Let's talk social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram because they are the only two I can seem to keep my arms around. I confess, for a very long time I had a love-hate relationship with social media feeds. I was torn between wanting to share and also with feeling that posts had more to do with ego than actual sharing.
I finally realized that my feelings were spawned by others' views of media feeds. There seems to be two MAIN camps: those that poke holes at all positivity posts and those that feel some entire feeds are made up of negativity. There is a small segment of us in the middle - in the gray, if you will - that just enjoy viewing everyone's pictures of their families and pets and vacations, and tend to just overlook the more negative posts or the folks who are forever sick or being hurt or feel ignored by others.
While I hope people are "following" us - meaning the B&B - I can honestly say I have no idea how many followers we have on Insta OR Facebook. On the other hand, I spend several hours of research a week on how to use social media to promote our business. The reality is that social media is THE way to advertise today...and it's FREE!! We'd be nuts to NOT utilize this resource that will only continue to change and deepen and grow as the years go by.
Some days, I feel like the more I learn, the more I don't know. I finally switched my personal Insta to primarily business; meaning, I changed it from MY personal name to Wildernest Bed & Breakfast. Yes, I'll still post pics of the grands, the doggies, the food...but those things are WHO we are, so it makes sense to me that our potential guests would like to see what we view as important.
We spend ENORMOUS amounts of hours on our front porch, so front porch pics are important to me. Pictures of our cabins, the food we serve, and views of the property are paramount to - not only promoting our business - but also giving small glimpses into who we are as business owners. We're family people, first and foremost, so there will always, always, ALWAYS be crazy amounts of pictures and stories of our grands, our kiddos, and our pets.
The one area that I question the most is: am I being real? Authentic?
Because THIS I can promise you. For every delicious food picture I post, there are at least THREE that are HORRIBLE! My sweet husband is very vocal and descriptive during our meals together. When it's good, there is NO doubt. His vocabulary and adjectives (some appropriate and some not so much:) leave no doubt that it's a dish worth repeating. But when he is silent; eating but with no commentary, I know it's bad. Very, very bad, usually! Ha!
For every "positivity" post, I promise I could post three things that AREN'T going well in life. Sometimes I think our family could have their own reality show. We have SO. MUCH. GOING. ON. right now! Most good, but some sad, some scary, some uncertain...So, sure, I make the decision each and every day what I want to share with others. The truth is that I WANT to be a voice of positivity. I WANT to point others to what gets me through: JESUS.
At the same time, even though I don't post about it on a regular basis, we have our own set of difficulties that we deal with on the daily. We've given up a regular, dependable salary to take a chance on "us" and this dream of a B&B. We celebrate with our kids who have kids and who are expecting another! (Hopefully we'll have a gender reveal later this week!!!) We also have kids who are going through infertility treatments, including surgery, medications, injections...We celebrate and we console, and many times both on the same day. We have parents with new medical issues, and our place in the "sandwich" of the family is that of the meat that holds both ends together. That's just where we are.
I could post all this, and I would never, ever discourage others from posting whatever they like. For me, I encourage myself with prayer, positivity quotes, and focusing on the good things in life. This naturally segues into my social media posts. It does as much, if not MORE, good for me than it could ever do for others.
Maybe most importantly of all is the growing of our family business - the B&B. We want that to be "the face" of our social media posts. We share certain pictures of family, pets, the grounds, the cabins, etc. because we want our potential guests to have a sense of who we are and what we value. We are two normal people: a couple who are deeply in forever love, who have grown children who are growing their own families, who have parents who are facing new challenges in life, who have meals that flop, ideas that fail, who laugh, cry, hurt, and rejoice.
We are normal.
We are not the personification of our social media feed.
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