5 Myths About Social Media

Social media! What would we do without this wondering invention? Social media is everywhere and everyone is using it. Some people are on social media more than others. Some use just one platform and others on are every single site you can sign up for. I remember when I first got on social media. Myspace was the first place I joined. After getting invited by my brother and then my best friend, I decided to take a look. That was in 2005 I have been hooked ever since.

There are some myths that people believe about social media that I just don’t think are true.

1) Social Media is just for fun, not for serious businesses. I was watching the show Weeds a while back. In one of the episodes I was watching, one of the characters, a man in his mid-40s meets a young 22-year-old waitress. They decide to get married and she starts talking all things Facebook and Twitter. He rolls his eyes and you can tell he thinks she is silly. It was this idea that she wasn’t serious because she was worried about Facebook and Twitter. I get the humor but the show made it seem like worrying about social media was something only carefree and silly kids do. Not for serious people. This simply isn’t true. Most businesses today are on Facebook and Twitter. If they aren’t, they are behind the times. They need to be where the people are. They need to take social media seriously. Twitter and Facebook are for serious businesses. This is how they can keep up with marketing in today’s world.

2) Social Media is a waste of time. Social Media can be a time suck. A huge time suck. You can spend too much time on each site and not get much done. You can tweet and not feel you are being seen. There are good ways to use social media and bad ways. But social media by itself is not a waste of time. So much has been done because of social media. From campaigns to establishing new friendships. While you can waste your time on social media, it is never a waste of time to try to figure how to best use social media. There are times when I think I want to cut myself off from social media but I never will because I really think that overall, social media is beneficial. Both in my business marketing and my personal life.

3) Social Media is too hard. You might be on Twitter and see how successful some people are and think social media is too difficult. Twitter and other social media sites can take a little bit of time to figure out and learn how to use correctly. Don’t be afraid of the platform. Keep working on the sites you think are important and you will see results. Take Facebook for example. I was frustrated with my pages on Facebook. I would post and no one would see what I was doing. What was the point? Then I started looking into Facebook a little more. I found this video by Hollie Homer and she taught me a lot about what I can do to help my pages grow.

4) There are too many Social Media sites. When a new social media site springs up, you can feel the pressure to join. Then you worry that you would be spreading yourself too thin. You have to ask yourself if you should join the new site. Should you really put the time into more social media? Sometimes you have to hang back and see how the new site does with everyone. Sometimes you have to just dive in and try the site for yourself. I think back to pre-Twitter days. Twitter probably seemed very odd to most of us but now it is one of the most popular places to be. Don’t be scared off by too many sites. Don’t feel like you have to be super active on all of them. Find what works for you and focus on those sites.

5) Social Media changes too much, who can keep up? Every time Facebook updates itself I hear the same thing, “Why do they keep changing things?” Well, because Facebook is social media and social media changes. That is just the nature of social media. The sites are not going to stay the same. Sometimes we hate the changes, sometimes we love them but social media evolves. We need to go along with the changes and figure out the best way to use them in our business and personal life.