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DQ News: Serve Yourself. Ain’t Nobody Gonna Do For You

This is a guest post by Marjorie Clayman.

A few years back, Yoko Ono released a comprehensive anthology of tapes that John Lennon had left behind. It’s a treasure trove of songs, some that you would know right away and others that he hadn’t yet gotten finished.

One of the latter is a song with the blog title as the chorus. It is, of course, acerbic and hilarious, as one might expect from John Lennon.

This song popped into my head the other day as I was thinking about the world of social media.

I am finding more and more that social media is like the ocean, and it has tides that can carry you out or bring you back in.

These tides can be ways of doing things (or not doing things), ways of thinking about people, ways of presenting yourself, and just about everything else. You meet a person who knows a person who’s connected to a person and they’re all of a like mind, so you float in with them. Then you meet other people and they pull you in a different direction.

Pretty soon, if you’re not careful, you can actually lose your footing and just become a piece of driftwood in this restless sea.

The sad fact of the matter, as you discover as you start treading water here in the online world, is that most people have some sort of agenda, and their ability to influence you towards that agenda is what makes social media extremely powerful.

Maybe a person wants you to think poorly of another person because they are competitive with that person. Maybe someone else wants you to avoid certain things because, really, they’re worried you’d be better than them.

You never really know the full story. You never know when the sea floor will randomly drop, pulling you under.

That’s why you need to follow John Lennon’s advice, online and offline.

It’s easy, very easy, to fall in with a crowd. It’s how we gain acceptance. It’s how we feel part of a group, or to use the oft-used online term, “tribe.” Thinking for yourself or remaining unaffiliated can be really exhausting. There are so many decisions to make on a daily basis. There is so much content to sift through, so many viewpoints to evaluate.

But you have to serve yourself.

Nobody else is going to gear your towards things that will always 100% be for your own good. You have to achieve yourself, too, because ain’t nobody gonna do for you. You can talk to people, you can befriend people, and you can listen to everybody. But don’t let yourself become that piece of driftwood.

Serve yourself. Ain’t nobody gonna do for you.

Truer words were never spoken.

About the author: Marjorie Clayman works for her family-owned agency, Clayman Advertising, Inc., where she represents the third generation! Margie is the resident blogger at MargieClayman.com, and can be found on Twitter at @MargieClayman. 

Serve Yourself. Ain’t Nobody Gonna Do For You originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

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