If you spend any amount of time on twitter, pretty much every post is about why everyone should pay attention to “me”.  I’m just as guilty of posting self serving comments in an effort to grow readership of my blog or for people to actually care about something I wrote or “favorite” a joke that I told with the use of just a handful of characters.  If we wanted nobody to read it, we wouldn’t post it right?  

Since writing this blog, I have been followed by quite a few authors, self help gurus and teams of social media specialists.  Most I have followed back in an effort to not be a jerk that didn’t return the favor.  Then it happens.  I take the time to read the posts of the people  I have given my approval to by following their posts.  How the hell do these people have more followers than me?  It’s not a contest.  I know that.  It’s just amazing how these individuals become virally famous with next to no real contributions from their experience or knowledge. They are social media Kardashians. Being famous for being famous (minus the Ray J video).

What’s interesting about these social media “specialists” is that most of them contribute very little in content, but rather retweet or repost something someone else wrote.  They quote famous writers and copy and paste small takeaways that happen to fit in the allotted characters and sometimes with an attached link that sends you to whatever they are trying to market.  Their only skill is the ability to identify something that would persuade someone to stop long enough to read it.  Again, the content is not theirs and that’s disappointing.  Any resourceful person would be able to locate enough meaningful content on their own and most likely without the help of these “gurus”. 

You ever notice how many artists out there have been discovered on YouTube?  Sure, they have to be discovered somehow and the Internet gives them a terrific platform to perform and hopefully get noticed. Yet, what are most of these people discovered for?  Singing covers.  Doing their version of someone else’s song. Once again, their contribution to fame is derived from someone else’s content.  Outside of their singing ability, they are sharing nothing personal with the world.  

Are you contributing or are you sharing?  Are you regurgitating someone else’s words or beliefs and not sharing your experience or knowledge? Are you holding back because of a lack of confidence or letting someone else speak for you?

 If so, someone else is doing the homework and presentation and you’re just along for the ride.  Other people’s words often sound better than the sentences you put together, but that doesn’t mean you should take a backseat and not contribute.  You can agree with someone to a certain extent, but deep down inside we are all different people with unique experiences and perspectives.  Share yours.  Holding back and not sharing your knowledge or outlook and only sharing brief excerpts from the mind of others doesn’t make you a guru or an expert on anything more than having the ability to identify takeaways.  

Anyone can get a 1000 likes for sharing something someone else created.  What did you create today that provoked a thoughtful conversation or changed a persons mind or life?  What did you learn or create today that was valuable enough to share with others?  

If nothing.  Try again tomorrow, but don’t just share…have the balls to create. 

#kardashian #twitter #sharing #gurus #socialmediaspecialists #selfhelp