No Is Forever
Social media makes growing an audience a lot easier than older methods. It carries a heavy downside risk that a lot of people don't seem to be aware of. To explain it, I need to establish some basic definitions.
Social media is niche media. It's conversational. Structurally, it's the antithesis of mass media, of broadcast.
Communications theory talks of "push" and "pull."
Push is broadcast. Push is advertising. Push is why fast-forward is disabled in On Demand programming. Push is "show it to them even if they don't want to see it." Push is the spam in your inbox that your filters can't screen out. Push succeeds when only a miniscule percentage of the people who see the message respond to it positively. Negative responses are irrelevant.
Pull is not.
It's you choosing, white listing, and black listing content based on what you want to see, read, hear. Social media is pull. All social media - Twitter, FB, Instagram, your blog - is pull. Ads aren't effective, because ads are push. The promise of a few million people broken down by the seventeen circles of Hell demographics fails because social media - all social media - is pull. I only see the messages I want to see there. I only see the people I want to see. Pull succeeds when a large percentage of the people who see the message respond to it positively.
Negative responses are fatal.
That structural reality controls how you reach potential readers, potential customers.
Think of that hypothetical reader out there in the aether. They’re looking for something fun, something interesting, something engaging. They find you instead.
It could happen. Maybe you made a witty comment on somebody's Instagram image. Maybe you inadvertently made an interesting tweet. Perhaps you are both members of a FB group.
Serendipity rules.
So they follow or like you and your content now appears in their streams. This is the "yes" but yes is conditional. As long as you keep the yes alive, the hypothetical reader will continue to see your messages.
But what if you step over the line? What if you post something stupid or mean? What if you post too many "read my blog" or “buy my book” links? What if you make it a point to ask people to do something for you once a month? Or once a week? Or once a day? What if all you do is ask people to do something for you? Your calls-to-action result in blocks and not conversion.
Then yes becomes no. You get unfriended and unfollowed. Possibly banned.
Once that happens you are plucked from that hypothetical reader's streams and it doesn't matter how good the next post is, how viral the next link might be, the hypothetical reader will never see it. You're not simply ignored. You're shunned.
And once that happens, that hypothetical reader is lost to you. Not just for this week. Not just until the next post.
Lost.
Because yes is conditional, but no is forever.
