resource that we're putting together that we're putting out. And then we also have, we're doing a month of support inside of our Maximizer MV community, which is for paid users only. And so I'm checking in on Facebook every day and interacting with people and I love it.

I think this is like the confusing thing, like when you love something, but it actually is really draining for you. And so it has made me pay a lot of attention to over the years that I've been an entrepreneur, I paid a lot of attention to how much energy social media can really take out of you. And that's when you're being intentional about it, that's when you are, you know, creating content thinking about what to put on there, what's what's going to be something that's going to be good impact that your people are going to like, how can you make it pretty, so it will stand out, etc, etc, right? A lot of energy goes there.

And then there's the energy of actually interacting with people. And so I've had to pay a lot of attention there, in terms of the intentional energy that you put into social media, but what about the unintentional energy that social media takes out of us, so when you have it on your phone, or when you are feeling the need to check in with social media, and I and mainly I think, you know, for me, it's Facebook and Instagram.

But if you are checking that multiple times a day, you can find yourself really battling that time suck of, and I know the the new term from from our COVID days is is doomscrolling, you know, where you just get caught in, in the scroll. And it brings up all kinds of yucky feelings, it's not good for your mental health. It I feel like it really does bring out more reactionary decisions in your business, rather than intentional ones, it doesn't allow your brain to really ever have time to chew on the bigger decisions because you're you're always filling it with consumption. And so, you know, over time, I have found myself even before we watch this documentary, I've really found myself pulling away from social media pulling away from putting a lot of energy into that other than our community on Facebook.

You know, I do have a team member that, you know, she schedules out promotions and stuff, and spotlights of our users and she does all of that on Facebook and Instagram. And so for a long time, I haven't even really interacted on Instagram. I spend a little bit more time on Facebook because of the community being there. And I like to I like to pop my head in there. You know, sometimes sometimes I'll go like a day or two without checking in but generally I check in only once a day. And and so it is a little bit more intentional, just because I'm making sure that I'm checking in with a member of our community. So It's all questions related to MemberVault, right.

But it can still create kind of a reactionary loop where it's like, oh, that's a really good idea, we should we should talk about doing that, like, let's talk about this like, instead of really staying focused on the goals that we've set for ourselves as a company. So it's an it's, it's a tough balance, because you do want to, you know, obviously, we want to pay attention to feedback, and we want to interact with our users. And those can be really, really powerful, amazing things, as long as they're in balance.

And so I've just been really conflicted about my stance on social media, especially like when we link to posts in the collaborative in our emails, and so probably around, probably around six months ago, I feel like this is around when the Social Dilemma documentary came out, I think there was a big wave of people being like, I'm done with social media, I'm getting off of social media. And there's always been a small fraction of people that felt that way.

But I feel like that fraction is getting bigger and bigger. And so I got a reply to one of our emails, and it was like, you only link to stuff that's happening in Facebook, but I don't use Facebook, like I refuse to use Facebook. And so I was like, yeah, that's a really good point. Like, if we are wanting you to be able to engage with the content, and we're linking you to Facebook, but you don't want to have a Facebook account, for whatever reason, like, we are blocking you from being able to consume that content.

And so it is really, you know, this is aligned with my whole belief system around accessibility. So accessibility of also looking at like the tools that you use, like, are you sharing content with your audience in a way that anyone can engage with? Like, is it completely open? Or do they have to have a specific tool to be able to engage with that content. And so I've been paying a lot more attention to that and feeling very resistant around linking to things on social media.

And I've noticed, you know, recently, I've noticed, and maybe this is just something that I've started paying attention to. And so that's why I'm noticing it. And maybe it's been happening for a while, but in my brain, it feels like a trend of people doing like blog posts, but then also doing shorter versions of the blog post, like a condensed version with graphics on Instagram, or doing an interview on Instagram, rather than on a podcast.

And so I've had a couple of emails recently, that have been things that I really wanted to check out. And they linked me to Instagram. And like I said, I don't have Instagram on my phone. And generally, when I'm on my computer, I am like its head down, doing work time, like, I'm not going to be consuming other people's content when I'm on my computer.

And so it's been really frustrating, because, of course, it'll show you you can click over and it'll show you, whatever it is like you get like a little screenshot of what you the thing that you want to consume. But Instagram is like, Hey, you need to log in, you need to install the app, like there's there's prompts, obviously, for you to be able to consume that content. And so it's really frustrating, because I don't want to have Instagram on my phone. And I really don't want to actually start spending a lot of time on Instagram.

So I find myself kind of at an impasse as a consumer of content from other people, because I want to know what they have to say, but I don't like how they're delivering it. And this might make me a bit of a curmudgeon. But I think this is the wave of the future is that people are getting really that up with the way that social media platforms are treating us as people, you know, they're using us as a product.

You know, I'm sure you've heard that phrase, like, if you're not paying for it, you're the product. And I think in some cases, that's not true. But in the case of social media, where they're their business model is completely wrapped around advertising, and getting getting more eyeballs onto their platform, so that the advertisers want to continue to pay them to advertise there.

