The moment I opened my laptop and decided to write this text, I caught myself in fear: I was afraid to say something that everybody already knew. Several years in journalistic and PR made me learn the golden rule of content creating. You have to say something new, fresh and catchy, otherwise, you’re no use.
This is – well – true. We consume so much content that we just have to – you know – distinguish. What we’re constantly doing is deciding whether to click on this link or that. And that’s why, of course, there’re limitations to our interests: we cannot click and open every story, we just cannot swallow everything. And we don’t need it. It’d be harmful to our mental health.
On the other hand, people always get into the same trap. The same fallacy. We are constantly “reading other people’s minds”. At least we think so. Posting something, we (maybe, unconsciously) think that this guy and that girl will like it. You know, will LIKE it. And we usually decide not to post something, when we think, that somebody will get us wrong or will judge us.
As a person from the communication field, I can confirm that, indeed, you can play with people’s interest. You can somehow feel, what someone will like and what he/she won’t like. You can really foresee reactions in some situations. But there’s always a ‘but’.
The trap this attitude to communication leads us to is that we narrow our mind and social circles by thinking this way. This approach is good enough for commercial PR and marketing. But we’ve used it too much in our daily lives. Not all of us, of course. Not all the time. But I bet there’re many of us who constantly try not to say something that goes out of the way. Or, at least, Facebook feed cares about us and keeps only those posts in our feed, that we LIKED.
But let me ask, how would you get creative if you don’t say something that is unusual even to you own self? Not to say someone else. How would people know your ideas, if you’re afraid of sharing them, cause you’re sure that someone’s already stated it? My music teacher has been always repeating: all music has been already written. Yet, we keep getting new songs, new pieces created, on and on.
Also, we all know that information is valued not only by the data itself but by the moment when the information has been shared and paid attention to. Hundreds of sceptical “friends” on Facebook will judge your banal post, but the one you haven’t even been thinking of will receive something that he truly needed at this very moment of his life. You can never know.
So, share. Don’t be afraid to send someone a message, don’t hold yourself. Somebody may be sitting in need of this very thing that you’d like to share; you can never know. Unless you do.