Why you shouldn't share your big news on social media

It's Monday morning. You're scrolling aimlessly through the newsfeed on your social platform of choice.

Ad. Ad. Ad. Someone has a new job.

Ad. Ad. Ad. Ad. Joe earned a certificate.

Ad. Another ad. Two more ads. Oh, Kelly's kid had a birthday this past weekend. How nice.

You feel caught up on the people in your life. Until you see a post from a close friend that's a month old, announcing that their mother unexpectedly passed away.

You'd been on social every day, but somehow this is the first time you've seen this. You instantly feel like a bad friend. You never reached out. Never sent flowers. Never showed this friend the support they needed.

Maybe you've been on the other side of this situation; you shared something personal on social media, good or bad, and hardly heard from anyone. Maybe you felt like no one cared.

If you're running a business, the hurt starts to become financial, too.

You throw a big event, you splash it all over social media, but you barely sell enough tickets to cover the cost of the venue. You think the event was a bigger flop than LaserDisc.

You announce a new product or program, but sales are slow. You wonder if you're misunderstanding your market.

But it's not because no one cares that grandma passed away or your event looked boring. It's because most of our posts on social media aren't being shown to our connections and followers.

The digital shift in communication

Over the last 20 years, we've stopped using direct communication to share our big life events or promote our businesses.

We don't call or text, even though we have many people's phone numbers, and we don't send emails even though Gmail still remembers the email address for that slacker from your college group project from 10 years ago.

Instead, we post on social media, partly because we think we're being efficient, but also because somewhere along the way, texting someone to say "A big thing happened to me" started to feel awkward. Sending an email to your contact list to let people know about a new offer felt like bugging them.

Facebook said: "I'll share this news with everyone for you, even that one high school classmate you're friends with even though you barely crossed paths! It's not weird at all." And we said "Makes sense."

Why engagement's dropping across social media

But in that same period, social media's been whittling away at our ability to reach our own friends, family, and followers, let alone new audiences. The posts you share organically, meaning without taking out an ad or paying to boost the post, reach less than 5% of the people who already follow you. (Except for LinkedIn, which reaches an estimated 10-15% of your audience, but in terms of letter grades, that's still an F, my friends.)

Social media stopped being a free digital bulletin board in 2011. That's the last time you had any control over your newsfeed before algorithms took over. Now, if you want to make sure the people you're connected to actually see what you're sharing, you need to pay.

It's one of the ways the platforms make money, aside from profiting off our data to the tune of billions of dollars in ad revenue.

This is why I tell my clients that they can't let social media play referee between them and their audience. It's not a digital bullhorn anymore, it's a pay-to-play scheme, and in my personal opinion it's kind of extortion.

It would be one thing if they were transparent about it, but I'm pretty sure you never got an email from Instagram telling you about this new arrangement. If no one tells you the rules of the game have changed, you're not playing the game, you're getting played.

For woman-owned businesses, who typically have less investment capital and less revenue to work with, the cost is even steeper. When you've got less cash to work with, you're already limited in how much you can pay to reach more of your followers.

How to reclaim your audience from social media

Here's the good news: you can reach more of your audience without paying a broker's fee to Meta, LinkedIn, or TikTok.

This is what I'm on a mission to help more women do.

I help clients think differently about the role social media plays in their business. Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience in digital marketing, I:

• analyze how vulnerable they are to social media's shenanigans

• create new strategies that help them reduce exposure to social media risk

• coach them to build systems they can manage at scale

• help them reclaim their time, money, and headspace from the hamster wheel of content creation for social channels

Because I've managed social channels for businesses before.

I've seen first hand how much time and effort it takes to create content—3 to 5 times per week, per channel—only to watch your metrics fall flat. I know the frustration of following a formula that worked great last week but is suddenly nose-diving today. I've watched businesses with a healthy budget blow cash on ads and boosted posts, and then scratch their heads when sales still fell below expectations.

And I can make sure none of that stresses you out as much as it does today. If you're tired of social media holding your own audience for ransom from you, contact me. I'd love to help.