#127 - 6 Tips To Use Social Media Without Jeopardising Your Mental Health
Prepare in advance: The secret to social media management is to create in advance: bulk create when you’re up to it. Everyone with top accounts does it, so why not you too? Whenever you’re feeling creative, go for it and create a ton of content that you’ll use and re-use for the next few weeks. It helps if you have set content ideas for your account but if you don’t - try out a few things and see what works for you.
Schedule: You’ve created all that content but skipped to Tip 6 (Spoiler: Log off social media) and you don’t want to log in, post and fake interact with bot accounts? That’s fine, there’s an app for that. Actually, there’s about 500 so pick one that works for you, that’s free and schedule out your posts. Although we do still recommend *genuinely* interacting with comments.
Unfollow: Unfollowing has become this passive-aggressive thing on social media but we need to normalize unfollowing accounts that make us feel bad about ourselves. If an account doesn’t make you 100% happy to see it, unfollow it. Times are hard enough as it is, don’t make your life harder. If the person gets mad you unfollowed them… that’s one more reason to unfollow them.
You’re not a number: Okay, yes numbers are important - especially when you’re trying to stand out and prove to people you have a following. But your engagement is more important than the size of your following. You could have 30,000 followers - it does not matter if only 20 people like your posts. If you have 100 followers, nurture those 100 followers and take care of them. That’s what matters. Your account will grow with you.
Turn notifications off: It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. You get overwhelmed when receiving a lot of notifications and anxious when you don’t get any. Turning off your notifications gives you the power to check your accounts on your schedule and not as they roll in. It seems too easy but having your notifications off, makes everything on your terms.
Log off: And if turning off your notifications doesn’t work - just log off or set a time limit on the apps. With new phones, you often can limit the amount of time you spend on each app. If that’s an issue for you, definitely take advantage of it. ‘Doom scrolling’ is a thing so let’s put some barriers in place to safe keep our mental health.
