I was recently on a trail ride with a friend and fellow spiritual business owner (Hi Ellen if you are reading this!) As I carefully navigated the highway pulling the horse trailer home, we chatted about burnout and not wanting to hustle and grind on social media. Three words came to the forefront of my mind as the conversation unfolded – Mindful Social Media.
I realized that I’ve been able to be more consistent in showing up on the apps over the past 90 days than I ever have before and the reason for that is mindfulness. So today I’m sharing my mindful social media practices with you.
Where Are You Putting Your Energy?
It’s tough to be mindful on social media if showing up for your community feels like a total drag. So do a quick energy audit. What’s killing your vibe? Is it scheduling? Editing? Writing your captions? Going live? Outsource whatever processes drag you down so you can keep a high vibe abundant energy flowing. We are here to help with content creation if you need us.
If you can’t outsource it (it would be kind of odd to hire someone else to show up live and nurture your audience) give yourself permission to let it go. No one wants to watch an Instagram live where the person presenting doesn’t want to be there.
Yes, the algorithm likes it when you use all the features of the app, BUT we are not here to please the algorithm. We are here to leverage the algorithm to provide an amazing experience for our soulmate clients.
If you can’t uphold the promise to deliver that amazing experience in one aspect of your marketing or another, it’s time to let that shit go. Progress is being made, my friend. You are on your way to mindful social media marketing.
Grow Your Community with Intention
You don’t want stagnant energy in your online community.
Stagnant energy includes:
- Inactive accounts
- People who aren’t your soulmate client
- People following you just to try to sell something to you
Listen to your gut about this stuff. It KNOWS.
Don’t get stuck in the scarcity mindset of “well, maybe this person is a soulmate client, but they haven’t updated their profile in a long time” or “this person doesn’t mean to sound so rude in their comments on my posts.”
If anyone I mean ANYONE me, your coach, a family member, etc. is messing with your vibe or your mind on social they have to go. No questions asked. Remove them from your community and yourself from theirs. I have a post on how to do a social media cleanse here. If you need it, do it.
Be Mindful About The Content You Create
Now that you have your community figured out, it’s time to create with intention. Market research is so so so dang essential! We have an entire module dedicated to it in Own Your Impact, and ALL of our 1:1 clients are required to do it.
Talk to your people. Ask them what they need from you. Allowing your community to participate in your content creation is an excellent way to make them feel seen and heard and provide a top-notch experience for them.
Be mindful of the different types of content you post. That funny photo of your dog will always get the most likes and comments. Does this mean you should only ever post pictures of your dog? No!
Remember, you are providing an experience, and sometimes that experience will invite your followers to step into the unknown with you. That’s sometimes uncomfortable, and people won’t outwardly share by commenting. However, that doesn’t mean the post didn’t have an impact, or you shouldn’t post posts like that again.
Your sales invitations will typically get the lowest engagement. Does that mean you should stop extending these invitations? Hell no! It just means that a much smaller percentage of your audience is ready to work with you than the percentage that loves your dog. Keep extending those invitations anyways. We can’t control who is ready, but we sure can show up for the people who are.
This is Important to Know:
- Shares and likes give your posts more reach – this helps you grow your audience
- Comments and direct messages help you build a relationship with the followers you already have
- Video or story views help your followers get to know you and peek behind the scenes, which builds trust
You need all of these things to nurture your audience successfully. SO that being said, you might post a quote one day, knowing it will get lots of likes and shares. That quote might not get many comments. That’s okay. That’s not why you posted it in the first place.
Then the next day, perhaps you post a simple question. What is your biggest struggle with X? That post should get lots of comments but not a lot of likes or shares. Again no big deal. That’s exactly what we wanted.
Think about how you want to engage with your followers and be intentional about the content you create to invite that type of engagement. Then, mix it up, experiment, and learn as you go!
Analyze Intentionally
When we look at your analytics, we assume you have an audience of soulmate clients. Therefore when things don’t go well it’s not them… it’s you. In a totally non-judgmental we are here to learn and do better kind of way.
So many people have bad feelings when they look at their analytics. They don’t like what they see, so they straight-up avoid it altogether. Don’t be this person. Your analytics don’t mean anything about you, your content, or your business. They are simply data, information that we can use as a guide to doing better in the next round.
