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For most entrepreneurs few things are worse than social media. You think it’s helpful while it’s a parasite that slowly kills you and your business.
Social media platforms have spent millions and millions to persuade us that they’re indispensable for business.
If you don’t exist on social media, you don’t exist at all.
What a joke.
We all know that social media can be bad for individuals. But it's poisonous for business, too, and you may be better off as an entrepreneur without it.
Not everyone will agree with this post and that’s okay. This thread is about showing a perspective counter to mainstream advice. It’s not the ultimate truth, though. I’m not saying EVERYONE has to avoid social media in business at all costs.
Note: by social media I refer to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. I don’t consider YouTube social media (because it’s more of a search engine) or Reddit (because it’s just a giant forum with various subforums, similar to the Fastlane forum).
Warning: I swear in this post and I share my opinion in a blunt way. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
Here are ten reasons why social media destroys entrepreneurs and their businesses:
1. You’re Putting More Effort Building Somebody Else’s Business Than Yours
Post ten times a day on Facebook (don’t forget about Facebook stories). Twenty times a day on Instagram (but thirty stories and forty reels). Upload ten videos on TikTok and don’t forget to tweet thirty times a day (and retweet another twenty tweets). It almost seems as if marketing today equals social media marketing.
Do it all AGAIN over and over again because the next day nobody sees your posts from the day before anyway. And if you ever figure out a way to crack the algorithm, it will soon change and you’ll be left behind again.
When you add it all up, you spend more time donating your time to social media platforms than spending it on your business. How ridiculous is that?
Few entrepreneurs ever calculate how much time, money, and effort they invest on social media. They don’t even know if they get a positive return from their investment.
That’s insanity. Not only you’re dedicating most of your business life to tasks that may not even be worth it. You’re also putting more effort building other people’s companies rather than yours.
Let me reiterate it because I find it F*cking incredible: did you start your OWN business to spend more time building somebody else’s?
How much do you enjoy being an unpaid Meta, TikTok or Twitter employee?
Is this what entrepreneurship comes down to these days? Filling the pockets of big, censor-happy corporations who don’t give two shits about you just so you can brag about your follower count?
2. You’re Only Getting Scraps
Even if you do everything right, at most maybe a few percent of your followers will see your posts. Out of them, only a few percent will take any action. Out of them, a few percent will do what you want them to do—buy your stuff.
In other words, you’re only getting scraps thrown at you by the social media platforms. And the more the platform grows, the less you get. It’s a natural growth cycle of every social media company. You can always count on the fact that they will grow at your expense.
You’re like that poor dog begging for food underneath the table. Only as time goes by, there are even more hungry dogs and less food on the table. Most goes into the mouths of the obese owners.
Moreover, social media platforms have a short lifespan so all your efforts are eventually for nothing. Ask anyone who has built a big following on Facebook how useful it is today. Meanwhile, a high-quality article on your own site can provide value for years.
3. You’re on a Never-Ending Content Treadmill
Social media gurus get on my nerves because their solution to any marketing problem is to post more. More, more, more, until you can’t do it anymore but you can’t stop because you’re afraid that if you stop, your business will end.
You become trapped on a content treadmill, posting endless amounts of content, begging to get some attention like an old wrinkly prostitute in flashy clothes.
The more you post, the faster the treadmill is. Since you can’t stop, you never have time and energy to reconsider what you’re doing and whether it’s the best strategy for your business.
Strategic thinking drowns in the sea of content you’re forced to produce every day just to stay afloat. And the worst thing is that whatever you produce, it’s often unsearchable and irrelevant the next day.
4. You Fail to Build What’s Most Important
The ONLY valuable asset in every business is a customer list. Yet, if you focus on social media, you fool yourself that your follower count is what defines your business.
You either spend time building your own platform or you build time spending other people’s platforms.
This forum is a great example of a platform standing on its own. I didn’t join it because I saw MJ on social media. I joined it because I read MJ’s book. I stayed because it’s an independent platform owned by a person who cares. For all I care, MJ may never post anything on social media. I want to read his content HERE, on his OWN platform.
Would your clients say the same about your business? Would they still work with you if you had no presence on social media?
Would you rather have 100,000 followers on social media or 1,000 loyal customers? (If you chose the former, sorry but there’s no hope for you LOL.)
5. You Judge the Value of the Business by the Number of Followers
My girlfriend has a podcast. She had a call with a potential guest today. The woman told her that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be featured in my girlfriend’s podcast because “nothing happens on her Instagram profile.”
