There is this weird phase that we all face when building our businesses. It’s this phase where you’re on the right path, but nothing tangible is happening.
For example, you might be posting the right content and getting the right people into your system, but you aren’t getting any sales yet. This is a difficult phase to be in because you don’t know if you’re in the phase or not.
If you panic about making a sale and start to change things up then you might be changing the stuff that is working and you just can’t see it yet. This is where you get the general questions people love to ask:
- How long does it take to make money?
- How many subscribers before I make money?
- How do I go viral and speed this up?
You know, the questions that don’t have answers.
But this is where social media can start to do some good in the world because it provides you with instant feedback on your content.
“Ummm, I don’t get any feedback on my content so does that mean I’m doing things wrong?“
Here’s your important lesson. When you’re getting started on social media, the comments you leave are more important than the content that you create.
(Note: TikTok might be the exception to this due to its algorithm.)
Too many people put such a high emphasis on their content that they don’t realize that comments are the easiest way to get immediate feedback around an idea.
Think about what happens when you leave a comment.
- The person you’re leaving the comment for sees it.
- The people who are consuming the original content have a chance to see it.
- If you’re using Threads then your followers see it.
None of this is based on a fancy algorithm. This is in stark contrast to when you post something on social media and you need all of the help you can get from the algorithm.
But more importantly with comments, you have a greater opportunity to share your ideas and see how they resonate.
- Are people liking the comment? Are they replying?
- Is the original poster engaging in a discussion with you?
Let me show you what happened yesterday. I saw that Jeff Walker posted an interesting Thread and while I didn’t have anything to add, I wanted to get more insight into things.
It was a great discussion and I’m grateful that he took the time to share the details that I was looking for. This also happened.
This is great to hear, but it’s more important to understand that it’s these little bits of feedback that we can quickly forget about and want to make changes. I’m not saying that just because Jeff Walker likes my stuff it means I’m on the path to a billion.
What I’m saying is that with social media I was able to get that kind of feedback by simply having a discussion.
So if I had doubts about what I was doing I could take this as a positive sign to continue moving forward. But what most people do is post content hoping that the algo works its magic.
How long will you be waiting?
Let’s make it simple and break your business journey into 4 different phases:
- Not started
- Started but on the wrong path and didn’t know it
- Started and on the right path and didn’t know it
- On the right path and know it
The only secure one is #4. The rest can drive you crazy. This is why it’s important to constantly search for feedback until you get to a place where you know you’re moving in the right direction.
Otherwise, you’re simply guessing and you could be stuck in the second phase and that’s a bad place to be. I’d rather not start than spend months or years on a path that is the wrong one.
Another reason why I love getting feedback through my comments is because if they don’t work then it’s no big deal. They simply get forgotten by you and everyone else.
You don’t go to your profile and look through all of the comments that you’ve made but you do see those posts that make you cringe.
The final point I’d like to make is that the days I go to bed feeling unproductive aren’t the days where I don’t post content on social media. It’s the days when I don’t spend a bit of time interacting with people on social media.
I could get by on nothing but comments and be fine, but I couldn’t survive with only posting content.
That says a lot.