I hate social media, but I had to do it

[Bert06840]

Darn it. Lost a long post, will re-type an abbreviated one.

After being on the road for a few months, there are two sorts of reactions that we get.

1. IS THIS EVEN LEGAL?
2. THIS IS SO COOL!

Luckily, the second one is much more prevalent...

Surpisingly, we get asked ALL THE TIME for our social media feeds. We don't do instagram, youtube, we don't have a blog, and no website. It's not our thing.

Yesterday I got asked four times, and got a note under the windshield. Two actually. "You on instagram? DM me!"

OK. So i caved in and created an account. I read up 15 minutes in a "instagram for dummies" sort of corner of the web, put up a bunch of pictures. That was 12 hours ago. 151 people have hit like, so I guess there is some sort of interest??

Anyone have any advice on how to do this right? I'm trying to alternate one technical post with a lifestyle sorta post.

http://www.instagram.com/hackabus

If you got an opinion, let me know...

[rossvtaylor]

Hey Bert, I like what you've got there already. A nicely blended mix of topics.

I'm certainly no social media expert. I don't have any personal accounts. But I did build a sizable following for the food biz my wife and I started. A fairly well-known friend of mine once told me, "you ain't **** on Instagram until you've got 10,000 followers." I remember when I texted her to say, "We're half a ****!" .

https://www.instagram.com/FatIsSmartFuel/

By being "real" and posting things I thought were interesting or relevant, without lots of hype, we grew that to over 10K in pretty quick time. Yay, Eva, we're a full **** now! Haha. Anyway, I tell you this because we did this with no social media experience and, probably more importantly, we didn't read any of the books on how to grow a brand or presence. When the high-dollar marketing people took over the account and the posts started to look like every other brand or "style of the day" the growth slowed noticeably. Lately, new folks are running that and the posts have returned to the more natural, less-salesy (my new made up word) style and now it's creeping up on 30K. We always noticed that organic posts got much more engagement than the photoshopped junk.

So, bringing this back to your page, I think you're on the right track already.

EDIT to add:

Despite my reluctance to spend time on social media, like you, we've recently been "motivated" to start a YouTube channel about the stuff we're doing now. I'm pleasantly surprised that we already have 650+ subscribers and almost 2000 hours of watch time, in not much more than a month. Again, like our approach to the food biz social media, we bucked the trend and purposely didn't do all "the right things" the consultants or experts said we had to do. I apologize to any marketing folks here...and this is a broad generalization, I know, which doesn't apply to all. But the experience we had with lots of marketing experts was that they were really good at marketing themselves and their services. I think the same applies to formulaic books and guides on the right way to do things. I recommend you just do what you like and what feels good to you. That will get you loyal followers.