My girlfriend only posts images with new episodes on her Instagram profile. But if you checked the podcast’s archives, you’d see over 75 episodes posted religiously every week, featuring dozens of recognized in her niche guests.
That poor guest is so brainwashed. She thinks that an Instagram profile counts more than your real-world track record. To make matters worse, she was SHOCKED how my girlfriend got podcast listeners through something else than Instagram.
My girlfriend is not an Instagrammer. She owns a podcast. That’s her business, not posting daily vlogs or other bullshit from her everyday life. She doesn’t even want Instagram followers who spend a tenth of a second liking her random images. She wants real listeners who invest hours listening to her episodes.
There are so many businesses that have few, if any, social media followers, yet kill it WAY, WAY more than brands that obsess about social media.
Do you help people through selling your products or do you chase status through posting meaningless social media posts?
6. You Waste Time and Mental Energy on Drama and Addiction
Social media thrives because it appeals to our most basic instincts.
Everything is designed in such a way to get you hooked and keep you there for as long as possible. Notifications, real-time updates, live stories. Then there’s inevitable drama and bullshit politics that’s impossible to opt out of.
Instagram will always pester you with profiles of plastic surgery enhanced half naked models of both genders.
Twitter will always pester you with annoying politics no matter who you follow.
Both Facebook and TikTok will always steal your attention through idiotic short clips designed to captivate your brain whether you want it or not.
Even if you’re strong-willed, there’s NO WAY you won’t waste your life each time you visit any of the social media platforms for “business” purposes.
Is this how you want to spend your valuable time?
7. You’re Contributing to Producing Mountains of Garbage
Most content on social media is F*cking garbage. I need to swear here because there’s no other way to describe it.
Twitter relies on bullshit, supposedly clever, one-liners that say nothing. Yet, our brains like these empty platitudes. So, like idiots, we retweet them. Long form, well though-out content is rare these days because it’s too hard for most people to read something longer than 280 characters.
Instagram relies on even more bullshit soft porn pictures or other depictions of a “perfect” life along with even more idiotic empty quotes. Yet, we fall for this, too. It’s in our genes. There’s no way a healthy male is able to look away from a perfect pair of photoshopped boobs.
TikTok relies on cringeworthy, self-absorbed, completely retarded videos of teenagers thinking they do something meaningful. Yet, in their stupidity, they’re so captivating you find yourself watching one video after another. Later, you feel disgusted with yourself only to do it again the next time you “work” on TikTok.
Can you find valuable content on social media? Yes, you can. Not everything is garbage.
It doesn’t change the fact that most of social media content is utter junk. These platforms don’t reward in-depth content. They reward simplistic, controversial or straight up idiotic posts and videos.
Since people are so addicted to social media today, their attention spans are so short you have to transmit your message in a few seconds. What valuable things can you say in a few seconds? By default, you’re forced to contribute to this mountain of garbage every single day.
8. You’re Building an Unsellable Asset
It’s rare for most small businesses to succeed on social media. So, instead, most founders post under their own names. Their business becomes them. Yes, a personal brand may be valuable but a personal brand, as the name implies, is unsellable.
If this doesn’t bother you, then this point doesn’t apply to you. Yet, I’d urge every entrepreneur to think about a potential exit strategy. If you’re building your business through promoting yourself, then most likely you won’t be able to sell it in the future.
9. You Fail to See Other Opportunities
People new to business, particularly those who don’t remember the world before social media, assume that EVERY business needs to be on social media. They focus only on those business ideas that have a social media presence, ignoring the wealth of other possible opportunities.
Boring, but essential B2B businesses? Nah, where will I get my followers?
Offline businesses without an online presence other than a simple website? No way, how will I brag about my biz?
Low-key business models that rely on joint ventures and deal-making rather than social media content? No thanks, I’m too busy building my “credibility” on social media.
10. You Do What Everyone Else Is Doing
Being an entrepreneur means full responsibility for your decisions but also complete freedom over how you want to run your business.
Unfortunately, most people let the prevailing narrative dictate how they’ll approach their ventures.
If the “only” way to succeed is through fifty social media posts a day, let’s do it.
If the “only” way to succeed is through showing your boobs to horny teenagers (who will not buy your products anyway), let’s do it.
If the “only” way to succeed is through being a complete idiot dancing like a drunk moose, let’s do it.
Don’t be a sheep. Use your brain. Create YOUR business on YOUR OWN terms rather than letting social media corporations bully you into using their toxic platforms.
