This past weekend, I spent a great deal of time feeling vulnerable: I was a speaker at the Canadian BFRB Support Network’s annual conference for the second year in a row. (For those who are unaware, I have a mental health condition known as a body-focused repetitive behaviour, or BFRB).
I speak openly and freely about my specific BFRB, which is compulsive hair-pulling disorder. I work hard to be an advocate those who suffer with it alone and in silence. Usually, when I’m sharing my personal journey of relapse and remission, I’m speaking to crowds of people who have generally never heard of BFRBs or, if they have, 
may not have a full understanding of what it all encompasses. I sprinkle a wee bit of infotainment in with a rousing motivational message of hope. My journey, though difficult, has had many high points that make audiences feel better when I share it with them.
But this conference is different.
There is no need for me to tell them what compulsive hair-pulling disorder is. They already know. Some of them have had it even longer than I have. What they want to know is if there’s a cure yet (there’s not), if their hair will grow back (it might, it might not), and if they can ever have a ‘normal’ life (they can, whatever ‘normal’ is). This conference is different because the organizers are asking me to be completely vulnerable.
But this time, I didn’t want to be. I’d become comfortable with my ‘easy’ talk that I give to the general public, and I’d become complacent in that comfort. This realization has been eye-opening for me.
As their Social Media VA, my clients look to me for strategies and solutions to attracting more business online. The things I ask them to do often put them outside of their comfort zone. I recently told one of my clients it’s time to start putting her amazing, off-the-cuff Facebook videos onto YouTube – something that absolutely makes her feel uncomfortable because it’s adding a whole new level of vulnerability to her growing social media presence.
This weekend, I learned how important it is to show our vulnerability, even if only a little bit. Our audience (our clients!), whether online or offline, is looking for that from us. They’re looking for what makes as more alike to them than different, because it’s those similarities that draw our audiences closer and make them want to know us and yes, work with us.
So, one of my goals as we lead into the new year is to be more vulnerable on Social Media. My reasoning behind embracing vulnerability is that it makes me authentic, which then builds the “Know, Like, Trust” factor that I consider to be extremely important when it comes to maintaining a social media presence. I’ll be thinking and brainstorming ways that I can do this over the coming weeks, but for now – it starts here, with this blog post.
At the end of my talk on Saturday, I shared the final stanza of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, because for me, it represents the long-term gain from the short-term pain of taking a path I wasn’t familiar with. I think it fits here, too:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
As you continue to build awareness about yourself and your business on social media, in what ways can you use your own vulnerabilities to connect with your audiences? I’d love to hear your ideas, so leave me a comment!