Staying True to Yourself on Social Media

Whether we like it or not, social media has become a routine part of daily life, which brings with it both positives and negatives. It can be a brilliant way to stay connected, but it also has a darker side, from online trolling to the rapid spread of disinformation.

With World Social Media Day in mind, I spoke to Alex McCann of Altrincham HQ about the role social media plays in our lives and how we can navigate it with more awareness.

Alex McCann

Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and Altrincham HQ?

I've been running Altrincham HQ, which is a social media company, for over 15 years now, it's coming up to 16 years this September. We do all things social media, so social media training, social media management, and advertising on our platforms.

Over those 15 years, we've built up a very, very loyal audience.  We have over 90,000 followers, our updates reach over a million people every single month these days, and in terms of the business and the training, we've worked with some large names. I think you know, the likes of the BBC, Costa Coffee, Selfridges and Manchester City.

We've built up a really good reputation, which is really nice, because the business is essentially just me, so it's really nice to have those names on your roster that you can go back to and go, well, these people have got processes in place that trust you implicitly to know what you're talking about.

And that obviously filters down to what I do day to day, which is working with lots of small businesses on social media marketing, and helping them improve their visibility, their engagement, and ultimately their sales. Because that's why business owners use social media, they're not doing it just because they want to clap themselves and pat themselves on the back for a thousand likes. They want actually some sales to come from it.

And you've not always been in social media, so tell us a little bit about your background.

My background, it's weird, I sort of did a circle around my life, so I started off at school and A-levels and university studying business and marketing. I went to Salford University, where I now actually do some teaching as well.

I got to the end of the business and marketing course, those were the days before social media, and they kind of give you the options - you can be a manager at a supermarket, or you can do marketing in this big corporate organisation. I was like, I don't want to do that, so I went into the music industry and launched one of Manchester's first music websites. 

I interviewed lots of rock and roll bands over the years, anyone who was big between about 1999 and 2008ish. I interviewed bands like Elbow and Muse, Marc Owen from Take That, and then older bands like Bill Wyman from the Stones, The Temptations, Run DMC, and Gary Numan.

Then I launched an events company, which was, again, passionate about music, putting on bands like The 1975 and Catfish and the Bottlemen (who have just played Heaton Park) and the Ting Tings, who are making a comeback.

So all obsessed with music, which I still am. People are surprised when I say I go to so many gigs - I think I went to 86 gigs last year.   I'm still a massive, obsessive music fan, but I earn my money in marketing and then spend it all on gig tickets.

When I see your posts on social media, that's what I see, a mix of obviously you talking about social media and what you do, but also the other things, like going to gigs and going out running. So, is that something that you would recommend to people?

Oh, 100%, you've got to put your personality out on there. I mean, when you go to face-to-face physical networking, you don't just get straight down to business and shake a hand and say, “I do marketing, and can I help you, and so-so”. You talk about everything from if you're into football, or how the traffic was, or the weather, or the holiday.

I talk about those things that I'm passionate about online, which tends to be Rock and Roll, running, and food. And people do tend to gravitate towards me based on those subjects, as much as the fact that I'm an expert in what I do, because I think that there's a perception that whatever you do, you're qualified, or you're an expert, or you've got a deep knowledge in it. I think then people have got to make a choice between who they actually like.

I think people do gravitate towards me because they've got similar music taste, or because they're into exercise and running or because they're vegan, or whatever. So I think that sort of side of things does really help on social media, and just having a mixture of really deep, serious marketing information and education and then having the light-hearted discussions on there.

I mean, one of my most recent posts on LinkedIn was about going to Waitrose for the first time, and buying one of their vegan sandwiches but I didn't think the sandwich was that good. That was the whole point that for a premium brand, it wasn't a premium product. I was giving education at the same time, but people were focused on different aspects of the post, from Waitrose to the sandwich, to the vegan element. It's reached, I think, 90,000 people now and I suspect it will get over 100,000 people. That was just a really light-hearted, but educational post, so I think being human works.

Is it even more important to show that we're human with all the AI posts?

You can tell AI posts straight away, but I know there's benefits. I was having a conversation with someone earlier. They were saying they were dyslexic, so it’s really helpful to use it almost like they've used Grammarly in the past. They use it to check the spelling and the grammar.

