Overcoming Your Fear of Social Media
Being active in social media requires self-confidence. Though many people give you tips about how to get started, I’ve noticed they often don’t focus on the one thing that inhibits a lot of people out there: FEAR.
Social Beings
We are social beings; we want to be liked by others. When we engage in social media, we are putting our voices out there and opening them up to a world of responses many of which are outside of the social in-group to which we’re accustomed.
Globalization
The internet has fostered a globalization of communication and, quite frankly, many of us just don’t know how to deal with it. The thought that someone out there might have more information than you do can be scary. What if that person knows more about the subject than you do? What if he or she corrects you in front of everyone? And the fact that you can’t even conceptualize who he or she is compounds the fear even more. It could be a person next door or halfway across the world.
Practice
If this sounds like you, all I can tell you is that everyone before you had a learning curve also. Maybe they were fearful; maybe they weren’t. But the truth is that no matter how advanced a person you admire seems now, he or she was in exactly the same boat as you at one point. The only difference? Practice.
So if you still haven’t jumped in, do it! Guess what? You’ll make a mistake. I’ll say that again: you’ll make a mistake. And what’s more is, you don’t know everything. So embrace it. We all make mistakes and were all constantly learning.
The truth of the matter is that in today’s world we all have a voice, so you’d better start using yours, or else you (and your company) may become obsolete.
