If you follow me on social or are on my newsletter list you’ll have seen that last week I got back on social media. This doesn’t mean that marketing without social has failed, it’s just another experiment I wanted to try. To be perfectly honest, my business has been doing really well the last few months without social and my mental health has been doing even better. So why would I get back on?
Why I’m Getting Back on Social
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with social. I’ve seen it do amazing things and terrible things. In the last 5-months when I would tell people I was off of it the number one response was “I wish I could do that” (Which by the way, you can!) I’m not the only one tired of the social media game but leaving cold turkey isn’t as approachable to a lot of people.
As a Marketing Strategist, I want to help discover new ways to give people the break they’re looking for without having to completely remove social media and I’m willing to be the guinea pig. As I’m starting to branch out into more illustration work I know that social can be a great way to grow that style of business. So I had to sit long and hard and decide what this could look like for me going back. I put a lot of rules around it.
My Social Media Boundaries
Here is what I know: on a personal level, simply scrolling through social media eats up a lot of my time and causes me to feel bad about myself or my work almost every single time. So I know that in order to stay healthy I can’t just be scrolling through a feed and losing track of time. I also know that I don’t want to be spending hours a day or even a week creating content for social media. I’m a photographer and have a TON of images to use and I’ve started documenting more of my artwork and the behind-the-scenes process. So I’ll use what I have without having to think about new content creation.
When I thought through how I wanted to be intentional with my social posts and my time these are the boundaries I came up with:
- Post + check messages once a week to Instagram only–Keeping with the theme of #TheMondayPost)
- Only use it on desktop, not on my phone–Not having the apps on my phone keeps me from wasting time and makes it harder to use if I want to check in on my phone.
- Only follow 50 people at a time–This limits the size of my feed so I don’t get disctracted and means that I’m very intentional with the content that comes into my life.
- No Fancy Stuff–Reels, video editing, stories etc. I’m sticking to feed posts that reflect my values and can showoff my work. A reel might make it in there if it’s a finished timelapse of the behind the scenes. No extra time is going into video editing.
- Don’t Look At Numbers–Numbers are an issue for me and make me feel like I’m not enough. So I’m not worrying about the number of likes I get or followers. Instead, I’m here to focus on creating valuable content that reflects my brand and my community. Just like the old days when we all first started on social.
Testing The Waters
I’m doing this as a test run to see if approaching social media with boundaries can give me the balance I need. If in a few months, I decide it’s not working then I get to make the decision to walk away again and most likely, for good this time.
This is the great thing about realizing there are no rules when it comes to business.
I don’t have to show up on social like all the “experts” tell me to. I can show up in a way that aligns with my values (discover yours with my free guide to work-life balance) and is done with intention. I also can decide at any time I don’t want to do this anymore and quit (for a period of time or for good).
So here’s to the next step on my journey to finding balance, growing a business, and living a life of intention. Tell me in the comments below how you’re finding balance with social media!
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