5 Tips To Control The Social Media Chaos

Bookending Spring is in full swing right now and I’m so excited to tell you that today it’s my chance to host! I have a few prompts lined up for this event so you’ll be getting a new and fun post every day 🙂

Just in case you have no idea what Bookending Spring is you can check out this post. Today is the first day that I’m hosting so expect some screams and squeals in between.

Ahem. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way let’s have a look at today’s prompt!

TODAY’S BOOKENDING SPRING PROMPT

Trying To Control The Social Media Chaos

If you’re a blogger then you have at least one social media account. It’s absolutely necessary to interact with the community and promote your content. But chances are that you actually have more accounts than fingers and are currently in the process of crying your eyes out and asking where you can sell your kidney to get some extra time to post all of those aesthetic pictures, write the hilarious tweets, craft beautiful graphics for Pinterest as well as update Facebook- all while blogging and trying to live.

It’s the same everywhere. Me? I honestly don’t know what sleep is. Do I sleep four hours a day? Or do I even sleep? I have no clue.

But I have to admit that I’ve gotten a lot better at handling my social media accounts than when I was a wee little child lost in the book blogging world. Which lowkey qualifies me to give you a few tips on how not to go insane keeping up with social media 😉

5 TIPS TO CONTROL THE SOCIAL MEDIA CHAOS

1. PRIORITIZE THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING

Let me start of by saying you don’t have to be on every freaking social media in this universe. Almost none of us have the time and energy to be everywhere- you literally cannot do that. It’s uselessly and not only will it drain you but also impact your quality of interactions. Less is more.

And in order to do that you need to prioritize. Now don’t prioritize on the basis of what you know and don’t know. If you have no clue how to operate Twitter learn it and try it out. Be smart and prioritize on the basis of the traffic these social media sites bring to your blog and the types of interaction you have there. For example I’ve dropped out of Facebook simply because it’s a dead site, especially when it comes to blogging. You’ll get next to no views and interactions. Instead I joined Pinterest which many bloggers say raw massive amounts of traffic to their blogs. I can’t say how much traffic I’ve gained since I’m relatively new to it but I get about 9.5k – 11k views which to me seems like a good amount.

2. PLANNING IS YOUR BEST FRIEND

My biggest mistake in my early days? I didn’t plan anything. Nil. Nada.

Planning will be your biggest tool in this adventure plus blogging too. This is especially important when we’re talking about Instagram. Take pictures for your feed in advance and plan it out. You can take a bunch of pictures today to make it easy and even write some of your captions in advance. Remember the funny tweets I was talking about? Sometimes I draft and save them in advance when I’m in that creative and goofy mood and then post them at regular intervals.

You’ll be really surprised how these small things can help you out in big ways.

3. TIME IT!

I personally haven’t tried this one because I’m more of a free spirit but you can try allotting some time to each social media site. Say spend half an hour on Instagram liking and commenting on other people’s posts, then about fifteen minutes making graphics for Pinterest and again going back to Instagram for 10 minutes to reply to comments on your posts. Some people go a step ahead and keep a set time for when they need to what like 20 minutes of Twitter at 4pm followed by 15 minutes of graphics for Pinterest at 4:20 pm.

You do you. See if you can work with time slots and it might do you some good and prevent you from getting sucked into the vast world of Twitter.

4. TAKE THE EASY WAY WHEN IT COMES TO GRAPHICS

For me making graphics used to be a time-consuming task. A simple banner would take me half an hour. Of course I practiced a lot which made me better and the whole process much more fun but I also have Canva to thank because it makes my life so much easier.

Canva is a free app available on android as well as a website that has an end number of templates for your graphics but the best part is that the templates are sized according to your different needs. Twitter post templates, Instagram story templates, blog banner templates, Pinterest graphic templates, Facebook banner templates- you name it and it’s on Canva. There’s no need to worry about the dimensions anymore!

And just in case you’re interested, I use the app Phonto for adding texts and Snapseed and VSCO for editing my pictures. Other than this there’s a whole Bookending Spring prompt on how to quickly and easily make graphics for the blog and social media.

5. DON’T DROP DEAD, TAKE A BREAK!

And lastly, don’t over-strain yourself.

All this social media and screen time can exhaust you mentally and physically and make you irritable. You may lose your interest in having to do anything with these social media sites and that is harming both you and your progress. So take a step back and go on a short break. Trust me, everyone is going to understand and nobody is going to forget you if you’re not operating your social media accounts for a few days. Take a walk in the park, read some books or indulge in any other hobby. This hiatus can turn out to be very refreshing and I wrote an entire post on how a social media detox can benefit you.

Breathe and relax. Once you’re back to your happy and productive self you can go ahead and start conquering the social media world.

What are your opinions on these tips? In what ways do you manage your social media accounts? Or do you not manage anything and just let them be? Do you feel new bloggers struggle more with handling social media or does it vary from blogger to blogger? Come tell me about it!