Taking the Leap
Have you ever gone in one direction and realized somewhere along the way you should have gone a completely different route?
That’s how life works sometimes. It’s not a bad thing because it means you’re learning, you’re growing, you’re changing, and you’re understanding what you need in order to be happy and balanced in your life. These kinds of changes are really good, but not always the easiest to do.
I just made one such change when I turned my personal profile back into a personal profile and blew the dust off my page to start using it instead. I went from 1300 followers to 150 in a matter of a minute. Ouch.
You may remember in the past, if you’ve been following me for a while, that I’ve tried this before and it didn’t stick. It didn’t work because there was a problem – I continued to hold onto the side of the pool. I held myself back by continuing to share and offer the content on my personal profile.
There’s a weird dynamic that happens on Facebook. If you create a popular page and then you shift to start adding some public content on your personal profile, people will follow you. But, if you create a popular personal profile and then to try to move to a page, nobody follows unless you go cold turkey. It’s a very odd dynamic that I’ve seen playout often for many creators.
The key to getting out of this dynamic is the willingness to go cold turkey. One of the main problems with using my personal profile was that I had 800 followers (plus my 500 friends equals 1300 followers), but 750 of them were guys trying to hit on me. So because the majority of the followers were spam, the actual number of people that genuinely wanted to see my content was pretty low. Frankly, not even all of my friends wanted the content I was sharing. They just put up with me because we were friends. That lowers my numbers even further.
Using the page, I’m able to remove all the personal details and it limits the number of guys trying to get my attention. It also means my friends can decide for themselves if they want the content or not. On the plus side, I have far more control over who comments and who doesn’t. There is more functionality in a page than there is on a personal profile. That’s my way of simply hoping that I get more genuine followers and fewer guys looking to get some, while at the same time not spamming my friends with stuff they don’t want to see. We’ll see what happens!
It’s pretty obvious where the challenge in this – you have to be willing to trust yourself to start again. You have to leave behind those followers on your personal profile, while hoping they follow you to your page. You have to be willing to go in the direction you want. You have to be willing to let people make a new choice for themselves.
1300 people on Facebook is nothing. In that there were probably 100 people that actually wanted my content. Those 100 people followed me. So did I get everybody out? More than likely I got most of them. So am I worried? No, because I don’t think I lost much except a bit of a higher number that gives the appearance of having more attention than I do.
Now, if you have a lot more people, that leap might be a lot harder, but the reality is the same. If you try to play it safe, your page is going to struggle. If you suck it up and start again, you’ll get farther faster. If you don’t trust that process though, you’ll give up on the page because people won’t follow you as long as your personal profile is active. That was my reality and I’ve seen it play out that way for many others as well. That seems to be the way Facebook rolls.
I’m weirdly okay with the fresh start. I like the idea of starting again to build what I actually want. I like the idea of no longer spamming my friends. I like the freedom that comes from having a page where my only followers are the people that want to see the content.
Am I going to have to be patient? Yes. But since I’ll be working on a big project directly related to the page for probably the rest of 2024, I have time. Is that enough time? Maybe. Does it matter? Not really. Better to do it a bit late than not at all.
I have very defined content now. I have a way of sharing that content that works. I have a vision for where it’s going. Now I have the ability to create an audience that wants what I’m doing, that wants the result of the evolution that my content has been through. That’s not to say that I’m at a final resting place, I’m just a heck of a lot closer to the goal than I was when I started a few years ago. Shifts will be far more minor now.
This isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s just possible. When you’re starting out, I get that you want to look for and use the thing that gives you the most visibility the quickest. I’m the first to admit that groups and personal profiles are the easiest way to get attention on Facebook without paying for that attention. The reward for being more patient with a page is that you have a page dedicated to your work that is separate from your personal profile.
Could I have created a secondary personal profile and gone that way? At that point I would have had the choice to move my friends or move my followers. Could that work? Sure. For me, the page is better suited to my long term vision, which is why I chose to go in that direction instead.
At the beginning when we worry a lot about getting visibility and traction or when there is a heavy focus on making money, we don’t often have the patience to wait for a page to grow. There’s a feeling of or a need for instant gratification. That’s usually the thing that ends up causing problems. We sort of sabotage ourselves because our focus is in the wrong place. We don’t build with the vision in mind, we build with a short term, needs must, type of focus. That’s a pretty quick jog down the path of self-sabotage.
Do you learn a ton from that? Absolutely. Sometimes that’s how we clarify our vision. That was me! The challenge then shows up at the other end, because sometimes that clarified vision requires you to drop what you were doing and start again. Also me! And I’m sure some of you are also running into that.
I wrote this to encourage you, if you’re in this same place, to take the leap. Do the thing. Let go of the side of the pool. As hard as that seems right now, especially if you’re in a hurry to monetize and make money, I promise you’ll thank your younger self later.
It’s worth the effort and the risk to follow your dreams and see what shows up.
Love to all.
Della
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