Threads! Should you be using it for your business or is it just shiny object syndrome?

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about the new social media platform that everyone is talking about - Threads!

In this episode I share how to know whether to do something new, how to know when something has worked or not worked, and how to stay in your lane and keep your head down and get on with the things that you need to be getting on with.

Are you on Threads yet? How are you finding it if you are? Drop me a DM on my socials and let me know, I'd love to hear from you!

 
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Why the issues you face with social media isn't necessarily about the platform you're on
The hockey stick effect of consistency
The most valuable resource you have as a business owner


 
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Happy Mind, Happy Life by Dr Rangan Chatterjeee

Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

 
Transcript 
You are listening to your dream business podcast. And as always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. Now, I actually started to get a bit ahead of myself again, as you will know, if you're a regular listener, I have literally been recording these like days before they're due to come out, which is very unlike me.

So I sat down the other day with all my team and we planned out the next, I don't know, six, seven episodes. And then the world, did something. And I thought, Oh no, I really need to talk about that. So we've moved episodes again, but that's fine because that's kind of one of the advantages of doing it as quick as I am doing it as it were.

I mean, there's good and bad to batching and doing things on the fly. So at the moment doing it on the flight is helping because I wanted to address something that has happened, in the marketing space. So Threads have just come out. Instagram, Facebook Meta have released a new social media platform which is in, meant to be a competitive thing towards Twitter.

And it's not that I want to sit and talk about Threads, because I really don't, and I'm not on it, so I don't know anything about it, so that's not going to be of any help, if that's what you're thinking this episode is. It's that I want to talk about around this subject of... How do you know whether to do something new?

When do you know something has worked or not worked? And how to stay in your lane and keep your head down and get on with the things that you need to be getting on with and not get necessarily distracted and swayed by other stuff? So, It came out and suddenly my Instagram feed is full of here's my first Thread, here's what's on Threads, and then of course all the social media people are putting on there, well not even just social media people, marketing people, and someone made a joke about, you know, give two days and there'll be a course on how to use Threads.

You know, everyone's commenting on it and I get it. If people are in that space, absolutely. They should be commenting on it.

Today’s episode of the podcast is all about the new social media platform that everyone is talking about - Threads!

In this episode I share how to know whether to do something new, how to know when something has worked or not worked, and how to stay in your lane and keep your head down and get on with the things that you need to be getting on with.

Are you on Threads yet? How are you finding it if you are? Drop me a DM on my socials and let me know, I'd love to hear from you!

 
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Why the issues you face with social media isn't necessarily about the platform you're on
The hockey stick effect of consistency
The most valuable resource you have as a business owner


 
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Happy Mind, Happy Life by Dr Rangan Chatterjeee

Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

 
Transcript 
You are listening to your dream business podcast. And as always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. Now, I actually started to get a bit ahead of myself again, as you will know, if you're a regular listener, I have literally been recording these like days before they're due to come out, which is very unlike me.

So I sat down the other day with all my team and we planned out the next, I don't know, six, seven episodes. And then the world, did something. And I thought, Oh no, I really need to talk about that. So we've moved episodes again, but that's fine because that's kind of one of the advantages of doing it as quick as I am doing it as it were.

I mean, there's good and bad to batching and doing things on the fly. So at the moment doing it on the flight is helping because I wanted to address something that has happened, in the marketing space. So Threads have just come out. Instagram, Facebook Meta have released a new social media platform which is in, meant to be a competitive thing towards Twitter.

And it's not that I want to sit and talk about Threads, because I really don't, and I'm not on it, so I don't know anything about it, so that's not going to be of any help, if that's what you're thinking this episode is. It's that I want to talk about around this subject of... How do you know whether to do something new?

When do you know something has worked or not worked? And how to stay in your lane and keep your head down and get on with the things that you need to be getting on with and not get necessarily distracted and swayed by other stuff? So, It came out and suddenly my Instagram feed is full of here's my first Thread, here's what's on Threads, and then of course all the social media people are putting on there, well not even just social media people, marketing people, and someone made a joke about, you know, give two days and there'll be a course on how to use Threads.

You know, everyone's commenting on it and I get it. If people are in that space, absolutely. They should be commenting on it. If they've got a social media business, if they've got a marketing business, I get why this would be something they're talking about and jumping on. However, I have to say, obviously my feed is full of business owners that not only I know, but ones that are in my world.

And I see them all or see a lot of them jumping on Threads and saying, you know, I'm on Threads and here it is, and this is what I'm doing. And I have to start questioning to myself, like why, and how's that helping their business and how, how have they decided that they need another social media platform?

So now this, I have to say this podcast is not in any way aimed to judge or shame or anything. It's just my thoughts and views on it. In fact, I had a very lovely message, which I shared on my Instagram the other week. About someone had listened to my podcast episode about when things are hard in your business and what to do and said it was like a big warm hug and it was lovely, which is my aim.

