Episode #23 - Is Social Media Stealing Your Business Joy?

Is Social Media Stealing Your Business Joy?

Are you feeling stuck in the endless scroll of social media, wondering if it’s worth the time and energy? In this episode of The Joy-Led Business Podcast, Tina Joy Cochran unpacks the truth about social media’s role in your business. Is it a tool to grow your dream, or a thief stealing your joy? Discover practical tips to reclaim your time, refocus your energy, and build a business you love—without letting social media run the show.

Listen in to explore how to stay authentic online, prioritize what matters, and use social media in a way that aligns with your faith and values.

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Transcript

Tina Joy 0:01

Hey there, welcome to the Joy Led business podcast. I'm your host, Tina Joy Cochran. I am thrilled that you're here. Sometimes growing a business can ruin your work life balance and make you feel like you have to be someone you're not, but it doesn't have to be that way. Business should incorporate your faith and honor the creative rural lifestyle you cherish. That's why I created this podcast to be your personal business coach in your pocket. Here you'll find Practical tips, insightful interviews, and easy to follow training all crafted to fit seamlessly into your busy life. Whether you're driving, creating, or taking a walk, I'll be right there with you. Now let's dive into this episode and start turning your dreams into reality. I can't wait to share this journey with you. Welcome back to the Joy led business podcast. This is Tina Joy Cochran, your host and your coach. Do you ever struggle with social media? I know I do. And today I was scrolling and this question came up in my mind. Is this really helping my business? You see, I got on Facebook and social media over a decade ago when I started my business. As a way to grow the business. And what I've discovered is that social media is really one of those necessary evils in business, if you will. But what strikes me about that is that unlike marketing, which is also a, necessary evil, if you want to call it that. We tend to avoid marketing and say we hate it, but social media is one of our closest friends. So the question remains, does it really help the business? I would submit that in some ways, it actually ruins your business. What do I mean? Well, first, here's a couple things to note. Social media in a business context is a marketing strategy. It can be an effective one. And what I've noticed is that with my clients and the members of our golden Heartland community, it's kind of the marketing strategy we gravitate to first and most well, why would we use something that could ruin our business because it can also help your business. And it's really about how we use it. So in this episode, we're going to dive deeper into this. In this episode, I'm going to share with you three ways that social media ruins your business. And I'm going to share with you three ways that it helps your business. And then as always, what do we do next? I'm going to share three things that you can do to change the results. But before that, let's pray. Father, thank you that you have created technology that is a double edged sword for us sometimes, but that when we lean in to being joy led with you, that we can find ways to make that technology enhance. the dreams that you have already placed in our hearts and the businesses that you have created for us to grow. Be with us as we walk through this journey and look at both sides of this sword and help us to use it for good to grow things that you would have us grow in Jesus name. Amen. First and foremost, I want to give you a definition when I say social media, what am I talking about? When I talk about social media, I am talking about any platform that is designed for connection and is designed to Network people together. And you use it to promote, engage, or get information about the world or other people. So, it could be Facebook, it could be X, formerly Twitter if you're old like me Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, etc. And some people say YouTube is a social media and just for purposes of clarification, YouTube is actually designed to be a search engine where you can search for video content, more than it is designed to be social media, but we often do not. Think of it as a social media because it tends to, if we're not careful, like social media for us. So, that's what we're talking about when we talk about social media. What are three ways that it can ruin your business? Number one, time. It can be a complete time suck. I don't know about you, it's kind of how we ended up with this podcast episode because I was spending a whole bunch of time scrolling this morning thinking, Huh, am I really doing something effective? Statistics show that on average Americans spend two and a half hours a day On social media and 30 percent of Americans self identify as addicted to social media. Why is that so? Well, we need to come back and we need to understand two things. We need to understand the structure and how social media is designed. And we need to understand a little bit about brain science. So social media is designed as a business, right? It's not free, even though we tend to think of it as free. The reality is it's a business and all of this technology that we love to use for free costs money somewhere. So in order for a social media business to make a living and to make a profit, they have to sell something. So what do they sell? They sell our attention to advertisers. That is really the way social media companies make money. So if what I'm selling is the attention of my users, what do I need to do to make more money? I need to get more users spending more time on it. So by its very nature, social media is designed to keep you on it longer and have you get more people on it. This is not a bad thing. This is completely neutral. This is just facts about what it is. Here's where it gets sticky. When we talk about brain science, one of the things that social media is designed in order to be able to do this is they have designed ways to give us a quote, dopamine hit. Dopamine is the feel good chemical in your brain that makes you want more and it can lead to addictive tendencies and addictive activities. So. When you think about all the bings, and the notifications, and the likes, and the shares, and the comments, and all the activity around social media, it's designed to make your brain go, Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, in dopamine. So, what does that mean? How can it ruin your business? It can ruin your business by keeping you on it all the time so you're not doing anything else. That's number one. Number two, social media can tend to create negativity. There's a new word in our vocabulary, doom scrolling. What does that mean? What that means is that you are spending your time on social media looking at the latest and greatest tragedy, drama, right? And unfortunately, social media will show you more of whatever you're looking at. And that tends to lead to things like sleep disruption. Anxiety, depression, because everything feels awful, and it builds an echo chamber effect. What's an echo chamber effect? That means because you're seeing more and more and more and more and more of the same thing, you start thinking that that's all there is. So we're spending a lot of time, we're creating some negativity, and then the last thing that maybe we don't think about. with social media is that it creates a false sense of connection. So what do I mean by that? Have you ever met someone in person that you are friends with on social media? And when you meet them in person, you have. This instant connection like you already know all these things about them because you've been following each other on social media. But the reality is you've never actually physically met. This happens to me all the time. When I meet people I feel like we already have met, we've already talked, because I follow them on social media and they post what's happening with them. So you're like, hey, how was that vacation? Even though you've never even met them So, there's this false sense of connection, how does that ruin your business? We think we know. We think we know the people, the circumstances around what's true and real in the world. And then we start thinking that we have a right or the experience to have an opinion on other people. The other thing that this does for us that can ruin your business is we start to make assumptions. We make assumptions about what other people think about us, what other people think about our products and our services, and whether or not they will buy them before we've even really connected with them. How do these three things ruin your business combined? When you combine them, you end up spending too much time trying to get people you think, you know, to do things you want them to do. And when it doesn't happen, you feel bad and think the world is against you. Think of, the economy's bad, nobody likes me. It's really easy if you're on social media and not using it effectively and not being mindful about it, it's really easy to get yourself in this place where everybody hates me, nobody likes me, my business won't work, and nobody's gonna buy from me. So that's the bad news. That's that one side of the sword that can cut and hurt bad. And yeah, because of this dopamine thing, if you will, and the belief that we have to for marketing, we keep doing it. Want to hear some good news? The good news is social media can be an effective marketing strategy to help your business. How can it help? Well, you are the number one asset in your business. If you have listened to this podcast for a while, you know that I will spend. a lot of time beating the drum that your business only grows to the level that you do because as the one running the business you are an asset to your business. So how does social media help that? Social media is the perfect practice court for things like boundaries, self control, time management skills, handling distractions well. Being able to create and boundaries as a business owner is important. And social media Yeah, it's always challenging those boundaries, so it gives you a chance to really spend some time mastering your self control time management muscles. And those are critical to running a business. So that's how it can help your business grow, is it actually makes you grow because you're pushing on those self control muscles in order to make it more effective. And that's number one. Number two, positivity. Just like there's a lot of negative on social media. There's a lot of positive content on social media as well. If you actually look for it, there's actually a lot of good things on social media, if you look for them and use them effectively, and it can inspire you, can inspire others, can bring more attention to your business as a positive place to be, if you look for it. There's another way that it can help. It helps you be better at time management and boundaries because it gives you an opportunity to practice that. And it also gives you the opportunity to find positive content and positive people and people that are positive thinking positively. The last thing, and probably the most important thing, and in my opinion, the only reason to do it is connection. There's actually a lot of good things about the connection part of social media. It's the real reason you want to include it in any marketing plan. Social media can be the easiest and least expensive way to connect with customers, community, and the world, especially for us rural business owners. When I first got on social media over a decade ago, I lived in a town of 1700 people. At one point, I was connected to close to 5, 000 people on my social media. That never would have happened without it. It's an hour drive to any place. So social media allows us, who are rural business owners, to have a window into areas that perhaps we would never have reached otherwise. This is especially important when you're talking about your target market. Sometimes your target market doesn't live. In the town you're in social media is the quickest, simplest, easiest, cheapest way to start to reach out to find those people. But here's the dilemma. There are really good things that can happen with social media, and there are really bad things. It's almost like a slot machine in that if you play it long enough, you might get a payout. The trick is to figure out how to not let the house win. So if you want to turn social media from a slot machine to effective marketing tool, we're going to start with these three things. The best part as a joy led business owner, is that we have We have a powerful secret weapon to help us and we don't fight against the house alone. We have the Bible, Holy Spirit, our faith to give us an unfair advantage against the house. So what are three things that you can do to beat the house in social media? Number one. Control your feed. What do I mean? The algorithm is designed to show you more. That's its purpose. That's its nature. Remember everything about social media is to keep you on it. So if you are engaging with something, it's going to show you more of that so that you will stay there and engage more. So use that algorithm to work. For you, not against you comment, like, share, interact with things that will help you find your who, or your ideal client connect with them or be inspired. Stop doom scrolling and use the feed to help renew your mind. Not fill it with junk. Romans 12. 