How to reframe the struggle of using social media in your business

Welcome to the Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit and I am an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs, the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love.

If you are looking to up-level your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator and business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within. To play bigger with your life and go after your dreams.

We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in.

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you are doing so well and having a great, great day. A great. I had a podcast topic in mind for this week, but then I spoke to a fabulous coaching client and she mentioned the struggles of social media and the struggles of showing up on Instagram and stuff and mentioned that it would be super cool if I could record a podcast on that topic.

And so I felt inspired to do that this week. And now that is kind of what I'm coming to you with this week. I am going to chat about, you know, the struggles of visibility on social media and how to reframe that, how to sort of reframe that story you tell yourself about social media and the relationship that you have with social media so that you can just have more.

in the process of being on social media for your business, because at the end of the day, if you're not running ads and doing all that jazz, organic marketing is the way that you grow your audience and build your email list. And so social media is that way. Social media is the main way to build your audience and email list online, and you cannot have an online business without an audience and an email list.

It is just one of those core foundational things that you need in order to generate income online and have a business right now. A lot of people struggle with social media. I have struggled with social media in my business. I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to just give up on Instagram.

I have gone through phases where I've taken months off Instagram for my business, for my mental health as I was going through a lot, and Instagram just wasn't in service of me. I have a very good understanding of the experience and the struggle that you're going through. If you are struggling with the idea of creating content on Instagram and getting visible on Instagram and all of that jazz, if you're finding a lot of resistance to it, just know that I have been there many times. 

I know, I know how it goes. I can relate to it in a huge way. Don't think that everyone who has a business is just having a good old time with social media and the relationship is perfect and everyone's just all happy. Chappy, a lot of people struggle with this. I mean, people who have seven figure businesses struggle with social media and Instagram and stuff. But the thing is, I really do believe that those who are able to keep consistent with their social media and organic marketing, they have these things, right?

They have an achievable and a manageable content plan that they can commit to. Nothing more, nothing less. And they have a reframe perspective and story around their, their Instagram or their content. They, they are actively reframing. Their story around it, and they're actively pushing through their resistance all the time until the point where the resistance just slowly starts to melt away and you just start having fun with it, and you get a bit less in your head about it, let's just say. 

This is what this episode is going to be about. In this episode, you're going to learn how most business owners have a love hate relationship with social media, how consistency doesn't mean constant, and what your posting schedule should reflect. How to let go, visibility, fears, and get more visible in your business.

And a way to reframe your relationship with social media and content creation in your business so that you can enjoy it, and so that you just don't hate life the whole time. Right. Okay firstly, I want to talk about the fact that many people, many business owners have a love-hate relationship with social media, okay?

So don't make yourself feel wrong for feeling that way. Social media can have a pretty shitty effect on our mental health, and it can often make you feel less than, or comparisonitis and all that jazz. And it's totally normal for you to have a love hate relationship with Instagram or whatever social media tool that you're using in your business. 

Most business owners have had that experience. I don't really know anyone who owns an online business who's like completely neutral around social media and feels like happy chappy all the time about it. That doesn't really exist. But I do know that business owners who are.

you know, fully invested in their business, are fully invested in organic marketing and are just willing to push through their resistant points to, you know, building an audience and all of that jazz, right? Now. The other thing is just because you have a love hate relationship with it doesn't mean you need to react to your feelings around it.

Meaning, like on the days that you are feeling crummy about it. You don't want to then let that affect your actions where you just don't. Where you just give up and don't post. You know, it's like going to gym. Not all the time are you going to want to go to gym, right? There's going to be times where you're like, I don't want to go to gym. 

But it is good if you are wanting to build like a healthy body, very fit, like get your goal weight, whatever it is, it's very good that you become consistent at going to gym and that you don't let how you feel about gym stop you from going to gym. Because if you do that, you'll literally never go to gym because let's be honest, who wants to go to gym all the time?

Okay. And there's probably a lot of people who want to go to gym all the time. I am not that person. For me, if I'm going to let my feelings around gym like affect my actions around going to gym, I would never go to gym. Okay? For me to go to gym, I have to shut myself off to how I feel about gym, basically. I have to be like, cool.

I don't feel like going to gym. But it's not a question of whether I feel like it. It's a question of I've committed to this and I'm going to do it. I want you to build up that commitment muscle. I want you to firstly not make yourself feel wrong for having a bit of a resistance point or. A day where you're just feeling crap about social media, that is okay.

