Keep Yourself Accountable With Social Media: What Worked For Me

I don’t know about you, but I often find myself wanting to try new skills like learning a new language, an instrument, baking and so much more. I want to adopt a new healthier routine, discover more hobbies, but can’t always find the willpower and motivation to get started and keep at it.

One of those things for me is also exercising. If exercising is not something that is very fun for you, getting started is the most challenging part. Over the years, I have tried a few ways to kick myself in the behind and found that using social media can sometimes be beneficial. Here are a few tricks that have helped me, that may also help you to get and, hopefully, stay motivated!

1. Find a group of friends with the same goals

One thing that has worked for me is enlisting the help of friends and community members that I care about to help each other be accountable.

When I was on a dance team, we would help each other remain accountable using Snapchat. We would Snap a silly photo of ourselves completing some form of workout outside of dance practice, and send it to the others as both entertainment and a way to remind the others that they should get up and get moving too.

Snapchat is a great tool for this because the photos you post don’t remain anywhere unless you want them to. We also created a group chat for the people who wanted to participate in friendly bouts of peer pressure to get up and do something, while not bothering those who did not want to participate.

2. Find a community you care about

It’s so much easier to ignore and forget notifications and messages from people that you do not know or really care about. That’s why it’s important to find people that are like-minded, that you get along with or that you know will be able to push you properly when you can’t do it yourself. If you don’t have a community of the sort just yet, there are a ton of places where you can find a community that is right for you, you just have a look around a little bit.

I personally like to use Reddit a lot for communities of interest. Here are a few of the ones that I like exploring:

r/selfimprovement

r/languagelearning

Go explore what’s out there and talk to people. Sometimes seeing others who are just like us reach goals we are also aiming for makes it seem that much more attainable. If you are doing a specific challenge, there may be a hashtag you can search on Instagram too to find people who are doing the same thing as you. You can find motivation from those other people and maybe a community for yourself.

I used to do Chloe Ting workouts, and there were hashtags that could be used when people tried out and posted themselves taking on her different workouts. There was also a lot of support from her community for new starters.

3. Try not to overwhelm yourself

The biggest takeaway I think for myself was not to try to do everything at once. It’s hard to break a habit and create new ones. If we change too many things at once it can be very overwhelming, you get tired and then fall back into the traps of old well-worn habits.

Pick one or two things that you want to change, and go from there. For starters, it can be as seemingly simple as start doing something physical 3 times a week, and eat more homemade meals instead of eating takeout. If forming healthy habits is your goal, every little thing counts.

Once those are more ingrained habits, then try to add more work out days per week, and maybe start choosing recipes that are more health conscious. Taking it step by step is really the key to success.

I know those tips may sound really easy and simple, but for me those are things that worked. I like using different social media applications because it keeps me connected to people, and since working out and getting healthy is a bit challenging, I like knowing that I have a support system at the tips of my fingers when I need it.

I hope this can help, even just one person take a step in a direction they’ve been considering for a long time. How do you keep yourself accountable when trying to change some habits or learn new skills? Do you use social media?

Best of luck out there, I believe in you!

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Facebook

Keeping yourself accountable can be really hard. Here is what worked for me.

Twitter

Easy tips to keep yourself accountable! #selfimprovement

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Targeted Marketing, Are They Listening to You?

Source

Have you ever talked about something with a friend and then had ads for it popping up on social media apps like Facebook or Instagram shortly after? It sometimes feels like someone is listening to us and serving us what we asked for (or sometimes did not ask for) on a very conveniently located plater right in our scrolling path.

It can seem kind of freaky to some, but personally I find that fascinating. I have fallen victim to perfectly timed ads for items I don’t really need but am curious enough about to open the link for later, or impulsive enough to throw my money at immediately. So how do they do it? The Facebook and Instagram higher ups get asked often enough if they are actively listening to us, and they keep repeating that they are not, but then how do they do it?

Well, according to McNut&Patners, they’re not so much listening as they are tracking your online behavior, and making connections to lead you in the general direction of things that may interest you. They’ll track what you interact with, posts and pages you’ve liked and shared, the people you connect with, both online and physically, your geolocation. They’ll trace you back to the people you spend time with and what they like too. They will connect all the dots, pick up all the breadcrumbs you leave behind and have a model of what target demographic you fit in pretty darn accurately.

Basically, it means that you don’t have to say exactly what it is that you’re looking for, because you will have led them there by your actions instead. This is just a facet of why knowing your audience, listening to your target demographic, and truly paying attention to them can open up worlds of possibilities for organizations and brands on social media platforms. On the flip side, it also shows people that being safe online can take a bit more work than setting up a password and forgetting about everything else, but that is a whole other topic that will have to be broached another time!

If you want to learn a bit more about how targeted marketing works, I’d suggest having a read through of the links below. Maybe it will make you change some of your online habits, maybe it won’t, but it’s always good to at least better understand what’s going on.

