Every time you open up the Instagram app, 20 people tell you that you have to post at least daily if not multiple times a day to stay top of mind with your audience and to not upset the almighty algorithm. In this blog post, you'll get to know different ways that you can use as a business owner to avoid social media burnout and feeling stressed about it daily.
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Let's face it: social media burnout is very much a thing, especially for business owners. For a lot of businesses, social media is one of the main marketing channels, if not the only one, which puts a lot of pressure on them to post frequently and post the right things.
Before we get into this, a little disclaimer: Even I as a Social Media Manager get social media burnout. If someone tells you that they have never been stressed about social media at all, then they either just don't really care about it or they are lying to you because almost everyone gets social media burnout sooner or later. You are not alone in this.
1) Social media is not your business. It's a TOOL to market your business:
The first thing that I had to learn to not feel so stressed about posting on social media is the fact that Instagram is not your business. It's simply a tool to market your business. Your business can be wildly successful and at the same time, your Instagram can not - and also the other way around.
This can be especially difficult to understand for online business owners who really rely on social media to market themselves. It can sometimes feel like the boundary between social media and your actual business is blurry.
You need to learn to separate the two from each other and understand that, while it is important to market yourself on social media, your business is not going to fail if you don't post for a week because you're on holidays.
Social media is an important tool but you decide how much importance you give to it.
2) It's okay to take breaks:
In fact, I strongly encourage you to take regular, scheduled breaks. I'm saying scheduled breaks because when I feel like I need a break, it's mostly already too late and I already feel the stress. Ideally, you want to take breaks to avoid feeling that stress in the first place.
Obviously, each person is different. Some people can take a lot of social media consumption and not feel burned out and for others, being on social media daily can already feel stressful. You need to figure out for yourself what amount of social media you can handle and when it is time to take a break.
Something I do consciously is not bringing my phone into certain areas of our house, for example, my bedroom. Phone-free areas in your home and times during your day ("no phones during dinner") can help you to decrease the pressure you feel and help you relax.
3) Find systems that work for you:
So far we've focused more on using and consuming social media, but I know that for a lot of business owners, the main stress factor is that they can't keep up with posting or they don't know what to post in the first place. There are different ways to tackle these problems.
One of them is obviously hiring a Social Media Manager (Hi there! :P) but if you don't currently have the budget for that, there are other ways as well. What I find helps most business owners are two things:
Understanding what to post
Setting up systems that work for them & their business
Explaining #1 and adapting it to your business is something I do with my coaching clients in our sessions, but it basically comes down to things like doing proper market research, understanding their audience and putting that knowledge into posts. If you want us to work on this for your business, book your coaching call here.
The second option is more relevant if you already have a clear understanding of your target audience, but you just lack the ability to stay consistent. Systems like a content calendar or content pillars can really help you with this. Other systems that you might find useful are Trello boards or AirTable.
3) Batch create your content:
Believe me, I have tried a lot of different ways to create content and what works best for me is to batch create instead of creating each post on the go. To batch create, sit down and do a few posts that you then schedule to be automatically posted later on. This will help you to be more consistent and also alleviates the stress of having to do social media every single day.
This is also really useful because you're not always as creative and motivated to do content on any given day. You can take advantage of those days when you are motivated and inspired to get a whole bunch of content done.
I hope these tips will help you put less pressure on yourself when it comes to social media and make things fun again!
Talk soon,
Hanna