Looking after your wellbeing when using social media

This month we’re going to be talking about a slightly different topic than usual, but a very important one. Many of us are realising more and more that being on social media has a negative affect on our mental wellbeing, and some are leaving certain platforms altogether because of it. However, that’s not so easy when social media is a major way that you promote your business. So what can you do if you need social media, but don’t find it a positive experience?

As someone whose job it is to do a lot of posting on these platforms, I’ve come up with four tips for protecting your wellbeing while utilising their undoubted marketing benefits. I should say that I’m not an expert on wellness, but these are things I do myself and know from experience work for me. I hope they can help you too:

Don’t worry too much about your ‘likes’

If you’re someone who puts up a post and then sits watching for the reaction, there is another way! Often engagement takes time to build anyway, so you’re not really accomplishing anything by obsessing over it for an hour or two afterwards. Instead, do your post and forget about it. Of course, it is useful for us to know the engagement level at some point, and we’ll also want to check and reply for comments, so we can’t ignore it forever. But we can be intentional about what time we check them, for example, just before trying to go to sleep at night is probably a bad idea. Leave enough time for the engagement data to be meaningful, and make sure it’s a moment in the day when you’re not also trying to do something else or it’s encroaching on what should be time off.

The other thing to absolutely avoid is equating your value as a business, creative or individual with how many likes you get. It’s totally normal to have both engaging posts and less engaging posts. Sometimes it’s because we posted it at the wrong time and our normal audience isn’t around. Sometimes the algorithm hasn’t liked it because it’s too promotional, or we’re directing to an outbound link. Sometimes we just get the topic or image wrong. Learn what we can learn from these posts (ie. what works and what doesn’t) and move on.

It is worth saying though, that if you’re getting consistently low engagement it might be of benefit to your business to get a social media audit done, or even see if your marketing budget allows for getting some regular help. Knowing you’re doing everything you can may help you let go more easily.

Consciously curate your feed

Remember that the algorithm doesn’t only influence what your followers see — it works for you too! And it’s constantly learning what you’re interested in. So if you stop and read and/or comment on posts that feature a certain type of content, guess what? You’re going to see a lot more similar stuff. This can be good if we commented because we were interested, but if it’s because the topic really winds us up then we’re soon going to end up feeling wound up every time we open our social media feeds.

If you do get stuck being shown lots of things you don’t want to see, there is something you can do about it. Most social media platforms have a way to express that you don’t like what you’re seeing — usually by hiding the post or asking to see less of that topic. On Facebook and Instagram you can find such options by tapping the three dots in the top right corner of the post in question. On Twitter (at the time of writing at least!) you’ll also find three dots in the right corner of a tweet with the option to select that you’re not interested. After a while the algorithms should start showing less of what you don’t want to see.

Set time limits (and stick to them)

We all know the feeling of thinking we’ll check our social media feeds for a few minutes, then looking up two hours later and wondering where the time went. It’s not really surprising — the platforms are seemingly set up to try and keep you there as long as possible.

This use of time can affect our wellbeing, particularly if we’ve ended up ‘doom-scrolling’ — reading negative news reports one after the other. It can also affects us in that we might find the time we spent on social media means we can’t get other things on our to do list finished, can’t finish work when we planned, or haven’t spent as much time relaxing with our family, friends or even ourselves.

The good news is that most smart phones now allow you to set your own time limits on certain apps, and will remind you after a set period that it’s time to leave now. Or you can simple set your self an alarm, say for 15 or 20 minutes, to do what you need to do on social media — like, comment and share some posts to keep your business page active — and then get on with your day.

Build a supportive community around you

Sometimes we don’t go to the negativity, it comes to us. Sadly the likelihood is that if we put ourselves and our businesses out there on social media, we’ll occasionally get some negative comments or unfair reviews. There’s not a lot we can do about that, unfortunately. But we can counteract such situations, and make them less likely, by building a supportive community around us.

For all the people who say negative things, there’s loads of other people who will genuinely like what we do, be kind, and even jump to our defence if they think we need it! Cultivate these sorts of interactions on social media by replying to the people who leave nice comments, by leaving your own nice comments on other posts, sharing what other local businesses are doing, and generally building your own virtual community.

In addition, try not to feed the negativity or allow unkind comments or reviews to live rent free in your head. Often people are just looking for a rise and actually want to start an argument, so it may not even be personal. Ignore them and move on.

We really hope these four tips can help you to look after your mental wellbeing when using social media. But if you find it does really impact you in a negative way, it might be time to think about some alternatives, such as sticking only to the platform you feel most comfortable, running adverts instead of focusing on organic posting, getting someone to manage your socials for you, or looking at other marketing options. Get in touch if you would like some help with any of these.