Don't make yourself feel wrong about it. That's totally normal. You're a human being. That's a human experience. But I do want you to be very mindful of the fact that you don't want that to affect your action. Of posting on social media. I still want you in that space to stick to your commitment, stick to your commitment of whatever consistency plan that you had with social media.

It's a commitment, right? And I want you to honour that commitment to yourself and to your business, just like you would with going to gym and all that jazz. I think that's really important. Don't make yourself feel wrong and don't let it affect. Your actions, right? Commit to it and stick to it. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention is people think consistency means constant, and that means that you must just be on social media all the time.

But consistency does not mean constant by like at all. Your biggest growth hack on, for example, Instagram or whatever social media platform is. Typically it is consistency. These algorithms love consistency, let's not lie about that. But it does not mean that you need to be on the app all the time.

Consistency for you is very different to what consistency is for someone else. It's like you decide what your consistency looks like. You get to make that decision no one else based on your capacity in your business. Consistency for you could be posting three times. Consistency for you could be posting one YouTube video a week.

Consistency for someone else may be posting five times a week. Once a day consistency for someone else who's like a full-time social media marketing guru, whatever, could be posting three times a day. Okay. Consistency must not be confused with constant. And what works for someone else is not necessarily going to work for.

there is absolutely zero reason for you to be on social media all the time. If you want to be on social media all the time, then good for you. But that is not necessary for your business. Like, it's just, it's just completely unhealthy. If I was told years ago, before I started my business that. In order for me to have a successful business, I needed to be on social media all the time.

I wouldn't have started my business because that sounds like an absolute, like, that just literally sounds terrible to me. That doesn't sound freeing at all. And remember, we start our business to create freedom. We don't start our business to trap ourselves in another cage that we can't escape. And I know social media can feel like that cage sometimes.

I get you. It can feel like that, but it's so important to just keep perspective. And just remember that you get to call the shots of how you show up on your, on your social media, your business, your rules, what feels good to you. What does consistency look like to you. Decide it and commit to it.

Your mental health is so important, and I really do believe that we need to create clear boundaries of how we show up on socials in our business because it can get very blurred. Before you know it, you are spending all your time on Instagram and that is not good for your mind. Okay? It's actually not healthy.

For example, I commit to consistency for me at this point in my business journey. Just know that this changes as you change and evolve and alignment. You constantly have to be reviewing this stuff, but for me right now, I commit to one post per day during the week. So that's five posts a week and I have zero commitments on the weekend.

Nothing like if I post on the weekend just because I feel like it. I very seldomly actually post on my feed on the weekend. I do stories on the weekend because that's fun. Now I also have, I do post stories during the week. It's important to do that too but I don't have like a oh, must post like five stories every day.

That's just makes me feel icky and weird. For me, I have fun with my stories. I love stories and I post during the week, and then on the weekend I'm chilling most of the time. Now having this clear boundary allows my brain to simply do the actions that I committed to, which is very clear. One post a week and in my stories, and then I switch off completely and I switch off guilt free.

Meaning I am not guilty when I'm not on social media. I have decided my consistency schedule, I have committed to it, and the rest is. Done right. You do not want to be in this constant guilt mode for not doing enough, that not enoughness will eat away at you. And that happens when you don't have a clear consistency schedule and a boundary around that because that will just zap your energy like anything else. 

You'll constantly be feeling like, oh, I haven't done enough. And that not enoughness energy is not good for your business. Not good for you. It's like draining as anything and think of it like an energy leak constantly, just like seeping. Every time you have guilt of not being on social media, just imagine that that energy is just leaking out of you and you losing energy for your business, and that's not what we want.

So remember, consistency doesn't mean constant. What works for someone is not necessarily going to work for. What does consistency look like for you at this point in your business? What do you have capacity for at this point in your business and honestly, have capacity for that feels good to you? Decide your posting schedule based on that.

Be specific around it. How many times per week is that? How many times? Like maybe you have a, a number of times you want to be on your stories. Whatever works for you. As long as it doesn't feel restricting and like that you're in a cage, like go for that feeling. Go for that fun, expansive, oh, this feels doable.

I can do this kind of feeling. And then after that, simply do the thing, take the action and then switch off. And then go live your life. I can not recommend that more. It is just going and living your life and not living through social media, because that's just absolutely toxic in my opinion. Now how to let go of visibility fears, and build more confidence and get more visible in your business.

