Post What You Know

Reading along in “The Social Media Marketing Workbook” by Jason McDonald, I came to a section about content. I was certainly interested about what he had to say here because tips and methods to help generate content are always helpful for a social media beginner like me. Amidst all the tips about finding out what your target audiences likes to see and how to post accordingly, I found a quote I liked:

“Share your knowledge and your passion. Become a “helpful expert” to your customers.”
                                                (McDonald, pg. 43)

Besides this being a quote I think can apply to multiple aspects of a professional life, it gave me some encouragement about posting on social media. With this blog and with my other social media my goal is to share what I am passionate about. I only post a picture on my Instagram when I want to share something I’m really excited about and when someone else posts something that excites me I make sure I like or comment on it. I don’t like or retweet anything on twitter unless I completely agree or relate to the statement. With my blog posts, I take the time to make sure I’m writing about something I can connect to personally. In fact, I don’t know how I could post anything, otherwise!

With that in mind, I also think this quote is saying in other words, post what you know. I feel like there’s this pressure, especially if you’re using social media as a business, to constantly be keeping up with what people want to see and read. Does this post look good enough? Is this funny enough? Does this get my message across well enough? Will this get enough likes? Why does this post have more like than this one? These are all important things, but I personally think it can get too complicated and you can end up with a post with no true connection to who you are. Most of the time, there’s no true way of answering those questions before you post anyway. The only thing you can control is your own wealth of knowledge and experience. In writing classes I’ve taken in the past, the best advice I’ve ever gotten is to write what I know. Recently I remembered this tidbit and it made planning my blog posts so much easier. I came up with a list of blogging ideas just based on subjects I know I could share about. As I think about what I should blog for the week, I ask myself, “What do I know? What’s going on in my life right now?” and a topic has always come to mind. It has honestly made me appreciate how there’s always something going on in my life that I’m passionate about or interests me. Life should be that way, so I’m hoping it continues!

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