The Great Compromise (With Social Media)
Why I Hate Social Media
At the risk of sounding like I’m on a soap-box, I do feel the need to mention why this is an important blog post to me. I hate social media. It’s a major detractor for me running my own business and it’s why, to this point, doing things on my own (teaching yoga, data consultancy, etc) was an anxious struggle for me. One of the reasons I was excited to jump back into a corporate job was so I could delete (and I did) all of my social profiles, except for the omni-and-ever present LinkedIn. Thing is, by being a small business, especially a small creative business, I have to have it. It’s the only way to market successfully these days, at scale, with minimal additional costs, unless I put dolla-bills to my sanity.
Maybe you can relate. Maybe not. But these are the feelings I struggle with, am conscious of, and am trying to avoid as I ramp up my business.
I know I have an unhealthy relationship with social, which is why, at the first chance I get, I delete all of it. I’ve done it before. Depending on how the business goes, I’ll likely do it again. If I could pay someone a million dollars today to pretend to be me and just do my social, both professionally and personally (because your personal accounts do impact the algorithm that pushes your professional accounts), I would. I would pay that person a million dollars in a heart beat to take all of my photos, and just do their thing. Look at the comments, look at the likes (or lack thereof), and just deal.
Comparisons
“They” (unsure who “they” really is) say to stop comparing myself to others, yet in reality, this feels impossible. This is especially impossible given the electronic culture we are in where everyone is always posting everything they’re doing, but in a filtered, curated kind of way. People post the funniest, prettiest, best versions of themselves, typically. Or they’re posting their “most authentic” versions, but still in some humble-brag kind of way. I’m sure if you Google mental health and social media, there are a lot of opinions and studies on what this is all doing to our self-image and motivation. There’s even a study on the addiction piece.
For some people, seeing everyone’s best stories is a great thing! For me, as a recovering perfectionist, I have a hard time not feeling like a failure for not living up to some arbitrary standard put out there on Meta. Most of this mental health stuff is self-inflicted, for sure. On one hand I’m excited and proud of others. On the other, I am wondering what I’m not doing (or doing) that is preventing me from feeling like I have a “best story” to also post. There is a constant battle of “am I good enough” or “will people find this interesting” which is often met with amazing content I feel I can’t compete with.
I am more and more conscious of when this is happening and I do actively try and short circuit these thoughts. More on that in the following sections.
Doom Scrolling (or Infinite Scrolling)
When I have social on my phone I find I’m mindlessly on it. At any point when I am bored or looking for a distraction, I’m nose-deep into scrolling through a literally-endless list of posts I’m comparing myself to. For me, this is doom scrolling. Others might find it more of a mindless, yet harmless, distraction. For me, I keep watching videos or reading posts and feeling like I’m not doing enough in the moment, or I could be doing better at whatever-it-is, or I “should” add this to my list of things to do. This feeling of never doing / being enough impacts my mood in a very real and tangible way. I can feel it. There are times when I feel particularly crabby and I’ll snap out of my mindlessness scrolling for a moment to realize it’s because I just spent 15-30-45 minutes on Instagram.
Social media makes their money, quite simply, off our attention. By us scrolling and looking at things, they’re making money off us. We are the product. Nothing is free. If it’s free, it’s because they’re selling our data / scrolling history / interests / etc. The reason I’m putting this out there is a reminder to myself, and to anyone else who needs to know it, that the concept of infinite scrolling is by design and for a profit. The more they can hold our attention with content, the more money they make, so the better they get at it (see next sub-section).
Algorithms and Echo Chambers
Their algorithms are designed to feed us more of what our eyes (literally) are drawn to - where we linger on our scroll, what we watch, what we like, etc - in an effort to keep that scroll going as long as possible. These algorithms add so much, in my strong opinion, to a lot of the cultural divide going on in our society right now. They enable a lot of viral activity of fake / click-baity news. They’re the root cause of many conspiracy theories. Really, it’s alarming. And these issues are in every group regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or political party. We are all victims of the algorithms at some point. I find it happening to myself, and I’m pretty educated and aware of how data is used for and against people because I’ve done it. I’ve collected data, cleaned it, and analyzed it. I get it and I still fall for it on social media. It’s subtle, but it’s very real.
Try this… Google something innocuous you’ve never Googled before. Then go to Youtube or Hulu or Facebook, or really anywhere you get ads pushed to you and watch it unfold. I’ve seen the Hulu ads change within a couple of hours based on my search history. It’s this marketing process that’s for sale.
