Social Media Guilt

Does this sound familiar?

• I go onto social media to find that my friend Sally has a birthday, so I send off a gif wishing her happy birthday.
• Then I see that George had to put down his 16-year-old cat today. So, I send off a sad emoji.
• Then I see that Kathy’s friend is going through a harrowing experience and needs all the prayers and best wishes possible. Now I send off prayer emojis and hopes for better times.
• Then I see that Bill/Sue are celebrating their 20-year anniversary and I send off congrats and heart’s.

3 hours later I’ve lost all track of time and have done nothing but spent time on social media trying to keep up with my many friends/family members. So, now I swear off social media and respond to no one. Now I feel guilty for not sending the birthday wish, sad emoji, get well prayer….and then the cycle starts all over again.

As business owners it’s important to keep up with your social media, but as soon as we open that screen and start to see all the hundreds of requests and responses, we start going down the Social Media Rabbit Hole of no return.

I must admit that when I see people posting all day, I think to myself, “How on earth do they have all this time?” Especially as I see my client deadlines looming and the workload beginning to surmount into a huge pile of To-Do’s. I would love to answer all the posts and wish everyone a great day, but honestly, I have work to do.

With this in mind, let me ask you this:

• “How much time do you spend on social media for personal reasons?”
• “How much time do you spend working on business social media?”
• “Or do you simply hand off this task to someone who can handle it for you?”

Either way you answer this, it’s still important to utilize social media for your business. But are you doing it correctly or are you simply going down the social media rabbit hole?

So, here’s my fix to help you manage it all:

• Schedule a time during the week to answer all of your personal posts in order to keep up with your friends/family. But no more than 45 minutes. In fact, set a timer on your phone, stove top or get one of those cute timers. Whatever works, keep within your time line.
• For business I suggest you pay someone to do this for you, but you should set up standards up front (I’ll cover this in more detail in another post).
• If you are on a tight budget and prefer to do this yourself, then I suggest you schedule time each month to write out your posts for the next month, pull together royalty free images, figure out your key hashtag words, and get them scheduled to go out through the various scheduling platforms. You should time yourself with this task as well. Give yourself at least 2 – 3 hours, once a month to get these completed. That’s really all you need.

Now here’s the caveat, don’t simply write posts to get stuff out there. They need to be relevant to your target audience. Let me say this again, they need to be relevant to your target audience. This doesn’t mean that if you are a business coach you post a roast beef recipe or how to buy the best flowers at your local farmers market. You come up with content that can help your clients solve a problem, give an idea that might spark them to move forward, an inspirational quote to help them through the day, or share some key tips from a program you pulled together. Whatever your industry, you want to share your knowledge in bits and pieces.

I’ll cover some key content resources and things to stay away from when posting to your audience in a future post. In the interim, schedule your time to start working on your monthly posts to at least get started. You can also do some homework online and find some content resources. Either way the key is to start writing with the following in mind all geared towards your target audience:

• Gaps you can help fill.
• Issues you can help resolve.
• Ideas you can impart to help your audience move forward.
• Inspirational quotes or words of wisdom to help them through the day.
• Tips from old programs you’ve held in the past.

Simply get started and stay on task.

Here’s to growing your business online.