Social media strategies (especially on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok etc) have become common knowledge.
There’s nothing wrong with following these “strategies” from a short-term perspective to succeed, as long as they produce results. However, business is a long game and you need to understand that social media trends come and go, and following these strategies may lead to “saturation” in the market.
Therefore, it is important to focus on creating a marketing approach that builds a foundation, and cements the practice of principles in case storms hit us rather than just focusing on developing specific strategies that might be working today, but may not be tomorrow.
When you create a foundation and practice principles, cement it, and practice it over the years, it is as if you have soil that allows things to grow no matter how severe the storm might be, whatever the obstacles the world throws at you.
This reminds of me when influencer or some celebrity expresses even a simple greeting like “good morning”, somehow it becomes valuable content.
Unfortunately, if I say “good morning” online, nobody will pay attention to it yet, if a celebrity says the same phrase, there will be a reaction. This is because the soil has been cultivated.
By creating this foundation, and cultivating the soil, the value of the content is manifested as what is said, but rather on who says it. This is a critical point to remember and I can’t stress this enough.
The ideal content is the one that activates a response regardless of what is said in the content, like planting a seed on well-cultivated soil. It doesn’t matter what is stated, but rather who said it will gravitate the attention of the audience that kicks off the integral conversation and relationship to grow.
That is why it is also important to mention that we should not be fixated on hacking one social media platform which I call superficial marketing strategies such as “how to master medium”, “how to master Instagram”, or “Twitter marketing techniques”.
I am not saying that these strategies and tactics are not important, yet too many people perceive and choose hacking one particular platform as the most important component for them to succeed and they always end up with an outcome that is not expected.
These strategies are too superficial. What I mean by superficial is that they are useful tools to be applied to survive, yet the tool itself will not allow you to survive when time evolves. That is why developing the foundation and practicing principles in your business is the only way to grow and thrive.
Pursuing these strategies without a foundation, without you growing, without you being harvested, will lead to a chase that has no finishing line, which creates less space to cultivate your foundation which affects sales and marketing outcomes.
I am talking about this from my personal experiences that I have been through this pattern of behavior and I got punished for that. I learned it a hard way.
I used to blame the change in algorithms or rule changes at the government level which increases the cost of production or logistics that impacted us negatively in the past. No matter how hard you try to blame or criticize them, things will not change and you don’t have time for that as you did need to make a swift judgment and make an integral decision to allow us to take action to survive.
And funny enough, when I went through this type of crisis only once and I consequently suffered a lot, yet I didn’t change the pattern of my behavior after that. In fact, I went back again to look for the strategy and tactics that looks quite attractive to me to buy into it and go through the same episode again and again. This is what I can call strategy addiction or shiny object syndrome.
I, unfortunately, had to hit the bottom to realise that I really need to change this addiction. That is when I changed my awareness to the voice from the dark side of me still inviting me to chase strategy and tactics but knowing that I need to listen to it and tame it instead of reacting to it to follow the same pattern.
It still requires consistency and perseverance since the voice is still there in me. These voices that invite me, magnetise me to strategy and tactics are part of my being, but I know now that I can use tools to recognize them and identify them when it starts coming and I choose to listen to them instead of reacting to them so that I am not surrendering my seat to the dark voice.
So principles over strategy because no matter how things will change now and in the future, no matter what roadblocks try to dictate your way, no matter how strong the wind gets, you can always win the game if the root of your life is strong, and the root is the direct reflection of who you are and the strength of the root is the direct proportion of the amount of time we practice the principles and cement the foundation.