I don’t want to belabor the point, but I do want to conclude that the main reasons for hating social media are a) the mental health drama I cause myself with constant comparisons, b) the fact that the user interface is designed to cause a brain-chemical-addiction for me as a user, and c) the algorithms that trick me into getting riled up and are pushing me into an echo-chamber. Some people do just fine in this world, finding balance and not letting these things get to them. Some people don’t care if they are bothered and keep doing it anyway. I do care, I am bothered, but unfortunately, running a business in this day and age, it’s a force I have to reckon with.
Boundaries I am Trying to Set
I noticed these issues I have with social years and. years ago and have been slowly adding tools to my belt for dealing with them. I’ve ordered them by effectiveness. Additionally, one of these tools is relatively new, so I haven’t had a ton of time to test out my theory, but will update this post over time as more information presents itself.
Notifications (< if I had to pick one thing, I’d pick this)
I have turned off all push notifications for everything except:
Food apps that tell me when my food is done or going to be delivered
Money apps that tell me someone sent me money
House apps around necessary smoke detector or water alerts
Phone calls from people in my contacts list
My priorities are pretty simple: people I know, home, food, and money. Everything else I do on my own time. I turn off notifications (on all of my devices, especially my wearables) for all messaging services (texts, Slack, email - yes, you read that right) and all apps not listed above. I’m always in “Focus Mode” on my computer, iPad, and phone. My little phone switch that silences things on iPhones is always switched to silent mode.
I used to do this when I worked too. I had to be more liberal with notifications because typically bosses expect you to be available, but I was quick to silence notifications on my work Slack, leave my phone in my office if I was taking a break, and NEVER had push notifications for work emails, especially, especially if my work email was on my personal phone.
The key here for me was to be conscious of what I was checking and to do it on my time. So instead of an important family event or conversation, or frankly, quiet time, being interrupted by a ding of my phone, I get the social messages / likes / texts / emails when I’m ready to sit down and read / respond to them. This helps me stay in my zone when I’m working and it helps me maintain a singular focus, which in reality, is the way our brains are designed to work.
This was particularly difficult for me to get used to and do, but I have found that for the most part one of two things happen:
I don’t respond fast enough to a message, so the person calls me (which if they’re in my contact list, I get)
The other person doesn’t even notice, and they get a response when they get it (which is 99.9% of my interactions)
I’m unapologetically push-notification free, and if I had to undo everything else I plan on doing boundary-wise in this post, this is the one thing I would keep at all costs. It’s been truly life-changing. I’m ~5-6 years deep into it, and the only thing that has changed over these 5-6 years is I get better and better at turning off more sounds / notifications.
Scheduling
Before I started this business, one of the first things I decided was to pay for a software that would help me with social media. I know that social media / marketing is a pain point for me, but I also know it’s imperative for running a business. This is one of the few places I spend money without a direct ROI, because the ROI is how I feel and my mental health. In the next section I explain more about HOW I do things, but the key benefit to having a scheduler (in my case, Hootsuite), is I can set it and forget it. I can spend a couple of hours a week or a couple of days a month, and sit down and muscle through the week or month’s worth of posts.
I can do anything for a day or two. What I don’t want is the incessant nagging in my mind of “I should really post something to social”, which then I dread and inevitably just not do. In previous ventures, this was the trap I fell into. I’d agonize over the content I was putting out there, the brand, etc. That’s what “they” (unsure who… but someone on Youtube for certain) were all about. This time around, I’m trying really hard to not let the perfectionism paralyze me from doing something, anything. In that spirit, I take to scheduling nicely. In reality, no one is time-sequencing my posts to say “actually, that picture is from last week”. No one is obsessing over my content the way I am. People will like what they like, and scroll where they don’t, and that’ll be that.
I can let go of the notion of having the perfect “on-brand” content all of the time, having everything posted the day I take the picture, and responding to social media notifications immediately. I can schedule things, let everything play out accordingly, and work on my own time. This might not scale. It might not make for a billion dollar business plan. But those aren’t my success criteria. My success criteria is simply to not lose myself and my mental health to social media, and try to make some money making things while I’m at it.
Separate Devices - The Physical Short-Circuit Technique
This worked beautifully when I worked for Tableau (a Salesforce company). I was given a separate phone. I could have done things like port my personal number over and used one phone for everything, but I chose to have a separate device and I have zero regrets around that. I have a hard time turning things off in my head, so I need physical boundaries at times. It’s why I don’t buy Oreos anymore (I know… sad), but also why I need separate devices. I’m really good at short circuiting temporarily, but if the temptation is there too long and too easy to mindlessly consume, I will. You put a pack of Oreos in my cabinet and they’ll be gone in a matter of a couple of days. The only short-circuiting I need now is in that 30 seconds at the grocery store where I tell myself “don’t even go down the cookie aisle”. Then it’s done and now the temptation isn’t easily accessible and I have to consciously decide I want something, get in my car, and go get it.
