I Lived On LinkedIn For 14 Months Until I Didn't: Part 4 - I Took A Long Break And Here's What I've Missed
Mirella Scalise
I'm About Business But I'm About People First~100% Genuine Leader~Lifelong Learner & Teacher ~Bringing Authentic Brands To Life~Career Marketer~Corporate Businesswoman~Operational Excellence
It took me two years to come back with part 4 because it took me two years to come back (and in moderation).
Like many other things in life, taking breaks to reflect and reset is never a bad thing. I truly believe in moderation and that also applies to social media. But it can also take absolute hold of us which I don't consider a good thing!
A few years back, I lived on LinkedIn daily for hours at a time, for almost a year and half. I was looking for income-generating opportunities and LinkedIn made perfect sense to me. After all, it is a professional networking platform, where it is/was assumed that everyone conducts themselves professionally (more on this in subsequent article posts).
In previous articles, I discussed how the platform started showing a more human existence, where bios and profiles were not just mere words, but were backed up by amazing people. Human connections were formed and the platform became less 'professional' and more down-to-earth, more human. Until the shift went to the extreme (and almost every other post was about how LinkedIn is not Facebook).
A mass wave of people became content creators (there are pros and cons to this and I will be sharing my thoughts in subsequent article posts), people were tagging other people (there are also pros and cons to this and I will be sharing my thoughts in subsequent article posts), people started to showcase themselves as more than just bios and resumes (this was/is quite refreshing) and the LinkedIn platform came alive!
Anyone who spends time on social media knows that the best way to garner support (which often leads to more connections/follower counts) is to engage on other peoples' posts. Is an hour a day of doing this enough? Well it really depends on the person's objectives. What are they trying to achieve? With so much importance placed on connection and follower counts, not to mention peoples' general competitive nature, the desire to increase metrics can also increase peoples' time spent online (to the tune of many, many hours a day).
And yes social media burnout is actually a thing!
More engagement, more tagging, more posting and while in general terms, this seems harmless enough, I saw first hand how out-of-control it made some people, compromising their integrity, their ethical standards and in some cases, peoples' need for validation impacted their mental health.
For me, LinkedIn has always been a part of my social media mix; maintaining an updated profile, sharing posts while supporting others' posts albeit more infrequently than I used to. I became more active on Facebook (since I started a weekly podcast-type show that live streams on Facebook) as well as Instagram. I've also dabbled on YouTube and will likely add Twitter and TikTok to the mix as part of my branding / marketing strategies for the various projects I'm either involved in or will be starting in 2022.
So what has changed from then to now?
I'm on social media on my terms, at my own pace, without it holding me hostage, without the urgency that I need to 'keep up with the joneses', that if I don't show up on social media, that I'm not of value or that people will forget about me.
My value comes from within, it always has, and if that matters to others, they won't forget about me. But if they do, that's okay - I just hope my presence on social media and in their lives at that time will have helped them even in a small way :)
So what have I missed on LinkedIn in the almost two years since I wrote my last article?
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Absolutely nothing!
Except perhaps more polls (which I know some people think are oversaturing the platform and in some ways, they might be right), however we always have the option to scroll through if we choose to :) Heck I might even start some myself and/or maybe I will continue with my back-to-basics old school type posts where I share as much wisdom and inspiration via all the experiences I've been through in life, business and relationships :)
I may not get the numbers on my posts as I used to (I was averaging hundreds per post at one point) but that's because I don't post as often, I don't engage as often, I don't tag hundreds of people and I'm not part of pods.
It's not because I'm not supportive, it's because I'm extremely supportive and would rather support others in their real life situations (which I've spent a lot of time doing) than to spend countless hours a day on social media hitting the like button.
So maybe something has actually changed from then to now.
Maybe I have become a better judge of online character and prefer to help genuine and kind-hearted people rather than bolster vanity metrics for those people who pretend to care about others but really just care about themselves.
To everyone who has been there on my journey (on and off social media) and continue to be, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. You have all helped me in more ways than you'll ever know xoxo
If you want to learn more about me and my journey (on and off LinkedIn), feel free to catch up on a few articles I've written on here :)
In the meantime, here are parts 1 to 3 as a prequel to this article today.
https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/what-living-linkedin-land-14-months-taught-me-part-3-scalise
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