Can Social Media Help Us Overcome Our Social Anxiety and Become Better Marketers?
By: Ana C. Reis
Tags: Social Media, Writing, Marketing, Social Anxiety, Introvert

The world has become a noisy place

Maybe it is easier now to make a name for yourself as a writer. But there are so many of us, it’s hard to find an audience in the middle of all the creative souls scattering their words to the four winds.

This all seems so awesome in theory.

The shattering of the glass ceiling, the downfall of the middlemen, the easy access to free and powerful means of communication.

There are no obstacles anymore… except for the ones we’ve built for ourselves in this new world.

In the land of opportunities, attention has become the world’s most coveted currency. Clickbait, fake news and “get rich quick” courses keep popping up all over our social media feeds like mushrooms after a heavy storm.

But I have to wonder if we didn’t end up where we started?

Aren’t the middlemen algorithmic entities who scavenge our feeds looking for valuable content? Aren’t our glass ceilings our social media stats? Aren’t our powerful and free channels crowded with noise?

And what does this mean for introverts like us?

Marketing for introverts — it’s not what you think

Some days I feel I’m 10 years old and back at school.

I feel the same paralysis I once felt when I looked around me and saw my classmates chatting happily and expressing their views freely in front of the entire class.

As for me, it terrified me even to think the teacher would remember I was there.

So my mouth remained shut. And my shoulders bent. But my eyes and ears were wide open capturing every single excruciating detail so I could write all about it when I got home.

Most of my teachers thought there was something wrong with me. Most of them would take pleasure in mocking me and my red cheeks in front of the entire class.

For a long time, I thought there was something wrong with me too. I wanted to be like everybody else… but I couldn’t.

I always stood out like an awkward moment of silence at a dinner party.

I knew I was different, but I would only find out about introversion a decade later. I first heard about it from the lips of Susan Cain, an introvert like me. And at that point, I’d completely forgotten which had started first: my introversion or my social anxiety.

Did I become anxious in social settings because my colleagues and teachers mocked me for being an introvert? Or was my social anxiety there all along?

I can’t remember at all.

Social media was supposed to make things easier. But it hasn’t. Not in the slightest.

Most days I feel I’ve been stuck in a giant classroom with thousands of people screaming at each other at the top of their lungs and ignoring everyone else around them.

To be honest, I feel the same fear and insecurity I once felt. I feel ignored and heartbroken. I feel just as powerless as before.

But there’s a quiet and solid strength to introverts that hardly anybody cares to recognize.

We’re good at creating comfortable and intimate environments around us.

Sure it might take us a while to adapt to new people and new circumstances. But once we start building bridges towards others, we’ll always make sure to keep our foundations strong.

We work at a different speed and start our journeys from unusual places.

But we know where we stand and we know what we want because… while others were screaming for attention, we were searching for our dreams and strengths deep within our souls.

How we can use introversion to become good marketers

Does this mean we’ll be bad at social media? Probably. Or at least we’ll suck at social media for a while.

But don’t let this discourage you. We’ll be bad because we need to learn how to express ourselves in this new medium in a way that’s lined up with our vision and our strengths.

We can’t do social media the same way everybody else is doing. The same way we can’t scream for attention in a crowded room.

But this doesn’t mean we can’t achieve the same or better results as natural extroverts. In the end, it’s all about the conversion and the engagement rates, not the number of fans, likes or comments.

To understand how our particular personality can help us become better marketers, we need to understand what marketing is all about.

Real marketing

Real marketing is about people. And it’s about change.

Seth Godin said it himself. Marketing is about foresting change. And change starts by creating a relationship with others. And a relationship starts by listening to what others have to say.

Good marketing it’s about going the extra mile for our clients and collaborators.

It’s not about standing out in a crowded and noisy room. It’s about knowing how to find the little and quiet rooms and building something valuable in there and making sure it is found by the right people.

Real marketing starts in one-on-one conversations.

Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash

As introverts, we may hate crowds, but we can understand others just as well as we understand ourselves. So don’t try to grab a microphone and scream into a room full of people. Grab a single person and listen to what she has to say.

Big changes can start small. They don’t need to go viral in the first hour. They don’t need to have millions of fans.

Social media has created the illusion of effortlessness success. But there is nothing easy about good marketing.

You can try all those shortcuts splashed all over the internet. You can choose to do what everybody else is doing. Or you can try to be different and try to find ways to go the extra mile.

The extra mile is where you should be. Find what everybody else is doing and do something else, something harder, something unscalable, something that cannot be replicated by others.

I’m still discovering what this means for writers. But as a web marketer I start to understand that the real opportunities are not on short posts on our social media accounts… but in genuine human interaction and collaboration.

Go out there. Get out of your feed and try to look for opportunities in the real world. Literary cafes, workshops, conferences, art exhibits…

Pick up that phone and start talking to people, interviewing them, creating collaborative content.

In the end, you can have a beautiful Instagram feed and hilarious tweets. You may have the numbers and the stats and the social proof.

But if you don’t have the relationships, if you don’t have a network, none of it will matter in the long run.