There's definitely massive advantages to AI, but I think people are using it in a really simplistic “oh, we can write captions for LinkedIn posts, or Instagram posts” way. But it never comes across as authentic or human or sounding like the person who has written it. The flip side to that is people are saying you're not using the right prompts and they then go on to how you have to give a paragraph of prompts, and I'm like, in that time, you could have actually written the post itself!

So, interesting times. I'm definitely looking at it, but not in the ways that many people are looking at it.

Earlier, you mentioned about if you go to a networking event, you obviously introduce yourself and talk about what your interests are. You run two networking events. Can you tell us a little bit more about those?

We've got two brands, one which is the longest brand, which has been running since 2019, which is called Alex and His Sisters. That is our Women in Business Networking group, which is strange, because I run it as a bloke.

It was all set up because I was going to other networking events, and when people were sat in front of me doing training sessions with me, I was saying, “You need to network as well. I go to this event; you should come down.” But the common thing that kept coming up was  “We can't make it, it starts at 8 o'clock, or half eight when the school run is on.”

So when it was 2019, it was 10 years of Altrincham HQ at the time, I just launched 10 events. That was one of them. There was a curry night - I was drinking, or in the verge of not drinking at that time - so I had boozy networking events in the evening, and a Christmas party. And the one that everyone wanted again was Alex and His Sisters. They found it really, really good. It's really good to bring people together from social media into the real world and shake hands and connect with people and have longer conversations.

And then in 2024, I think it was, we launched Smiley Happy People, which is exactly the same format, except men could come along as well. So it's 50% men and 50% women, again based around that idea of connection and meeting people, because I think social media is great, it definitely drives business, but I think we still need to meet people in the real world.

The pandemic showed us that, if anything, that online networking doesn't work quite as well as face-to-face, where you can actually meet people, so I'm a big advocate for that. I'm a big cheerleader for saying, “Let's go out and network and meet people.” I think if people are reading this and they've never gone to a networking meeting, the one thing they can take away is go to a networking meeting.

Just try it and see what it's like.

Yeah, there's different types for different people. Mine are really friendly and informal. There's more formal ones, if that’s your personality type. And there's probably ones that are even less formal than mine. So you find the one that works for you, and you keep going back, and you keep meeting people.

The advice I'd give is don't just jump around. I see a lot of new businesses, they come to mine, and they turn up for a couple of events, then they'll go to someone else's and turn up for a couple of events. And they do that for about 3 or 4 different meetings, and then they'll come back to mine, and they wonder why they're not getting business, because they're not sticking around often enough.

And I know another thing that you're very involved in is fundraising, so can you tell me about that?

We've been in business for 15 years, and I think for 11 years of that, we've been fundraising for the Christie. Like many people who fundraise for the Christie, I set it up for personal reasons and use the platform that I've got to help bring people together.

So, I've got an event called Altrincham vs. Cancer, which runs every year in February. It's always based around fitness and health, so running, obviously, but people have done walking and cycling - rowing we had this year - and dog walking. And it's raised - now the total is £85,000 for the Christie, which we're going to hit £100,000 next year.

So, I set it up because my best friend lost both of his parents to cancer, unfortunately, but the Christie obviously really supported them. And then in 2021, I lost my best friend to cancer as well, so it continues in his name.

And everyone who's involved, it's not just me, there's at least 30 businesses every year that get involved. And they're all doing it for very personal reasons, whether that's family members, friends, colleagues because the Christie is obviously a very well-known Manchester charity and it helps so many people. So, as much as I've lost people, there's a lot of people that are still walking the streets that I walk on, because of the Christie.

It's an important part of what we do.  I've always said Altrincham HQ is 50% business, 50% community, and a lot of the community side is either charity or helping support new businesses or events in the town. I don't think you can just be a business owner anymore. I'm not saying that we've got values listed anywhere behind me, but I still like to help people as much as possible.

And I know you did another challenge, which I don't know if you’ve completed yet. Weren't you running to every St. Mark's in Manchester, or Greater Manchester?

Again, the friend that passed away was called Mark, and I always have these random ideas of running to interesting places, and I think I was just doing a random average 5K and I passed a church, and it just got the cogs in my brain going around.  I thought,”I wonder how many St. Mark's churches there are in Greater Manchester?”

