hey and welcome back to another episode
of the tech lead with the tech least
Coffee time
today we're going to be talking about
quitting social media and why you
probably shouldn't do it you know it's
funny that every now and then I see
these articles about these hilarious
people who go around quitting social
media they're gonna quit Twitter for a
month or quit Facebook quit red
uninstall' all these social media apps
on their phones and I think that a lot
of these people they're not really quite
going about it the right way and a lot
of these types of thinking are outdated
you've seen these sorts of things done
over the past few years and people have
been doing this as sort of an experiment
to see if it can really work and I think
the verdict is in overwhelmingly
research is showing that 99 percent of
social media is actually good for you
and I can provide you the links to cite
this study but essentially it is not a
smart move for you or your success to be
quitting social media if you are not on
social media I might recommend that you
get back on this train this video by the
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first 200 subscribers I've had my face
where I have quite a lot of these social
media platforms as well right I quit
Facebook for a while I quit Twitter
I quit LinkedIn for the longest time I
was not on LinkedIn and personally I
find LinkedIn absolutely disgusting with
all of their dark UI patterns to try to
spam all of your friends get all of your
email content
many times I almost fell for that stuff
but I'm on LinkedIn these days too even
though I don't know many people on
Instagram I've signed up to that too
because it is essential for my business
as an Instagram influencer and you can
check me out instagram.com slash Patrick
shoe link in the description below so
what I want to say here is that you need
to treat these social media platforms as
part of your business as part of your
company and as part of your success
imagine if Nike or coca-cola suddenly
decided that they wanted to take a
one-month break from social media you
know they would lose huge amounts of
revenue because they couldn't reach that
part of their audience social media is
here and is here to stay and it's not
just a set of services social media is
essentially the marketing platform of
the future it is how you reach your
audiences and if that's where all the
young people are if that's where
attention is then that's where you need
to be you know what all the naysayers
were busy quitting Twitter YouTube
social media you had other people like a
Gary Vaynerchuk who had been leveraging
and using Twitter and YouTube the whole
entire time and now he's built this huge
media publishing Empire while those
people who were busy criticizing social
media are still out there criticizing it
right in their stupid little blog post
about how they quit social media and you
know the blogs just getting no traction
let me tell you something these days I
don't really build my own websites all
that often you're going to need some
websites for like landing pages but I
would say that I generally don't tend to
drive traffic to my own separate website
if I don't need to it's just one more
step in that funnel that conversion
process and there used to be a train of
thought where people would say well yeah
they have this huge Facebook page or
they have this huge YouTube channel but
it's not really on their own independent
website and then they want to take other
time trying to drive traffic away from
these social media platforms onto their
own independent website onto their own
domain and they spend other time getting
a domain name setting up their own
website moving all their content over
there driving all of their traffic over
there and then when viewers go there
there's absolutely no distribution no
way to share this stuff no marketing
power no social features on that side at
all people just go to this independent
blog or website or whatever it is that
you've set up and it's like a black hole
you just lose the user and the return on
investment is like zero I've heard some
people say that this is a good way to
safeguard yourself such that if YouTube
for example ever changes their algorithm
and then you lose all of the viewers on
your channel well you still have your
own little independent website you know
I don't think that's going to save you
you know I've had situations myself
where I would build an independent
website like I had a set of games for
Twitter one day Twitter shut down the
developer platform cut off
API access the independent website that
I had set up did nothing for me traffic
dropped like 80 90 percent it was pretty
much over by that point and I needed to
come up with something else
let's talk about properness for a while
I know that social media does not have
the image of being proper right
generally is considered a waste of time
a trash pile of garbage news but the
future is not going to look like the
past right in your mind you have a
preconceived notion of what a proper
business should look like of what proper
people should be doing and in that image
you know you're going around in business
suit you're going into real companies
and you're busy reading The Wall Street
Journal and The New York Times
newspapers that's all very outdated
these days you know like the younger
people and where your customers are
they're not reading the Wall Street
Journal or the New York Times right
they're out there reading reddit
Facebook their social media feeds so I
would not necessarily give more weight
to having some article appear on The
Wall Street Journal compared to say the
front page of Reddit right the front
page of Reddit may actually get you far
more coverage far more publicity and
customers if your business trying to get
some traction so the future of business
