Thanks to David Hopkins for this excellent headline as I copied it from his recent blog post. (I hope he doesn’t mind). I’ve been reading his blog posts for some years and his recent one resonated.

Many of his posts seem to me, to follow the same questions that I had been going through for the last six months when I decided to delete my social media accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram) and “commit professional suicide” (as some people have told me).

Luckily, I didn’t listen to them – although I was worried for a while in case they were right. Let’s just say I had some sleepless nights because I knew no one else in their right mind would do what I did despite wanting to. (Some have told me that they would love to do what I did but simply cannot because of the level of personal investment into the platform to build their following, network or business). That’s because they use social media to market and broadcast their products, services and expertise to their followers. It was the way they could make sure their work was shared, promoted and amplified across their network.

I understood their predicament.

After all, as someone who used social networks to build a reputation and a profile in the field of corporate learning and development, me choosing to permanently delete social media meant that it affected and impacted my own identity.

Who WAS I now?

Hell, I used to RUN workshops and events as well as SPEAK at national and international conferences about Twitter and using social media for building your personal learning networks.

So where does this leave me now if I don’t have social media?

Have I lost my professional credibility too?

Can you see the dilemma I had to work through for the last six or so months?

Let me add that the process of “letting go” was pretty hard. I had to face some hard truths about my work, myself and the social media addiction.

Let’s call it out for what it is. Don’t deny it. We all love to put our ideas out there, we love to get the feedback through Likes and Follows, we like to find like-minded people and pretend strangers are our friends.

I’ve gone through some major self-reflection in that time to tease out a lot of things about why it got to the point where I had to do this drastic action – and what I learned about myself in the process.

David’s last post, I Don’t Need to Tweet This resonated with me when I first got off Twitter in June 2022 because there were many times I was caught out with wanting to say something or share a photo of something but I had no Twitter so the experience left me “wanting”. A bit empty.

Tweet this

Of course now, I have this blog but it means that I share photos and videos of everything – not just learning related. Besides, I don’t even know who reads or follows this blog and having conversations about what I share isn’t as seamless as a tweet once was.

All of a sudden there are…. obstacles. I’ve had to get comfortable with the feeling that I don’t always need to share everything and anything.

But also the question, WHY do I feel compelled to share it?

I’ve had to get comfortable with the fact that people:

• Will not see my stuff
• Will not engage with me
• Will not share my blogs and my work
• Will not be able to connect with me easily
• Will not be able to find me quickly
• Will not know what I stand for anymore
• Will not know who I’m connected with

In a nutshell, I too questioned, like David did, “Do We Really Want to be Social?”

After all, when you start to delete your social media accounts, you’re also removing your followers. I didn’t say that I removed my ‘personal learning network’ because from my thousands of followers, I had trawled through these and selected the top 150 in my network (Dunbar’s number).

From these 150, I sent personal DMs, emails and text messages (if I knew their numbers), to let them know that I was deleting my accounts and that if they wanted to maintain a connection with me, I shared my mobile number and email address (to those who responded affirmatively) to keep in contact.

Many did not respond. Therefore, this gave me the answer I needed with regards to whether I was valuable or not to them.

It was an eye opener to realise that out of a massive following, there was only a TINY percentage of that who wanted to remain in contact. That should tell you something about who your friends are online.

So with those who accepted, I’m now connected with through DM apps and have had deeper and more meaningful conversations because after all, some of them hadn’t been on Twitter for a while so I started to question, what’s the point of using Twitter anyway?

Mark Carrigan explains it better in his recent post Requiem for a Tweet – Is there a future for the academic social capital held on the platform? In this post, he shares his thoughts about the impact of deleting Twitter to academics and how we may have focussed on one platform at the expense of other alternatives which means that academics are now scrambling to build this up again on another platform like Mastodon.

For me, all I see is people doing the same thing all over again rather than taking a break and reassessing what and why they need social media – and if they do, how can they use it differently to how they were using it in the past.

Part of me wonders if people have also moved to other platforms such as LinkedIn (which is HUGE in the corporate and business world) but even that platform is owned by Microsoft – a private company. Given that the majority of businesses and organisations are Microsoft shops, they have access now to all workers information, career and skill profiles, plus can see who you’re connected with. Many people and industries such as sales and recruiters use LinkedIn data to sell products, services and find candidates for job positions. Imagine that going down….!! (I’d like to see that).

Regardless, I believe that what’s happening at Twitter could be seen as an opportunity for some. A chance to do something different – to reconsider alternative approaches and to change behaviours especially when it comes to relying on single platforms.

You just have to have courage that you can find another way – and not to discount ideas that could be seen as ‘old fashioned or luddite’ such as incorporating blends of online and offline approaches; teaching others how to find and where to find you; using emails, creating physical objects and assets and meetups.

Time to be different and stand out – but at the same time, claim your own bit of online territory that is yours and yours alone.

Find ways for people to come to you, to seek you out, and then welcome them into your space.

I’m glad this happened to Twitter. It’s a wake up call for the rest of us.

Photo by greenwish _ on Pexels.com