Content Queen Mariah

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232: If you feel the pressure of social media - this is for you

Mariah MacInnes

Let’s think outside the box. Let’s create something more holistic so you don’t burnout, feel the fear, feel the pressure or whatever is coming up for you when you think about social media. 

There are many ways you can show up on social media, and it doesn’t mean being active on it 24/7. Let me share with you a few hard truths about socials plus a few options you have! 

If you LOVED this episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah. ⁠⁠⁠

✨ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠JOIN CONTENT BOOTCAMP to create your own content marketing strategy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠✨⁠

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

  • The 3 hard truths about social media for business owners 

  • How to create a more holistic content marketing approach 

  • How to put in boundaries and feel less pressure 

SHOW RESOURCES 👇 

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is episode 232 and I'm talking all about this pressure that sometimes comes up as business owners with social media. Welcome to the Content Queen podcast. I'm your host, Mariah, entrepreneur, storyteller, digital nomad, creator of Content Bootcamp and founder of Content Queen.  I'm here to teach you how to share your unique story, create content and market your business with strategy through the channels that work for you.

Each week I'll deliver a story to help you connect to a powerful strategy around marketing, business, and content creation. I'll also be joined by amazing souls and entrepreneurs who are here to share their own journey along with actual steps to help you take your business to a whole new level through amazing storytelling, powerful aligned marketing and content strategy.

Let's do it. Hello gang. Okay.  Hot topic, social media, pressures, fears, things that come up with social media. Now we had an episode last week with the amazing Jess who is an empowerment coach and she gave a five step process to talk about fear on social media or content fear with anything really, but you know, it was tangible for the content space.

Now I actually did a poll and a lot of you still fear the fear, feel fear around social media and content. Now, a lot of us, Also could come across as really confident on social media, but there's also underlying fears that come with it. So, um, it is totally like we all feel fit, feel fear, right? And even if it's like, Oh, what will the comments be?

Or what will people say if I share this certain thing? A lot of us do hold back for that exact reason.  And of course there are things that we don't share on  and that's okay. We can have a boundary around social media for sure.  But, of course, what happens is, um, With social media, with, you should do this, you should do that, you should be like this, or you should create this kind of content.

It creates a lot of pressure in how we should be showing up on these channels, which is, you know, it's completely normal to feel that pressure. So I wanted to talk about this because there are so many things that we can do with these channels to make them work for us. And, you know, there's things with consuming, how we consume it, boundaries around that.

There's a type of content that we create. So I'm going to share three sort of things that occur with social media and small business owners and kind of what we can do. And really what I want to put a lens on is always trying to look at our content marketing a little bit more holistically and trying to build different channels and things so that we're not just relying on social media and it doesn't consume all of our time and energy.

Um, we don't always have this level of fear around it. So I will talk to that today because yeah, we're in this little trend around mindset and marketing. Um, with Jess last week. And then next week we have a really good podcast around ERT, which we'll talk about that next week, but it's really about the subconscious level of, um, marketing and business and all those things, things that we're.

Kind of not aware of,  but what I want to share first is I had a podcast guest come on at the start of 2023  and she actually talked about her journey. It was really a podcast episode around introverts. Um, and I will link it in the show notes, but basically Tara, the guest shared her experience with social media and how actually she did.

no longer shows up on social media in a way, in the way that we're used to. She uses it very differently. She uses more of like a webpage as opposed to, um, you know, like something that we're posting on all the time. And this, you know, of course sparks a debate around social media and how we can use it to our advantage.

And, you know, there's lots of people on there, like if you're not on social media, no one's going to know about your business. And, you know, there's a lot of merit to that, that it's, it can be true in a way. Like I've also done a video about how. You know, because I show up so much on social media people are like, oh my god I see you so much on social media.

It feels like I'm meeting a celebrity, which is just obviously not the case. Um, but that's what happens, of course, the power of social media.  But in this journey with Tara, and I'll talk a little bit more about the end of her journey at the end of the podcast, was basically she realized social media, that really reactive social media space, wasn't for her and she made Things work for her, like her podcast, her email marketing, and she can still have that same effect of oh my god I feel like I know you so well, I get your emails, I listen to your podcast, you feel like you're a celebrity, like you can get the same effect that's not on social media and she was able to remove herself from that really reactive social media space that made her feel lost.

more calm. And whilst a lot of people out there that say, you know, you, if you're not on social media, you're not doing this, you're not doing that. Your business isn't going to work. They're not really understanding that everyone has different needs from, you know, their, um, nervous system, you know, how they respond to things and who they want to attract as well.