at least part of it it's not going to
look like people in businesses going
around with briefcases in brick and
mortar stores but rather is going to be
these highly agile small teams of people
going around on social media managing
tons of random social media accounts
they're on the up TripAdvisor Facebook
Twitter Instagram LinkedIn YouTube all
of those social media sites and they're
just going around plastering their wares
all over these sites all the time and
they're on their phone just managing all
the social media stuff I think that's
really what the future of business is
going to look like and anybody who says
oh you're just looking at down that
you're
all the time can't you go around and
smell the roses you just look like a
zombie on your phone all the time you
know that's what the future is going to
look like this is the age of information
overload and if your strategy is to just
bury your head into the sand and ignore
all of that you're going to miss out on
all of it
the trick is to know how to manage that
information to control it and to
properly use these social media
platforms such that you're not
necessarily absorbing too much from them
you're not getting too controlled by
them you're restraining your use but
getting what value you can from them and
it's not about quitting code directly on
these sites because if you were to do
that you would miss out on all the
opportunities out there
social media is known to cause
depression in part because of
influencers like me out there just
bragging about the lavish lifestyle that
I'm living but you need to manage your
depression and your expectations and
just not be a spoiled brat other time
looking up to Instagram influencers who
are just selling you a fake lifestyle
you think this is my house it's not it's
my parents house now one final point I
want to touch on a little bit here which
is kind of intriguing to me is your
usage of these social media websites and
the interesting thing I would say about
this is that you don't necessarily need
to be social on these sites you don't
necessarily need to be there friending
everybody interacting with people
talking to them that's not necessarily
what you're gonna need it's funny that
if you were to take a look at some of
the biggest platforms out there these
days they are non social I'm talking
about sites like Reddit Instagram
YouTube there are no friends on these
sites
it's the algorithm at work primarily
along with some influencers that you're
following but it's fascinating to me
that several years ago everybody was up
in arms about how important friends
graphs were going to be you had Google
trying to create their Google+ social
networking platform and they were
proclaiming that social would be the
future but I'm not sure if that's really
the case anymore you know back at that
point machine learning had only been
starting to take off but these days you
can take a look and seems that machine
learning has beaten social it's not so
much what my friends or family are doing
online that I'm interested in right I
couldn't care less what my mom is
reading on social media what video she
is watching well I'm personally
is maybe in the topics the videos the
news that I'm reading and then what sort
of related content some algorithm can
push out for me
so if you were to take a look at YouTube
they just do a bunch of machine learning
based on what you're watching what
relate that people are watching what
videos you maybe subscribe to and then
they try to figure out what you could be
interested in watch it on your home page
same with Reddit right you go on reddit
you don't have any friends there it's
just a bunch of anonymous people who are
reading stuff recommended to them by an
algorithm Instagram - right most of the
time people are actually following
influencers and so I would say that this
is an age that has sort of gone past
basic friends and we're starting to see
communities build up around topics and
influencers influencers like myself
where people go to these central
gathering points and then they have
discussions around these topics of
interest to them and so what I'm really
trying to say here is that your
investment into social media does not
necessarily need to be very high you can
just go in there you don't have to be
busy trying to talk to people friending
everybody you know sending out invite
requests going on LinkedIn trying to get
a bunch of connections you don't
necessarily need all of that you can
still go to these sighs keep your
participation limited you don't
necessarily need to invest a huge amount
of time with these things and still get
a lot of value from these sites I might
conclude that it's not about being right
and it's not about taking a political
stand this is about your own personal
success right I remember when I phone
came out this was the biggest mistake of
my career at the time I thought Apple
was stupid I thought it was a bunch of
Jelly Belly bean people and so I went
with the very cool blackberry and they
had a real keyboard so I thought that
was for real people to do real business
work and I missed out on the whole
iPhone app generation era for the first
two years until I finally got rid of my
blackberry and pick up an iPhone and the
MacBook and get on that gravy train no
that was a stand that I had taken and
they felt good for me to stand up for my
beliefs and to push against the whole
wave of Jelly Belly being people who are
non-technical iPhone fanatics who were
just talking about how cool I phone
would be and I just thought yeah that's
just silly
but in the end I was the one who lost
right I missed out on that whole wave I
failed to adapt to the
modern era don't let that be you let me
know your thoughts in the comments below
remember to give the video a like really
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I'll see you next time bye