Are you among the millions who would love a more substantial social media presence? You may own a company or represent a brand and want to use social media as a marketing opportunity. Or maybe you just want to get boxes of free stuff to review, and you know unlocking 100,000 followers is the key. Regardless of our situation, most of us would like to utilize social media. It makes sense; you can access a billion people from your hand, primarily for free. 

But there is a snag: you look at all your favorite accounts, and as you scroll, fear and anxiety wash over you – you can never do what they do. They curate their feeds with just the content the audience seems to love. Every post is perfect. Every reel edited. You can overcome this! So you buy that course, that the Instagram ad algorithm says you should. You watch a quarter of the content and feel a mix of inspired and overwhelmed. You think it must be the editing app they use, so you try all of them. Maybe you buy a book on planning your content calendar for a year. 

One thing is clear: you must plan and prepare, and you can start posting later. After all, this represents you! It portrays your brand! It has to be good. great. perfect. 

Enough! Give me the hack…

Okay, okay. I hear what you are saying; enough of the problem, you are all too familiar with it already. So here is the hack: stalk your favorite accounts. It is not like a casual glance through; I want you to scroll back—all the way back. (Just be careful to either like all the old posts or none of them 😂).

The truth is, your favorite influencers and brands went through an awkward phase of just starting, too. Many have never returned to erase that puppy-paws stage when they were tumbling over themselves, trying to balance it all and find what worked. This is your real inspiration: not what the best of the best are doing today but how they started. 

You will be inspired when you watch the blurry image of their SM presence become focused. You will give yourself grace for the awkward first steps. You will see that you need to look 10 feet in front of you, not 1 mile. We need more slow success stories and a lot of them are still online to look at.

We all want to go viral, but sitting around crafting that perfect post doesn’t do it. 

Real Life Storytime

I think of Marc Scibilia, a musician I have followed for over ten years (not on social media, just like the old-fashioned way when you add music to your library). Maybe a year ago, I started to follow him on Instagram; I think he had around 33,000 followers then. Marc posted great content, but nothing was hitting compared to his talent (he is extremely gifted, but sometimes raw talent isn’t enough for the algo). 

Then, one day, he posted a simple reel saying “music isn’t a hobby; it is his whole life” while showing off his beautiful studio space. The algorithm loved it, and people loved it even more. It went viral. His followers doubled, then tripled, quadrupled and have continued to grow. Now his real content, not the on-a-whim post, is getting traction. At the time of writing this, he has over 512,000 followers! 

Why am I telling you this? If Marc hadn’t started with awkward baby steps at some point, he never would’ve posted the reel that created his following. He wouldn’t have cultivated the skills to find what works and what doesn’t (hint: it isn’t going to stay static). He could have planned and planned the perfect post, but without experimenting he would never have gone viral. In other words, he had to start. He had to create. He had to get posting.

Oh yeah, and if you scroll back in Marc’s feed, you will find that his posts weren’t always edited and titled. He too had to find his footing. So if you are a musician and look at his current Instagram, don’t get depressed, scroll back and watch his journey unfold.

Wrapping it All Up

So you want to use social media, great. It is a good idea, but you have to start. So go back and stalk all your favorite follows. Scroll so hard to the beginning of their feeds that your fingers get blisters. Spy on what starting out looked like for them. Take notes on their journey, and then put down the books, courses, and content planner and start posting! 

Takeaways: 
Two social media hacks: 

1. Don’t obsess over perfect; stalk your favorite influencers and brands to see what starting out looks like.
2. Take the first step today, post something, and find your voice as you go. In the end, an organic evolution will always beat the pre-planned perfect posts in the algorithm anyway.