10 Ways to Avoid Social Media Burnout + Free Social Media Graphics
Social media is an essential component of marketing for small businesses, but it can also put a huge strain on busy entrepreneurs. The “always on” nature of our modern, interconnected world may mean your clients expect to be able to reach you via any communication channel at any time. This is a recipe for overworking yourself and living under constant stress. As entrepreneurs, we need to be especially careful to take care of ourselves. Small business owners are more likely to try and do it all when it comes to running our companies!
The current expectation to maintain active social media accounts on multiple platforms just isn’t realistic for self-employed business owners with no or few other employees. Most of my clients want a virtual assistant to help with their social media content creation and scheduling because they simply don’t have the time to do it themselves! Whether you decide to outsource some of your social media maintenance to a virtual assistant or go it alone, you’ll need to be proactive to avoid burning out.
To accompany my advice in this post, I’m offering 15 free, professionally designed graphics for sharing on your social media platforms. You can download them at the bottom of this post!
[Tweet “Managing multiple social media accounts can be exhausting. Avoiding burnout is vital.”]
#1: Use a scheduler:
The single best thing you can do to avoid burnout is to schedule a whole bunch of social media posts at one time. Set it and forget it! One of my favorite schedulers is Hootsuite, which is super easy to learn, but also very powerful.
#2: Create a social media calendar:
You can create cohesive marketing campaigns across all of your social media platforms if you plan ahead. A dedicated social media calendar to track when you want to be posting about what is essential.
#3: Block out times for interacting on social media:
Don’t leave a tab open for Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook all day long! This will just distract you, and keep you from getting more important things done. Set aside time for replying to comments and interacting with your followers, preferably during your less productive times of day.
#4: Think quality:
Posting ten times a day will just seem like spamming to your clients and followers. Nobody will be interacting with 10 uninspired posts each day! One status update that makes them want to like, retweet, or respond is better.
#5: Not everything needs to be original content:
Linking to your blog articles and new products or services is certainly important, but not every post needs to be about your business. Linking to relevant content that would be of interest to your followers is a good way to break it up and reduce your content creation workload.
#6: Focus on the channels that work for your business:
You don’t need to be on every social media website. Really. Some work better for certain types of business, so you should focus on the social platforms you get the biggest engagement with.
#7: Set goals and use analytics:
Without a clear objective, it can be difficult to use social media to your best advantage. Know what you want to achieve with your posts, and measure the results with analytics tools to figure out how you can improve your posting.
#8: Manage notification settings:
Having your mobile device pinging you with notifications from social media apps all day long is not only annoying but can be a major source of distraction. Change your settings for each social media platform/app and on your phone to reduce the unnecessary notifications.
#9: Have an “off” day:
One day a week, don’t touch any of your social media accounts. Let the prescheduled posts go up, and get back to any comments the following day.
#10: Share the work:
Consider hiring a virtual assistant to take over some of your social media duties! From writing and scheduling posts to creating graphics for social media, a good virtual assistant can significantly reduce the burden.
[Tweet “A good social media schedule can reduce the daily stress of managing a campaign.”]
I hope this post has given you some useful ideas for reducing the toll that managing social media can take on your productivity and health.
Click here to grab the 15 social media graphics that I promised!
If you have other strategies to prevent burnout, please comment on this post—I’d love to hear them! Why not schedule a free consultation with me to talk about your social media marketing strategy and see how a virtual assistant can help share the workload?