Same thing with a separate device. I’ve noticed recently (because I no longer work for a company with a separate company phone) that I have all of my work apps and things on my personal phone, and I mindlessly scroll. This then puts me in a negative cycle. Since the separate device worked so well in the past for me, I am going to give this a try again. The actual logistics still need to be worked out, so do stay tuned as I keep this post updated.
How (the Operations)
Notifications & Phone OS Things
I use Apple products, so I can only talk to this OS, but it is likely the case other devices have similar functionality. I recommend Google to get the equivalent features:
On the side of iPhones there is a physical switch for silencing all notifications. Mine is pushed down, showing reddish-orangish, at all times.
Under Settings > Notifications:
“Announce Notifications” is Off (the few notifications I do get, I get on all of my devices, so I really don’t need Siri reading to me while I’m listening to a podcast and my hands are too dirty to silence it)
For all other apps, I regularly audit the notifications turned on. There are 3 levels for me. 1) Critical app (see above) where I get all banners, badges, and pushes, 2) Minor, but care about, where I leave the badge on, but turn off everything else (this is for messaging apps I forget to check, like Slack), and lastly 3) everything-else, which has all notifications turned off (I’ll use the app when I want to but otherwise, don’t want the distraction; this is for high-frequency, typically low priority apps like email and texts).
Under Settings > Focus: regularly audit this list too. I’m 100% of the time in “Do Not Disturb” mode. Because of this, it’s important that those Critical Apps from above are allowed through.
Under Watch > Notifications: again, regularly audit, but I make sure most of the apps are mirroring my phone. This way one audit handles them all.
Designing Content, Canva
For creating content, I use Canva. I’ve been paying for Professional for a few years now, and would recommend it, but you can get pretty far with the free version as well.
Create a blank design in the Instagram Post size (I start here because it’s my main platform)
Name the design something like: YYYY-MM Week X - Social Media Platform Name (or if it’s for the entire month, which I am not so great about, just leave it YYYY-MM)
Name each individual page something like: YYYY-MM-DD 1,2,3 Brief Description of Post, where “YYYY-MM-DD” is the date I intend to schedule and“1,2,3” is the post number within that date. This naming convention is optimal, in my experience, for ordering of things in A-Z once you’re in your file system on your computer.
Design away, but not stressing if I have to leave some pages blank. They’ll get filled in as time passes (see “Tip” below).
Using the Instagram square sized content works well when scheduling for Instagram & Facebook alike. For my social media (as of writing in Sep 2023), I was getting little engagement from Twitter / X, so I now stop here. For those using other platforms, see below.
Click Resize (I think this is a Pro feature) and allow it to copy and resize my designs for each of the platforms (i.e. Twitter, Instagram Stories, and Facebook). Rename all of the designs as needed from the Home page.
In each of the other designs, resize / move around the designs to fit the the other platforms’ ratios
Download each of the designs. When you download more than one page from Canva, it’ll download a zip file with each of the pages, which is why renaming the pages is so important!
Tip: If I skipped a page, and need to go back and fill it in, I start with Instagram, and then go into each of the other platforms’ designs, and copy it over without overwriting / redoing the work already done. Here’s how.
Scheduling Content, Meta Business Suite (Free)
Before purchasing a scheduling platform, I recommend using the FREE resources at your disposal. That said, if I were still using social media platforms outside of Meta, I’d recommend Hootsuite, a paid-for platform that allows cross social media scheduling and enable analytics.
After the decision to focus only on Meta products (Instagram & Facebook), I was able to simplify my social media strategy significantly. One key feature few people seem to know about when I talk with them is the Meta Business Suite. Through the business suite one can:
Link both Meta accounts, viewing comments and messages in one place
View analytics and see overview between both Instagram & Facebook
SCHEDULE posts and stories, modify by platform, and tag accounts
I’m sure there’s more, but those are the main selling factors for me, and likely for a lot of smaller businesses who just want help getting posts out there timely without having to sit and watch their accounts. You do need Business Accounts - both for Instagram and Facebook.
Final Thoughts
I am a solopreneur in the creative-arts business, trying to figure things out as I go, and dealing with mental baggage around social media. It’s entirely possible I’m the only one, but in the event I’m not, know you’re not alone, if that’s at all helpful. There are tools out there I use and am able to be effective with, without having to abandon my dream of never having a boss again. It can be done; it just takes a lot of self-awareness, general mindfulness, and conscious planning.
Versioning
v 01. Oct 5, 2022 - Initial post; no affiliate links.
v 02. Sep 11, 2023 - Updated to reflect changes in Social Media tech and strategy over previous year