They spend a tremendous amount of time and energy and development, to getting you to come back and login, which creates this like loop of being obsessive and going on social media to much to the detriment of yourself and to the detriment of your business. And so, you know, I just feeling very resistant to encouraging that or to requiring that to consume any content that we're creating. And so that's why I really like podcasts, because you can is, you know, you can listen to anchor on your phone, even if you don't even have the anchor app installed.

You can go to a browser window, you can go you know, go on your computer or your tablet and consume it or if you have a preferred podcast platform or not on all of them, but you know, we're on the major ones. And so it's just like trying to make sure that the content that we're creating is accessible whether you're using social media or not. And we're not there yet because We do still have our community on Facebook. And that is kind of the struggle.

Because and I've always had this sort of dilemma when people would bring that up inside of our community, like, oh, I don't want to be on Facebook. What should I use for my group? And it's like, Okay, well, Facebook spends a tremendous amount of time getting people to come back to Facebook. So that's where Facebook are, that's where people are spending their time already.

And so if your community is on Facebook, people are there already, it's a lot easier for them to pop over into your group and engage with it. Whereas if you are requiring them to go to an outside tool, there are a lot less likely to remember to do that, like, you're going to have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to get them to log in to your space.

And that has been my experience, any time I've engaged as a community member, that I've engaged with other tools, like, on Mighty Networks, or whatever. It's just like, I forget the link, or I just forget about it, and I don't engage, or when I do, actually, you know, put in the time to like, login and everything. It's crickets in there, and there's just not very much engagement. And so it doesn't make me very interested in going and putting that effort in at a later date. 

So it's just, it puts a lot of burden on you, as the business owner to spend a bunch of time and energy getting people to even engage with the with the community. And so if you haven't on Facebook, Facebook has pretty much doing that for you. And so that's always been my argument is like, you know, I know, we might not like Facebook, but it does make your job easier as a business owner.

But more and more, especially after watching the social dilemma, I just don't feel great about putting creating content, and making people sign into social media apps to consume that content, and really even thinking about like, how can we move our community off of Facebook? And is that a good idea. And so I think, you know, this is something that we're that we're really as an internal, you know, internally in the business, like, that's something that we're really discussing a lot.

And, you know, we're thinking about trying out Circle, and embedding it inside of MemberVault content, which then means that when someone does come over to consume content inside of our MemberVault, they will have the community element as well. And they are going to be in that intentional brain space of like, Oh, I'm working on my business.

So, you know, but from the aspect of someone that's considering looking at MemberVault that isn't in the community yet, that's where that's kind of the sticking point for me, because it's like that we get a lot of people that join our community that are that are kicking the tires on member vault, and they love our community. And so they, you know, they're happy to join. And so you would lose that if we were on an external platform. So, you know, there's pros and cons. And this is this is why I said it's like this big puzzle is you can be you can be against something, but still not have a clear path forward in terms of the right solution.

I'm sharing this, because I think that there's a lot of people that are feeling very disenchanted by social media right now. And so if you're also kind of puzzling this out in your brain, I wanted to, to share what my brain is doing. And I do think that I think that in the future. And it may be near or far in the future, we will be pretty much off of social media. And we will probably still have a team member that like acts as a connector that like, you know, might be sharing some of our podcasts episodes on social media. And that might be connecting with our users on social media, but isn't we're not spending a bunch of time or energy to create content.

And we're certainly not using that as a primary driver, in our emails, or in our community where we're saying, if you want to consume this content, you have to log into Instagram to be able to view it or to you know, to consume it, that it's always going to be something that you can consume outside of that, whether it's a blog post, or a podcast episode, or a community inside of our MemberVault, that we are going to be very intentionally making sure that we are not forcing people to be on social media, because I just not very happy with with the foundations of social media and the kind of personality trends that it brings out and people and, you know, as a general rule, there's obviously exceptions like I love our community, it's very positive and welcoming and inclusive you know, but we put energy into it being that way.

But I feel like there's the majority of social media feels like it definitely trends negative or a trends highlight reel, which is in you know, when consuming that it is negative for you. And so I just, I don't know I don't think that that's great for business owners, and when I'm thinking about how we can make life easier for our business owners and for our users, and help them stay centered and focused and getting results, it's not forcing them to go and engage on social media because I know that once social media, whether it's Instagram or Facebook or whatever, once they have their hooks in you, because you clicked over to watch this video from us, or this, SlideShare, whatever it was, that you're going to end up scrolling in, you're going to lose time or you're going to lose focus, or you're going to end up with something funky in your head. And I just don't really want to be a part of that.

So that is my struggle with social media. That is how I am ending the week. And as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and where you're at with it. You can email me at erin@membervault.co. Or you can send me an audio message on Anchor. And I'd love love to hear your thoughts and kind of your philosophy around this and the decisions that you're making for your own business.

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• [Transcript] My ongoing struggle with social media