Have you ever felt post paralysis like you can't post the thing you want to post. Or have you ever taken a million pictures and then not posted any of them because you're judging how you look and you're like, nah, I don't look so good. I don't think I should post that. What are people going to think? All that jazz.

Welcome to the super common visibility fear, and anxiety that comes with showing up as your authentic. Note the word authentic self because Instagram especially, I don't like, I'm talking about Instagram at the moment. Whatever social media you are using. But Instagram has a nice way of just being this perfectly curated, fake feed of everything is amazing and good in this world, and there's nothing like real about it.

And so you start to really. Like judge yourself so hard that you're just not good enough or you're not flashy enough, or you don't have that like super flashy lifestyle and it's just not worth sharing, and you start to really feel less then and then showing up. You just feel not good enough to show up as your authentic self. I think this happens to everyone. 

This is a very normal thing now. I'm not going to give you some quick hack to this, okay? This is a journey that you need to go on. And it's going to involve a journey of self-love and self-worth outside of this matrix of social media. If you have self-love and self-worth. and you truly, truly love yourself, and you truly comfortable with yourself in your skin and you appreciate yourself, then you're not going to have as much of a tough time with showing up as yourself, and you're not going to be as affected by external things like what people think of you and stuff.

I know this to be true. I've walked this journey myself. I went from zero, having no like very little self-worth and self-love, and also just low self-esteem to building that up over time. And now I'm just like, to be honest, I give zero beep you, you get me zero fucks about what people think of me at this point in my life.

And that's quite a freeing thing. I must say, you are going to have to go on that journey of really claiming yourself, loving yourself, knowing your worth, and then the rest doesn't matter as much. Like you just, you're untouchable, in my opinion. I think that's one of the most amazing things that business can give us, is it's going to force us to go and do that work.

Now the other thing that I would say is that the act of just showing up is one of the best ways to build your confidence muscle in showing up and invisibility. This is not a quick hack or whatever. This is literally me telling you that in order to overcome your visibility, fears, and to build confidence in getting visible on social media is to face them head.

is to lean into them. It is to challenge yourself and to get visible. Okay? That is the way that you dissolve fears and overcome things. My biggest fear ever in my online business journey, I think I've mentioned this a few times on my podcast. So you probably know, but it has been speaking on video online, like speaking on camera, speaking on video, going live.

This was by far the thing I hated most. It was by far the thing I was scared of most. I had some trauma as a child that involved public speaking, and it was screwed me up for a long time as a child, and then it, it came into my adult life. And I had a huge amount of anxiety around visibility, and I just felt inadequate.

I couldn't do it, right? Now I had to push through that. And the way that I pushed through that was through going live. I went live on, on Facebook, I launched my course. I went live all the time. I literally just went and did the thing over and over again. And then after a while it just sort of became a lot easier.

I got less stressed about it. And then I built confidence, and then you build a confidence and then you can get visible without getting so stressed about it. Now, what I did, which made a huge difference, is that I worked on calming my nervous system and creating safety invisibility. So I did breath work before I did stuff.

I grounded myself. I did meditation. just made sure that I was feeling regulated as much as possible and that I was feeling safe to show up online. I had to always show myself or remind myself that nothing bad is going to happen. You are not in danger. There is no real threat. I also used EFT tapping emotional freedom technique, which is It's a way to release anxieties around anything really, any kind of limits and anxieties.

I use that a lot and I use mantras to reframe the experience as well. I would say I'm safe to get visible. I'm safe to show up my show up as myself fully. It is safe for me to share my perspective. I am safe. Everything is okay, and I would go live and then afterwards I'd be okay. And I realized, sure, nothing bad happened.

Like everything was fine. Everything was fine. So you also want to create evidence for your brain that nothing bad is going to happen to you when you post that picture of your face or when you go live or when you share your perspective. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. Maybe someone's going to disagree with you, but that's.

that's fine. Maybe you find a troll. That's okay. You just delete them and block them and forget of their existence. That's the beauty of being online. Right? I want you to, put it into perspective, right? And the other thing that really makes a hell of a lot of a difference is that this is so truthful, I can't even tell you.

No one cares as much as you think they do. People just don't care that much about you. Like people are thinking about themselves. They aren't there thinking about like how they can pull you apart and break you down. So when you get all in your head about, oh, what will people think about how I look or how I speak or what I, my perspective, take a moment and pause and remind.

