Social media myths and their real facts

Last updated on January 19th, 2022 at 07:19 am

In this socially active world, everybody wants to be popular quickly, gain instant followers with minimum efforts. This leads to many misconceptions. If I ask you what are the most possible reasons for someone to use social media like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc?. People use social media for the following reasons:

  1. To pass their time.
  2. To search for information
  3. To get entertained
  4. To sell their product
  5. To become popular

If you closely observe, every listed reason is inter-connected and has created a lot of social media myths between us. There are lots of doubts regarding content creation, social media promotions, followers, and engagement. You will get to know if you have any of them. If yes, I am also sharing some real solutions or fact check for the popular social media myths.

Myth 1: Social media is a shortcut to earn money

Fact: No, Social media is not a shortcut of any kind.

To earn money through social media like YouTube, Instagram, etc, you have to upload a lot of content there, and only then you can be able to do that. To clarify you I am sharing some necessary guidelines by popular social media earning channels:

a) For enabling monetization on your YouTube channel, it must have at least 4000 hours watch time and a minimum of 1000 subscribers within the past 12 months.
b) You need at least 10,000 followers to be a nano social media influencer in your niche.

That’s why there is no surprise that peoples buy Fake followers etc. But social media is not that simple as it looks. You also have to work hard and put lots of effort into building your genuine audience and sell your product or service or do affiliate marketing etc.

Myth 2: There is nobody to guide you

Fact: You can still learn anything from the Internet.

If you want to try sharing your skill on social media and you want to generate opportunities there and you are not trying anything just because you don’t have enough resources, actually you don’t have to.

Everything is just one click away. It is OK to have a slow start and slowly collect resources and build your online presence.

Start with a single platform and then experiment on other platforms, if one platform doesn’t suit you.

Learn from your friends and competitors or the skilled people of your field by watching what they are doing. Try to find ways how can you do that and start your journey.

Myth 3: Getting a large number of audience is enough

Fact: Not at all. You should have an active audience.

I have already shared a blog over followers vs engagement which says that numbers don’t actually matter if there is very little or no engagement.

Also, many social media channels remove fake accounts when they do annual audits on real users vs fake bots, etc.

If you create content with a less audience and you are getting good engagement from them then keep doing your work and refine it from time to time.

If you grow your organic audience it is always beneficial. Work on a 20% growth Funda. Try to put as much effort that you can increase 20% followers from your last post.

This is no hard and fast but when you keep that in mind you will have a feasible goal to work upon.

Myth 4: Only Promotion can generate engagement

Fact: Promotion is enough only for temporary engagement

Promotion can just help you in getting temporary reach to a new audience. Many small entrepreneurs or new startups start promoting their products and become happy with the paid engagement.

But when they pause the ad campaigns and find very less engagement, they become sad. 

It is the reality that if you are trying to increase your active audience, promotion is not helpful. You have to create user engaging content, you have to organize contests, a kind of targeted giveaways, etc. to get that engagement.

Promotion can help you spread your world for that contest which you want to organize and in this way you can a good audience.

Myth 5: You can work without having a plan

Fact: Not a good idea at all. Make a plan!

You can begin anything with a blank mind but if you don’t have a vision and plan for your social media activity you cant succeed.

That’s why you should have a goal which you want to achieve. There can be following goals which you can pick from:

a) Increase product reach
b) Increase followers and engagement
c) Provide better Customer service via social media
d) Arranging Online Contest etc.

If you will plan on any of these and work accordingly, you will have many things to achieve. It will be better if you make a social media calendar and start working with a basic plan and slowly move for some more specific goal-oriented one.

You can work with a social media calendar to collect your ideas at a single place in a systematic manner.

Myth 6: You need to be an expert to increase your engagement

Fact: Uh Oh! You can learn it and implement it gradually.

I have seen many people denying some work because they are no expert in that. But I assure you, I am also no expert.

I am handling my own social media marketing and blogging on my own. So in your case, you also need no specification to increase your engagement.

Let me share you some basic applied strategies which you can try to learn and become an expert practicing it:

  1. Make a social media plan with a clear goal
  2. Start your social media channel
  3. Post content and observe the behavior of the posts of your competitors or field experts.
  4. Try to implement their ideas in a new manner with your posts.
  5. Commit mistakes and learn from them.
  6. Check which kind of post is giving you better results.
  7. Start making that specific type of content and test their engagement on a regular basis.

I am sure it will work out being a “NO-Expert” to a “PRO-Player” with a little time push.

Myth 7: You need to post daily

Fact: It depends on the nature of the content.

Consistency does not mean posting daily. It is totally dependent on the type of social media channel and category of content.

If you are having a video format content e.g. for YouTube, it is difficult to post daily. So they can be posted on a monthly basis.

In fact, making videos daily is also a tedious task. If you post text-based posts that you can make more frequently, it is suggested to post daily.

The best way to set your post frequency is to observe two things:

  1. Your content generation capacity
  2. The type of content and user engagement consistency

When you find that you are comfortable with 10 posts a week, and users will remain engaged with those 10 posts, put your whole efforts in creating them. Always remember, “It is the quality that matters, not the quantity”

Myth 8: Social Media Influencing is a solution to everything

Fact: It is just a better version of your product promotion.

It will not work until you have some solid products or services. This is because you don’t want to sell anything for once or you don’t want your viewers to visit your content just once.

With social media influencing, you can make that first visit but it is always the content or the product value that increases the returning follower count.

Better is to focus the most on your content quality and then invest in promotion activities accordingly.

Myth 9: Fewer followers are not helpful

Fact: Every follower is important.

If you have 10 good followers having a good reach and are loyal to you, they are better than a crowd of 100’s. You can slowly grow your subscriber base along with time and posting good content.

When you have good and professional relations with your followers, their activity on your content will definitely drive more people to your content and in turn, increase your channel reach.

Myth 10: This blog is not useful

Fact: If you are here and reading it till now, then it’s useful!

I am sure that you have got an explanation to some of your past social media misconceptions and content generation, promotion, and audience management.

In turn, this blog is totally useful and it gives me huge contentment that you have read all the major myths and their actual reality.

Now comment which one helped you and which one was kind of familiar fact which you’ve already known.

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