Are you giving or taking?

My strength on social media is creating scroll-stopping shorts.

What I've NEVER been good at is sharing candid glimpses into my life or process. Posting Stories, basically.

On Instagram, my audience of 1.8M converts to a hilariously low average of around 5k views on a typical Story. Clearly, I haven't built trust that my Stories are worth clicking.

Taking

It occurred to me that a lot of what I've shared through Stories over the years could be considered 'taking'. It's obvious I'm simply posting for attention, engagement baiting, or self promotion. I'm taking your attention.

It's a bit tough to define, exactly, but it looks something like this:

Giving

The remedy, I think, is to think about how you're giving to your audience.

Over the past few weeks, I've approached each Story from this perspective. I've made sure to include a suggestion about a piece of film gear, a tip about how I do what I do, or simply just a strange habit that contributes to my success.

Something like this:

Building trust

Interestingly, it feels like I'm starting to build some better trust with my audience.

📊 The Story above isn't particularly interesting, but it got 17k views. Much better than the average of 5k views! The more my audience clues in that my Stories are generous with insight, the more they'll continue to click on them.

And this isn't a views or follows thing - it's about getting the audience you do have to trust that you provide value. Giving can be anything: information, a laugh, trustworthy links, etc.

✨ Is what you're about to post taking attention or giving value? Are you building trust with your audience?