Prevent Social Media Burnout
What is burnout? Some sources state that burnout is an emotional, physical and mental state when you feel overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands. The “hustle” culture can be one of the catalysts that lead to burnout. How can you avoid burning out on your marketing efforts? Here are some tips that can help:
Tip #1: First off, hiring a social media manager can make a HUGE difference. This allows you to make decisions, relay those decisions and then continue on with running your business knowing that the marketing will be taken care of. For example, you have a sale this month at your store. The social media manager can broadcast that to your audience on a consistent basis, here at Social Mirror Media we can also send out an e-newsletter to customers and update your website as well. This means, you now have the time to organize stock, handle customers/employees, and even plan for next month. The key to consistency for me is to always be ahead of the game.
Now if you aren’t quite there yet, here are some tips I use to stay on top of things but also prevent myself from burning out… I’m not perfect but we all do our best.
Tip #2: Plan your content well in advance. Planning your social media content will also assist in planning your business. Having a plan that is established 2-4 weeks ahead of time or even a whole quarter means that when other ideas pop up or you get too busy, you aren't scrambling the day before to meet social media deadlines. In the past, I have seen businesses scrambling to inform their customers of the upcoming “due date” or “last chance sale” for products the week of (or even days before) said date or sale ends. This just doesn’t give the busy consumer time to adjust their schedule to make the effort for you and therefore you lose out on customers.
This also creates social media fatigue and burnout. There just isn’t enough time to make well-thought-out social media captions, hashtags, take quality photos, and advertise. Plan ahead to give yourself enough time to complete QUALITY marketing.
Tip #3: Don’t do everything at once!! You don’t need to have a photo, create a caption, find good hashtags, find the best time to post, and schedule all in one sitting. For Social Mirror Media, we set aside separate times (sometimes days) to plan/brainstorm, caption write, create visuals, and schedule posts. The best part of this strategy is we review the previous step before we take on the next. This limits spelling errors that are bound to happen, blurry photos, “posting just to post” and allows review of the whole post over multiple days.
Tip #4: When you are scheduling your content, schedule multiple posts at a time. I like the Two Week Rule. Create your content for the next two weeks, schedule it then you have a two-week buffer to brainstorm new content, take some photos, plan, etc. then schedule the next two weeks and so on and so forth.
Tip #5: Don’t Post, just to Post!! As discussed in the last blog post, establishing your tone is important. This can mean that you may have a few days when you could post but that post would not provide any value to your business. It would make no sense to have an informative and professional brand tone to post a funny meme just to hit 5 posts this week, for example. Stick to your tone and try to think, what does this post do for the business and what does it provide for my audience?
I hope that by using these tips you can further your business goals and prevent social media burnout. If you have a tip that would be useful or need clarification on any of the tips above, leave a comment below with your email and I would be happy to provide you with more information.