Next week I’ll be sharing some ideas from the martial arts as they relate to building and improving your social media capabilities at Social Fresh East, but for today I want to share one specific idea: recipes aren’t bad.
Let’s talk about scrambled eggs as an example.
In the very beginning, if you don’t know how to boil water, having instructions and a checklist that a robot could follow will get you started and get you results. You’ll learn how to crack an egg, how to put it in the pan, how to stir it, and how to plate it so that it’s edible.
You’ll have decent, if bland, scrambled eggs.
Learning to Cook
Over time, you’ll learn that you can vary the oil you use in the pan. Sometimes you’ll use butter, other times you’ll use vegetable oil, and a few times you might fry up some bacon in the pan first and then cook the eggs right on top of it. You’ll eventually learn when you can safely sprinkle delicate herbs like dill or cilantro on it so that they don’t cook.
Transcending the Recipe
After a lot of egg plates, you’ll be proficient at making a nice scrambled egg breakfast.
You’ll have transcended the recipe and won’t have any more need of it. One of the dangers at this point is that you’ll forget what it’s like for a beginner who has never scrambled an egg. You’ll assume that everyone can scramble eggs the same way you can, masterfully assembling all the ingredients without a recipe or a measurement in sight.
You might even have a laugh at them – noobs who don’t know how to scramble an egg, or tell them that if they use a recipe, they’re doing it wrong.
Sound Familiar?
This is the progression of your skills through social media, too.
In the beginning, a recipe isn’t a bad thing.
Tweet this many times a day, post this on Facebook, etc. These are great starting points.
Then you’ll spend time varying the recipes until you learn all of the different ways you can use social media to grow your business, from customer service to sales to staff training.
Finally, you’ll reach “formlessly appropriate” usage of social media, where you’ll do what is needed and helpful without relying on recipes or frameworks, simply creating what is needed at that moment.
Image source: Shutterstock.com basket of eggs