Social Media for the Time Poor

There are many things I love about social media, but the need to be available constantly is not one of them.

Running a small business often means being the CEO of Everything. That means you are the accountant, the marketing department, the sales team, the admin, I could go on.

Time is precious, and as much as you might love what you do, that doesn’t mean you want to do it all the time or that you should. Social media is a time hoover like nothing else. Marketing your business on social media means not only are you figuring out what and when to post, not only are you trying to understand an algorithm that even social media managers struggle with, not only are you replying to customers and remembering to engage with others, but also you are spending time in the world’s most enormous rabbit hole.

It’s so easy to get sucked into the trap of looking at what everyone else is doing and comparing ourselves unfavourably. Your competitors are posting every day, sometimes twice a day. They have stories, they have reels, they’re going live, and they are doing all of this on three different platforms at the same time. It’s hard not to feel like you need to be more present, especially when you see their follower numbers going through the roof.

But here’s the thing. You are only one person.

I am a big fan of outsourcing where you can, but sometimes that’s just not possible. So what to do?

Here’s what. Give yourself permission not to show up all the time. That’s right, you don’t have to post constantly to grow your audience. And if you want the weekend off, then do that too.

It’s easy to worry about not having a large enough audience, but sit down and think about your business. If you are a service business, then how many clients can you actually work with in one year? If you sell products, then how many can you actually ship out in a month?

If your audience grows so fast that you can’t keep up, your business becomes unsustainable. Grow at a speed which suits you. If you have an audience of 1000 people who are genuinely engaged and interested in what you are doing, that has far more value than an audience of 10,000 who don’t care.

So yes, you need to keep posting, but no, it doesn’t need to be all the time. Find a scheduling tool you like, get your head around the idea of creating batch content and then use your tool to batch schedule posts.

A few posts a week is fine if that’s what you have the capacity for. Set aside a few minutes each day to engage with others, maybe set a timer so you don’t fall down a rabbit hole, and allow yourself not to be present all day every day. It won’t all blow up if you give yourself time off.