2 says do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Your feed can be transformed too, I promise. I'll give you an example. in my career, I have moved into new communities more than once. What happens when you move into a new community is you don't know anybody, you don't know where anything is. Social media becomes incredibly powerful. When you control your feed, what does that mean? That means I like anything I see local. I start liking what that does is tell social media media. Hey, show me more of what's in the local community. So if you're looking for a specific target market, you want to be liking and commenting and sharing on things that they would like and comment and share on. If you like and comment and share on things your target market also likes, you will start to see more of your target market. If you spend your time arguing about the latest news thing, guess what you're going to get? Which moves us into the second thing you can do to beat the house. Positive thinking. Remember, social media is not your life. Social media is a tool. There are plenty of tools to keep you informed of what is happening in your community and the world. If you choose to use social media as a marketing tool for your business, be very careful about also using it to keep yourself informed about what's happening. Remember, the algorithm shows you. What you engage with. So when you comment, post or share, be positive. My mama used to say, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. The more you add positive, the better your business will be. Don't complain or criticize anything on social media. Why? Well, think about it. What does that do? It does two things. It tarnishes your brand. It tells the public. that your brand will complain and criticize. It also tells the algorithm, please give me more like this. So I can complain more. I like to think of it as an electronic billboard. What you share on social media, both on your personal profile and on your business profile is a reflection of your brand. Make it shiny, uplifting, inspiring, on brand for what you want a joy led business to look like. Philippians 4. 8 says, Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. This, this is the energy that we want your brand to push out on social media. This is the brand we want to project as joy led business owners. And the more we do it, the more the feed for us and for those who follow the business will change. So positive only. Control your feed. Turn it from chaos to positive inspiration. And last but not least, the number one reason. We all need to use social media, connect, connect, connect, connect, connect. For in business. We have something to sell. We are looking for people to buy it. So connections on social media, make them, what do I mean? Not I have 5, 000 friends and I click on the button that says happy birthday, and that's all I do. Use social media to get people off social media. The real power is in the ability to find people, especially rural businesses. The trick to making this work best is to connect online and then deepen the connection offline, privately. As you find your who, you love them into a deeper connection. In Matthew 39, Jesus says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. So what if, when I encounter you on social media, what I find? is a real person who is positive, who is interested in getting to know me and seeing if they can help me with this. What they offer rather than a brand that posts and yells at me, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, or complains about what is happening in the news. It's your choice. I would submit that if you are joy led, you will choose positivity. So let's wrap this up. Social media is here to stay. It's going to change forms. If you're old enough to remember my space, you know that the platforms change. That sometimes Facebook is really popular and sometimes tick tock is popular and sometimes Pinterest and Instagram. It just depends on what's happening in the trends. However, the concept of social media is pretty much here to say, just like email marketing and connecting with people via email. is not going away. I would submit social media is not going away. It is an effective marketing tool if you master it. So how do we master it? Think about the scriptures that we read. We master it by renewing our minds, focusing on the positive, whatever is true, whatever is right, whatever is admirable, whatever is lovely, and then loving people. into connection to make it work better. Okay, where can you find me on social media? Yeah, I'm on social media. I will tell you honestly, I made a choice a long time ago. to not be everywhere. You can find me on Facebook at JoyLed Business Golden Heartland Community. We have a Facebook page there and I'd love to connect with you there. I have a YouTube channel. Again, JoyLed Business Golden Heartland Community. That again is not necessarily a social media, but that's where you can find this podcast. That's where you can find content from our challenges training content and where you can connect with us as well online. So let's go ahead and connect. I'm happy to do that. Remember your business only grows to the level that you do embrace this learning and grow to become a social media master. You can do this. Until next time, you matter, your business dream matters, and being joy led will get you there. You've been listening to the joy led business podcast. I'm your host, Tina Joy Cochran. Thanks for sharing part of your day with me. You don't have to walk this business journey alone. Discover others just like you at goldenheartland. com. Business coaching community for creative rural women. Faith. Go there to learn more and get free gifts I designed just for you. Be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode and share this episode with someone who could use a bit more joy today. Remember, your business success matters to me and to God. Being joy led will get you there. Can't wait to meet you at Golden Heartland.