66. Optimizing Social Media: Prioritizing Quality over Quantity
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Optimizing Social Media: Prioritizing Quality over Quantity
Today, I want to talk about something I think we all could really benefit from: how to optimize your energy while using social media.
Sometimes, as much as we want to keep our presence on social media consistent, we just don’t have the time or the energy to keep up the way we would like to. So how can we stay present without grinding ourselves into the dust? Let’s get into it!
When Life Gets Crazy
If you're connected with me on my email list or over on Instagram, you know that I've been going through some life and business changes. The biggest one is that I just got married, which means I not only took three weeks off from my business, but pretty much the whole year was spent planning this big, joyful, intense event!
Weddings, no matter how exciting they are, are a huge energy-zapper. Because of that, I didn't really have the capacity to create, to show up and record videos and do a lot of fancy edits like I normally love to, but I still wanted to show up for my community. I'm sure that a lot of you can relate whether you're growing your business, you're taking time off, or if you're recovering from burnout. Even when you’re struggling to keep your energy up, you want to do your best to be consistent in order to keep optimizing social media.
The Benefits of Consistency
While I definitely think there is a time and place to completely take a break from posting, it's no secret that when optimizing social media for marketing, consistency is key; not only for getting the types of results you want to see on those social media apps, but for building trust and relationships with your community. When you're consistently showing up for them without sacrificing value, that builds trust between them and you. They’ll keep coming back to engage with your content, and when you put out your offers or offer the option to purchase your products, they’ll be ready to say yes as soon as they’re offered the opportunity!
So how do you stay consistent in optimizing social media without running yourself into the ground? Let me introduce you to my new favorite concept for optimizing social media: the chill content era.
Chill Content Era
Personally, I’m entering my chill content era of optimizing social media, and I am welcoming you along for the ride.
What is this “chill content era” and how you can embrace it within your strategy for optimizing social media, specifically when it comes to video? It’s not as contradictory as you might think.
Essentially, my chill content era has required one thing of me: I have continued to choose to show up on social media consistently. Maybe not five plus days a week, but perhaps three times a week, or even just on stories. Presence is presence, is anything is better than nothing!
Regardless of how often I’m able to show up, I’ve been able to achieve consistency by opting for lower-energy content. Now, it’s important to make the distinction that lower energy doesn't have to mean that you're being lazy or you're just throwing stuff at the video wall hoping it'll stick. It can still be done with a lot of intention.
There’s a difference between being lazy with our marketing and adjusting things so that they’re filled with ease for us as creators. Whether you're scrolling on your reels tab or you're seeing the hottest marketer at the time talking about it, we’ve all seen the hacks that essentially promote doing things quicker. There’s nothing wrong with this, but many of these hacks really lean into the idea of not wanting to put in the effort marketing requires.
It's no secret that optimizing social media for marketing is such an important part of running your business. But it requires time, energy, and resources to create that content. Video especially requires effort, just like marketing requires effort.
The important thing to reframe here is that we're not trying to remove the effort required for optimizing social media; that results in half-hearted, half-baked content that won’t do much to build trust in your audience. Rather, this is about optimizing how much time and energy it takes to show up on social media, specifically with video. Effort means that we care. We're putting in thought, we're putting in value. We are pouring into our communities. We want there to be effort, but optimizing social media doesn’t have to take away from the other parts of our business or our life, which is where the chill comes into play.
So today I want to share a few ways that I've been embracing that chill content era with low-energy ways of showing up and optimizing social media, without sacrificing effort. So let's dive right on in with the first method of optimizing social media without burning ourselves out, which is simpler content.
Simplifying Content
Lately, I've been feeling this shift towards consumers wanting less. I think after the past few years that we've had, we've been so overwhelmed with content and tips and news and all these things that now, people are just wanting to consume less on social media. For instance, especially in the TikTok space, there's such a big niche for constantly posting the latest find at Target or Amazon. This creates a constant feeling of FOMO; it’s constantly making you feel like there's something new that you need to buy, or else you’re missing out. I really think that people are kind of over that; not just with their consumption habits, but also the way they're learning through social media.
An example of shifting this trend to embrace optimizing your energy would be instead of sharing five hacks to do something better, which typically is what performs well and what goes viral, what if we just shared just one in-depth transformation or new way of doing something? Instead of continuing to think that our content needs to be longer or more complicated to be valuable for your audience, let's dive deeper into one thing and do that really well. People can actually see those mini-shifts, and they can leave your content better than they found it.
Because the content is simpler, we’re not having to think of five tips and hacks to share in order to keep optimizing social media. We're not having to film ten million different clips for a piece of content. We can swap out quantity for quality, which is what people are really desiring nowadays. People are craving more depth in their content, which often means that we don't have to talk about everything under the sun in order to add value for them.
Fun Content
The second way that I've been embracing optimizing social media during my chill content era? Fun content.
Lately, a lot of people have been talking about how Instagram and social media first started out. They weren’t built for business, right? You were posting the photos with the cringey filters. You were sharing what you were interested in, and you were seeing your friends do the same. Even the first influencers of our time were having creative shoots where they were dreamlike and creative, right? And then the strategy and the hacking the algorithms and all these things came along, things that are important now to us as business owners and brands. These things are important for seeing results, but I really think that creating a long-term strategy that builds a community, not just a following, really comes down to you enjoying how you create. If you're constantly feeling burnt out with how you're creating, then you really need to lean into more fun content. Anything that sparks a bit of curiosity or joy in you is worth doing rather than blindly following trends just to check it off your list.
Also, if you aren’t enjoying optimizing social media your usual way, don’t be afraid to experiment! Try a new way of filming video content, a new way of writing captions, a new way of posting your favorite content on stories, or even simply leaning into your own interests a little bit more. I don't believe in the concept of you only being allowed to have one niche and that's it. I actually recommend approaching “content pillars,” which are essentially the categories of the topics you're posting about on social media, with a less restrictive attitude. Rather than only having one category, I suggest having five. Your expertise and your niche are included in those, but how can we have maybe one or two of those pillars bring out your personality and things that people can connect to? Think about it: when you’re shopping around for something, of course you're looking for the best product. You're looking for the best coach or the best course or the best template or whatever it is. But chances are, when you're comparing your options, there's a part of you that wants to like the person that you're investing in. That personal connection is what's going to keep people coming back and engaging with your content.
Repurposed Content
The third way I've been optimizing social media and leaning into my chill content era has been repurposed content. Now, there's a lot of different ways to repurpose. I personally don't love just taking something I already posted and posting it again. I don’t care to copy and paste every element. But I do like using a concept or a piece of that content that performed really well, or maybe a part that I want to give new life. Instead of feeling like I always need to reinvent the wheel and add a new tip to my arsenal of content, what if I go back to something that I feel like people need to hear again, or I feel like people need to hear a different way?
My personal approach to repurposing is taking an existing piece of content and tweaking it, adding something new without redoing the entire thing. It’s a great way to expand on things you’ve shared before without having to invest in an all-new approach.
Optimizing Social Media in 3 Easy Steps!
There you have it: my top three tips for optimizing social media! Effort doesn’t have to mean sacrificing all your energy. You’re allowed to enjoy your social media presence, even when attempting to use it to market your business.
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