The surprising reason it's OK to step away from social media
There’s a lot of it going around at the moment isn’t there? ‘Busyness’
This was the exchange I had with my husband this morning:
Husband: Are you busy today?
Me: I’ve got some bits to do and then I’m having lunch with some friends.
H: But are you stacked?
M: No, because that’s not how I plan my days.
H: Disparaging look as he rushes out the door
And it got me thinking, he equates being stacked to having a productive day. He thrives on the adrenaline of rushing from task to task.
But being permanently stressed doesn’t look like the definition of productive or successful to me.
I’m the opposite. I feel stressed and unable to perform at my best if I have a lot on. I get a bit panicky if there aren’t enough breaks in my diary. I need to have built in unassigned time where I can do the jobs I haven’t got round to or catch up with things or just have a nice sit down and watch an episode of Friends!
Does that resonate with you?
I strongly believe that having downtime, really helps you bring creativity into your life.
I had a catch up message from a lovely friend this morning, she said she was busy with life and work but was struggling to find the time to post on social media.
My response to her ‘Give yourself permission to drop the Insta ball this week’.
When you are feeling up against it with everything you have to do, marketing your business, being creative and talking to your audience is likely to be the last thing on your mind. It’s just going to be adding extra pressure and quite frankly it is going to take all the enjoyment out of Instagram and social media in general.
I love social media, so it makes me sad when people feel like it is a chore, or something hanging over their head. It should be a fun space and one where you enjoy spending time.
So if you’re feeling up against it with your social media marketing, give yourself a break. Decide that you’re not going to post for the next few days / week and take the following steps to get back on top of things:
Grab a cuppa and spend 10 minutes thinking about what consistency is realistic for you. Is that two grid posts a week, 1 x Reel and 5 x stories? Is it just stories? Really be honest with yourself. What can you fit in alongside what you have going on right now?
Now extrapolate that out, what does that mean for the next 4 weeks? Write down how many bits of content you need to create to be consistent.
Next, when you have another 20 minutes, sit away from your desk with a pen and paper and list out the pieces of content next to the dates you’re going to post them.
Say you’ve decided on 5 grid posts and 3 reels, list it out e.g:
Post 1 - Wed 23rd
Reel 1 - Fri 25th
Post 2 - Sun 27th
Post 3 - Wed 30th etc
Be consistent with the days you are posting (look to your Insights to see which days are best for your audience)
4. Put topic ideas / headline words to those posts.
Give yourself a pat on the back - you’re well on the way to getting ahead of yourself on social media.
Now make sure you actually schedule time to take photos / assign imagery / create graphics and video content / write posts and schedule.
Creating your content in batches like this will actually save you time in the long run. It is easier on the brain as you are doing one specific task at a time e.g creating graphics, so you can get through a lot in a shorter space of time than if you created a graphic individually every time you posted.
If you’d like some handholding with this approach, I’m running another of my successful content planning workshops where I take you through all of this step by step.
We do the work together, next Thursday 24th June at 11am. It’s on Zoom and you can book your space below.
It is great for accountability as it forces you to focus on your planning for the 2 hours we are together. I also follow up with you to see how you are getting on and encourage you with the next steps.
There is plenty of time during the session to ask questions and actually do the work. So at the very least, you come away with topics and ideas for the whole month of July.