Spring Cleaning your Social Media

I'm super excited about this month because this month we are going to focus on spring cleaning. Now I know what you're thinking, "Kristin, really, really?" But I'm not talking about cleaning your house. We are going to be working on spring, cleaning all of the areas of our lives and our business one week at a time.  Each week we will be covering a new topic on here, on the podcast, and on our social media. Make sure to follow our page. This week we will be talking about spring cleaning your social media.

The answers to these questions will be different for different platforms.

1. What do you use social media for? 

Essentially you are going to define what is social media for you.  Define what you use it for and what you do not use it for.

For me, social media is a marketing tool. It also allows me to keep up with people that I don't get to see very often. Now what I don't use social media for is for arguing with people about politics or much of anything anymore.

Don't let social media be a place that makes you feel.  You don't want it to be a place where people think that they have the right to abuse you. Or to tear down what you are trying to do.

Spring cleaning your social media will make you feel comfortable going there

Social media needs to be a place where you feel comfortable going and where you can be yourself.

So now is the time to start deleting the people you don't want to be there.  One of my favorite sayings in Bookkeeper Training School is that no one has the right to be on your Facebook. I don't care who they are. If they're going to treat you like crap, nobody has the right to do that in your space.

Nobody has the right to tear apart your dreams or tear you down. So figure out who your need to block from your posts.

So number one is to define what you're going to use social media for and what you're not. I want you to look at that list and see if any of those things are at odds with each other. For example, if you put down that you use social media to grow my business, but you also want to talk about politics. Those two may not work together. And that's okay if you're okay with the ramifications of that.

You've got to figure out if you can do both. And you can.  You can be a business person who has who has ideas, thoughts, and beliefs. That is absolutely okay. Be who you are. Don't hide yourself from the work.  But you do need to go into it with your eyes open. Because there can be ramifications.

2. How much time are you going to spend on social media?

Now that you know what you are going to use social media for, you need to define how much time you are going to spend there.

What we did for Bookkeeper Training School, was move the Empower Bookkeeper Network group off of Facebook. We moved into something called circle. It's still included with the purchase of Bookkeeper Training School. And you still get the length of time in the group, the live calls, and everything you would have gotten before.

We moved it off of Facebook because what I found is that when I went into Facebook, there were so many notifications. There were so many things going on. I would go online and my messenger would start popping up. And it was just a huge distraction.

And so I would go in to help people in the Empower Bookkeeper Network group, and spend an hour on Facebook and five minutes in the empower bookkeeper network. And I was like, you know what? I don't like this. I want to help our members. I want to dedicate this time to them.

Now I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook anymore. Since we've moved the group off,  I spent less than two hours on Facebook. And I think half that time is doing lives.  It's fantastic. I love it.

Spring cleaning your social media will help you plan how much time you'll spend there

So you need to know how much time you are going to spend there. And define when you are going to do that. You can set a timer for 15 minutes and network in a couple of groups. Contribute some content.  Do your social media posting, which you can schedule ahead of time. 

You might figure out that you have some adjusting to do.

3. Who do you want to be on social media?

This goes back to what I mentioned at the beginning of the post.  People do not have the right to be connected with you on social.

You can block some people or you can put people into groups.  You can have a close friends group. This is really helpful if you want to be able to post pictures of your kids, but you don't want everybody to see it.

You can be very selective in your settings about who sees what.  That is one way to handle that.  Sometimes the family and friend dynamic can be toxic.  If that is the case, they will continue to be toxic.  So you can either rip off the Band-Aid and block or unfriend the person.

How spring-cleaning your social media will help you use it for business purposes

If they say something about it you can say that you're are going to be using social media for business purposes. And that there are going to be a lot of posts about that. And that your friends and family don't necessarily want to see that. So you can let them know that you are cleaning your friends list a little bit.

It can be a problem if you decide you are not going to do that. If you don't want to block or unfriend that person, your will be dealing with the constant negative comments on your posts.  Or you might not even want to post anything just to avoid those comments.  So you can either deal with it all at once and then have the freedom to post whatever you want on social media or not have to deal with it for the rest of the time you're on social.  So either way, you need to deal with it.

