Tag Archives: Seth Godin

What’s Social Media for you?

What’s Social Media for you? A place to connect with friends and like-minded people? Right. That’s the original definition though which was somewhat true a few years ago.

What is it now really?

  1. A place where your friends and like-minded people give their opinions all day long.
  2. A place where your friends (read acquaintances) and (so-called) like-minded people share what they had for lunch.
  3. A place where all your friends have become highly political and ready to chop everyone down from their armchair via WiFi if there’s any disagreement.
  4. A place where you are given a notification about your as distant as Pluto relatives  liking the photos of their as close as Charon relatives whom you don’t care about.
  5. A place where you hate to go now… You get the drift. Right?

In my previous few posts I have shared that I have been successful in, to a good extent, subsiding myself from the main crowd. I have tried to curb my FOMO if I may by indulging in discussing irrelevant things with strangers. I have basically made myself distant from the happenings, trendings and the agree-to-disagree endings.

Today, I came across a very interesting episode of the Ask Gary Vee show where his guest was Seth Godin. The show format is mostly audience asking the guests questions and them replying to that.

Here’s the episode for your entertainment and enlightenment:

In this, Seth Godin said a beautiful thing when asked about how he can only blog in today’s day and age and why not he is on all the social media platform which could further enhance his brand. As in, who doesn’t want that?

I will try to summarise his answer to that below:

On the Internet (or even in traditional media format), there are 2 kinds of people: Consumers (for whom the modern day algorithms of social media sites are optimized on regular basis) and the Creators (who have to work hard in order to get noticed).

Are you a Consumer?
Are you a Consumer?

All websites want to keep the consumer addicted and stuck to their sites. They make logging out difficult by keep feeding stuff to Like and Retweet. There has been so much said already about this so I don’t even need to say anything more. Even Facebook recently admitted to the fact that people who just like others end up feeling depressed.

or are You a Creator?
or are You a Creator?

Creators, on the other hand, are people who are trying hard to create worthy stuff. They are the producers. They are constantly learning and updating themselves so that they can be better. If creators only consume, they won’t be able to create. This is as simple as that.

Seth went on to give the examples after examples. But he also mentioned that if you are consuming things for your entertainment and for self-improvement, then that’s understandable. However, there must be a limit of how much one should consume if one wants to be a creator.

Check that video out and ponder, whether you are a consumer or a creator?

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