Where Is My Voice In The Noisy World Of Social Media

By Rohini Vaishnavi

There is a lot of noise all over the social media platforms with everyone trying to showcase their talent and offerings, especially because of the pandemic. Speakers and listeners both are fatigued. Speakers are fatigued because they can’t woe the audience even if they make their pearls of wisdom available for free and the listeners have the obvious reasons for being exhausted. After all what all can they listen to?

Pandemic has caused drastic changes in the lifestyle especially work and sleep patterns which is leaving people exhausted. There is no demarcation between the work and private life. Scientifically, when we leave from office to get back home, there is a commute involved and during that time we are mentally winding down. Similarly the routines like family time in the evening, reading a book or watching a TV show send signals to the body which starts producing melatonin and preparing the body for sleep. Having lost the demarcation between work and the personal life, minds are in a constant state of activity which causes stress. Those who lost their jobs or fear losing jobs have obvious reasons to be stressed.

In the middle of all this, every business is trying to stay afloat may it be a big capitalist or a small hawker or a nearby Pizza outlet. Since there is no one outdoors, everyone is forced to be on the social media. When I look at platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram and twitter, I tend to lose my clarity of thinking because I am so carried away by everything that is there that I can’t tell how I spent an hour or half reading or watching things which may not even be relevant to me. After sometime I am surprised to see that the clock has taken quite a leap and this leaves me feeling guilty because I have more important tasks at hand on which I should have spent my time. After grasping so much information which was not really so important to me, I feel exhausted and obviously my productivity goes down. Suddenly I realise that it is time to cook dinner. After all there can be a flexibility in work timing for any other type of work except for cooking a meal. Being a women I cannot afford to be so engrossed in my work that I forget to cook a meal for my family. Day after day passes feeling guilty that perhaps I have not been able to do justice to household chores and nor have I been able to do justice to my official work. Such are the dilemmas which many of us are facing due to lost work and life demarcation.

Coming back to the noise on the social media which is deafening, I feel sad for all those who are constantly making noises and are still unheard, getting few viewers or likes and comments. I am also one of those who can be pitied. Imagine the stress of going back to social media handles to check how many people liked your post. This is another type of Social media anxiety, which certainly is not new but I should say it is more prevalent now than before.

You must be wondering, what am I trying to say? What is this article about? Is it about social media or about people’s lifestyle in pandemic? As I am writing, I am myself not aware but I can tell you how I started to write this article. I started with the intention of mapping my customers on the marketing funnel for my company’s services namely “Employability Skills” and “Women Entrepreneurship.” As I am further working on developing content and marketing communication strategy it became necessary for me to think of meeting my customers where they are in their life stages so that I am able to address their genuine needs to offer them value. Should I expect the customer to come to me and listen to me whenever I am on the social media? Or should I try to be there when my consumer needs my services depending on their life stages and the circumstances of their lives. After all by offering my service to them, I am intending to be a part of their lives, how can I shy away from understanding the entire milieu in which they are spending their life? Therefore, while I set out to put some thought on my marketing communication strategy, this entire Pandora box opened in front of my eyes from where the things like, life style, stress, noise over social media, falling incomes and work life balance started to pour out before me. In the middle of all this, should I over burden those who I wish to serve or should I understand when, how and where do they really need my service so that I can make a positive impact on their lives?

The truth is that each one of us wishes to hear something that really takes away some burden from us or hands over a solution that addresses a need. Yet we feel overwhelmed by all the noise around us, excessive information and data in the form of written text, audio and video. My article is also gradually becoming a part of that noise which will find its place in someone’s trash folder. However, I do not wish to end up there hence it is important that I meet my customers when they need my service. Tracking my customer’s journey and the marketing funnel in tandem will enable me to know them better and make my offerings more relevant to them. I do not wish to burden them through over communication or by sneaking into their social media space un-invited. I want my product to address a genuine need and offer value.

Therefore, few things shall be key to my success first is a clear value proposition which is also distinct from the competition and second is to find a place where my customer is present and would also like to know more about my offerings and third and most important is to imagine the milieu in which the customer exists to be a part of that milieu as an asset.