How to stay sane on social media as a non profit marketer
Do you ever feel overwhelmed looking at other charity social media feeds and ads? The comparison trap is so easy to fall into when it looks like everyone else is doing more, reaching more people and generating more engagement, and this can quickly spiral into imposter syndrome and paralysis.
It's hard to act when it feels like you are in constant competition with others. I was the same for a long time - when I started out in the ads world I followed lots of digital marketers on Instagram and felt disheartened every time I saw how well they were doing. I forgot that they were on chapter 15 of their career, and I was on chapter 1, and that that would change. Since then, I've learnt some really helpful techniques for staying sane on social media, that I thought might be helpful to share:
Reduce the noise. It's more important that you can focus on growing and engaging your audience than it is to know what everyone else is doing every second of the day. Unfollow the accounts - charity or otherwise - that trigger that comparison monster. For those accounts that are relevant to your organisation, like other charities with common goals, partner organisations etc, follow them but review your notification settings so that you don't see an alert pop up on your phone every time they post. Distraction doesn't breed brilliance.
Have a solid social media strategy in place. By this I mean being really clear on who you want to talk to, where they spend time online, what they value and how best to reach and engage them. There are two major benefits to having a strategy: a) you will know how often you have to post content and what type of content this should be, which makes you significantly more efficient, and b) you can allocate the time you need to spend on social media engagement, go in, get the job done and log back out. This saves you from 'just popping into' Instagram every 20 minutes and getting sucked down a rabbit hole.
Remember who your ideal supporter is. Keep your ideal supporter at the heart of everything you create, based on the challenges they face and the value you can offer them. Consistent content creation for and engagement with your audience is the surest way to grow on any social channel. And focusing on one person (or few people) really helps you avoid getting distracted by what everyone else is doing for their audience - after all, if your audience is women aged 25-40 living in London, it doesn’t matter what charities talking to men aged 55+ living in Hull are doing.
Lastly, if I could gift you one thing this week, it would be these two tiny life tweaks that have been so helpful in helping me focus and reduce the noise of social media. Last week I went through all the notification settings on my phone and switched all alert types to silent other than phone calls (not vibration, silent - who knew that was even an option!), and I also changed the mail notification settings on my laptop so I don't get a ping or an urgent looking little red number when I get mail. It feels like finally I have more power over my own time, and I have the option to focus on one task at a time. My brain already feels significantly less distracted and congested - if you try it, I'd love to hear how you get on!