Your Followers Are Consumers

A recap of my one-on-one call with Meta

This week I had the opportunity to talk to one of Meta’s “media experts.” I got a notification on Instagram that I qualified for one of these calls as a creator utilizing reels. I will give you a breakdown of what I learned but what struck me the most was an off the cuff, and likely off script, comment Meta’s rep said. He said, “Over the weekend I was using Instagram as a consumer.” Maybe this comment makes sense because I am sure if you work for Meta, the majority of your time on Meta is for business rather than pleasure but this is how we should all be thinking about social media. Your followers are on social media to consume content.

When I started thinking about my followers as consumers and Instagram as a tool rather than a place to mindlessly scroll, that is when things changed. Yes, platforms push the narrative of “this is a place to foster community and build relationships” which is certainly an element of building an engaged and authentic following but before you can get there you have to shift your mindset. So my challenge for you this week is this:

Ask yourself these two questions:

1. Who is your target audience?

   1. Example: First time home buyers.

2. What are they hungry for?

   1. Example: Trying to figure out of the heck to buy in this economy.

This should be the foundation of the content you are putting out there.

And now, here is the recap of the call with Meta that I promised: