My mom's 2 minute Instagram rant totally changed my posting strategy

She's 62 and barely on social media, but last week she told me 'you post too much about yourself and not enough about what helps people.' She was right. I went back through my last 20 posts and 16 were just me talking about my day. Switched to giving one useful tip per post for a week and my reach jumped from 40 views to almost 200. Has anyone else had a family member call them out and end up being right?

3 comments

3 Comments

bennett.harper1mo ago

I mean, "not enough about what helps people" is such a simple thing but it really gets at something deeper. Like, maybe it's just me but I think we get so caught up in documenting our own lives for ourselves that we forget the whole point of putting stuff out there is for other people to actually get something from it. It's kind of wild that a 62 year old who barely uses social media can see that more clearly than someone who lives on it. There's probably a lesson in there about how we treat attention as this scarce resource we have to fight for instead of just, you know, offering something useful and letting people come to us.

xena_bailey181mo ago

That part about "how we treat attention as this scarce resource we have to fight for" really got me. I used to think you had to just blast out your life constantly to stay relevant, like people cared about my morning coffee run or whatever. But when I switched to actually putting out helpful stuff, I realized I was just broadcasting noise before. Now I see that offering something useful isn't giving away your attention, it's earning theirs in a way that actually matters. My numbers aren't huge yet but the comments I get are way more meaningful than just likes.

ivan_murphy801mo ago

Exactly. @bennett.harper nailed it with that observation about a 62 year old seeing it clearer than someone living on social media. It's like we overthink the whole thing when the real answer is just to give people something they can actually use.