My Beef with Social Media

Growing my Substack with one arm tied behind my back

Hi Everyone,

First, I want to thank all of you who read and engaged with last week’s post. To date it’s been the most viewed and commented on thing I’ve put out on this platform by far. I have a new crop of subscribers to show for it, and I’ve even received an interview request from a Catholic radio station. I had already started riding a wave of renewed creative inspiration. This sudden surge in interest (although extremely modest in the grand scheme of things) has been a strong encouragement to keep going.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, writing and trying to grow this Substack has made it crystal clear to me why companies hire full time social media managers and spend tens (to hundreds of millions) of dollars on marketing. It’s true that these days it’s easier than ever for an article to go viral and reach millions of people, even without the help of a large following. But those cases are still akin to winning the lottery, and even when they happen, they often don’t translate to a sustained audience.

So in order for this Substack to grow, it needs to be marketed. What traditional marketing and modern algorithm driven growth strategies have in common is that they operate like a funnel or a fishing trawler. Something is shown to a huge number of people in the hopes that a tiny percentage of them will take interest. At the present moment, I don’t have the time, audience, or resources to market my writing in this way on my own.

I’m also at a further disadvantage because at this point I’m still firmly committed to staying off social media. On my last attempt at blogging, I could do a lot of the heavy lifting myself; simply posting my articles on Facebook would drive a respectable amount of traffic to my writing. In my very first post on this Substack I posted a reflection where I wrestled with my decision to leave Facebook for this very reason. Fittingly, that post stands at twelve views at the time of printing.

This past year I did start an Instagram page dedicated solely to promoting this Substack. For its size and the tiny amount of traffic it’s generated, this page has yielded a surprising number of subscribers, some of whom have gone on to become avid readers. This striking success has led me to keep it up, but I am still ambivalent and seriously considering taking it down.

What’s my beef with social media? As far as I’m concerned, social media is our generation’s smoking. Yes, everyone had a relative who smoked a pack a day and lived to be ninety five. And I think that ten to fifteen years from now we’ll look back and realize that some of the warnings going around about social media were a little hysterical.

Nevertheless, I think social media is destined for (or at least deserves) a similar resounding cultural rejection as smoking. As a culture we were able to come to a collective realization: Yes, my great aunt Sally lived to be ninety five. That doesn’t mean her life wouldn’t have been much better without smoking a pack a day, and that doesn’t mean we should let children have unrestricted access to cigarettes.

For me personally, social media took far more than it ever gave. When it comes to return on investment, leaving Facebook easily ranks in the top ten best decisions I’ve ever made. If you’re unhappy with the role that social media is playing in your life, I highly recommend checking out Cal Newport’s books Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work (here is a brief summary of Newport’s philosophy of Digital Minimalism).

So I can’t buy ads, I’m not willing to become a social media influencer, I still haven’t struck gold with the algorithm, and all my friends already know about my work. How am I supposed to grow this Substack?

While I’m not above accepting help from other people with large followings of their own, I would love for this Substack to grow organically. Rather than a large funnel or fishing trawler, I would love for this Substack’s overall growth to model a determined and efficient fisherman. Rather than showing it to a vast crowd of mostly uninterested people, I would love for my posts to be shared to a much smaller but much more likely to be interested cohort.

This is where you come in. If you have a vast army of social media followers and you’re willing to share my work with them, that would be very much appreciated, and it would probably go a long way. But above all, if you read a reflection and someone comes to mind who you think would enjoy this, bring them aboard by sharing the piece with them. I publish these reflections for all the world to see because I think these ideas are worth sharing, and you subscribed because you felt they were worth receiving. My last post wasn’t a home run when it comes to reach, but it was my first real base hit, and it showed that Integrated Prayer can resonate far and wide if the right people share it in the right ways with the right people. I hope you’ll join me in looking for ways to give it legs.