So I certainly don't want you to think I'm sat here judging you or judging anybody going, what are you doing on that new platform? That's not the case. What I'm doing is, I guess, explaining my thoughts, my approach to these things, and it may or not, or may help you in yours. So the first thing is when something new comes out, it's really hard not to jump on it, right?

Cause everyone's jumping on it and you don't want to be the one person that's not on the platform that everyone's talking about. Because in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, being part of a community and being in people's world and having people around us is one of his needs. I'm sure he says it much more eloquently and he doesn't mean social media, but that is part of our needs.

So if we think everyone is doing something and we're not there and we're not invited to the party or we're not getting involved, then we will automatically want to make sure that we are part of that party. So it is absolutely human nature to want to get involved in something that everyone else is involved in.

But one of the things that really kind of not surprised me, one of the things that really made me think was some of the people moving on to Threads and creating accounts and posting on Threads haven't been consistent on their own social media. They haven't posted consistently on the ones that they're currently on.

They are not killing it on those platforms as in, they've got it all sussed and therefore they've got enough time and space to take on another platform. These things, like, let's move business to one side, but from a mental health point of view, like, I really don't like social media. I really don't. I have a very curated feed.

I literally block and mute people on a regular basis if they give me anything but positive vibes. The only people I really follow and look at their stuff are my members and my community and people in my world. I don't look at competitors. I don't look at some friends because they do similar stuff to me and I don't want to see what they're doing.

So the last thing I want to do is go on another platform where my time is being taken. I can't remember what it was, whether it was a book or a podcast or something. I think it might have been a podcast. No, it wasn't. It was a book. It was, Rangan Chatterjee. Have I said that right? Probably not. Anyway, I'll make sure we link up to it.

I think it's called happy something, happy something. I'm obviously prepared for this podcast. Can't you tell? And basically he talks about phones in that, and I will make sure we link up to it in the show notes. In case you don't know where the show notes are, it's teresaheathwareing.com/ whatever number episode this is.

Which FYI, I better tell you what episode it is or otherwise that's not gonna be very helpful. It's episode 303. So it literally will be the numbers 303. Yeah, so I, He talks in this book about Phones and imagine if your phone was another person, right? So imagine you're sat on your sofa and your partner's sat next to you And imagine your phone is another person and how much attention you're giving that other person.

Imagine going out for dinner with your partner. And instead of talking to your partner, you're talking to this other person. And it really kind of made me think, and I was like, do you know what? It's not good being on our phones this much is not good. As you will know, if you are a regular listener, I'm a teen, I'm a teenager.

No, I'm not. I'm a mom to a teenager. And I hate the fact that she wants to spend so much time on her phone. So from a mental health point of view, I don't think it's great to have yet another platform to take our time, to take up our mental space, and to affect our mental health. I don't think it's, personally, I don't want that in my world.

Someone did say that, you know, All the people, you know, there's only nice people on Thread so far. And it's like, yeah, there will be so far maybe, but it won't be long. There's the issues aren't necessarily with the platforms. It's with the people on the platforms and what they're putting on them. And just because it's a new platform does not mean those people who are horrible and hateful and have the worst things to say are not going to come over to that platform.

Anyway, I've gone down a rabbit hole that I didn't expect to go down. So let's come back to the business thing. So how do we stay in our own lane? How do we know what's working and how do we make a confident decision to change when we know something isn't working? This is a really hard question. Because people come to me all the time and they go, I've done this thing and it's not working.

And then I speak to them and go, how much have you done it? And how often have you posted it? And what have you done from it? And inevitably 9 out of 10 times, it's not the thing that isn't working. If the fact that they either haven't done it enough, they haven't been consistent enough, or they haven't shown up in the way that they should be on that particular thing.

So when people say social media doesn't work, you know, have you tried all the various different things? Have you been consistent? When I was watching something the other week with Jasmine Starr, I'm in social curator and, and I don't catch any of her stuff really, and wildly, I'm not entirely sure I caught this one, but she talks about how do I know when it's, you know, when something is working, as in if I try a new social media strategy on my Instagram.

And she said 90 posts. Like, it should be 90 days if you're posting every day, but if you're not, it's 90 posts. She said to me, not to me, she said on this thing that, you know, if you do that for 90 posts or 90 days consistently, And then come and speak to me, there's a fair chance I'm going to say, yeah, it's not working.

And I just want you to like, think about that for a second. It's like me and my podcast, and I've told this story a million times over, but it's always a good one to tell. I said I was going to do my podcast for 12 months consistently before I made a decision. And it wasn't until month nine that suddenly it had like the hockey stick effect where it was tagging along pretty nice and then suddenly it was like, whoosh, went up there, got loads of downloads. My husband was like, what did you do? My team members were like, what did you do? And I did nothing different. The only thing I could put it down to was consistency.

