Social Media for publications is Pathetic {vlog}

Social Media for publications {vlog}

In today’s NJroute22.com VLOG – we’re going to talk about our opinions on “social media” when it comes to publications like ours.

Is social media necessary for everything?

Back in the day – let’s say 15 years ago, all you needed was a good website with some basic setup.

People searching for content would look online and almost always find the right fit. I can certainly recall feeling that most search results led us to satisfactory content.

Today – much has changed.

Not only do only “BIG” content providers get the top few pages on searches, but also social media plays a role.

Less people are searching “the web” and instead are using one or more of the myriad of social media sites.

It’s like internet usage has changed dramatically.

And so has everyone’s general mindset.

Not many people gravitate towards ideas and general interest topics.

You almost need to have a “schtick” of some kind.

Whether it’s purely for entertainment purposes – or to sell something. You cannot seem to sell just friendly content anymore.

The remaining sites that DO survive, only do so usually because they have been established for a long time – and had the time to develop the following back when people could FIND you!

Newer sites that get traction most often do so because of large financial budgets or known endorsements. In other words, they get a head start of some kind.

Normal people like us who strive to build even a small following of like-minded people have to do so organically.

Even then – getting people to find you is brutal work. Almost non-stop “marketing” of yourself. It takes away from content-creation especially if you’re solo.

But I digress.

How does social media help a blog and vlog?

We’ve been struggling with the idea that social media is necessary for us.

In the beginning, we tried hard, using all the major sites such as Facebook pages, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Oddly enough – our biggest success was on Instagram, which does NOTHING for online websites like ours. Because you get next to no web traffic from them.

Instagram only benefits “influencers” (who get paid to promote products), or established businesses that have brick and mortar operations. It’s like one big flea market for your attention and money.

YouTube is getting better for us – as we’re approaching a whopping 200 subscribers! Which is pretty good.

Our highest performing videos, oddly enough, were ones we made on a whim, and are typically helpful – like a how-to video.

You know, most people don’t try to figure things out themselves anymore – they almost instantly go on youtube for answers.

But our conceptual videos – or videos about healthy living are not doing nearly as well.

We’re growing slowly, but at least in the right direction for now.

But as far as we can see – sending out tweets and other social media updates has done NOTHING for us. And we were prolific in our usage. On average about 20 updates a day across those platforms.

Come to think of it, even if those social media platforms did start picking up traction – we wouldn’t have the time to manage all the “chatter” across almost half a dozen channels.

We like spending our time creating – not managing chit-chat from readers. Honest questions, sure – but not trivial comments.

One thing we have kept up with – is the feedback from YouTube users. Seems to be the most organic for the time being.

So back in January, we stopped posting updates to all those channels.

We were lucky – we used a service that automatically published our posts many times for us. So that saved us 90% of the time, but it didn’t matter. Several thousand dollars down the drain for zero net positive results.

That is why we’ve shifted our online blog to just 3 video posts per week for the time being.

The virus-crisis of the past year has made it harder to go out and talk about the central New Jersey area anyway.

There is no way we’re going to talk about mandates and regulations. And we’d never submit to them anyway.

So that means we’ve almost entirely opted out of exploring the general area anyway.

Now, while our site is based in central NJ, we’ve kind of morphed into a video-only mode.

• Low Carb on Sundays.
• General interest on Wednesdays.
• And either booze reviews or other local retail updates on Fridays.

It really is a shame that you can’t just be a creator with fun ideas anymore.

I guess the market has become too saturated, as well as the public’s attention span is divided into a million bits.

People seem to be attracted to nonsense – or what might be called “bread and circus” type material. Celebrities. Sports. Material and superficial.

You can’t be a Jack of all trades anymore. You have to be entirely niche-oriented. Which is not easy for everyone.

Perhaps that is why getting your YouTube channel into monetization is harder than ever.

You either have to be a prolific film-maker with more than ample time to create – or have a very popular niche that you have passion for, as well as the knowledge and personality to back it up.

Or maybe the whole thing is rigged to some degree. Maybe these people that make it are somehow connected to the right people in the industry.

Who knows.

All we know is that almost three years of dedication and hard work have not shown us many dividends.

We’ll continue on for a while and re-evaluate again.

But as we foresaw back in 2006, when Twitter was breaking onto the scene – that we just didn’t like that form of communication.

And we feel the same way 15 years later.

It’s almost like too much information. And if you step back and see it for what it is – it boils down to static from afar.

Like gossip at Mach speed.

We’re going to try other methods. But we’re not too optimistic. Too many readers are stuck in the ghetto of the internet.

The way humanity in developed nations has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of decades has us worried.

There has to be some way to put our minds to use without social media!