That no one cares as much as you do. We care so much about that stuff, about ourselves, and then no one cares. It's funny that we care so much about what people think about us, but most people are just too busy caring about themselves in their own life to bother caring about you. I think that helps me a lot is like, just don't expend any energy on things that just don't make sense. 

Yeah, it's not bringing you any closer to your goals and dreams and it's just an energy drain essentially. When in doubt, just remember no one, everyone's too busy living their life to care that much. Just go do your thing. And yeah, exercise that muscle of building confidence and

Yeah. Going through the fear of doing it, building confidence, and essentially just being able to do it without getting in your head about it. Right. I think it's a journey. I think everyone's got their own way of doing it. Those are some of the things that have helped me in my journey. Let's find a way to reframe our relationship or your relationship with social media and content creation in your business so that you can actually enjoy the process of it, because it's such a big part of your business that if you really hate it.

It's going to bring a lot of pain to your business, right? And we don't want that. For me, I think what makes a big difference is to zoom out. You know how you get so panicked about like the one post, the one thing, and you like scrutinize it. There is really no need to do that. And really what I want you to do is to zoom out and look at the big picture purpose and not just the tiny action. 

The act of posting one thing on social media is it's kind of empty, right? It doesn't have much meaning to it, and so, Often, there's no major joy derived from the act in itself, but the act in itself is part of the process of building your business and impacting people and making a difference and connecting with humans and monetizing your gifts and being able to live the life you love.

How can we enjoy it? How can we see value in the process of posting on social media? And for me, the easiest way to get out of my, ugh, this is pointless kind of mindset, is to zoom out from the act, the tiny act, and to zoom into the big picture purpose. So the long game, okay? Business is a long game.

You're not going to become wealthy and successful from one post. You're going to become whatever successful, whatever that looks like to you through the tiny actions that you take consistently over time that will compound into building you wealth. Almost the same as how you're not going to make a lot of money investing once, but you'll make money investing consistently.

For a long time over the period of your life that's going to make the difference, right? I want you to look at this as a long game, and I want you to realize that building your audience and building an audience that buys from you is a labour of love that requires patience. And it's not a fast, there's no like quick, rich thing.

Obviously Facebook ads does make it much quicker, and I, I must say, I do love Facebook ads for that reason. But organic is just a slower, more nurtured approach, and that's something we we're not living in like the fast-food era of business right now. Like that's not a thing. Like where you can just within two months launch a course, make $10,000 of nothing, right?

That doesn't really exist. Maybe in the past, but not anymore. Zoom out from the tiny Act and look at the long game. Look at the big picture. Okay? Your tiny little post today or your one post today might feel insignificant, but if you post consistently over time, that compounds and you develop, you build an organic machine.

It really is the long game when it comes to that. The other thing that makes a huge difference is channelling your why, your greater mission and purpose. So what is your why for your business? Like why did you start your business? Who are you trying to help? What is your mission like? What is the purpose here?

Why are you doing this? Re like, I feel like if you get disconnected from your social media, you're disconnecting yourself from the person you're trying to serve an impact, because the bridge between you and them is social media, and that's, that's the way you connect with them. If you stop with the social media, you're essentially stopping yourself from impacting people and connecting with them and meeting.

Dreamy soulmate students and clients that just make your life so much better and you make their life so much better. Remember, if you get into a state of like, oh, this is pointless, is it really pointless to serve your audience? Is it pointless to show up for your business? You know, even if it just helps one person, is it pointless?

Like if you've started a business to impact people, helping one person with your post over a period of time, you're helping a lot of people, right? I want you to really tune back into your purpose and your mission because that gives you meaning, and I think meaning is important. In the name of social media, it's very easy to lose meaning, and you're very much in it and you are like, what is the point of this one post? 

But I want you to zoom out, look at the big picture, look at the greater mission and impact, and tune back into your why and your purpose. That's going to feel much better to you, and it's going to feel like, okay, no, this is, this is cool. If I can help someone, just one person, that's really a win for me.

The other thing is what feels fun to you? Okay. What feels light to you? Where is your energy pointing towards? Go do some of that. For example, for a period of time I had energy for lives Instagram lives. I did that once a week and I felt like, this is cool. I got energy for this. This is feeling light. I don't have that much resistance.