Spring cleaning your social media will help you do what makes you happy 

Ultimately you have to do what's going to make you happy. And I know from talking to folks in the Empower Bookkeeper Network, some of you are allowing these people to stop you from achieving what you want to achieve.

There are people in your life who have so much control.  You might not see it that way, but you are turning so much power over to these people because you don't want to deal with the reactions. You don't want to deal with the negative comments. You just don't want to deal.  And I get it. But at some point, you have to say enough and you have to start deciding what your life is going to be like.

That is why it's critically important that you answer this third question. Who do you want to be there?

I think that what I'm asking you to do is not easy. I completely acknowledge that. But getting what you want in life is not always easy. And sometimes if we do the hard work now, it will be easier in the future.

Have a connection policy.  Create your criteria for who can friend you.  Have a filter for who you are going to allow onto your social media platform.

So make sure you've answered the first three questions before you move on to number four.

4. What platforms will you focus on?

So you've gone through. You've decided:

• What you're going to use social media for.  
• How much time you want to spend there.
• Who you want to connect with there.

Define what social media platform will serve you best

Now you need to define which platforms are going to serve you best? You can't be everywhere. You can, but you won't be very effective if you are  everywhere. So I would like to see you do one platform.

Say you want to use social media to grow your business. You're going to spend 30 minutes a day on social. And you want to connect with your ideal customer. The platform you focus on might be LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Clubhouse.

You just need to decide. But I want you to pick one platform and have that be the place you're focusing on for now.

Why I tell people to focus on Facebook first

In Bookkeeper Training School I have them focus on Facebook because Facebook has the largest user base by far. It has the most consistent user base.  Even with people being annoyed with everything going on, people are still checking into Facebook every single day, multiple times a day.

For most of you that are interested in bookkeeping or being a virtual assistant or any sort of freelancer at all, it's either going to be Facebook or it's going to be LinkedIn. Instagram is nice, but I don't think a lot of people go to Instagram to do business.

You can experiment.  Take two weeks and dive into LinkedIn.  See what you can do. Make connections. Inbox people. Do all the things. Make a go of it and see what happens. If you're on LinkedIn and you're finding that a lot of the small business owners in your community aren't there or the business owners you want to tap into aren't there, then try something else.

Cross-connect with people

I recommend you try to cross-connect with people.  If you're on LinkedIn you can post asking what their Facebook page is and say you'd love to follow it.  Then post on Facebook and ask if they are on LinkedIn and that you want to connect with them there.

Brendon Burchard calls this circular viralocity. You're getting your content everywhere and using that to connect with people. So for me, I want to connect with you on Instagram so I can interact with your stories. I want to connect with you on LinkedIn, just like direct messages on Instagram, inbox messages on LinkedIn is where all the actions happen. That's where all the conversations are happening.

The more places you can connect with people, the better. Especially since it takes seven to 20 touches to make a sale.  Once you connect with people, you can decide where you want to interact with people. And I know I just said beyond one platform, so I post to one platform but I'm interacting on multiple.

How I use my social media to connect with others

So once a week, I might go into LinkedIn for 30-45 minutes and just see what people are doing. Go check on my connections, see if any connections look interesting. But that's part of my marketing time when I'm trying to grow my business.

So when I say focus on one platform, what I mean is that that is where you're posting. You are putting content out on one platform. It's really hard to do multiple. It's hard enough to be consistent on one. And so I'd love to see you try to do that first.

Let me know if you have any questions about this. I'd love your thoughts and feedback. You can either go to our Facebook Bookkeeper Training Page, or you can go to the Small Biz Mama community.  You can interact with us there,

This week focus on:

• Determining what you're going to use our social media for
• The time you're going to invest there
• Who you want to be there
• What platform you're going to focus on.

And then start implementing that strategy to simplify your social media.  Use the tool that is right to grow your businesses and bring joy to your lives.

When you start to feel that social media is bringing you down, it's time to pull back. It's time to do a bit of spring cleaning there.