There, I said it.
Thoughts, love, hate—all welcome.
Social media platforms have spent millions and millions to persuade us that they’re indispensable for business.
If you don’t exist on social media, you don’t exist at all.
What a joke.
We all know that social media can be bad for individuals. But it's poisonous for business, too, and you may be better off as an entrepreneur without it.
Not everyone will agree with this post and that’s okay. This thread is about showing a perspective counter to mainstream advice. It’s not the ultimate truth, though. I’m not saying EVERYONE has to avoid social media in business at all costs.
Note: by social media I refer to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. I don’t consider YouTube social media (because it’s more of a search engine) or Reddit (because it’s just a giant forum with various subforums, similar to the Fastlane forum).
Warning: I swear in this post and I share my opinion in a blunt way. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
Here are ten reasons why social media destroys entrepreneurs and their businesses:
1. You’re Putting More Effort Building Somebody Else’s Business Than Yours
Post ten times a day on Facebook (don’t forget about Facebook stories). Twenty times a day on Instagram (but thirty stories and forty reels). Upload ten videos on TikTok and don’t forget to tweet thirty times a day (and retweet another twenty tweets). It almost seems as if marketing today equals social media marketing.
Do it all AGAIN over and over again because the next day nobody sees your posts from the day before anyway. And if you ever figure out a way to crack the algorithm, it will soon change and you’ll be left behind again.
When you add it all up, you spend more time donating your time to social media platforms than spending it on your business. How ridiculous is that?
Few entrepreneurs ever calculate how much time, money, and effort they invest on social media. They don’t even know if they get a positive return from their investment.
That’s insanity. Not only you’re dedicating most of your business life to tasks that may not even be worth it. You’re also putting more effort building other people’s companies rather than yours.
Let me reiterate it because I find it F*cking incredible: did you start your OWN business to spend more time building somebody else’s?
How much do you enjoy being an unpaid Meta, TikTok or Twitter employee?
Is this what entrepreneurship comes down to these days? Filling the pockets of big, censor-happy corporations who don’t give two shits about you just so you can brag about your follower count?
2. You’re Only Getting Scraps
Even if you do everything right, at most maybe a few percent of your followers will see your posts. Out of them, only a few percent will take any action. Out of them, a few percent will do what you want them to do—buy your stuff.
In other words, you’re only getting scraps thrown at you by the social media platforms. And the more the platform grows, the less you get. It’s a natural growth cycle of every social media company. You can always count on the fact that they will grow at your expense.
You’re like that poor dog begging for food underneath the table. Only as time goes by, there are even more hungry dogs and less food on the table. Most goes into the mouths of the obese owners.
Moreover, social media platforms have a short lifespan so all your efforts are eventually for nothing. Ask anyone who has built a big following on Facebook how useful it is today. Meanwhile, a high-quality article on your own site can provide value for years.
3. You’re on a Never-Ending Content Treadmill
Social media gurus get on my nerves because their solution to any marketing problem is to post more. More, more, more, until you can’t do it anymore but you can’t stop because you’re afraid that if you stop, your business will end.
You become trapped on a content treadmill, posting endless amounts of content, begging to get some attention like an old wrinkly prostitute in flashy clothes.
The more you post, the faster the treadmill is. Since you can’t stop, you never have time and energy to reconsider what you’re doing and whether it’s the best strategy for your business.
Strategic thinking drowns in the sea of content you’re forced to produce every day just to stay afloat. And the worst thing is that whatever you produce, it’s often unsearchable and irrelevant the next day.
4. You Fail to Build What’s Most Important
The ONLY valuable asset in every business is a customer list. Yet, if you focus on social media, you fool yourself that your follower count is what defines your business.
You either spend time building your own platform or you build time spending other people’s platforms.
This forum is a great example of a platform standing on its own. I didn’t join it because I saw MJ on social media. I joined it because I read MJ’s book. I stayed because it’s an independent platform owned by a person who cares. For all I care, MJ may never post anything on social media. I want to read his content HERE, on his OWN platform.
Would your clients say the same about your business? Would they still work with you if you had no presence on social media?
Would you rather have 100,000 followers on social media or 1,000 loyal customers? (If you chose the former, sorry but there’s no hope for you LOL.)
5. You Judge the Value of the Business by the Number of Followers
My girlfriend has a podcast. She had a call with a potential guest today. The woman told her that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be featured in my girlfriend’s podcast because “nothing happens on her Instagram profile.”
