Some people come into your life for a season, some for a reason, and some for a lifetime, but eventually, they all leave.
The same goes for everything else that we let into our lives.
Once upon a time, there was a life without social media for me. And guess what? I loved it for quite a while. Since I am traveling most of the time, I won’t see most of the people I meet anytime soon. Yet… I would like to stay in contact.
Social media gave me a perfect platform for that. Interaction was good, and every time I logged in, I saw real updates from real people that I knew.
too much distraction
By now, my feed mainly contains suggested content from people I don’t know, advertisements for stuff I don’t want to buy, and friend re-posts from content I am mainly not interested in.
And often, the content of people that I am actually interested in is not shown or is shown way too late because they don’t get the engagement the social media company wants to see to keep the user hooked.
I simply don’t enjoy using it myself, and most of all, I don’t want to play by the rules to create engaging content that draws you into your data stream.
connect with people
And yet, I love to stay in contact with people, I love to interact, and I love to share my stories with, even when I am on the other side of the planet. I love to have a community around the world of people that I can call my friends and where we can rely on each other.
When I started my journey on my tiny wooden boat in 2018, I created a small community on Patreon around paid content, and it went pretty well for a while. During the pandemic, it became very quiet, and I did a fresh start last summer.
What is really great about Patreon is that they don’t try to draw you into their stream. Nobody else is promoted, no ads, and no distractions. You “only” get what you subscribed for. When I started to share my stories again last year, I chose to publish all updates for free.
You can even subscribe for free and will get every blog post in your inbox. I am still offering a couple of specials to my paid members, but that is absolutely free of choice. If you are interested in staying connected, it is a super easy and free way to do so.
I found myself often in the position that I was unsure whether to post a story or an update somewhere on social media or on Patreon. Or post it on Patreon and then share a link on social media. Often, I postponed at all.
fomo
When I started to turn these thoughts into reality, I developed a whole bunch of FOMO though. My fear of missing out on that one update that I would be really interested to see or that one far friend that I could have reached after a long time. I already went offline with my company profiles and some private ones, but I am hesitating to delete all. For Instagram, for example, I deleted all of my previous uploads, and suddenly my posts were seen by three times as many people as before.
While that gave me an uneasy feeling about leaving (now that so many more people see the posts), it proved to me that the distribution of the content is not even. The algorithm delivered those postings where it expects the most clicks. That means you won’t see what you subscribed for but what will keep you hooked most likely.
I do not want to play that game, and yet I am considering staying on LinkedIn as an online address book.
What do you think about that?
I want to focus on mainly two ways to stay in contact with me. One being my newsletter about all coaching related stuff and secondly my travel adventure blog: https://www.patreon.com/flohjoe
Whenever you contact me here or there, I will always read and reply to the message. No gatekeepers.
With lots of gratitude, Florian
