How do you react when people say you have to post and show up on social every day to make it as a business?

Do you:

• Eye-roll so hard that you can actually see your own eye-brows?
• Frantically post a dancing reel that you’ll regret and delete later?
• Write a deep and meaningful thesis-length caption… then never post it?

Or all of the above?

For the last couple of years I’ve had waves of activity on social. Sometimes posting on the daily, followed by weeks of tumbleweeds.

And in BOTH situations I’ve felt:

Stressed…

Stressed when I wasn’t posting enough. And equally stressed if my posts didn’t get the response I’d hoped for.

Guilty…

Guilty when I wasn’t serving my audience with regular nuggets of wisdom. And equally guilty that I was always in ‘content-creation mode’ instead of being present with my children and the people in my life.

P*ssed off!

And yeah! Ultimately, pretty miffed that, yet again, I had gotten caught up with the social media circus, instead of taking more aligned action.

What am I doing wrong?

Here’s the thing: While I whine about social, the platforms have brought fantastic opportunities my way and connected me with about 60% of my clients. The problem really is when it comes to my intentions with social media.

I reckon social can become an intrusive aspect of running a business if your intentions aren’t lined up right. We can feel at the mercy of algorithms, trends, and updates – things that are out of our control. That’s when the stress and guilt and p*ssed off vibe come in.

Set your intention with a simple social media strategy

It doesn’t have to be complicated to use social media for visibility and lead generation.

If you’re going for massive growth and hoping for a silver bullet algorithm hack, this strategy is not for you. But if you want to use social media to get known by people who can offer you opportunities – give this a try.

My one-sentence social media strategy:

Share good content regularly and start conversations.

That’s all you need to remember. Let me break it down a bit

Share good content regularly and start conversations. What platform will you focus on? You should have a SINGLE key platform to focus on. Spreading over multiple platforms is possible when you have a team, otherwise, I’d recommend focusing your energy on one where your ideal clients definitely spend their time.

Related: are you making this mistake with your ideal client?

Share good content regularly and start conversations. Your content should appeal specifically to the people you wish to reach. It should educate, entertain or inspire them.

Share good content regularly and start conversations. How often is it possible to post? Does committing to a schedule work for you?

Share good content regularly and start conversations. The often-forgotten part of social media is the social part. Starting conversations and engaging with the people who follow/subscribe to your content is what ultimately gets you opportunities. But creating the content takes up a lot of energy so we tend to forget to get chatty.

When to step away

Look. Businesses existed and thrived before social media existed. There are other ways to grow a business if social is not your thing. If you feel stressed, if there’s zero joy or fulfillment in this strategy for you – it’s time to take a look at the big picture and find out what aligned action you need to take in your business. (Check this out)

If I believed the idea that you have to show up daily to make your business work, I’d’ve given up on Claire Creative a long time ago. The arbitrary schedule thing, to me, just takes the focus away from the HUMAN BEINGS you hope to reach. Social media works for my business even with my relatively small following. Yes, I get caught up with the circus sometimes, but my intentions and boundaries are stronger than before.

• I show up when I have a decent idea to share not just posting for the sake of some arbitrary schedule. And I (mostly) don’t feel guilty or stressed if weeks pass between posts.
• Nothing bad happens when I take a break. I don’t think anyone really noticed that I took a 2-month break over the summer. And I don’t need to publicly apologize for my absence. 
• Pre-loading weeks of posts into a scheduling tool works for a lot of people, but I don’t like it for me and my brand. When I’m in the right zone, I love creating my content myself and I aim for value and connection, not vanity metrics or algorithm hacks 

What’s your intention on social media?