Social media is art. Yes, it really is! Our brush strokes are our words, our platforms the canvas. And yet so many of us continue to ‘paint by numbers’ rather than choose to be original.
Someone once said “life’s too short not to use the whole box of crayons”. So, I have to ask the question: Why do we keep limiting our spectrum? Trying so hard to conform to what we think will make us popular within those ever-elusive ‘cool tribes’ that we forget to use those shades that make us who we are. These are the tones that are vibrant with our personality – the ones that set up apart and make us remarkable.
Conformity is easy and while, deep down, we might know that it’s boring, it’s the safe option for so many of us who are unsure of how to best use social media for our brands, whether personal or business.
So what do we do? We pick a social media influencer, someone we worship from afar, and we try desperately to emulate his or her persona – painting our social canvases in his or her colours, whilst totally disregarding and devaluing our own. We pick up a few followers here and there and but our method is ultimately flawed and doomed to fail. After all, we’re painting someone else’s picture but, worse than that, we’re making a bad copy, a forgery if you will, and everyone knows that a fake is never as good as an original.
So please – do something remarkable this week! Start with a clean canvas and create a social media masterpiece that has nothing to do with being in the ‘in-crowd’ but all about being YOU.
I guarantee you that amazing things will happen if you dare to try.
The Social Skillet 