But then eventually I started to feel very heavy to go and do an Instagram live. I just was like, Ugh, not feeling this anymore. And it started to feel a bit misaligned. And so I was like playing around and if I'm not going to do Instagram live, what's going to be my method of nurturing my audience?

Like what? What's going to feel good to me now? And I brainstormed and podcasting came up and I was in Sesimbra in Portugal. And I remember being like so lit up at the thought of creating a podcast. And I'd never felt that before. I'd never felt like an expansive feeling to that. I'd always played around with it and I was like, nah, nah.

But then I was like, yes. And it just felt right. And I knew okay, I'm going to lean into that. And then within a month I launched the podcast and I've literally loved it so much. It's the one form of content that I'm like, so game for. I love doing these podcasts. I think they're so cool. And I'm just going with the energy, right?

And I do understand that maybe at some point I'm going to feel a bit misaligned with podcasting and it's going to feel heavy, and I'm going to have to maybe rethink things. Obviously, I'm not going to just throw in the towel and give up on my podcast, but I just want you to like listen to your energy as well and follow it.

And maybe like reels isn't energizing for you right now. Maybe posts are. So just do some posts. Maybe reels are energizing. Do that and remember if it scares you, like reels potentially maybe scare you, like I think that's a very good reason to go and do the thing. I feel like you are going to have to face that demon at some point, and through overcoming your fear, you just go and do the thing, okay? 

I do want you to follow your energy, but to a certain extent, if you are like not showing up at all and you're, you're just like letting your fears govern your actions, that's also not a vibe. There's definitely a nuance to this. Now the other thing that I think can be pretty epic is when instead of viewing content creation and say posting on Instagram or whatever, social media as a chore, something that you should.

Like, I should be doing this. I have to do this. I want you to change that language to saying, I get to do this. It is an honour to be able to do this. I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to do this because we are living in a world that we can so freely share our perspectives. We can share our gifts online.

We can help. From our PJs in bed on the other side of the world, like people who are listening to my podcast right now, they're from all walks of life in all areas of the world. And I'm sitting in my house like in my pyjama pants, and I'm able to connect with you and have this awesome experience with you.

That is amazing. That's the same goes for your social, your, your Instagram or whatever it is. Like you have the opportunity to entertain people, to make them happy, to make them like feel something, to shift someone's perspective, to change someone's life, really. You can change someone's life. Even micro shifts, but micro shifts are massive.

You know, they do ripple into every area of your life. I think it's a miracle. And often we forget that it's a miracle and we are just so normalized by it. We've been living in the internet era our whole lives. If you're like a millennial and you were born in this internet era, like it's, it's maybe just normalized and you're just like, whatever, but really have some perspective.

Like it is freaking cool. Like for free on your phone. You can build an audience online and you can sell stuff online and you can make. Basically from your fingertips. And that is an opportunity and that is amazing. And you can impact people just from your house and how, what an honour it is to be able to do that.

What a gift. How much better does that feel when you think of it like that? It's not a should as soon as you are in, that should energy, it feels like, ugh, heavy. Like I don't like to be told what I should and shouldn't do. When someone's telling me I must post five times on Instagram a day for the algorithm to work.

I'm like, hell no. I'm going to go make a snack and chill and watch some Netflix because that is not going to happen. I will not be doing such things that should, energy is very constrictive and it, it, you will push up against resistance a lot. You get to like that I get to energy or I want to energy is a lot better.

And so do what you can to just shift that story and that you're telling about social media and creating content and reframe it like it's not a pointless act. There is meaning behind it in the sense that you're impacting people and you get to do that. You get to impact someone from your house. You get to create content that speaks to someone that really makes their day better or just.

Resonates with them. Someone who feels very alone, whatever it may be. If you are a teacher, just helping someone develop confidence in something that they're struggling with. Like there's much that we do in our content that helps people and it's not meaningless. And I feel like that perspective has helped me a lot because I've had to, like, I've had so many existential crises or whatever. 

And so, this has just been something that has helped me feel a bit more. I don't know, the energy just feels different when I look at it like that. I see it as a gift and I see it as an opportunity to connect with amazing people. And my business has pulled in some absolutely beautiful souls. And the more content I create, the more beautiful souls I believe it's going to pull in.

And that's a beautiful thing. View it like that and be in the gratitude. Always just be in the gratitude space of I get to do this. What a gift. And sometimes it's going to feel crappy and that's okay, but always bring it back to it's okay, like I get to do this and what a gift that is. All right.

