I Had Finally Created my First Social Media Accounts in Early 2019
By: Life Not Abrupt, L.N.A.
Tags: Inspiration, Social Media, Life, Millennials, Beyourself

I am a private person, so posting my picture and name as profile information on a social media account would be a major step for me. Even for years prior, I had no interest in having a social media account.

But this was the first time in my life, back in May 2018 when I graduated from undergraduate studies, where there was not structure in my life, in terms of being in school. I’d allowed self-discouragement and external distraction to halt my original gap year plan (study preparation for the MCAT, taking the exam, and applying to DO medical schools).

With this freedom I did not do what I planned for my gap year to involve. I ended up doing a lot of surfing the internet. This included watching a lot of youtube videos, joining email lists, and binge watching tv shows I’d missed when they regularly aired during the school semesters. From my perspective I was being unproductive because I was not using my time wisely to work toward anything specifically now that I was completely neglecting my plan. My deviation from my intentional plan was just me wandering without a sense of direction (absorbing more and more information from the internet).

But, thankfully, during this time of endless web surfing, the idea of blogging began to interest me, and in all this googling, I discovered and explored Medium.

But, what topics would I write about?

In my short life so far I did not feel I had any “expert knowledge” to contribute. In my mind I had not attained anything that would inspire, empower, or encourage other millennial women distinguishingly different from what others similarly already accomplished and shared about. Also, what opportunity was there for me to add perspective when I was still figuring out what I was now doing since my gap year was off-course?

Not only this, more pressing in my mind was I would have to create my very first social platform account on Medium to write here.

I would never post anything which would jeopardize myself in the future. In spite of this thought of mine, I was gripped and hesitant to have my name or face floating anywhere on the internet.

But in January 2019 I did just this.

I had read about while surfing on the internet, in order to create a successful personal brand, one has to be willing to put oneself out there. I’d browsed Medium and saw people were using their names and photos. I assumed this was what I had to do if I wanted to achieve success, too. There was no alternative I thought.

I believed I would just have to get over my aversion to this required step. So I did it even though my hesitancy was waging a great internal battle.

But there is always more than one way to achieve success, I remembered.

An obvious thing, which was not so apparent to me at the time as I was trying to figure the Medium platform out.

When I hit save and it became live, in January 2019, I felt exposed although I had not written and published a single post on Medium yet. I felt the reminder of the permanence of my decision.

Though I eventually deleted it and replaced it with a brand name months later, so I would feel way more comfortable, delete was not really delete. Somewhere in their internet database, my initial Medium profile was hanging out.

When I created a twitter account in January 2019 and a pinterest account in February 2019 I copied the profile information I had in my original Medium one. Although it is not visible in a google search anymore, it is lingering on their databases, too.

I wished I’d had the more than one way to success epiphany before ever creating my original profile. Nevertheless, I have to live with this decision I made, but I have learned from it.

I had put my real life self out on these social platforms hoping it would reach individuals who might be interested in reading my weekly blog posts on Medium. It was solely to help me build a community through engagement with introverted young women millennials who share my interests.

It is not to connect with my family or my small circle of friends.

People connect with people faces. And this term “personal branding”, people putting their faces with their stories is the transition from faceless brands to face brands.

I thought putting my real photo and name out here, people will trust me. But if I hid behind a brand name, people would think I am trying to hide something.

Could I not be doing personal branding just exclusively through my stories? Is my transparency and authenticity lessened by the exclusion of a visible image of myself? Would I be making it more difficult for myself to appear legitimate to others and for people to engage with me because I am faceless and nameless? Maybe I am putting way too much thought into this and it does not matter at all.

It just felt awkward revealing and having myself on my Medium, twitter, and pinterest profile pages. I felt in the spotlight even though probably, hardly anyone even glanced at my newbie profile information.

I realized creating something which is a community, I personally think now does not rely on my name and a visual of myself. This is my experiment I hope proves right. These two elements may not be important or essential at all for building an online community.

I do not want to be known, I just desire to serve.

I want to build a community organically and not have anyone know about it. By anyone I am referring to my already established personal relationships not having any knowledge I am blogging. This would be impossible if I continued using my photo and name because as new content is published on the internet google will index it. Therefore, returned google search results for my name or any related related terms would eventually start populating posts I post across twitter, pinterest, and Medium. I want my success to be based on my content only and I believe anonymity allows me to maintain this.

I have many interests and want this to be the spotlight of myself, not my name or my appearance. Also I am not into praise and acknowledgement, so this will help me develop something, which are sharing stories in my authentic written voice. This is the primary focus.

I could care less about my name or face being known. I just want my message to resonate with individuals who are seeking a resource for inspiration, graduate student life, faith, creativity, and social and environmental consciousness. I do not have it all together, but want to write stories to share my learnings on my journeys and connect with introverted young women millennials.

All of this led me to arrive at this decision with peace in my heart and mind that I am okay with a logo being my internet representation.