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An Essentialist Approach to Social Media

By Jared Dees

A few months ago I quit using social media.

I did not check the news feeds and I did not post updates throughout the day.

I checked in to see if I had any messages a few times a week.

To be completely honest, I have not missed it.

There have been a few times when people I knew personally assumed I knew what was going on in their lives from following them online, but when I started asking questions then we got to have a real, human conversation.

I liked that better than trying to read between the links of written posts anyway.

While I used to satisfy boredom during random parts of the day by checking those feeds, now I just open up my Kindle app and read.

Today, I am going to slightly adjust my hiatus from social media.

I am going to continue to make email my #1 form of online communication.

I am going to continue to block or avoid the news feeds.

But I will be:

  1. Posting links to these daily blog posts and other content I create.
  2. Interacting with other influencers that I am learning from as a creator.

I am going to tag anyone I need to thank for helping me learn something new.

I am going to reach out and say “thanks” to anyone I learn from.

The biggest reason is that it is a very quick and efficient way to communicate and connect with specific people.

When I first started these daily blog posts, I had a number of meaningful interactions with other influencers.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s retweet of a post I wrote about his $1.80 Instagram Strategy, for example, led to a lot of backlinks to this website.

I tweeted a post last week and got an immediate question about the content on my website that could be a good opportunity.

I do miss the mini-interactions I’ve had online and want to get out of my content-creation cave a little bit more than usual.

The point is, it takes two minutes to post a tweet that can make a big impact.

May 8, 2018 Filed Under: Productivity

About Jared Dees

Jared Dees is passionate about sharing practical resources to teach faith. He is best known for his website The Religion Teacher and is the author of many books including 31 Days to Becoming a Better Religious Educator, Christ in the Classroom, and Beatitales: 80 Fables about the Beatitudes for Children.

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Jared Dees is passionate about sharing practical resources to teach faith. He is best known for his website The Religion Teacher and is the author of many books including 31 Days to Becoming a Better Religious Educator, Christ in the Classroom, and Beatitales: 80 Fables about the Beatitudes for Children. See all of Jared's Books →

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