Because the type of content you create and the types of channels that you show up on,  you know, allow you to attract the type of people that you want and also the other way you don't want. Um, and you know, being through my own personal experience with, um, high stress and my endocrine system, which was where I had my cancer is actually linked to the nervous system and hormones and things.

I totally understand why some people feel really triggered on social media. And that's why it's really good to have Gabby come on next week and talk about it from a different lens, not just a marketer saying like, You should be here. You should be there. So I want you to think about social media in a different way and a different lens that could work for you.

Because when you have a holistic content marketing strategy and you have other channels that you can rely on, you know, quote rely on, then you don't have to rely on one channel to sustain you and your business and you can kind of take yourself away from it. And I'm also going to share my own personal experience because  I'm not on, like, I obviously create a lot of content, but there's a lot of things that I can do that doesn't mean I have to be on the trigger all the time.

And I can still run a business, you know, in this space. And I'm, you know,  being up with all the trends and all that thing. So  the first thing is I believe we rely too much on the social media platforms. Basically, I saw a video a couple of years ago, and I'm still Um, yeah, so she went through all the analytics of really top companies that spend quite a lot of money on social media.

And she worked out that only 11 percent of their website traffic came from social media. Now that's not to say that That's amounts to sales or anything like that, but it was very, very interesting how we automatically go to social media because it's like what everyone is doing or what we all know or  how we think we're going to reach our audience quicker.

And that is so cool. It's not a lie, but also at the same time,  we do rely on it a lot. So what happens is as well is when we have something to sell or when we want to make money, we feel like we have to go to social media and sell it on social media. But behind it is this sort of fear and scarcity to make that money.

So that energy is very different and we rely on social media to actually make us money when in fact it should be the top of your funnel. It should be generating new audience. And leading people to the next step, not necessarily always selling to them, but giving them something, the next stage that they can engage in you without necessarily buying from you.

So, The alternative is if you have an email list, you don't really need to feel like this all the time. And if you have a sales pipeline and a marketing funnel where you're, you know where people need to go next and you know, you can nurture them and you can also rely on other marketing channels like traditional paid marketing, you know, there's other things other than just content, then you don't feel like you have to always be selling on this platform with this energy that feels probably a little bit icky to you.

that feels very like I feel eventually my audience is going to be like, Oh my God, all she does is sell at me all day. And then you can actually start to have fun with social media knowing that, okay, it's the top of the funnel. And what I love is when I work with clients and they really want to use social media to build their brand, build their thought leadership, build their authority.

And there's not this scarcity around, I have to make money off this channel. They know that  ROI comes back in other  marketing efforts, in other sales plans. And, you know, then you can use social media for that really like the first glimpse that someone gets of you. And do you want that first glimpse of someone?

Like the first glimpse of you from someone being, Oh my god, she's just selling, or he's just selling at me all the time.  So, if we have an email list, if we have these other things set up, we're not always relying on social media to sell. That's also why it's important to, of course, diversify your business, and have different income streams and stuff, but again, not a business strategist, so, you can definitely talk to someone about how you can bring in multiple streams of income into your business and things like that, but, what I'm trying to say is, When you've got things set up in the background, you've got, you know, eventually you might run ads to things, eventually, you know, you might be networking, you might be doing other things where it's not just always on social media all the time.

And remember, the people that, um, sell social media as a must have or must perfect,  they're successful on social media because they're teaching social media. So obviously what you need is going to be a little bit different. It doesn't mean it won't necessarily work. It's just going to be different.  So that's number one.

I generally believe we rely too much on social media and we put a lot of eggs in the social media basket. What I will always do with the client is if they're like, okay, we are going to start off on social media. The goal is to always expand. So right now you might not be ready to start a longer form channel, but the goal should be to expand.

The goal should always be. to get an email list as well. Or yeah, look at other things within the social media, within the online space. You know, for example, even a, um,  a  local restaurant, you know, would rely a lot on Google reviews, even if they don't necessarily have a website, you know, or TripAdvisor. So there's other marketing platforms other than just social media.

to generate traffic and audience to that space. So you wouldn't, you wouldn't ignore that.  Number two is consistently trying to find ideas. and trends, then ends up in us comparing ourselves. So this is, happens a lot, right? Um, we are on these social media platforms, there's lots of trends, there's lots of new ideas, there's lots of things that we feel like we're always keeping up with.

