I talk about this often: If you post bitter political links in your Facebook profile, I’m going to hide you. My goal with social media is not to have a bunch of angry people yelling their dogma at me. And guess what…I’m not the only one.
The sad thing for those people who I hide is that they still think I’m following them. We’re still friends, but I see nothing they post. They see their friendship count at 1,000 people and think those are all a captive audience. So when they want prayer for something or want to share a new business venture, they think their platform is 1,000 people, eager to listen to them. It’s not. Even the people who haven’t hid them are probably so annoyed by the posts already that they wouldn’t bother to respond to a request like that.
Some people build their following by posting extremely biased content or ranting about the latest political situation. I get that. But the diversity in their platform is non-existent. They might have a lot of followers, but they’ll never be able to sway someone’s opinion. I don’t consider that a platform.
I don’t know about you, but I want a real platform. I want a group of people who trust and respect me enough that I could actually drop a new idea into their head and have it take root. I don’t want to lose that opportunity simply to scratch an itch of wanting to criticize our latest president or the latest hot-button issue.
I’m not perfect at this. I still fall prey every now and then. But I try to remind myself daily…my platform is not the place to air my dirty laundry. It’s a place to invest in people and garner respect.
What are you doing with your platform? You have one…are you using it wisely?
