A few weeks ago I was listening to a small business podcast that said every business should be using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to grow sales.
“Oh crap”, I thought, although I had accounts at all three, I only used LinkedIn regularly. So I decided to amp up my social media activity for my business, Inside Sales Dude.
- I updated my profiles and created business pages.
- I explored different feeds, joined groups and connected with new people each day.
- I cross-posted my business blog articles to Facebook and Twitter.
After about a month, I found almost no benefits to my extensive use of social media for business.
- The B2B groups on LinkedIn were a major disappointment. Group feeds were almost 100% advertising. It was as bad as going to local Chamber of Commerce meetings and being hit up by every small business selling floral arrangements, business cards, real estate and financial services. This held true across Sales Groups, Executive Groups, and Entrepreneur Groups.
- I made zero good business connections, although I did reconnect with one old friend I hadn’t heard from since high school.
- My blog traffic didn’t increase. Almost all of my readers are connections who visit after I post a new article on LinkedIn or when I email them my newsletter.
What was more revealing was the effect that spending more time using social media had on me.
Twitter made me spastic. My mind was filled with stupid memes, funny one liners, trending videos and angry political commentary. It was addictive to go down random ratholes of content that filled my mind with small bits of meaningless info. I checked Twitter for news. Then I used it to see when my favorite podcasts were updated. Then I found funny one liners about politics. Pretty soon I was checking it for “trending tweets” to keep up on the latest news, jokes, and gossip.
Facebook was worse. The things that showed up in my feed were of zero interest to me. Memes, likes and bad jokes. Facebook’s friend suggestions were all strangers I didn’t know. The only friend requests I received were clearly bogus accounts (Russian supermodels?)
Even LinkedIn generated mostly noise for me. Although LinkedIn is useful for me to keep in touch with business colleagues and publish my blog posts, my feed had become filled with ads for products I don’t want, “popular” posts that are trite cheeseball inspirational/motivational fluff and updates from people I don’t know or interact with.
I became angrier. My temper flared up more quickly while my patience had dropped. I also kept checking my “feeds” for updates and news.
My head was also filled with news updates of tragedies, potential tragedies and awful things from “around the globe”. If I wasn’t worried about something before I started my social media experiment began, I sure was now.
My brain was on overload.
My solution – the low information diet*
Once I realized how little my frenetic daily activity of posting, checking, and consuming data was contributing to my business and my sense of peace, I tried to slow down.
At first I said to myself, I’ll stop checking Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn multiple times a day and just look at them occasionally – for business.
But it didn’t work. I’d sneak a peek on my phone in the bathroom, in line at the grocery store or at a traffic light and then I’d be right back down the rathole.
Here’s what I did:
- I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts**.
- I cleaned up my contacts list in LinkedIn and aggressively unfollowed contacts whose updates I was no longer interested in***.
- I stopped checking LinkedIn throughout the day.
- I stopped reading the news online and listening to podcasts.
- I even stopped listening to music when I exercised because I needed to quiet the noise in my head.
And it worked.
It’s now been 2 weeks of near silence.
- Instead of music, I listen to the birds or my breath when exercising.
- Instead of zoning out to a podcast when doing chores, I talk to my wife or my pets. Sometimes I just let my mind wander and othertimes I even sing to myself.
- Instead of getting pissed off every morning reading the news, I start my day off clear headed thinking about my day rather than the world’s tragedies.
If you are having a difficult time clearing the noise in your head and being the person you want to be, you might want to try the Low Information Diet too.
*I realized after writing this post, that I first heard of the term “low information diet” in this post on mrmoneymustache.com. It’s so appropriate, I had to use it. I highly recommend you read his article and blog for more.
**Since nobody noticed I quit social media, I’d say the business impact was minimal.
**You should unfollow me too if my posts aren’t valuable or interesting to you. You can always sign up again or visit my blog if things change.