Can You Just Give it a Rest Already?!

As the Director of a digital marketing agency, I work across multiple platforms every single day. I watch as each and every one of them changes how they do things every single day. I try and keep my followers and clients up to date every single day. I have to keep up with new advances across each of the platforms... every. single. damn. day!

Not to complain (well I am complaining a little, but I promise I am heading to a solution so bear with me).

It really is their world, we are just living in it. But isn't enough, enough already? The last 18 months in social media has been nothing but shifting sands and emotional trauma for small business.

I spend the majority of my time now, not focussed on income producing, strategic creative work for my clients (I've had to hire more team members to do that), but in tech support and education for clients who just can't comprehend the scale of the changes - it breaks my heart.

From trying to remove restrictions, recover disabled accounts and navigating ridiculous AI rejections of advertising for no apparent reason while our accounts lay idle in wait for a miracle resolve... my clients (and I) are just absolutely fed up with social media.

Are you feeling it too? There is a term for it you know... it's called #FacebookFatigue

• It's the overall frustration with social media in all its forms.
• It's the constantly having jumping through shifting hoops to comply with the latest algorithmic challenges for little to no reward.?
• It's being utterly and entirely fed up with all of the updates, bugs, glitches, issues, lockouts, shut downs, rejections, restrictions and everything in between.
• It's literally zero support or care for the issues and challenges they have created.?
• It's allowing ourselves to be conditioned (and manipulated) by the big tech companies, believing that the?only?way to succeed on their platforms is to pay more money for advertising, crank out even?more?content and try all kinds of tricks and hacks to get our stuff seen, to get more reach, to grow our following, etc. etc.?

But hold on, let's not allow ourselves to get dragged down with the negative, can we all please just take a minute and think about a solution that will help us succeed?

We need to stop focusing on how many followers we have, our reach, engagement - basically all of the public facing metrics that business has focused on without hesitation for the duration of the social media revolution.

The subtle change that is rarely being talked about in social circles, is that we need to get back to focusing on metrics that matter, like building genuine contacts, listening, making sales, and growing a sustainable business for the future, not just for now!

"Sure sounds great!" I hear you say, swiftly followed by, "but how do we make that happen?"As a digital agency, we need our clients to understand this shift and let us make this happen for them.

More specifically, we need business owners to stop listening to their yoga friends, uncle's, sister's, cousin's, dog walker who is secretly a digital marketing genius that spits out advice in between face kissing their dogs over a latte at the local cafe.

If you are not on social media every day, you are already way behind the game. I am pretty sure I speak on behalf of most agency professionals when I say we spend hours each day training, learning, fixing, understanding and implementing the techniques that work, and we test away the ones that don't, so that we are always working in our client's best interest.

Social is no longer about pushing a massive scatter gun barrel full of irrelevant content at your audience. The 'crank out content' model died out about 5 years ago.?We need to start focusing less on quantity and more on quality. It is strategic, considered, measured and most of all, it's about being proactively and genuinely engaged.

Take the time, know your audience, listen to your community, and engage back with them to develop actual connections. Contrary to popular belief, digital is not going to get you instant gains, so please allow your agency the time, and the budget, to help you do it well, so that we all succeed in this crazy new digital world together.