When Social Media Takes Over
As business owners, we constantly hear that the key to business success is social media. As a social media strategist, I totally agree that to build a thriving business, right now, having a good presence on social media is necessary.
But the problem comes when social media takes over our lives. Just take a moment and think about whether this is you?!
You wake up in the morning, kids are jumping around wanting breakfast, ready to start the day. And you're there in bed, quickly checking your phone making sure you get all the latest Facebook notifications, quickly scrolling through Instagram making sure that you’re replying to comments. Next thing you hear, “Mum put your phone down!”
Well isn't that the quickest way to a mum guilt trip.
See what has happened is we feel like social media is such an important part of growing our business, that we let it takeover so much of our spare time. In fact a lot of us business owners feel like we're justified being constantly on our phone, using the excuse but I've got to build my business.
Building your business doesn't have to mean being on social media 24/7. In fact, it's much better to have a consistent presence on say one platform, than trying to do all the things on all the platforms and becoming inconsistent. We want to build businesses that support us and our families, but if we're spending all our time on social media and the rest of our time feeling guilty about how much we are on social media, that does not leave a lot of time for building a business.
So let's take a moment and talk about a few quick simple ideas you can use right now for your business so that you don't have to spend every waking moment on social media.
When it comes to using Facebook for your business, there are a couple of quick steps you can take right now to help reduce the need to be always online. Firstly, head into your Facebook Business Page and set your opening hours. You might not be a physical store, but that doesn’t mean you cannot have opening hours.
Secondly, set up an autoresponder, with those opening hours and a nice greeting message, so that when people message your business, they get this immediately. This will keep your customers happy, and the Facebook gods also. Head into the messages tab on your Facebook Business Page and go to the autoresponders tab. (Or if you want to go really high level, set up a bot.)
Your Phone
When it comes to your phone and social media, there are a few ideas you can implement to help you curb your social media time. Firstly, you may want to consider the do not disturb function on your phone, thereby eliminating notifications etc. You may even want to go so far as to delete the apps. Another great idea is to move your phone out of the bedroom, and charge it in the lounge room overnight. This will make it much harder for you to get stuck in the early morning, or late night scroll.
Finally, I want to suggest that what we really need to do is shift our mindset around social media and business building. Social media is the most amazing tool for connecting in business, and being available to people everywhere. Don’t let this become overwhelming though, taking you away from other joys in your life. Treat it like any other part of your business, schedule time for it, make the most of it, but don’t let it take over your life.
Caroline is a mum to 2, business owner and loves all things social media. She loves creating social media strategy to help mums in business focus and refine their social media efforts for maximum impact and income. Find her at https://socialstrategymum.com or on Facebook and Instagram as Social Strategy Mum.