Pursue Authenticity, Not Algorithms

Ditch the social media uniform and dress for your own success

Photo by Veronica Benavides on Unsplash

Social media feels like my childhood Catholic school uniform: boring, conformist, and a requirement. 

Like being forced to wear only red, white, or blue polo shirts with a hideous plaid skirt, being present on social media is an outfit that I feel pressured to wear as an entrepreneur. I’m just swapping polo shirts for formulaic posts, and the plaid skirt for growth-hacking schemes. It doesn't look good on me and I feel ugly in it. But, if I deviate from it, do I risk being kicked out?

Isn’t this how to make it as an entrepreneur? Am I going to be left behind if I don’t get a ring light? Do I need to schedule writing a Tweet thread every day about the same ideas that all the Twitter tech bros are sharing? Do I need to write LinkedIn posts that start with a humblebrag and end with a call-to-action to work with me so you can humblebrag too? 

Marketing is a necessary activity for creating success in any kind of business. And, social media is a key component in every marketing strategy. When I’m helping clients build their brands, they never want to participate in social media. “It’s just not me,” they’ll say. And, I find myself saying the same now that I’m building myself as a brand, too.

The proverbial uniform we are told we have to wear for social media has created a sea of sameness, so it’s hard to feel like ourselves out there. The problem is, success on social media has been reduced to numbers (audience count, number of likes, number of people who commented, etc.). We’ve lost sight of the original intent of social media: to communicate and connect. It’s time to stop chasing algorithms and start chasing authenticity.

How? By finding people who are bucking the trend and achieving success anyway. I like to turn to an author and entrepreneur I’ve admired and followed for a long time, Luvvie Ajayi Jones. 

Luvvie is a social media master who decided to burn the uniform and dress for her own kind of success. I look forward to everything Luvvie posts because:

• She knows who she is (a professional troublemaker)

• She knows who she’s trying to help (aspiring professional trouble makers)

• She creates and shares content that supports her message and beliefs

I’m keeping these three things in mind for myself as I embark on my own social media journey. I trust that if I met Luvvie in person, I’d feel like I’d known her forever, and I want people to feel that way about me, too. I can’t achieve that wearing a uniform. I can only achieve it by embracing my own authenticity. Will it work? I have no idea. But, I’m excited to try.