How to Build a Learning Social Network That Actually Makes You Smarter (No Ads, Just Results!)

Welcome to the podcast as flipping the script on social Networks. I'm Sudha Rajsekhar and today we're diving into how we can evolve from mindless scrolling to purposeful learning. Forget the likes and the ads and the noise, because this is all about creating a learning social network where the focus is on growth, knowledge, real connections. And also imagine a space dedicated to one topic, filled with courses, workshops, gamification, and a safe environment to collaborate and thrive. So are you ready for this? Let's transform your social habits and let's get started.

Hey there, Sid here. Welcome to yet another episode of the Freedom is this podcast. And if you have not yet subscribed to me on Apple or Spotify, please do that right away. Okay, so social networks, it has evolved over the years from when MySpace started way back in the early 2000s. In fact, I even remember before that it was MSN, Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Mirc, if you remember some of those days. And then Facebook started in 2004 and then YouTube came much later. And then all the other Networks, Instagram and WhatsApp and all, all the other platforms that meta has actually built, as well as other competing platforms along the world, around the world. It has evolved in four stages. You know, the first stage of social networks was all about friends. If you remember back in the day, the orchid days where we found our school friends, and the initial days of Facebook, we started to just make friend requests and it was more like sharing pictures and birthday messages and you know, you would change your profile pic and everybody would know what's happening in your life, an anniversary, a birthday. So it was more about friend to friend, which is the first wave of the social networks. And then we saw after that all these different social media platforms, including Twitter and others, started to go more towards micro topics or groups, if I should say, even Facebook groups started to get bigger. And even if you look at other platforms, it was more around topic based. And of course on Instagram and everything else, as they started to grow, it was more around hashtags. So, you know, you could, even though it was not a group, but you can actually track a topic now, even on LinkedIn, LinkedIn groups was popular. I still remember back in the day, even now it may be popular, but I Remember back in 2011, 2012, I was a part of many LinkedIn groups and there was quite a few, you know, quite a lot of engagement happening in those groups. And then the third wave of social media is moving from friends to groups and hashtags. It moved more towards video content and micro Video content, okay, I'm talking about, you know, viral content. And reels started to pick up steam. And this is we are talking about in the last five to six years, even just before COVID onward, we saw like a massive growth in micro video content. Less than one minute and everybody started to do reels. And many of the big influencers that you see today on Instagram, they're all born on reels in the sense they have started the whole game of reels and they built their influence and distribution to a massive way in the last five to six years through reel content. In fact, even before the typical social media was growing, I would say the first media or the most meaningful media was blogs. When I say meaningful is no ads. Very focused on the content. Long form. People get a lot of value spending time. But then after blogging came all of this stuff. Okay, so now moving from three from this reels and content, the fourth phase of social media is all about ads. So now if you look at Facebook, Facebook is way different compared to what it was before, 10, 15 years ago. Now Facebook is literally dead because it's all in the ads, right? You just open the newsfeed every two posts. There's some somebody's ad that is there on the right side and below. And even Instagram is starting to get filled with ads. And that is their business model. And that is how these platforms had had originally presumed to monetize their platform. By losing, you know, millions of dollars or billions of dollars just acquiring customers and on technology when there was no monetization model before ads. And of course ads has been around for a long time. I'm not saying it is something new, but you can see the it has grown to such an extent right now where most social media platforms are only based on ads. So which leads me to now the topic of this podcast is how to build a learning social network that actually makes you smarter. Because social media originally was supposed to make you connected with other people. But I'm very sad to say that there's more discussion, there's more disconnection in this world because. Because of social media. Okay, so how do you build a learning social network that actually makes you smarter? No ads, just results. So there are six elements of a learning social network. And please note this down. The first element is focus on one topic. For example, Internet Lifestyle hub is only focused on creating teachers and leaders. And we have over 30,000 premium members in this network. And everybody is coming in, they're logging into this platform just to get information on that one topic without any distractions. The second aspect of a learning social network is learning. So it is not just about mindlessly consuming content, but it's about learning through courses and learning through live workshops or live webinars, which is happening for the premium members of that particular network. And they get, they keep getting invited to this. Okay. And you may be possibly listening to this podcast during my inner circle call or during my hackathon, where I would have asked you to come and listen to this. The third part about learning social network is there are no ads. Because it's a private social network. The only way to monetize or the creator of the coach monetizes is through their own content. So there's absolutely no ads and there's no reason to have ads. So it becomes an awesome place where there's no distractions. It's not taking you away from the objective or the goal of why I've come over here. The fourth crucial element on learning social network is gamification points. So right now in our social network we have point system and anybody likes a post, they get two points. When they comment below the post, they get five points and all these points add up. And I have weekly giveaways and I also give people awards and vouchers that really gets people to come back to this network. So even though it may not be as huge as Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever, or Instagram for that matter, a private learning social network focused on one topic actually creates progress for your students because they're coming every day, logging in, learning something, getting points so that they can move forward in whatever topic they're interested in. And number five is the other element of a learning social network is collaboration. Now in a space like LinkedIn, you can, yes, there's a lot of networking that happens in space of Instagram. A lot of collaborations happen. Even on Twitter, a lot of collaborations can happen. But when you have a topic focused social network, a learning social network, there is a higher chance that you'll be able to find people who are more aligned with what you're really looking for and to really take those relationships forward, or in other words, build your return on relationships, to translate those relationships into meaningful collaborations, alliances and partnerships. And that is why inside Internet Lifestyle Hub, we have this concept that, that we are building up right now called community clusters, where as we are helping everybody build their own individual communities or their own learning social networks, what do these social networks start to connect with each other. And two social networks are bridged with each other or linked up with each other. Now, that is the innovation that we are working on right now. And we have many of our coaches who have already started collaborating through alliances and partnerships. And finally, the sixth element of a learning social network that actually makes you smarter is it's a safe space. It's a safe space where there are core values and principles that are established so that the members of the network are able to follow the guidelines. And it is not like an open kind of a platform on like what you see on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter where every you have all kinds of content over there. And of course there is some kind of filtration that they do at an algorithm level, but it is not really a safe space. Some people get spans spammed, some people get st. You know, they get all kinds of random messages that is not aligned with what they're looking forward to. So here are the six elements of a learning social network. And if you want to build a learning social network of your own, I would highly recommend that you attend my next webinar by going to sidzsids co live and attend my next webinar. And if you're already in my community, upgrade to diamond because you'll be able to see at a 33,000ft above the air level on how I actually have built and on how I manage the social network. Okay, so what I would recommend that you do is go to sidzsids co diamond and attend my next diamond showcase, take that next step and build your own social network, your own learning social network that actually makes you smarter, which does not have any ads, just results for your students and the people on that network. Wish you all the best and catch you in the next episode.

Sam.