I get home from the run and Google it, found there were 13, one in every borough of Greater Manchester, apart from Bolton, where one got knocked down and it's never been rebuilt. So it was running from either Altrincham or Manchester City centre to -  I think we covered Trafford, which was Altrincham and Wythenshawe, there's about 3 or 4 in Stockport, Salford, Wigan, Oldham, and all over.

I did it - it was about 150 kilometres in total. The last one was 34 kilometres from Altrincham to Wigan. We raised money for Crohn's and Colitis UK. I think it was the equivalent of doing 7 half marathons.  I'll do another challenge next year for Crohn's and Colitis, I'm not sure what yet, but it'll be something interesting again.

And you were saying there that one of your purposes is about helping other people. Social media can be really useful, but there can be some downsides as well. How would you recommend that we can make sure that we are using it in a positive way?

I think yes, you're totally right there. There are definitely downsides, and the obvious downside, that is trolling, which is a negative or relentless negativity. Thankfully, LinkedIn doesn't have much negativity, and TikTok doesn't have much negativity, so there are platforms out there that are relatively positive.

What I would suggest, what's really worked for me, because I've been trolled in the past, although it's not for everyone, is unfollow as many news outlets as possible, unfollow as many politicians as possible. And just block or mute anyone that creates this negative space in your feed, because ultimately, you get to curate or decide what appears in your feed. There's unfollow buttons, there's block buttons, there's not interested buttons.

And I think it starts from you. You choose to go, “I can follow these 100 people that are all very, very positive, and they educate me in the areas that I want to be educated in.” Or you can follow, as I said, news outlets or politicians, and have that relentless doom-scrolling that happens.

So, that's the first bit of advice I would give.

Don't get into unnecessary arguments that you don't need to get into, because it's so easy to put a two-line comment on something, which you're doing antagonistically, and then you find yourself there hours later responding to all of those.

So, I think it's a case of carefully choosing what you consume. You think about what you consume in other aspects of your life, whether it's what you're eating, or whether it's what you're consuming on TV. For instance, I don't watch reality TV, as a standard, because I think it's garbage, and if I have garbage input, I'm going to have garbage output.

Social media is just another area that we consume so, I think it's down to you. Ultimately social media is neither positive or negative, it's down to how we choose to use it.

And in terms of choosing that, are there any accounts or online spaces that you find that are particularly uplifting or supportive?

I think it's the two I just mentioned, which is LinkedIn and TikTok and I'll explain why.

LinkedIn, because people's names are connected with the companies that they work for, is usually a positive, supportive place, and for me it's the one place that I can discuss serious business issues around serious business professionals. So it's very much an online version of your face-to-face networking. You have your clients on there, you have your potential clients, and you have your community, your real-life network around you.

I tend to find if you post good news on that platform, the love tends to come back to you, where if you post good news on other platforms, sometimes you might receive negativity, or you'll just receive silence on some of them. So I think LinkedIn for businesses. Ignore what you hear on other platforms about LinkedIn. There's lots of other platforms that will call LinkedIn cringey or embarrassing but it's a really positive platform.

The other platform that I find really positive is TikTok, for different reasons.  I think, yes, it can be used as a good business tool, but I actually think the content there, it makes me smile, as there's lots of comedic content on there. It's light-hearted. I find it's very easy to get addicted on TikTok, so one thing I do suggest is setting a timer on your phone for when you go on it, a 15-minute timer. But I do find that, literally, I can sit at that platform and nothing ever makes me angry, it makes me smile. It’s used as almost an unwinding platform at times. Before I go to bed, I'll sit on the sofa, and I'll just go, “I'll just have a look at TikTok” and it makes me relax and take the stresses of the day away.

Who or what inspires you?

I'm not going to go for the obvious ones. I can't think of one solo business owner that really I look up to and go, “oh, I want to be Richard Branson, or I want to be Steve Bartlett,” or anything like that.

I think it's just rock and roll, and lots of influences over the years. Obviously, the formative years, when you're in your teenage years, I think those people stick with you and stand like gods on the screen, or gods on the music player.

He's no longer with us, but Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers, the guy, who for those that don't know, the guy that went missing. He was the ultimate hero growing up when I was a teenager. I was very much into the early Manic Street Preachers, and still am.

And then Morrissey from not necessarily today, but the Morrissey of the 80s and 90s was a big influence on me.

