Last week, I shared my insight into different social media platforms. While most of it was true, it was also pretty light-hearted. This week I realized there was something more important to be said.
As I made clear last time (and probably just in general!) I’m a pretty introverted person — the type to think over a comment three times before saying it, if I eventually do say it. More often than not, I don’t even get that far! Usually I say that’s why I prefer writing as a method of communication: I get to edit and say exactly what I mean. But when it comes to social media, that’s not really true.
Even though my social media input is all written (I haven’t ventured into video yet), I still overthink every tiny comment, and I still let most opportunities for commenting pass me by. I’m plagued by doubts: would anyone want to hear my comment? Am I inserting myself where I have no right to be? Do I really know enough about this topic to share?
Now, a lot of the business & writing gurus I follow have an answer to these questions. “Your voice matters!” they say. “Everyone has a story to share!” And I think that’s nice. It’s probably true, too. 🙂 But for some reason it wasn’t really sinking in for me.
Instagram is actually the platform that showed me another way to think about this. Because it’s photo-based (harder to start arguments!), and because I follow awesome people (the cozy mystery community is wonderful), my Instagram feed was full of positivity from the very beginning. And the cool thing abut kindness and excitement is that you don’t have to be an expert in anything to share them. You don’t even have to know all of the people or topics involved. After a few weeks of lurking, I started making small comments — literally just things like “that’s lovely!” and “so cool, I want to read that book too!”. And it worked.
Now, Instagram is by far my favorite platform, and I actually have made friends there. And that’s building my confidence. Essentially, all along I’ve been practicing speaking up.
So, what’s the takeaway here? To me, the important thing is not that your comments be “worthy,” but that they share something. Kindness, positivity, help, sympathy. There’s always room in the world for more of those things. Almost everyone wants likes and comments on their posts: by interacting, you are helping them out. And when it comes to posting your own content, you’ll find that suddenly you have a crowd of people interested in helping you out, too.
At least, that’s what I tell myself when the doubts kick in. 🙂