• Why We See Digital Ads After Talking About Something (same as link posted above)
• Is Facebook listening to me? Why those ads appear after you talk about things

Personally, as a mildly embarrassed but very pleased new owner of not one, but two very cool lightsabers, I don’t think my habits will be changing all that much. I genuinely enjoy discovering things that I do end up liking because the algorithm has me pegged pretty solidly.

What are your thoughts on this? Anyone else helpless to try these catered products that are present to them?

One day this might be me at this rate…

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Facebook

Is Facebook listening to you? Find out about targeted ads and how they work.

Twitter

Is Facebook listening to you? #targetedmarketing

https://bit.ly/3vrg1mN

Hashtag and Trend Missteps: What You See Is Not Always What It Seems!

Have you ever seen someone post something and immediately facepalmed? I know I have, and as much as it can be entertaining to watch the fallout, it also sort of feels like watching a train wreck.

Trends and viral sensations are ever present these days. They have the potential to shoot you to instant internet fame, even if only for 15 minutes. Some trends seem easy to hop onto, such as dance challenge videos like the floss, or hashtag challenges like Jimmy Fallon’s #DescribeAMovieBadly on twitter.

Hashtags are super fun. They’re a good way to interact with a wide range of people on a shared interest or topic. They can also however be a little bit tricky. The intended use is not always the most obvious meaning behind the hashtag, and this is where some people can land themselves in hot water.

Here are a few examples of some spectacular trend blunders that could have been avoided with just a little more time spent on research.

That one time a pizza company decided to jump on a domestic violence awareness hashtag to promote their product:

Example of a brand using a trending topic without understanding the context #Advertising #SocialMedia #WhyIStayed pic.twitter.com/iTSmfaT6Xv

— Scott Paul (@scottfpaul) September 9, 2014

A million apologies. Did not read what the hashtag was about before posting.

— DiGiorno (@DiGiorno) September 9, 2014

Or that one time a baked goods company hopped on a very controversial murder trial verdict hashtag:

Source

Source

An honest mistake followed by an honest apology goes a long way, but this could have been prevented by just looking into what people were using the hashtag for, and doing some research to ensure your audience will be receptive of your content.

This goes for any platform really. On TikTok recently there was this trend going around where girls share two looks they know to recognize and give their friends when going out: the ”Oh, he’s cute!”, and the ”Oh god please help me!”. This was a trend from girls for other girls, but others tried to hop on, and in some cases it came off as a little tone deaf to some.

@houseofbrooklyn

What’s the difference?

♬ Tainted Love – Soft Cell

@bene.schulz

Tell me in the comments #looks #party

♬ Tainted Love – Soft Cell

A reminder that in this house we do not condone online bullying or harassment. This particular TikTok was used as an example for the aforementioned trend hopper, please do not interact with this creator’s content if it’s out of anger.

Admittedly this one is not nearly as bad in the grand scheme of things, but it does show that sometimes it’s all about finding the right balance of social awareness while joining trends, and not muddling the message originally intended. Some trends are for all, some are for specific groups of people to create a space where they can freely share their story or express themselves and feel heard, some are for movements.

Before hopping on a seemingly innocuous trend, it’s best to find out what it’s really about first. Take 5 minutes to research instead of scrambling to save face afterwards.

As for you, dear reader, was there ever a trend you remember seeing that had you baffled as to why this particular subject was trending? What was your reaction?

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Facebook post:

How taking 5 minutes to research a trend can save you a world of trouble. Hashtag and Trend Missteps: What You See Is Not Always What It Seems!

Twitter post:

Avoiding Hashtag and Trend Missteps #socialmediafails

https://bit.ly/3v426D4

3 Things I Wish I Knew Before my Official Page Went Dark

Running an official page can be tricky. Looking back on it now, there is so much we could have done to help increase our presence online. I hope others can learn from our experience and that the few points I’ll be sharing may help someone else boost their following! Hi, my name is MP and during my university years, myself and some friends used to run a K-pop cover dance troop called Kapital K-Dance.

[Screenshot of Kapital K-Dance’s last post]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/KapitalKDance

First, a little background. This all started as a fun dance project, and it developed into offering free dance classes on the weekends. We quickly grew a solid group of people who faithfully showed up every week. Fast forward a few months later, and we decided we were ready to build a performance team. We started participating in conventions and community events, competitions, and even putting on our own year-end showcases.

Our team and the interest we were garnering in our region’s K-pop community was growing much faster than any of us could have predicted, but we still had the time of our lives. We were very much learning as we went along, which is partly why we made some mistakes with our online presence.

1. Promoting from a Facebook group instead of an official page

[Screenshot of Kapital K-Dance’s Open Classes group header]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/groups/132776090193283

If you are unfamiliar with terms such as event, group or page in Facebook speak, I highly recommend having a quick look at this website first.