Now I'm going to give you some practical tips that have helped me. And I always come back to these tips when my energy is feeling dense around social media or Instagram. Which happens every now and then. Firstly, unfollow your competitors or anyone else who makes you feel less than or not good enough.

If you're on Instagram and you've got all these competitors in your niche and they're making you go into comparisonitis and feel like you can't do whatever, whatever, whatever, unfollow them, cut that shit out, that is not good for you. That's not that Less than energy is not good enough. You're not missing anything, unfollow.

That's going to serve you much better, okay? Anything that makes you feel anxious, like you're not good enough. in any way unfollow, that's not good for the brain, I would recommend ignoring polarizing content as well. So as soon as someone's saying this is the only way to do something, and that is not the way to do it, and they're like debunking something completely.

For example, organic is the only way you should be growing your audience and ads are useless. That kind of polarizing content's very common. It does well, it gets a lot of like engagement, whatever, but it's actually just nonsense. Like low ticket is the best and high ticket is not good. It's like it's very confusing.

Polarizing content is just not a vibe. I mean, it works and yes, controversial stuff is good for conversation, but if someone's saying, this is the only way you can do something. I just feel like I'm like, no, unfollow immediately. The other thing is set an Instagram or whatever, TikTok, whatever app you're using.

I'm sure they have this too, but set a daily timer to it. I'm currently on one and a half hours for my Instagram daily amount. And when that timer comes on, when it says you've had your one and a half hours? I close my phone and I'm done with it. And sometimes I don't use it at all. Sometimes I am over, but I do my utmost best to keep it.

Ideally it would be one hour a day, but, you know, one and a half hours is where I'm at, okay. So do that. The other thing is just remember, this is a nice thing to keep in mind. You want to create more than you consume. So when you are on Instagram, whatever, social media, ideally, you're using that to either create or save.

Like it's for work, you're creating content on it, you're maybe saving reels or whatever. Saving audios or whatever. But you're not just blindly consuming as a business owner. You want to create more content than you consume. I think that's a good rule of thumb. Easier said than done. I know, but it's a good thing to keep in mind, okay?

And you can always ask yourself, when you're down the rabbit hole of your reels, like, is this me creating or am I just consuming? And you have to like nip it in the bud. The other thing is batch create content. Like I do believe, like with reels and stuff, I have to get in the mood and then I go and create like 20 reels in a day.

I just do that, and then I've got reels for weeks. I really recommend for things like reels or videos and stuff, short form stuff, batch create it. You can literally in an hour or two hours do like, I don't know, 10, 20 reels, and then you've got reels for the next, I don't know, month or two months, however many you need.

So do that, schedule like two hours in your week, once a month to batch create reels. And this is just the video, like the actual video creation part. Not the whole post, but you just create videos that's very effective. Batch creating content with everything is effective. Sometimes I feel a bit heavy about it, like if someone's telling me to batch create like a month of my podcast in a day, that feels like a big ask

I don't know if I have that kind of energy, you know? Do what feels good to you? I think batch creating reels is a winner. Batch creating posts as well is also a winner, just general Instagram posts and carousels and stuff. So that helps me. I like doing that, and I think it's fun to put on some music in your ears and just go on a little bit of an hour or two of just batch creating content for your Instagram.

The other thing is to forget about the beautifully curated Insta Feed, you know? Like when you look at someone's feed, it's like perfect. All the colours are matching whatever. In the past, I think this was like a thing and everyone was like, ah, Instagram is like a photo app and you must just make it look beautiful.

But I'm telling you, those days we've moved past those days. These days, people prefer authenticity rather than perfectly curated. That whole I am perfect vibe. I am like superhuman. My life is perfect. It's not, it's not really a thing anymore. Like it just, and it also just, it's hard to maintain. It's not authentic and it just causes loads of suffering. 

The way I approach it is channel the content that feels good to you in that time and be yourself like people really. Your humanness like, mistakes are fine. I've had mistakes in my posts. I've had mistakes in my, like everywhere, even in my courses, I have spelling mistakes for heaven's sakes. If you are concerned about a spelling mistake and you're, then you're missing the whole lesson of the training or of the post.

Those are very insignificant things. Just show up authentically. You are a human being and I must tell you now that AI is a thing, being a human is going to be so valuable and creating human content is going to be very valuable because AI is going to be all perfect and whatever, but humans are going to crave connection and authenticity more than anything.

