Navigating the authenticity crises: How to thrive within a fake social media environment

You hate social media because you think it’s fake.

You think it’s fake because you see many people showing versions of themselves that seem “off.”

You don’t post because you’re scared you must do the same to succeed. 

People who grow the fastest are the ones who know that the opposite is the truth. 

I was exactly like you

I was naive in the beginning of my career. I saw people who had a larger following and assumed that they were real. I wondered why I had only 100-200 followers. I wondered why my post only received four likes and what it would take to become an expert in real-estate. 

I put out SO much content, hosted events and supported other people like CRAZY, but I didn’t see any traction online. I felt like a failure as I watched other accounts grow (TOO MUCH) by tens and thousands of followers. 

Then I noticed a thing.

The following are some of the most effective ways to reduce your risk.My phone rang. They wanted to work with me and wanted my content. 

I have listings. We grew. 

I also noticed that those same people who had 5-10 times more followers than mine were not selling. Online, they looked great, but it didn’t translate to REAL relationships. 

Then, I figured out what the problem was

When I reached a certain threshold, I started getting pitched to BUY followers — the new trend in getting engagement/comments/views.

The more things change the more they remain the same. 

I felt AWFUL and had to decide what to do. I had to make a decision.

Some people will do this because “It’s sales, baby!” If that’s your jam, go for it. For me, when people hear my name, what’s more important to me is this proverb:

“A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, loving favor rather than silver and gold.” 

This business is fraught. Competition is a great thing. Comparison is not the same as competition.

In the best times, competition can drive innovation. It can show us what’s possible and help us refine our best selves. 

In the worst of situations, comparison can make us miserable despite all that we have. 

You can also read more about it here. How to Get Started?Can you solve it? Here’s what helped me achieve authenticity with integrity.

Shut out the Noise

What?You should focus on expanding. I did a time-audit and began catching myself when i was spending more time worrying about my competitors than growing my business. So I started researching better ways to curate feeds: 

1. Unfollow and block people

I know that this sounds aggressive, but it was necessary. It may have not been a “them” problem — their content actually WAS that good. It was more that I realized that in order to achieve my dreams, drastic measures were needed, and this was just one of them. 

I FORCED my self to unfollow anyone who made me feel that way.

It wasn’t a lot of work. I didn’t overthink it. I just went with my gut. 

At first, it didn’t make a difference. After a couple months of thoughtful consideration, I found that I was MUCH more productive on the internet. Posting with purpose and GHOSTING. Not feeling bad. WIN. 

2. Build community

After I figured out who I didn’t want in my feeds, I realized the algorithms on ALL platforms WANT to serve you the RIGHT people. 

Consider it.  If your feed is filled with terrible things, it’s probably more a reflection of what you actually look at or engage with.

Did you realize that even pausing for 1.5 seconds on a Facebook post counts as an impression.

When I realized that, I did a quick Google search. “How to clean up your feed on ‘insert any social platform here’”

I’ll save you the research:

• Click Here to Learn More “see less” 
• Click Here to Learn More “X”Close the post
• Unfollow 

Every single platform has a simple way to tell it you don’t want that content in your feed. When was the last time you TOLD platforms what you wanted?

Same as unfollowing people, it didn’t take much effort. Simple actions, repeated over time, allowed me to achieve success.

You can also find out more about this by clicking here.One of the biggest unlocks was a new feature. Slowly but steadily, I saw so many people who I wanted communicate with in my feed.

So much of what I didn’t like about social media went away: The petty political arguments. The provocative. The violence. The fear.

Social media is not fake, unless you assume it to be so or interact with it in this way.

What dominates the bulk of people’s feeds adds nothing good to your lives, I promise you that. 

What dominates my feed are people who have integrity and are intelligent. 

What I see on my feed is stuff that makes me smarter.

What dominates my feed is people from my community. 

Social media is supposed to be social. It’s not fake unless you assume it is or engage with it in that way.

Social media is your high-school cafeteria. You choose which table to sit at, but guess what? You can change the table at any time. So, I changed the table.

I doubled my efforts for MY people. They were the ones who wished us luck and cheered us on. I continued to try to provide valuable solutions for their problems, regardless of vanity metrics.

It took me a LONG TIME to figure out who I was speaking to, but it worked. The compound effect is undeniable. We’ve now reached over nine million people and climbed across multiple platforms, but that’s unimportant.

What’s important is that we continue to find the RIGHT people.

What’s important is slow growth over time will yield something sustainable and valuable. 

Stop worrying about followers. Stop worrying about views. Stop worrying about views. 

Focus on the person who is on the other end of a DM or a phone call. They are real people. Stop treating them like they aren’t real. “community”Like income lines on a worksheet. Everything will change when you do this.

Stay tuned for the next piece that will give you more information on how to use Social Media in a way which helps you achieve authenticity and integrity.