Stop feeling stressed by social media marketing

Social media is an essential part of tourism marketing. It’s free and can be incredibly effective.

It can also feel overwhelming and stressful. Here are a few ideas to help:

1. Create, then consume. Social media is useful when you use it to post, not just to scroll. So stop scrolling, think what you want to post, post it, and then if you have time, take a peak at the rest of your timeline. Being deliberate about how you use social media definitely helps.

2. Decide why you want to be on social media. What are you trying to achieve? More visits and bookings? Then think how you can get them, what you need to say, how you can persuade more people, what they are interested in knowing about, and set out to provide that info. If you post with purpose, it’s much easier than simply putting stuff on social media because you feel you should.

3. It can help to set some targets. Look at how many followers you have, and how much engagement (likes, shares, comments – shares & comments are really important) you’re getting on each platform and make a note. Set yourself a target in say a month, by which time you plan to get x followers, shares and comments. It’s a small mindset shift that can make a big difference and stop social media from feeling so aimless.

4. You might find it easier to manage your social media if you deal with it in blocks of time, instead of it eating into a part of everyday. Some people find it better to pre-schedule as many posts as possible. If you do this, you also need to schedule some time to respond otherwise your engagement will fall.

5. Be you. Your posts don’t have to be perfect. You don't need to spend ages perfecting them. Authenticity does work. Just show you understand what your visitors want.

6. Repeat. You don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel. If something works well, repeat it every now and then.

7. When you struggle to think of posts, share some-one else’s. It helps make your content more varied and builds relationships with others who may return the favour later.

8. We scroll and lose time because we’re looking for ideas for posts we can do for our own businesses. You can save masses of time by planning. I don’t mean hours of spreadsheets and complex plans – just a running scribbled list of ideas makes a difference. If you want to get a stock of ideas and some fresh ways to think about social media posts, you might like this online workshop.

9. Don’t try to be everywhere. You don’t need to be on every social media platform. If it makes you feel better, pick one and stick to it for a while, then consider whether you could manage two different platforms. Which to pick? You need to fish where the fish are – so find out whether your ideal customers prefer Instagram, Facebook or YouTube or whatever, and get to grips with that platform. It’s far better to really understand and use one platform than spread yourself thinly across several and feel confused!

10. Social media can feel stressful because it’s never ‘done’. There’s always something to see, or a feeling you ‘should’ be posting more. The easiest way to deal with this is to set some boundaries or targets. For example, you can set limits on your phone for how much time you’re allowed to be on Facebook each day. If you either don’t get round to posting on social media very much or always feel there’s more you can do, it’s worth trying to create more of a habit. Set yourself a diary reminder on a given number of days or times and post then. Once it becomes more of a habit, you might find you can increase or decrease your post and scroll times.

11. It all feels much better if you can see that your social media is actually getting results. Google Analytics or your own web stats can show you whether your website gets traffic from social media, and which platforms. If you don’t feel like you’re getting results, there are usually three reasons:

• You don’t have many followers or you’re not getting enough engagement – this comes down to what you post and you might need to improve your content
• You are not including enough calls to action, encouraging bookings and interactions
• You’re not expecting results – that might sound odd but some businesses don’t believe in the power of social media so their efforts are limited. A mindset shift is necessary!

Want some fresh ideas for social media posts? You could get a whole bank of them and content ideas by joining me on this quick course.