A New Year in the social media landscape means fast-incoming trends, rolling updates and an all-around demand for more. Social media marketers and trend experts collectively attempt to predict the future of the social landscape. These professionals and their findings are here to help your businesses grow, and help you get to grips with where to focus your marketing energy.
What they don’t tell you, though, is how to exercise safer social media habits. As each of the main platforms grow, taking up more and more space in our lives, it’s important that we approach these changes with purpose and the intention to take good care of ourselves as well as our brands.
So, throw your typical resolutions to the side and make room in your day-to-day to mindfully practice five of our favourite social-savvy habits.
1. Keep your focus on quality over quantity
You’ve probably seen those TikTok or Reel videos: “Want to grow on Instagram? Post Reels EVERY SINGLE DAY for 30 days!”
It’s exhausting and it doesn’t always work. It might for some accounts, but comparing and trying to copy someone else’s strategy doesn’t mean it will have the same impact for you.
Being consistent with your social media content is way more important than posting every day.
Decide on what you are capable of doing. If you have a budget, look for content creators to help you. All you need to do is make sure those pieces of content are on your A-game. That way, you’re building a sustainable social media marketing strategy that will stand the test of time.
2. ‘Community over competition’ should be your mantra in 2022
Social media relationships should be held to the same standards as your in-person relationships. They should be positive, uplifting and always bring out the best in you. If they don’t, maybe now is a good time to reevaluate those relationships and consider if they’re beneficial to your growth.
Within the social insiders circle, it’s been well known for a while now that community and collaboration are key to cultivating social media success. No brand can achieve new highs without a strong sense of community for their shoppers, and no community can come together without consistent collaboration.
Think of it as word-of-mouth advertising for the modern age – the only reliable way to authentically gain your customers’ trust and loyalty, and the only way for you to show up in your digital spaces without feeling burnt out in the long run.
Don’t develop surface-level relationships. Make sure your relationships are value-driven, genuine and authentic. This social media tip isn’t about chasing clout but rather supporting and growing together.
3. Silence and distance your devices
This may be a suggestion you’ve heard a lot before, but for us here at Style Up it’s a critical one – a habit we believe everyone needs to develop.
Spend chunks of the day without your phone or device. To truly reorient the brain toward quiet and stillness, you need… well, quiet and stillness. We’ve been experimenting with iOS 15’s ‘Focus Mode’, which lets you schedule silenced notifications during the workday, as well as at night and when driving.
It can feel that you are often missing something when you don’t pick up your phone every 5 minutes but more often than not, nothing’s happened. If you can find the one thing that distances you from the notifications and the pointless scrolling, we promise you will feel lighter.
Try out ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode when needing to finish an important task, set your notifications to ‘Silent’ before and after a certain time of the day. Commit to a small-scale social detox, where you avoid using your phone for the first and last hours of the day, every day.
Do what feels achievable for you and allows you time to relax away from a screen.
4. Remember tech multitasking isn’t a thing
Have you ever opened your inbox, taken a detour to Instagram, then back to your inbox where you’d click on a email, read half of that, then text a friend about its contents, see a text from another friend which takes you to Tik Tok, spend 30 minutes laughing and lost in videos and then forget what you’d set out to do in the first place?
Okay, so maybe not in that exact order… but you get what we mean, right?!
The point is not to let your working day become like an impossible-to-finish tech maze. Your tech use – filled with lots of scrolling, texting, weather-checking, online cart-filling, scheduling, engaging and podcast listening – can all too easily become chaotic.
Consciously making a decision to do one thing at a time can feel liberating. Surprisingly, also far less overwhelming.
Why not present for real-time Slack, text and DM conversations with friends, family and colleagues rather than toggling between windows and tasks during the brief silences while waiting for the other person to respond? Try picking up your phone to use Instagram with intention. Instead of being on there for an hour and feeling like you have achieved nothing, create dedicated time slots to post content and engage with your customers, creators and friends.
5. Know your highlight reel doesn’t have to be ‘Insta-worthy’ to be worth something
Too often, we can find ourselves stuck in a comparison rut – wishing we had the successes of others, their talent, their looks or even their perceived status. But that’s just the problem… everything we see on social media has been curated to appear in the way it does. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to show our best-selves, per say, but there is absolutely no joy to be found in comparing your latest achievements or everyday life to those of the people you follow.
Practice remembering your worth, both on and offline, by challenging the comparisons and resting in the awareness that you are good enough. Someone online having something you dream for doesn’t mean you’re not valuable already, exactly as you are. Gaining confidence in your brand and yourself, both as the face of your company and as a successful human being in your own right, can be an absolute game changer when scrolling your socials.
Before long, your newfound self-assurance will have you wondering why you ever felt less-than in the first place.
As always, feel free to leave your biggest social media questions in the comments below or book in for a FREE Clarity Call to discuss how we can help turn your scrollers into dedicated shoppers in 2022. We can’t wait to hear what these habits do for you!