Be Informational, Not Confrontational

One of the barriers I keep feeling while starting to share more “content” on social media is – DO THESE PEOPLE FEEL NO SHAME? LIKE, ZERO? EVER?!

Is it all just bullies, bad takes, and big provokes?

And the truth is, 

Yeah, kind of. There’s a lot of crap content. There, I said it. 

And now we can say, too, it’s not all bad either. 

There’s a non-confrontational side of social media that doesn’t suck. 

To be very clear, there is a non-confrontational side of social of that does suck too. 

Ice bath listicles, morning rituals, and inherently demotivating motivational morning quotes – they all can bugger off. 

They can’t catch my limited attention span anyway. 

But beyond the confrontational, past the crap, you can find the informational people. 

These are my people. These, if you’re reading this and nodding your head, are YOUR people too. 

They are there. 

You can be one of them. 

Here’s how:

Share some of “you,” and share how it connects/applies/is useful OR usable to at least one other person. 

Inform us. 

Make it fun. Or sad. Or inspiring. 

To you, first. 

Then, connect it to others. 

Hell, my two most popular posts on LinkedIn are currently about getting married and an old Tracy Chapman story. 

As the poet Montell Jordan once wrote, “This is how we do it.” 

(We = me and you)

Ditch the confrontational social media crowd. Rage-engagement is a strategy that works. A little too well. And It doesn’t have to be for you. Choose “no.”   

Ditch the non-confrontational, useless-informational social media crowd. Even if it works for some baseless engagement, they are the Facebookification of fun. Keep up on your old friends however you need to, and skip the uninspired inspirers. Choose “no,” again.  

Embrace the informational social media community. It’s a slow build, but you’ll learn about you while you’re doing it. And most importantly, we’ll learn about you too. This is where relationships grow. Online and in the real world. 

Who’s in?

h/t to Ted Merz. He coined “be informational, not confrontational.” And if he says otherwise, I’ll confront him for lying (maybe even on social media), because he’s at least the first person who said it so clearly to me.