So we scroll a lot on that platform.  So if the more scrolling we do, the more other people we see, the more chances we have of,  of comparing ourselves, of thinking we're not enough, of seeing people's stuff and then trying to replicate it, and then not having.  origin, an originality in what we're creating.

So staying up with the trends can lead to burnout and no originality. I'm not saying it's not a good thing. I really like trends. I really enjoy, you know, funny sounds and stuff, but it's all about having your own spit and your own take on it, but then pairing it with other types of content that is unique and different.

So this is where like blogs and podcasts and  having an email list and having maybe a YouTube channel or some kind of long form video, um, it allows, it means you don't consume as much because you're like spreading your wings across different channels. So you don't necessarily have time to be on social media all the time.

And this actually gives you ideas for social media. Say you're going to write a blog, or you're going to record a podcast on a certain topic. It then allows you to use that topic to create more content. And usually those topics come from questions from your clients or your audience, or, you know, things that are happening that you see around you.

And it's really impacting you and your clients. First connect, like first hand, so  it is really relevant and it's not just what everyone's saying on social media.  Then of course, like,  if you don't need to be on social media as much, you can turn off some of those notifications. And, oh my god, it's a breath of fresh air when you do that.

So, for me, obviously, I'm logged into quite a few Instagram accounts, um, across TikTok, quite a few different channels. Then, you know, you've got, I communicate over WhatsApp, I've got, um, Boxer for some of my, like, my own personal development stuff. There's a lot of apps that I have. The day I decided to turn my notifications off, the happier I was.

And now I go, when I go into the channel, that is when the notifications appear and you might be like, Oh my God, that feels so overwhelming, but I go in at like a couple of times a day and obviously with my WhatsApp and my client stuff,  I'm usually on my computer, so I see the notification come in. Same with my emails, but I don't need my phone reminding me every two seconds that something's coming up or, you know, every couple of minutes, every hour that there's something new to see because that's where we get distracted.

And of course, like, depending on what's going on in your life in that current moment, because not everything is perfect, you might find yourself getting distracted going on those platforms when you're not really in a great headspace, and then that just leads to more, like, comparison,  more, I'm not good enough, I'm not getting enough of this, I'm not getting enough of that, that person looks like their life is amazing, or their business is going really well, and it's just not.

a vibe, right? So if you're intentionally going on those platforms when you want to find an idea or when you want to check a notification, it's not like you're reminded every second to go on that platform. So when it was funny, when I decided to do this in 2020,  I remember, um,  Mitch saying to me, Oh, that will last five minutes.

Like you'll just turn them back on. And I was like, no, I just feel like I need to turn them off. Like I feel like, and especially cause I have client accounts and I don't, unless I'm doing community engagement for that client or community management, I don't need to be reading their messages. So I don't need the notification coming up on my phone.

And the minute I did that, it was just so nice. It was so nice, and it means on the weekends, like, you don't, you're not bombarded with notifications, so.  And even with my WhatsApp, you know, I felt like as soon as I had a notification, I needed to look at it. But if I'm out and about doing something, having a break from my business, and I intentionally go in to see if there's a message, then I can respond, but I don't need to, you know, if something is so important, someone would call me.

So.  It is, um, been a breath of fresh air doing that. But as I said, if we're on social media and we're consistently relying on social media as our main form of channel, we want to come up with ideas. We want trends. So we're always scrolling. Whereas if we have our holistic content marketing strategy, we have, um, you know, different platforms that That we can utilize, then we're not necessarily always needing to find the latest trend.

And also it helps you come up with original content ideas. If, for example, you say, well, a social media platform is my main channel and I don't, I have an email list, but I don't necessarily want to do a podcast blog or anything like that. That's fine. But having a look at social media from a different lens and coming up with a different plan and strategy other than just trending audios.

And, you know, because that is a strategy for people that works if you love it. Great. But. This is for the people that feel that pressure that really just want to do something different or a little bit tired of social media or  not so much tired, but they just don't want to, you know, their whole life to be consumed by social media because you started your business to do have the impact you want to have the freedom, all those things, and maybe you are a social media manager and a content marketer.

