I have never been one to conceal my disdain for social media in general. Once a great idea, making easier to find the audience for your small-scale online projects (like blogs), now it’s just a giant shithole with more and more primitive and vulgar stuff that forces real and valuable content into the corner.
Furthermore, most of those users started following you 10 or even only 5 years ago, don’t know anymore what to do with your “normal” content, because they’re already conditioned to react (almost) only to rage-baiting marketing. Trying to make them click on a link leading to your website with the simple and honest purpose (“hey, look, here is a nice article about the cyclist you like,you might like to read it”), seems mission impossible now.
And yet, I’m not that person who gives up easily. I still try to fix the problem again and again, even agains any odds. It’s like placing a bet in the 89th minute of a football (soccer) match that there will be at least one more goal. It is not entirely impossible to have a success even that too late. (Especially since this new trend of 7, 8 or even 10 minutes overtime)
Anyway, my road cycling projects still have several thousands followers, regardless why they started following me (see my last post about the possible miscommunication what road cycling history means to me in contrary to many cycling fans), and I considered myself a stubborn businesswomanenough trying again and again to figure out how to use this asset to make my projects profitable. (It’s still about providing road cycling related content to people who are apparently interested in road cycling stuff.) On the other hand, it’s not about the money, it’s never really about the money, but proving that my idea works. (That’s the core of real entrepreneurship. Challenging yourself with business ideas hard to succeeed with, but you would try and try again until it works.)
So, for the last time (because it’s my last road cycling season, as I like to emphasise this again and again ) I’m intend to be a bit more active on social media again. Trying to build up an active audience, remind them why they started following my projects, or clarifying that they might have misunderstood something about them.
Bu i don’t intend to create original content only for social media. It will be always clear,that my aim is to get more people to my website, where they can read many interesting posts about their interest. (If they really started following my project for being provided with interesting content related to road cycling history. It’s still a mystery to me, because, as I said for several times, I’ve never offered anything else, and I was always honest about my aims that I want people to read my words about road cycling on my own website. Maybe that’s the problem. People get used to trickery so much that they can’t handle “honest marketing” anymore. They don’t understand it.)
I know, I’m going to hate this very soon. But on the other hand. I’m even more stubborn.
Vintage Road Cycling Stories on social media:
Instagram: vintagecyclingstories
X (twitter) vintageroadcycl
On Threads and Blyesky there are now special accounts dedicated to the project, but I’m still there and share road cycling related content frequently
Threads: anita_petho
Bluesky: anitapetho