How Being Successful in Social Media, Can Make You Feel Like a Failure

A Success = Failure?

I use the term "successful" loosely here, because everyone's definition of success is different. For some, it may be in terms of views, for others it may the monthly amount of revenue your social media outlets are bringing, and ultimately - for those that have it figured out, perhaps it is just the amount of joy it is bringing you. However you define your terms of success as a social media influencer, digital publisher, YouTuber, blogger, or whatever terms you prefer to call yourself, I've found the more goals that I achieve or higher amounts of "success" that I achieve, the more it can make you feel like a failure.

With each climb upwards, it makes you wonder how you possibly sustain that? Where do you go from there?

Pondering where you even go from here?

Don't Compare

Very early on in your YouTube career, you learn not to compare yourself to others. Our numbers are very "out in the open", on each video, channel page, and easily searched on Social Blade. There are numbers everywhere you turn. There will always be someone that is "bigger" than you, growing faster, or that grows overnight. Your channel and your social media outlets are on their own trajectory.

Up to this point, I have stuck with letting my social media outlets grow organically. Relying on the YouTube algorithm and search function to help people find my videos, and using additional social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, to stay engaged with my audience and remind them when my videos are posted. Along the way, you realize that it is extremely easy to get "caught up in the numbers" of it all and it can consume you, for some this is too overwhelming and they decide that working in social media is not for them, for others you persevere and keep moving forwards only looking at your own gains and losses for comparison sake... Comparison is still comparison though, even if it is with yourself.

When you lose comparing against yourself

Comparison can still be a thief of joy, even if it is just comparing against yourself. I'm coming off of one of my biggest months in recent months. January can be a down time for many publishers, but for me - it tends to be a higher viewed month with my Christmas videos being highly searched out. Add to that a few additional videos that drove views even higher during January 2017, a Disney World and Disney Cruise reveal video that added over 65,000 views, and a few videos that were done to test the algorithm (which worked, by the way - more on that in a future post) - including a wrapping prank video that brought in a higher than average 15,000 views. It added up to be one of my best Januarys yet, with 745,000+ videos on Being Mommy with Style and over 1.1 million views on all of my channels... A significant percent higher than my average monthly views of 500,000 on Being Mommy with Style and 700,000-800,000 views overall across all channels.

...Yet, come the end of February, I will feel like a failure.

I will feel like a failure, because I know February's numbers will not match January's. Due to either circumstances of Christmas searches starting to drop off, that I was traveling for part of the month so my channel had to be on "auto-pilot" for that time with scheduled videos with limited intervention from me, or the fact that February only has 28 days - February's numbers will undoubtedly not match nor top January's numbers. And then you feel set up to try to "chase" the higher numbers of the previous month, which really - that's not what I started all of this and it doesn't have to be about.

Christmas videos are some of my most highly searched videos in January!

When these thoughts start to creep in and I start to have self-doubt about what this is all about, why I'm doing this, and whether I'm really achieving anything at all, I have to remind myself that I started this to help people, to build that connection. And whether it is 5 people or 100 people, if I can bring some brightness to their day, help them in some way, or entertain them while they are stuck in the house with sick children or nursing their baby in the middle of the night, then that makes it all worth it.

So I would implore you, if you're feeling this way... you feel yourself starting to feel like you've failed even after you've met goals you've set for yourself, consider how far you've come. Consider the positive impact that we are making to help people make informed purchasing decisions, deciding where to vacation, or giving them a bit of company when they need it... We can bring positivity into the world through social media and THAT is what I want my ultimate goal to be. Not to meet last month's numbers, but to bring joy to people however I can.

If we focus on that joy, and let our social media outlets continue to be organic and authentic, then really we are all successful. In the true sense of the word.

** This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.