Facebook was the easiest way to connect with a lot of people at the time, so that was our base of operations. The dance troop was supposed to be small and just for fun, so we initially started creating events for our dance classes and meetups in a Facebook group. The official Facebook page was only created later on.

Promoting our classes from this group is something we should have stopped doing as soon as it started really gaining traction. We got our logo, created an official email address, the official Facebook page, and our Instagram account all in a relatively short span of time. That’s when we should have shifted our focus on creating our events directly from the official page before sharing them to the group, instead of the other way around.

For comparison’s sake, this is an example of the system we ended up working with: We would first create the event for the dance class in our Facebook group, then we would share it on our Facebook page, and then essentially share it once again on Instagram by creating a post using the same format and information.

Highlighted in the following screenshots are some indicators of the level of engagement each post garnered.

Facebook event created in the Kapital K-Dance’s Open Classes public group

[Screenshot of a Kapital K-Dance open class event]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/KapitalKDance/posts/1399754793386698

The same event shared through the official Kapital K-Dance Facebook page

[Screenshot of a Kapital K-Dance open class event shared through the official page]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/KapitalKDance/posts/1399754793386698

Instagram post promoting it

[Screenshot of a Kapital K-Dance open class event announcement]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/BLkdrSdjgNx/

The original post from the Facebook group got a much higher response rate and much more engagement than the other two posts about the same event. We had a decent crowd attend this particular class, so there was no reason these people weren’t directly interacting with the official page other than us accidentally misusing our tools.

Actual class attendance for that event

[Screenshot of a Kapital K-Dance open class attendance photo]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/BLpXA39DGiG/

2. Not having a defined voice

As you can see from the above photos, we posted practically the same thing across all our different accounts, and it made things very bland and interaction opportunities were minimal at best. Now mind you, we had no idea what we were doing, we just knew that it was probably a good idea to promote our team on Instagram as well as on Facebook, and so we gave it a go.

If these pages were still active today, I believe we should have tried to post different content to appeal to our different audiences. For starters:

• Using Facebook as a place to share information posts about events, shows, and ask questions
• Using Instagram to post fun content and interact with our followers more personally

Other than sharing our events in a roundabout way, we also should have left all the promotional posts to be hosted on the Facebook page alone.

We should have instead invited people to engage in the Instagram posts by sharing videos of the classes (with the participants’ consent). It would have permitted the participants to watch themselves and their friends dancing to a song they knew well and enjoyed. We had them participate in polls on the Facebook group to vote for which numbers they wanted to learn next, that could have been done through Instagram too. The class photos could still have been posted to up our content, and then shared on the official Facebook page too.

A big problem we encountered is that we were missing the human aspect on our posts and did not actively encourage engagement. Our year-end showcase poster and pictures should have been close to the only promotional picture posts we shared on Instagram. Otherwise, what we saw happen is that the account remained very two dimensional and did not encourage people to interact.

3. Incongruences in branding and use of hashtags

This one was not as flagrant because we were only active in a very niche market, but it’s still good practices for the future. The Facebook page name (Kapital K-Dance) and the Instagram account name (kkdofficial) were not the same, and even though Kapital K-Dance was very commonly known as KKD, it had the potential to create some confusion down the line had we kept going.

We never knew to build a style guide for posting on social media. Adding to that, we had approximately 6 different people throughout our time as an active organization managing the Facebook account, and about 3 for the Instagram account. There was surprisingly little collaboration between the parties and no actual promotional plan. Trying to cast a wider net we accidentally misused hashtags and did not pick a specific one for our brand: #kkd, #KKD, as well as #kapitalkdance all made an appearance at some point.

We were kind of posting willy-nilly as need arose with no plan to grow our brand or engage with the public.

The more I learn about social media, the more I realize there is SO MUCH to it. We ultimately called it quits because the older crowd was leaving university to go lead ‘’adultier lives’’ and did not have the time to manage a still growing organization. I’m taking this experience as something to look back on and learn from. If I started working in social media, I know there are mistakes that I wouldn’t make again because this experience helped me to better learn how to manage my tools and how to identify some of the obstacles I’ll probably be facing.

Some additional resources I would HIGHLY recommend people look into are How to Create the Ultimate Social Media Style Guide and A Simple Guide to Using Hashtags on Twitter. Those two resources really helped me to identify some easy to fix mistakes we were making, and some relatively easy changes that could have a drastic impact on an organization’s social media presence.

If this could help even one person, then I’m glad I wrote it 😊

For those of you also running official accounts, any takeaways you’d like to share?

Facebook Post:

Hindsight is such a powerful tool, here are 3 Things I Wish I Knew Before my Official Page Went Dark

Twitter Post:

3 things to avoid when starting out on #socialmedia

https://bit.ly/3AN45xV