The Social Check OUT

At the beginning of June, I deleted ALL social media apps off my phone. Despite being a micro business owner who has several social media channels. 

But I was burned out. Stressed. 

Every time I looked at my phone, there was something there. A Discord notification. An email. I was constantly thinking about what I should be doing for social media. Stressed that I had forgotten YET AGAIN to post anything today. 

I was irritable. Consumed by work. Doom scrolling. Stressed about the state of, well, everything. 

So I limited my access and exposure. I spent (nearly) a month scheduling posts. I sat down twice a week and followed a little prompt schedule I had sketched out so I know what kind of content I should be sharing on this day. I aimed for 3 posts a day. And I mostly achieved it. 

I did hit a rough spot at the end of June and disappeared. I tried to schedule stuff, but every time I started writing, it just referenced my current existential crisis about all the things. And that's not really the kind of vibe I'm going for on my business account. That's the stuff for ye olde personal account. 

My goals for the month were to 
1. Find mental balance
2. Grow audiences
3. Start to establish a business rhythm
4. Finish some projects that doom scrolling was preventing progress on

How did I do? 

1. I have felt far more balanced and centered. I'm not constantly worried about the horrible things going on. I'm keeping my finger lightly on the pulse, but I don't see it for hours every day and fall into a pit of helpless despair to do anything about it. 

I have felt disconnected from the Discord servers I'm part of and I worry that the community I was trying so hard to be part of has essentially forgotten me and realized they don't actually care. I'm sure that's just my own personal insecurities speaking, but it is hard to maintain community when I'm constantly missing out on conversations and discussions. I have also found multiple occasions where I would like to post something to MY Discord quick and I can't because, well, it isn't there. 

2. I have 10 new followers across all my social media platforms, which is more growth than I've had between any single data catchment point excepting the times I moved to a new social platform. My email list has grown by 25% however. I'm honestly not sure how many are actual people and how many are bots as I'm getting more undelivered mail than usual. I haven't yet figured out how to see who is not getting mail delivered so I can weed them out, but it's just a case of finding the time to actually do that and search out the solution. 

​I also realized that I had never tracked my Discord joining, so I spent a few minutes adding that to my chart. There are definitely surges to joining when I recruit testers, but otherwise I don't get much joining otherwise. 

I probably didn't spend as much time engaging with other people on social media as I could have done, and perhaps that would have been more beneficial?? I'm honestly not really sure. 

3. I do think I've started to establish a business rhythm. I have alarms on my phone twice a week set to remind me to check my social media posts. Mostly it works, so that's good. Of course, I have a few times turned it off while I was doing something else only to immediately forget it ever went off, but that's how it goes. I think until I'm ready to PAY for scheduling software (or, even better, a social media PERSON), this is as good as it's going to get. I can only do so much when I'm running a business and a household with 4 active children. 

We just talked through kid activities for the coming school year since registrations have opened and hoo boy are we going to be BUSY. Two kids with practices 3x a week, games and meets on weekends, and a third child joining a sport which will eat up more weekends. I think establishing a workable rhythm now while we're relatively unbusy will help so that when things REALLY blow up, I might be able to keep up with some of it. 

In that vein, I started with posting 3x a day to see if volume would increase engagement. I'm not sure that I'm seeing a TON more engagement than I had before or if I'm getting more reach. For July, I'm going to go down to just twice a day and change up the times just a little bit--right away in the morning and later in the evening instead of mid-morning, noon, and mid-evening. I was thinking about the times people are most likely to be free to peruse social media and those times felt more likely, but again, we'll see. I've been just winging stuff up until now so it's new territory to be trialing different things and trying to see results. 

4. I have really hit this one. I got one pattern into tech editing, finished another sample and it's in tech editing. I've also nearly finished writing a third pattern and will get THAT sent off to my tech editor. (so if you'd like to pity purchase a pattern from me to help me afford these, I wouldn't be sad. Ha!) 

I have 2 cowl patterns that I need to finish and publish (just need photos. The samples are done and ready) and 5 coozie pattern updates to finish. My Discord testers were SUPER generous and whipped up some samples that I could use for pattern photos and I just haven't forced myself to sit down and get those patterns updated. But that definitely needs to happen. I love the patterns more than ever after seeing their samples, so I'm excited about them. Updating patterns is just tedious and boring and hard to motivate to do sometimes. 

SO

Where do I go from here? 

​I think I'm going to maintain being social media free on my phone. I'm considering adding Discord back in BUT turning off all notifications. That way, I'm heading in when I WANT to and not because I have a zillion notifications stressing me out. I do worry that I'll spend too much time doomscrolling Discord, though, so I'm going to really really think on that before I make any decisions. 

So that's where things are right now. 

Overall, I do feel like things have been MUCH easier to manage this past month and I'd like to continue with the successes I've found while also balancing my newfound reluctance to be part of the system that caused me so much distress. I stepped away from constant social media because it wasn't good for me and now I'm trying to do social media. It's . . . confusing a little, but alas, such is it when you're a small-timer trying to run your own small creative business. 

I know I don't have the real business acumen to do the business part well, so I'm trying to learn what I can at a reasonable rate and apply it and just try to do better while still keeping in mind my manifesto items. 

I hope you're well yourself and that you enjoyed this little waltz through my brain around all this. I wrote it here because it is certainly too long and involved for a newsletter, but it is something I wanted to share anyway. I know I enjoy when a creative shows the behind the scenes kinds of things so I'm trying to do some of the same.