Pro tips to help you prioritize your mental health when using Instagram and social media
Even though you can start fresh any time you want, a new year is a great time to look at what’s working and what’s not – in business, life, and everything in between.
For me, focusing on mental wellness is more important than ever, especially as I navigate major health challenges. And from the DMs and comments I get, I’m not the only one. Even though I’ll always teach you how to use social media to grow your business and sell, I want all of us to put our mental health first this year. We can’t keep letting things like low engagement or not enough followers bring us down.
And we have no reason to! Because even though ranking those numbers gets increasingly harder to do as Instagram gets more competitive, the chances to sell and book clients through Instagram just increase at an even faster rate.
Here are my top tips to help you prioritize your wellbeing this year:
Turn notifications off.
There’s no reason your phone should be chirping at you everytime someone likes or comments on your posts on Instagram. Even if it’s a customer asking a question, they can easily wait a few hours until you log in next.
Follow fewer accounts.
Many of us follow people because they follow us. But that’s really not necessary. Not to mention accounts you followed a long time ago that no longer interest you, or even accounts that are best followed by your personal account instead. Do a clean up and only follow accounts you genuinely care about or learn from and ditch the rest. It’s not personal: the more accounts you follow, the longer you will scroll and it will take a toll on our productivity and mental health.
Reset your expectations for followers and engagement.
Instagram in 2023 isn’t the same Instagram as 2017. Why would we have the same expectations we had when there were a fraction of the accounts there are now? However people buy and book services from Instagram a lot more now (they hardly ever did then!). So regardless of the lower engagement and growth, 2023 Instagram is a lot better for your business.
Set boundaries for how much you give in the DMs.
It might surprise you but setting boundaries actually makes people respect you more, not less. You’re under no obligation to give away your knowledge for free, listen to 5 cold voice messages when you’re busy, or engage in a string of 10 follow up questions. Chatting with your audience in DMs is great, but draw a line for when to send them to a paid service or resource.
Repurpose your own content.
I will never understand how so many of us have convinced ourselves we need a brand new piece of content every day. Even when we know each time we post we only reach a fraction of our audience. Your high-performing content should have many lives! Reuse the same post with the same caption every 6 weeks or so. You don’t need to tweak unless it’s no longer accurate or relevant.
Post with the frequency that’s best for you.
Don’t want to post every day? Don’t. Period. Instagram needs to work for your business and bandwidth, not the other way around. Ignore the advice and post in a frequency that is possible and healthy for you.
Unfollow accounts that make you feel bad.
If the content doesn’t lift you up in some way, you don’t need it. Even if it’s good content. I promise. ♥️
Don’t worry about what your competitors are doing.
The reality is we’re all doing the best we can. Don’t waste your time or energy trying to keep up with anyone else. To paraphrase RuPaul “unless they’re paying your bills, pay them no mind!”
One last thing: we’re all working on our relationship with social media, whether we spend hours on Instagram, scrolling TikTok, Tweeting away, or even adding value on our favorite Facebook groups.
We’re not going to do it perfectly. So do what you can!
Maybe choose just one of these to try for a week and see how it feels.
Here’s to a healthy, happy 2023!
Hugs,
Manu
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Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and content shop to help social media managers and Instagram savvy women entrepreneurs to beat the algorithm and grow their organic engagement (yes, even in 2021).
This year she also launched Your Template Club, a Canva Template subscription to provide social media managers and Instagram savvy business owners with content templates designed for engagement in their inbox.
Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2017, Manu started Your Social Team with the mission of helping women entrepreneurs and social media managers grow engagement and sales through Instagram without the overwhelm.