And this is another thing I see all the time. People start something like a podcast, they do a few episodes, stop. Then have a break, then do a random one episode. Then don't do any for three weeks. Then do another episode. Then I haven't done any for two months. And it's like, that isn't how it works. It works through consistency.

So if you are thinking, well, Threads might work because the others didn't. Have you honestly, and this isn't, like I said, this isn't shame. This isn't judgment. This is for you to honestly ask yourself these questions. Have I honestly done what I needed to do on those other platforms? And if you can answer, yes, I have.

Then yeah, great. Try something new, do something new. I want to remind you that it is that consistency that makes business owners successful when you find someone that you like, you know, let's say you're new to this podcast. I'm on episode 303. I have done. I have never, ever missed a week ever. Right. And I don't say that to be a big head.

I don't say that to be like, check me out. I say that to go when I say I'm going to do something, I do it and you can trust me that I am going to do this. You can trust that I will show up and give you a new episode every single week. And that's why I've been able to grow an audience from it.

That's why I have customers from my podcast because I've consistently shown up and done it. So when people come to me and go, it doesn't work. If they haven't consistently shown up and done it, then it might not work. And You won't really ever know cause you haven't done it consistently. So that's the one thing I want to say that, you know, if you're sat there thinking, I haven't really put my all into the other platforms, is it such a good idea to get a new platform or to follow the trend?

The other thing I want to say is just because people are successful on different things. And again, I'm not necessarily even talking about everyone moving to Threads or when clubhouse opened, everyone going over to clubhouse. And when TikTok, I've never, like, I've been on TikTok, I think, just to look at it, and I deleted it after 24 hours because I knew for my mental health and my time, it would not be useful to me.

I know there are some businesses that are over successful using those platforms, crazy successful, made loads of money, but that doesn't mean I need to. It doesn't mean that I have to go to that platform to be successful. There are people, there are businesses out there who don't even have social media and make a lot of money.

You know, there are people where it's all done a referral or it's all done through PR or it's all done just through social media. Like you don't have a website. So it's not to say that don't do these things, but just know that you don't have to do these things. You don't have to be on those things to be successful and to show up and to and to bring money into your business.

So, like I said, the first thing or the kind of one thing I want to think about is Have you been consistent and can you honestly go, I have shown up consistently and done this thing for a good amount of time, i. e. three months, and it's not worked, and I'm not getting the results I want, and it doesn't even mean that it won't ever work, it might mean you need to tweak it.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is, I want you to think about, You can make more money. You can't make more time. And if our time is a premium as a business owner, it's an absolute premium. And one of my main jobs to myself is, am I staying focused? Am I doing the right things? And again, you've been in my world for a while.

You'll know, I talk about, you know, does it make the boat go faster? Which came from an amazing talk we had from Laura Try, who rode the ocean, um, rode the ocean, like. I just say that really flippantly, and what ocean truly is it like? So she rode from like, somewhere like Spain, I've got this really wrong, over to Antigua.

It was definitely from that side of the world to Antigua. And this woman is an absolute rock star, she's phenomenal. And she came and did a talk in the... online event I have for my members. And basically her, her whole thing was, we would only do something if it was going to help us make our boat go faster.

And this is the question I ask myself all the time as I get distracted down a rabbit hole, which I do because I am not superhuman. I will stop myself at some point. Sometimes it's minutes in, sometimes it's half an hour later and go, Teresa, is this making the boat go faster? And if it's not, you need to stop.

So. I want you to be fierce with your own time. I want you to be the, you know, gatekeeper of your own time and decide that your time is the most valuable thing in the world and therefore you don't need it being sucked up and taken away by things that are not important. Now, Will I never be on Threads? I don't know.

I will see what happens. But the other thing, like, because it's basically Twitter, but new, you know, so it's like, well, was everyone consistent on Twitter before? Because if you weren't, then why are you going to Threads? Like, it just, the whole thing blows my mind, quite honestly. But like I said, I didn't come on here to shame people who have joined and be like, what the hell have you done?

Not at all. Just to say to yourself, I give you permission if you think you need it, that you don't have to follow the crowd and follow everybody else, that you can be selfish and go, my time is worth more than this. And I know doing XYZ would get me more customers or grow my business more or have me shown up more or do better things for my business than necessarily joining a new platform.

So like I said, it was a bit of an odd one. I wanted to address the fact that this has happened. And just to remind you that, like I said, your time is so very valuable and it's so easily distracted by so many things already as a business owner that we really don't need to add something else.

But those are my thoughts. So anyway, I hope you've had a good week or have a good week. If you're listening to this on Monday, I will be back next week. Talking about the sunk cost fallacy. If you don't know what that is, then make sure you tune in next week to find out. Have an awesome week and I will see you then.