How do you get seen on social media when everybody is already talking?
How do you get heard without turning yourself into the loudest person in the room—or a full-time content creator when you already have a business to run?
I keep circling those questions.
It's hard to get your voice out there.
Sometimes social media anxiety doesn't look like panic.
Sometimes it looks like having something useful to say, opening the app, seeing everybody already talking and quietly closing it again.
There are so many voices. So many people posting, promoting, teaching, shouting, dancing in front of their phones and apparently knowing exactly what the algorithm ate for breakfast.
If you're trying to run a small business, it can feel as if marketing now requires you to become a full-time content creator on top of doing the work people are meant to be hiring you for.
Sometimes it's easier to listen to the noise and decide nobody's going to hear you anyway.
I know that feeling. I also know it from long before social media.
I'm a ham radio operator. The summer I passed my Advanced Exam, I could finally get on HF and talk around the world.
And I was ready.
I bought an older Kenwood HF radio from a friend. It needed repairs, but I knew I could fix it.
And I did.
Then I learned more about building antennas. I experimented. I adjusted things. I made the equipment work.
It was awesome.
In June 2006, I was sitting in our CB shop in London, Ontario, Canada, listening to a dog pile of hams trying to reach a radio operator who was operating aboard a Second World War submarine in Pearl Harbor.
A dog pile is exactly what it sounds like: a whole lot of people calling at once, each hoping their signal will be the one that gets through.
I listened for a while. Then I finally got my nerve up, grabbed the microphone and called:
“CQ CQ DX, VE3LYY.”
And I kept going.
A little while later, I heard him say my call sign.
My call sign.
He'd heard me.
I wished him 73 and he moved on to someone else. The whole exchange was brief, but I was thrilled. My voice had travelled all the way from London, Ontario, through that dog pile and reached a person I couldn't see in Pearl Harbor.
So I kept turning the dial.
I found more people to talk to, and every contact made the next one a little easier. One day I had a wonderful conversation with a man tending a lighthouse in Venezuela.
My world got bigger every time I used my voice.
The medium changed. The dog pile didn't.
Now the radio is a website, an email list, a workshop, a social platform or a room where everybody seems to know one another already.
There's still a dog pile.
There will always be somebody louder. Somebody with a bigger audience, newer equipment or suspiciously firm opinions about how often the rest of us should be posting.
That doesn't mean your signal isn't worth sending.
It means you may have to do what I did then: speak, listen, experiment and build a better antenna.
A better antenna doesn't mean turning yourself into a louder, shinier version of somebody else. It means making it easier for the right people to receive what you're actually trying to say.
Maybe the idea needs a clearer sentence.
Maybe you're transmitting in a place where your people aren't listening.
Maybe the story carries farther than the list of tips.
Maybe you need to make the call more than once before somebody catches it.
None of that means your voice is wrong. It means you're still working on the signal.
Do a signal check
When I catch myself sitting quietly at the edge of the noise, I can ask:
- What am I actually trying to say? Not everything I know. One honest thing.
- Who am I trying to reach? Not “the internet.” One kind of person who might need to hear it.
- What would make this signal easier to receive? A story, a clearer subject line, a different format or a better place to share it.
- What is one call I can make today? One post. One email. One invitation. Then listen for what comes back.
On a low-energy day, make it even smaller: write the one sentence you'd say if you and that person were talking somewhere quiet. Put that sentence where they have a chance of finding it.
That's enough of a transmission for today.
Confidence didn't arrive before I picked up that microphone. It grew because I picked it up, made the call and discovered that someone could hear me.
I need to keep telling myself about these moments. Not because I need another motivational speech, but because they're evidence.
I've been afraid to transmit before. I did it anyway. Someone heard me.
Little has changed, really. Only the medium.
There's always a dog pile.
I have to keep speaking, keep listening, keep experimenting and keep building better antennas.
Then I make the call again.
Until next time Friends...