We need a break to, you know, but if you're not, if you are in another space, Then it's not, you didn't start your business to do that. So. It doesn't mean you have to be there on there all the time. And the third one is, you know, the things that happen with social media engagement dips, you've got hackers everywhere and really no control.

So basically social media's algorithms are always changing. It's not up to us to keep up with it all the time. It's not about hacking the algorithm. It is simply about connecting with your audience. Now I saw a post, like an email that came in, Not that long ago, and it talked about in social media engagement and the person that sent it said, you know what, I had a post that had  four likes, but got three clients.

Now, we're always led to believe that likes equals success, and that is not true.  And even if you look at the backend data, you might see that those posts lead to websites, visits, or as I said, posts. Maybe you're not selling on social media. Maybe you're just building connection to get people to your email list.

So that's why it is important to have a goal around social media and not try to have all the expectations that you're going to make millions off that platform because the people that generally make a lot more money on social media is because they teach social media. So obviously our job on social media with any content is to connect with our audience and if they decide to like it, great.

If they don't but they're really interested in what you have to say, great.  still great.  You know, there's so many instances where you'd have someone say, Oh, You do cool things on social media. I love what you do. And you've never seen them engage in a piece of content. It happens. Some people aren't like that.

They don't think to like that post. They might've thought it was good, but they just didn't think to like it or it just wasn't part of their habit. You haven't built that habit with them.  So engagement dips happen all the time. Social media, you might have one post that gets really high engagement and you're like, Oh, great.

And then you replicate something similar and it flops. It's very normal for that to happen. Um, And, you know, it doesn't mean that you're not quote unquote good at creating content, it's just sometimes the, um, social media platform doesn't push it out to enough people.  And those people that might think that content is great, don't like it, and then it doesn't go to anyone more because it's based off, you know, the engagement, the list, the reads, the watches, the watch rate, all those things.

There's so many variables as to why that piece of content goes further.  So there's engagement dips, there's hackers, you know, people get hacked on social media all the time, which is a scary thought, especially when you've built up an audience and all the things. But if you're just relying on social media, you don't have an email list, you don't have any of these things, and all of a sudden someone hacks your account,  social media, like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, don't really have that much customer service.

I know Facebook and Instagram definitely don't, unless you pay for the blue tick.  I don't think you necessarily like, yeah, great. If you want to pay, you can totally pay for it. Um, but there's lots of subscriptions out there, right?  So basically if you are hacked, you're not guaranteed, you're going to get your account back.

You're not guaranteed anything. And even, you know, I've had people put my bio in there. in their bio and tag my agency as their agency and you report them. And it doesn't necessarily mean that accounts going to get taken down. It just means you've reported them. And a lot of the times it does get taken down, but at the end of the day, there's lots of things that happen.

People steal content. And because it is one of those channels where you say yes to the terms and conditions, you don't own that content anymore.  And it, it sucks, but that's just what happens. So.  There isn't much control either over social media because at the end of the day, it's a borrowed channel. You don't own that channel.

It's not an earned channel. It's a borrowed channel. It's a channel that you are borrowing off another business and essentially social media's business model is and we had podcast guests come on and talk about this and I will link it in the show notes, but basically what he said was  Social media's business model is to get people to stay on social media for as long as possible.

So they want to deliver ads to these people to sell products. And those ads, you could pay for those ads.  yourself, um, to get your product or service in front of other people. But basically their business model is to get more people on that platform. The more people they have on that platform, the more people are going to spend money on advertisement because there's people on that platform.

And it's a cycle. If you've ever seen the social dilemma, that will give you a very good indication of how the business model of social media works. So at the end of the day, their business model is to make money. Just like, you know, all our business models are to make money, but ours are also impact. And I'm not saying social medias aren't because there is a lot of great things that happen on socials.

But I'm just saying the reason why you don't feel like you have any control or there's engagement dips or you know, there's a worry about hackers is because it's someone else's platform.  It's someone else's platform. So you want to use it to nurture the audience you have on that platform to engage with the audience you have on that platform and essentially to get them to go to the next step.

And that's why I mentioned, you know, with the funnel, having social media as that top of funnel can even be middle funnel and really bring people to your website, bring people to your email list is the best thing you can do with socials rather than trying to sell all the time. It doesn't mean you can't, but it is makes life a lot easier when you can funnel them somewhere else.

