Social media can be a real time suck if you let it. Do you ever hop on over to Instagram with all of the intentions of posting, being social, and creating content, but find yourself lost within a stream of videos of goo, or the latest food trend? ?All of a sudden an hour goes by and you haven’t accomplished anything. ?And the worst part is, now you have to actually get up and get to your other tasks! ?I am totally guilty of being on social media and not using it to my advantage at times. ?It’s hard to break this cycle. ?Especially when you’re exhausted from seeing patients throughout the day, working on growing your practice, and completing all of your other daily tasks. ?Sometimes working on growing your social media just seems so far out in the distance. Let me tell you something. . . it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s time for you to start setting boundaries and create a plan of action.?
I want to share some of the things that I?m currently doing to make marketing my practice on social media a lot more enjoyable, impactful, and less stressful. Hopefully, these tips will help you create a routine for your practice that allows for you to have the same experience.
- Batch your content: Whenever possible, batch create the content you?re going to be sharing on social media. Batching means that you get more done in one specific period of time rather than having to sit down every day and create content to share. You’ll most likely find that you?re a lot more productive and content is easier for you to create because you?re inspired and in the moment rather than forcing it because you need something to post on that day.
- Use a scheduler: If you can get into the groove of batching content, then you definitely want to start using a scheduler that will remind you when it?s time for you to post. You can literally upload your images and the captions into an app, and when it’s time to post a reminder will pop up on your phone and you basically can just push the post into the social media platform and post it in less than 1 minute. This is less work for you but you still get the same amount of impact from your marketing.
- Set a timer: Whenever you?re going to be posting or engaging you need to set a timer. Setting a timer helps you to make sure that the 15-minutes that you planned to spend engaging on Instagram doesn’t turn into an entire hour wasted looking at random photos and videos. It happens to the best of us but setting a timer is one way to combat that.?
- Have a purpose: Before you open up your social media app, set a purpose for the time that you?re about to spend on there. It?s important to always have a game plan for how you?re spending your time on social media. If you don?t have a purpose your timer will be going off and you?ll find that you?ve spent all of your time either liking cat photos or reading celebrity news. Set an intention each time and stick to that intention.
- Set boundaries: Boundaries are important in every area of our lives and especially when it comes to social media. Social media, like I said earlier, can be a time suck, and even if you use the above tips you may still find yourself spending way more time on there trying to market your practice than you think you should be. This is why you need to set boundaries around how often you?ll post, how often you?ll engage, and so on, and then stick to those boundaries! Make them non-negotiable so you actually have time to do other things.
As with anything, not wasting time on social media means that you have to be intentional about just that, not wasting time. Putting these things to work while you?re using social media to market your practice will make the entire experience a lot more enjoyable and fun for you, not to mention more efficient and effective. Now I’m curious, which of these resonated with you the most and which ones do you need to implement? ?Find me on Instagram?(@DrYazdan) and let me know!?
By the way, don’t forget to download my free cheat sheet to help you stop wasting your time on social media!!
