We get a certain amount of time and energy to put into our projects. I think it’s equally important to decide when to stop pursuing something that isn’t working as it is to start something new. The work in progress can become part of your routine and production. It can be hard to admit when something you’ve been doing is no longer serving you. Or that it’s not getting results that you want.
Sample problem
For me, reflecting on a couple of examples of efforts I’ve stopped helps me think about whether new things fall in that category. A few years ago I decided to post a weekly blog on both my business site and my author/journalism website. My business site is the one that I share mostly with clients at CodeWord Communications www.codeword.ca. My journalist/author site is a site that I use a lot more for magazine pitching and writing where I use my byline more often.
So I had tried for a while to write a weekly blog post for each site and then realized that I was burning out. I wasn’t even particularly measuring by the numbers which I do recommend to do, but the decision was more around my time and burnout. And I wasn’t getting any response from the posts I was putting on the personal site, and it was just too overwhelming to come up with that much content and that I didn’t want to move towards hiring somebody. Just resentful that I had to come up with all of this content, I decided to wind that down and I’m feeling the same.
Timing counts
I usually try things for a year and so I think after having tried for a year.
I often feel the same way about starting and stopping a presence on social media. For example, recently that occurs to me about Twitter, as so many people are getting off the platform. Unfortunately I do like Twitter, since one of the ways that I enjoy contributing to an audience is by sharing what I’m reading. So sharing links, for example, to publications, that’s something you can do really easily on Twitter. And not as easily on a platform like Instagram, which is more visual where I I’m not a particularly visual person.
So, I struggle to find ways to communicate using the images as the primary and then the post as the secondary, which is the way I see Instagram ordering its world. But with the decline of Twitter and seeing so many people leave the tool I’m struck by the thought of whether it’s worth my while.
As I think about how to reorganize my life on social, I’m trying to think out, how is the what are the best platforms for me? What are going to give me the most chance to connect with my community, and how can I contribute the best, in addition to the ways that I’d like to contribute. What are the platforms where everybody is participating on and how can I use those platforms?
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