So be a human being. And human beings make mistakes sometimes and just whatever. Don't worry. Like create content that feels good to you, that feels light to you, that feels like impactful for you. That connects to your ideal student that's niche specific. Obviously with strategy in mind. And just go with that.

Don't get caught up in, oh, this doesn't look good on my Insta feed and so I'm going to delete it, or There's a spelling error so I'm going to delete it. That literally is not a vibe. The other thing is repurpose your content. Honestly you can repurpose two thirds of your weekly Instagram or TikTok, whatever content.

Say you're posting three times a week on one of those social media platforms. Two of those posts can be repurposed from previous posts that performed well in the past, where you then just take the exact post and repost it, or you maybe tweak the image or the headline, whatever. If you aren't repurposing your content and you're constantly creating new content. That definitely can stop, go and start repurposing two thirds of your old content, and that is such a dream.

The other thing is to hide likes on Instagram. You can do that in your settings. I can't remember exactly where. But go into your settings and you'll find an area where it says Hide likes or something of that sort. I've done that. I think it's helpful. I don't need to see how many people, like everyone else's stuff.

I think it's a vanity metric, and if you feel bad from seeing the amount of likes on someone's post, and then you get into that this isn't like how much I have. Hide the likes. It's not necessary at all. And also just remember, followers don't actually matter. You can have someone with a million followers who earns nothing.

And then you can have someone with a thousand followers and generate six figures in their business a year. Followers are vanity metrics. What matters is community quality, relationship building, and ideal students in your niche following you. But most importantly, what matters is your email list, okay?

So social media is a tool that you use in order to grow your audience, but primarily grow your email list. People are like, oh, why do you need an email list? You need an email list. Okay. This is just the thing you must be focusing on.

Most of our revenue is generated through our email list, and that outperforms social media all the time. We use social media as a tool to grow the email list, and this is what I want you to do as well. If you are focusing on followers, you're focusing on the wrong thing, I want you to focus on turning those followers into leads, which means that they have signed up to your email list, and they do that through signing up to maybe your freebie or lead magnet.

Maybe it's a free training, it's some event, your launch event, whatever it is. The thing that you want to be getting people to do on your social media is either becoming a lead and then they'll turn into a customer. Obviously you can get customers straight from Instagram, that is possible, but getting them on your email list, not just turns them from zero to a hundred in their like hotness for you.

Like they, they get much more. and they're much more likely to convert and become like students of yours later down the line. So, forget about the metrics that don't matter and focus on what does community connection, authenticity, and email list growth. So those were a few tips that I think. Will be helpful.

Use what resonates, discard what doesn't. I hope this helps you. Don't worry. Your energy around social media will ebb and flow, but I do believe it's your duty as a business owner to work on this relationship. as it is the backbone of your business. I do believe that organic has a place in business.

Organic is like the long game. Organic is like the long nurturing game and it builds your brand. And it builds, yeah, a lot of stuff, right? Facebook ads are incredible to turn on the tap and like amplify things, but you want to have that organic in place as well. You want those two things to feed into each other.

And with anything, I want you to think of like your relationship to social media. Just like with any relationship, even with your partner, it needs work. Some days you're going to be over each other, you're not going to feel each other. Other days you're going to be like loving each other. Like it's just one of those things.

Don't make yourself feel wrong about it. Try some of the things that I've suggested in this episode. Reframe the story with social media and just work on that relationship I guess. And remember, just have some fun. Like we get so caught up in all these things that I should be doing and this and that and that, and I am not good enough and just forget all of it and enjoy it. 

Just enjoy creating some content. Have fun play around. You'll see on my Instagram, I recently started creating content with like beautiful galaxy images, because that felt fun to me. I was getting tired of using the same like graphics and maybe I am breaking branding rules, but it feels really nice to me to create content like that at the moment, and so I'm just leaning into that.

Don't put so many rules on yourself. Have fun. And go create some content that's going to impact people and connect with students all over the world. I think that is such a freaking vibe. Okay, have an awesome week. I will connect with you again next week. Bye.

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you love what you heard today, then be sure to share it with me by leaving a five star review so I can continue delivering these goodies. If you aren't already following me on social media, then come tune into some daily inspiration on Instagram by following @_digiterach_ or visiting my website at digiteach.biz.

I appreciate you so much, and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.