Set up a schedule to analyze your results. Weekly, monthly, whatever works for you. We use monthly for ourselves and our clients.
What posts got the most reach? What topics did you cover? How can you expand your message to cover these topics more often in your content?
What posts got the most comments? What did people say? How can you create content that addresses their questions and ideas?
What topics don’t resonate with your audience? Are they not resonating because you speak too technically and your audience doesn’t understand or because those topics don’t hit home for your people?
Who are your top five most engaged fans? Are they soulmate clients? Have you talked to them 1:1 at all? Can you reach out and thank them for participating in your community? Are you following them and engaging with their content? Do they know that you are super excited to work with them when they are ready to work with you?
How many new followers did you get? What is your engagement rate? How does that compare to last month? How much did you post this month compared to last month?
Are YOU happy with the performance of your content and the direction your community is going? If you are, great! Carry on. If you aren’t, what changes can you make?
Be Intentionally Consistent
You can’t ghost your community for weeks at a time and expect soulmate clients to be flowing in with ease. You have to consistently show up and provide an experience that your soulmate clients enjoy being a part of. You have to consistently put your offer out there to remind them how you can help them, what you can help them achieve, and how to take the first step.
BUT, you can’t burn yourself out and create a space where you can’t stand to show up in either.
So how do we do this? We get honest with ourselves. How much content can you reasonably create in a month and still enjoy the process, so it doesn’t become a chore? Perhaps you can post every one of your workdays. Great! Maybe you can only show up 2-3 times a week. That’s totally fine. Whatever it is, this is your minimum (Emily Schwalbach coined this term she is awesome; check her out). This is the consistency that you must commit to upholding and persist in maintaining even in the hard times.
The times will not always be hard! Sometimes you will feel super called to create more and share more, and you’ll share every day or maybe even twice a day for a while. That’s so dang cool! Do it! Also know that there is no pressure to maintain that new level of frequency. You can drop back to your minimum whenever you need to.
BUT you must maintain that minimum so that your community feels supported and remembers you exist.
What if you get sick? Have a family emergency? Or go on Vacation? You have options! If you have pre-scheduled content, you can let it roll out, and just know that you won’t be engaging with the responses as much as you normally would, if at all—no big deal. You can also just take a break for a week or two. You will not ruin all the momentum you’ve built.
When we talk about consistency, we mean showing up and doing your minimum over and over again for years. When you think about the long game, a week or two here or there is no big deal.
It’s when you are disappearing for three weeks out of every month on repeat that you have a problem, and you can avoid this problem by finding your minimum and committing to stick to it. You can also outsource your minimum to us or another content creator.
When you are intentional about the consistency you strive for, it’s a LOT less scary and feels so much more doable. For example, three posts a week is only 12 posts a month. You can even create those all at once if you want to.
Engage with Intention
You’ve probably heard that you have to give engagement if you want to get it. This is especially true for online communities under 5k members because your content doesn’t have its own momentum yet.
So, how do you engage with intention? First off, (you can probably see this one coming) only engage with soulmate clients. Don’t waste your time with anyone else.
This is another area where you need to find your minimum. I engage on Instagram for roughly 10 minutes 2-3 times a week. You might want to do it for 30 minutes or 5 minutes instead. Do that. Just do something.
If I’m traveling and sitting around in airports, I’ll engage WAY more than this, but I always return to my minimum when things get crazy.
You'll engage in five ways:
Commenting on the posts of soulmate clients you follow
Direct message responses to stories (or other content if not on FB or Insta)
Sharing content by creators that resonate with you (always tag them)
Commenting on the posts of soulmate clients you don’t follow
Commenting on posts of 2-3 of the biggest influencers in your industry (make sure the accounts you choose have lots of engagement, not just followers)
Be super intentional about what you comment. If all you have to say is YASSS GIRL or some emojis, don’t comment on that one. It’s not for you. Why did the post resonate? How can you thoughtfully answer the question in their call to action? We are looking for meaningful human connection here.
We don’t just want more followers and more engagement. We want more soulmate clients, and to do that we need to build genuine relationships.
I hope these mindful social media tips gave you some things to think about and helps make serving your community more enjoyable and less like a chore.
Before You Go
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