Finding Your People In Online Groups
In the past few years, my participation on Facebook and other social media platforms has shifted from content creation and sharing to more group participation and looking for opportunities for discussion, service, and meaningful interaction. This has been liberating. In the old model, I'd spend hours creating content to share, hoping it would reach enough people and stimulate enough likes and shares to be picked up by the algorithm for more people to see. I did social media this way for many years until I went through a period of burnout. Looking back on all that activity, I learned some important lessons. First, the content creation didn't amount to much more than busy work when I looked at the overall return I received from my time investment. Playing the algorithm and going viral was a losing proposition in gaining business. The one area that had a high payoff was Facebook groups. I tried hosting my own for a while, but that didn't get off the ground, mostly because I di