 I think those two people, for very similar reasons, who are quite outspoken, and they were very individualistic and they believed in what they said. I think even as a business owner, I’ve got those two, sort of, on either shoulder when I'm posting, sort of thinking “Am I being true here? Am I being myself?” And I think that, in a good way, keeps me away from being a little bit of a cliche on social media. There's lots of trends that you can get involved in and I sometimes go, “that's just ridiculous, I'm not getting involved in that.” And I think it's because of those two.

I think there's just great people in music. I think the music industry is great for communicating ideas. And I think every generation has someone they look up to. Obviously, you've got the 70s, it was The Clash, you've got the 80s, it was the Smiths and Morrissey. You've got the 90s, which, for me, was the Manic Street Preachers, but you also had Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. And then you have the emo bands like My Chemical Romance, and I guess the modern artists that people really like now, if you're a teenager, it's probably someone like YUNGBLUD.

Last night, I went to a talk with Ashley Walters, who was Asher D from So Solid Crew, and he's got a book out, so he had a two-hour talk at Home in Manchester. When you think about it, he had a career with So Solid Crew, which was defining. He had a career with Top Boy, which was, like, a generational show, and obviously everyone knows him now for Adolescence. And there's not many people who could say, in almost three different decades - so the noughties, the teenies, and the twenties - that have produced three things that have really made an impact.

So I think for anyone, arts and culture always makes more impact than business.

And I like what you're saying about hearing those voices as you're posting, to try and make sure that you're being authentic.

Yeah, you have to be, because otherwise you get, particularly in social media, you get taken down this rabbit hole.

I'll always do these funny little pieces of content on Instagram, like semi-rants - serious, but with a comedic undertone. It’s some of the things that people do on social media, like the B-roll footage of people typing on a keyboard, and I'm like, “Why are you trying to pretend to be a secretary?” It's a bit random.

I have what I'd call northern truth. I'm not trying to be glossy and American. I'm trying to be British. I used to say in the early days, I'm more Coronation Street than Britney Spears. It's because there's a lot of flash and a lot of Dallas-esque American Hollywood social media. I'm like “No, I'm Northern, I'm from Manchester. Let's be real.”

I'm very Mancunian, and you can't take that out of me. I did see a post about that recently.

Yeah, on accents - which I don't think Altrincham has an accent, but whenever I go outside of the UK, people automatically know I’m from Manchester, but I don't really hear that in my own voice.

And my next question is, what does success look like for you?

It's changed over the years. As I get older -  I'm getting closer to 50 than I am to 40 -  I think my perception of success now is definitely work-life balance, that's very, very important to me, and has become more important to me since the pandemic.

I think before the pandemic, as much as that doesn't come across, has never really come across, I've always had that strong business focus. Because for me working in social media, I've always been about getting sales and getting money and growing a successful business, and obviously, making money is a big part of that.

And then the pandemic happened and that slower pace of life -  even though for my world, because Zoom existed, the slower pace only existed for about 2 weeks, and then I went straight  back into work. But I actually really like that concept of work-life balance, and in an ideal world, success would look like me having that idealistic 4-day week that everyone seems to talk about, but for a solo business owner, isn't entirely manageable at the moment.

But if I could get to working Monday to Thursday and having Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off, for me, that would be a success. I'm doing very, very well for myself at the moment, but I would really like to just have that balance where I can choose to have a longer run on a Friday or something. I did try immediately after the pandemic to take every last Friday of the month off, and it ended up being too restrictive, so I think I'm still grasping for success in that work-life balance. Definitely, and I think as you get older, I think everyone should gear towards that.

I've never been overly materialistic, even though I like the concept of having a good, successful business and earning money, but I think work-life balance  - where I can see my friends, I can do what I want, I can see the sunshine when it is shining, it' s not today – that’s success.

I think you've highlighted there that sometimes people think the idea of work-life balance means that they've got to be perfectly balanced. Whereas work-life balance is different for each person, and it might be about, like you say, having a four-day week, having a Friday off, but for someone else, that work-life balance might be “I need to be around for the children, for childcare in the day, so I need to do more work in the evenings”, and I think sometimes that work-life balance means that there's more focus on work, and then other times more on life, and it switches.

When I started the business, I started the social media business alongside doing the music events business. And I always say to people, it wasn't realistic to do it in the long term. I was working 80-hour weeks at the start, because I was working the events business predominantly in the evening and working the social media business in the daytime. I mean, my day was 7am/7.30am to sometimes 11 o'clock at night and I think I've done that extreme.

