Hey Girl Hey! Trust Issues!

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Hey Girl Hey!

I’m often asked why bloggers and social media content creators are often so hesitant to help one another or share contacts. My answer is always simple, WE HAVE TRUST ISSUES! After doing this for a decade, the longer you are blogging and working in Social Media, you will develop some major trust issues. Why do we develop such trust issues you ask? Well, because from my own personal experience I’ve been burned time and time again trying to be nice and girls support girls and all that. If you keep getting burned and crapped on after trying to help people, it makes you very hesitant to help people. I personally only recommend and help people I know personally and have met in person and have essentially vetted at this point. It’s so hard to trust people you don’t know period, and it makes it only worse when you take a leap of faith and try to help someone and then get burned for it.

Here is a perfect example. I have been going to a well known conference for some time. I always recommended it and thought they were professional people who ran it. I essentially trusted them because I rationalized, some of these people have book deals and run their own conference, how could I get screwed over by them? Well… People will do anything to get ahead folks! Moral of this story is trust no one you don’t 100% know!

This conference approached me to do a panel with three major social media channels/apps that I had pitched them. I was emailed by the conference that they were interested in the panel I pitched for their conference this year. I’m like great how do we proceed and how do I sign up as a panelist. The woman from the conference proceeds to tell me I have to put the whole panel together and get her all the panelists information and we’ll go from there. First of all, I have never been asked to essentially work for a conference and put a whole panel together myself. I’ve spoken on a lot of panels in my day and if I’m asked to be a panelist, the conference usually puts the whole panel together and I essentially just join the panel and speak. No, this woman was asking me to contact all my friends and colleagues at these social media channels/apps and put this panel together and to then just forward their info to her. It seemed all so sketch and I had a horrible feeling about it, but I didn’t listen to my gut because I figured this is a big conference, I guess they must do things a little differently. I tell her I’m a little hesitant to pitch a panel you haven’t even guaranteed me will take place. She couldn’t comprehend what the problem was. I responded: I’m not going to approach a huge social media channel with a panel and do all this work to put together a panel and then you tell me there is no panel. I need to know there will be a panel and when will it take place. I was not sure what was not clear about that. She says once I put the panel together then we will work out all the details and there will be a panel and all on the panel will get a pass to the conference. I say fine and get to work.

So I go to all my friends and colleagues and pitch them this panel. I respond to this woman and say I have everyone on board for the panel, what are the next steps. She says to forward their info to her for the next steps. I forward her two of my social media contacts for the panel solely, since one was still confirming who they would send for the panel. Myself, and the two I put in touch with her proceed to ask her what the next steps are and she responds with some non-specific answer about when it may take place and nothing about the ticket to the conference. We all respond about if we can have details on how to register as panelists and now the woman doesn’t respond. She stops responding to everyone!!!!! Who doesn’t return the emails to a direct contact to the biggest social media platform in the world? Who does that? It made me look bad! She literally didn’t respond to anyone, so I had to back track and apologize to everyone for this woman’s behavior and tell them the panel I had spent all this time and energy planning was canceled. I honestly did not know what else to do since I’ve never had anyone act this crazy and unprofessional before from a conference in my life. They were all shocked too!

Next thing I know, the conference is coming up and I find out she and the conference apparently responds to the two social media channels/apps she did get the contacts for and offered them all panels to be on! Since these two social media companies had never been, they really wanted to check out the conference and they accepted. That’s how I got them to agree to the panel I had pitched them. They had always wanted to check it out. I don’t blame them for accepting. They asked if I was going and I say she never responded to me and everyone was still shocked and confused. We all just realized she essentially just wanted the contacts I had and just contacted them behind my back. The only ones she never got her hands on was the one I didn’t send her, because I never forwarded her that contact! Thank god I didn’t! Hence why they are not on a panel at her conference. It’s so upsetting because even though she still looks bad to everyone, she essentially gets a pass and gets away with this kind of behavior because she has a trendy conference everyone wants to go to and has a lot of followers on Instagram! I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, you could be completely insane, rob a bank and murder someone and everyone will look the other way if you have a lot of followers on Instagram. Time and time again I’m constantly shown that how I feel is completely justified when things like this happen to me. I know I will never attend or recommend this conference to anyone EVER again.

You feel so used and taken advantage of when this kind of thing happens. Now this conference can pretend they have more clout than they do and brag that they have connections to Instagram and Pinterest at their conference, when in realty they had to steal someone contacts and be extra shady to get those contacts and reps at their conference.

Oh and after all that, the conference had the nerve to message me on Instagram asking if they could repost my picture onto their Instagram account. I’m sure the person running their Instagram has no idea the amount of stress and how used, hurt and taken advantage I was by their conference when they reached out. I told them NO and why they are not allowed just so she was aware of why I want nothing to do with them.

It’s all just really sad as this was a conference I enjoyed and now will never go to again, paid hundreds of dollars for tickets for multiple times over the years and even did their online conference and classes when they had them. I supported them non-stop and recommended so many brands and colleagues to them, which helped them grow immensely and all I got in return was taken advantage of.

It just makes you want to not trust anyone ever again! It’s something I struggle with constantly, since you literally have to constantly tell yourself not everyone is the same. Honestly, I think that’s why my team is still solely me and my husband and VA and a few contributors after over 10 years of working, because I have such trust issues after numerous experiences like this.

That’s just one example of how low some people will go to get a contact and just one example of why I have major trust issues. I can tell you many other horror stories of things like this that have happened to me and others I know, but I just wanted to give you one example today. It’s the reality of what you have to deal with in blogging world. In over 10 years you accumulate a lot of stories like these and this is why trust issues are created and why you always have to be very careful with who you help!

So if you wonder why someone won’t just connect you or hand over a contact or help you, trust issues may be a reason why!

Thanks for letting me switch it up and share my personal stories with you here every Wednesday! It really does help to let go of it all by just writing about it!