The, to a channel that you own, and you can get more data about these people as well. There is things like product base have Instagram shop where people can buy straight from Insta and that's awesome too. But at the same time, then Instagram also owns that data too. So you want to get people to a space where you can understand them more and you can connect with them on a different level and all the things.

But again, that's it.  I love social media. Don't get me wrong. I use it a lot in my business, but I'm just trying to show you that if you are feeling the pressure of social media, maybe thinking about some other channels or thinking about the way you do your content that will make you feel a little bit better about what  you're creating on the channel, how it feels for you.

You know, if trends just really are consuming a lot of your time, then try and think of like other things you can do, other types of content that you really like to create. I'm all about finding the content that you love and enjoy. Okay.  So.  Let's go back. So I'm not obviously saying don't do social media.

I think it is a great Uh, platform, there's a lot of power with it, but if you do feel that pressure, how can you empower yourself? So, what did Tara do?  The story from the start, she decided that she was going to not consistently post on social media, and she was going to create kind of like a website on her socials.

So, she has what's called a nine grid, which is nine posts that describe, who she is and what her business does and connects with anyone that goes there. She's optimized, obviously, her profile. And I think sometimes she said she does do stories. She might not anymore, but at the time she was doing Instagram stories.

So there's no pressure for her to always be on. And that is a platform where she can funnel people to learn more about through her. podcast through her blog, through her email list. So she links people to other places there. So if I linked her Instagram in the blog, the podcast episode we did, and people went there, they'd get a really clear idea of what she does and the next steps.

Because remember, like, the chances of someone going on your profile and binging all your content is quite rare. So,  if they just went to your profile and saw nine posts, then they go, Oh, they get a really good idea, and then they go to the next step. A lot of times we see a lot of content on Instagram Reels or in our feed, and we might not ever go to that person's profile.

So, that's where, you know, that social media content is very 24 hour. Response content, but obviously in Tara's case, someone would be looking for that particular pain point and someone that's an introvert wants help. They might find her go to a profile, see what they need to see and make the next choice, not necessarily needing to binge a lot of content and they can go somewhere else to get that.

So  that is an option for anyone was like, Oh, this is too much for me. But what I would recommend is thinking about just more of a holistic content marketing strategy.  What are the next plans? What are the next steps to get people?  From social media somewhere else. Right. And if you need any help and support in that, I'm here for you.

We've got content bootcamp. I do strategy sessions, and this is what I'm about creating this holistic content marketing strategy. So we're not just relying on one space. We have so many other spaces that we can, you know, connect with our audience. We can allow them to see our products and services. We can do all these things that, you know, ensure that people understand and see more of our business.

So if you need any. If you're thinking, okay, socials is a little bit stressful for me. I feel like it's just a bit overwhelming. There's all these things to do. There's all these people at me all the time. Make socials your own. Do something, like, ask yourself, how can I make social media more enjoyable for myself?

What would I need to do and what would it take? And then have a go at that and see how it works. Because where energy goes, energy flows. So if you put intention into that and you are really enjoying that, it's going to your audience is going to see that they're going to be more engaged in what you have to say as well.

But the best thing and the best way forward is to create that content marketing strategy. So, you know, the plan, you know, what you need to do to get people to where you want them to go. And as I said, it might not be a podcast.  It might not be a blog. You might not have any interest in doing that much, but like, I'm okay with creating social media content.

It's just, I feel like I'm not doing it in a way that's aligned to me. It's time to explore that and see how you can take the pressure off yourself on this platform.  And just empower yourself to enjoy it. That's the, like, key thing I would like you to do off the back of this episode. So, always just,  there's two things that you want to do when you create content.

Create it because you love it and you enjoy it and there's energy and create it for an audience. And sometimes the balance takes a bit of time to get.  But  with time, you'll start to learn more about what you enjoy, what your audience likes, and you can just grow from there. Be a content queen or king and remember that developing your strategy and story develops your business.

Thank you so much for joining me today and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends. You can do this by adding it to your Insta stories and tagging me at content queen Mariah or just simply tell them about it. If you rate and review on whatever platform you're listening to this on, it helped me get there.

It will help me get this podcast out there and share my message. And the more people that see the podcast, the more people that want to join and be part of it and the better the content gets. So follow me on Instagram and let me know if there are any topics you'd like me to cover in the future. I would so be down for that.

So just send me a message and I'll talk to you next week. Bye.

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