I know the opposite extreme of not working at all isn't an option, and I wouldn’t want it to be an option, but I think I am quite good at switching off when I switch off. If I run, I am not running and working. If I go to the cinema, my phone goes totally off. If I'm with friends, or I'm at a concert I put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode, so I'm very good at creating that sense of work-life balance.

Just financially, I think that I have to work 5 days a week at the moment. I would like to work four and that's going to come. I'm working on something at the moment, which I think could make that a reality, but it's going to take a year, two years, three years to bed in, maybe. It'll get there.

I think you have already mentioned this, but in terms of those self-care activities, or those things that you do to switch off, what are those for you?

It's running, it's Rock and Roll and its food. Running is probably my best switch-off, though, I'd say, out of all of those. Purely because working in an industry where you are permanently connected to some form of device, the fact that your phone is strapped to your arm means you can't check your notifications, and it's quite kind of nice, so it ticks a physical box and a mental box.

For me, there's no greater feeling  - a nice 5K run is good - but for me, it's all about the longer runs, where I'm not necessarily going for a time; I'm going for “I'm going to spend 2 hours where I'm not thinking about work, or I'm not looking at a device and the only thing I'm concentrating on is my destination, about where to go.”

I did a lovely run this weekend. I print my instructions out on paper. And I've worked out the best way for me to map is to have the distance and go “turn left on this road, turn right at that.” So the only thing I have to think about is, when I know roughly what I've got to do, is get a piece of paper out of my pocket, right, I'm turning next left at whatever road it's called, and that is so nice.

And I said, I feel good after a run, and I feel like it's good use of my time. I generally run at least 3 times a week. It's the nicest feeling in the world.

I've said this to a lot of people, I might have even said it at our networking meetings in public, if I could find a way to make money out of running, I would do. But then I'm, like, “Do I really want to do that?”  I like the fact that running is something I don't try and monetise, and I don't try and make it into a business. It is a total switch-off.

But you know what? If I could go out today and it's warm, and someone could pay me to do that, that would be absolute bliss.

Are you headphones or no headphones?

Oh, I’m headphones, music, I can't do a podcast while running, so it's music. I can run to anything, so I can run to slow music, fast music, but it has to be music. I've tried running once to silence, and it's really weird hearing you breathe and hearing your footsteps and hearing the people next to you, because it was a race setting in Stockport.

It was one of these ones where they ran on the roads, when it wasn't totally closed roads, so they had to be careful for obviously your health and safety. It's the weirdest feeling, silence for 2 hours.

I am never used to silence of any description. I've got TV in the background, or I'm always used to consuming something, so I think it's got to be running with music. So it ticks two boxes - music and running definitely ticks two boxes.

Finally, what advice would you give to your younger self?

Do it earlier.

I always say that I think I felt, even though I didn't looking back, I felt that I had started a little bit too late, and I think maybe that's generational.

 So when I launched my music industry career, that was in 1999, I would have been 21, or 20ish. I was born in 1978 so I think that's 21.  Looking back, you see kids launch stuff at, like, 16 years old but I think I wasn't overly confident as a teenager, and maybe the opportunities weren't there because of the internet.

But I would probably say launch earlier. If I'd have launched two years earlier, life might have been very, very different in terms of the music industry career. I think I'd have definitely been well ahead of the curve, even though I was quite an early adopter of the internet.

Start early. I think most people that I meet that run their own business, the one thing that they always say when they’re sat down with me is, I wish I'd have started this earlier.

Like, it's quite often a dream that people have and for whatever reason, whether it's financial restraints or lack of confidence they talk themselves out of doing it.

There will be so many people that will be reading this blog that might be in a corporate career, that are sat there, and they've got this passion, they really, really, really want to do. But they say I can't do this because of the kids' ages, or I can't do this because I've got a secure job, or I can't do this because I don't know if it'll work out.

And I've never met anyone who's ever said I made the wrong decision to launch that business. They might go back to the corporate life because the reality didn't quite live up to it, but they've never regretted making that decision.

So do it earlier.

Alex McCann is owner of Altrincham HQ - a social media management and training company based in Cheshire that has worked with 1000s of local business developing their social media strategy. Over the past 10 years Alex has built up an impressive training client list including the BBC, Manchester City, NHS, The Midland Hotel, University Of Manchester, Manchester Arndale and many more.