My girlfriend only posts images with new episodes on her Instagram profile. But if you checked the podcast’s archives, you’d see over 75 episodes posted religiously every week, featuring dozens of recognized in her niche guests.
That poor guest is so brainwashed. She thinks that an Instagram profile counts more than your real-world track record. To make matters worse, she was SHOCKED how my girlfriend got podcast listeners through something else than Instagram.
My girlfriend is not an Instagrammer. She owns a podcast. That’s her business, not posting daily vlogs or other bullshit from her everyday life. She doesn’t even want Instagram followers who spend a tenth of a second liking her random images. She wants real listeners who invest hours listening to her episodes.
There are so many businesses that have few, if any, social media followers, yet kill it WAY, WAY more than brands that obsess about social media.
Do you help people through selling your products or do you chase status through posting meaningless social media posts?
6. You Waste Time and Mental Energy on Drama and Addiction
Social media thrives because it appeals to our most basic instincts.
Everything is designed in such a way to get you hooked and keep you there for as long as possible. Notifications, real-time updates, live stories. Then there’s inevitable drama and bullshit politics that’s impossible to opt out of.
Instagram will always pester you with profiles of plastic surgery enhanced half naked models of both genders.
Twitter will always pester you with annoying politics no matter who you follow.
Both Facebook and TikTok will always steal your attention through idiotic short clips designed to captivate your brain whether you want it or not.
Even if you’re strong-willed, there’s NO WAY you won’t waste your life each time you visit any of the social media platforms for “business” purposes.
Is this how you want to spend your valuable time?
7. You’re Contributing to Producing Mountains of Garbage
Most content on social media is F*cking garbage. I need to swear here because there’s no other way to describe it.
Twitter relies on bullshit, supposedly clever, one-liners that say nothing. Yet, our brains like these empty platitudes. So, like idiots, we retweet them. Long form, well though-out content is rare these days because it’s too hard for most people to read something longer than 280 characters.
Instagram relies on even more bullshit soft porn pictures or other depictions of a “perfect” life along with even more idiotic empty quotes. Yet, we fall for this, too. It’s in our genes. There’s no way a healthy male is able to look away from a perfect pair of photoshopped boobs.
TikTok relies on cringeworthy, self-absorbed, completely retarded videos of teenagers thinking they do something meaningful. Yet, in their stupidity, they’re so captivating you find yourself watching one video after another. Later, you feel disgusted with yourself only to do it again the next time you “work” on TikTok.
Can you find valuable content on social media? Yes, you can. Not everything is garbage.
It doesn’t change the fact that most of social media content is utter junk. These platforms don’t reward in-depth content. They reward simplistic, controversial or straight up idiotic posts and videos.
Since people are so addicted to social media today, their attention spans are so short you have to transmit your message in a few seconds. What valuable things can you say in a few seconds? By default, you’re forced to contribute to this mountain of garbage every single day.
8. You’re Building an Unsellable Asset
It’s rare for most small businesses to succeed on social media. So, instead, most founders post under their own names. Their business becomes them. Yes, a personal brand may be valuable but a personal brand, as the name implies, is unsellable.
If this doesn’t bother you, then this point doesn’t apply to you. Yet, I’d urge every entrepreneur to think about a potential exit strategy. If you’re building your business through promoting yourself, then most likely you won’t be able to sell it in the future.
9. You Fail to See Other Opportunities
People new to business, particularly those who don’t remember the world before social media, assume that EVERY business needs to be on social media. They focus only on those business ideas that have a social media presence, ignoring the wealth of other possible opportunities.
Boring, but essential B2B businesses? Nah, where will I get my followers?
Offline businesses without an online presence other than a simple website? No way, how will I brag about my biz?
Low-key business models that rely on joint ventures and deal-making rather than social media content? No thanks, I’m too busy building my “credibility” on social media.
10. You Do What Everyone Else Is Doing
Being an entrepreneur means full responsibility for your decisions but also complete freedom over how you want to run your business.
Unfortunately, most people let the prevailing narrative dictate how they’ll approach their ventures.
If the “only” way to succeed is through fifty social media posts a day, let’s do it.
If the “only” way to succeed is through showing your boobs to horny teenagers (who will not buy your products anyway), let’s do it.
If the “only” way to succeed is through being a complete idiot dancing like a drunk moose, let’s do it.
Don’t be a sheep. Use your brain. Create YOUR business on YOUR OWN terms rather than letting social media corporations bully you into using their toxic platforms.
There, I said it.
Thoughts, love, hate—all welcome.
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