#180 - Hunting Versus Gathering In The Digital World
hen you post on social media, you cast a net into the vast ocean, hoping to catch views, shares, likes, subscribes, follows, and comments from the billions of fish who may happen to swim past your account that floats in that vast ocean. Your net catches something, or it doesn’t, and then you cast your net again, maybe the next day.
Your posts are only seen on social media for a few hours or days at most. You try to improve your net so that you may catch more tomorrow. Or, if your net worked well, you stick with it and use a similar net tomorrow.
When you are on platforms that encourage evergreen content like Pinterest, YouTube, Google Search, Websites, Blogs, and Podcasts, your posts may be shown for years and years, and it may indeed take a year or two for the platform to figure out who your posts are for.
You are more of a gatherer, a gardener. You grow and nurture flowers, vegetables, and trees, and as they grow over time, they attract butterflies and ladybirds. You tend to your garden and try to nourish each plant.
Over time, gathering reaps bigger rewards.
While you cast your net into the ocean once, haul it in, and then forget about it, it pays to nurture the plants and other flora in your garden.
On Instagram, you fire and forget your Reel. On YouTube, at least for long-form videos, you revisit videos, occasionally changing the title and thumbnail, changing up your playlists, descriptions under your videos, etc.
Over time, gathering online ends up being far more valuable than hunting.
Think about it: You could make one net, cast it, haul it in, and then discard it, having to make another net for tomorrow. OR, you could plant some trees and reap the fruit regularly for years to come.
The one requires a lot of effort for a one-off chance, and the other requires effort, but the fruits of that labor keep rewarding you for years to come.
Be a gatherer online, not a hunter.