67. The Causes of Burnout on Social Media
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The Causes of Burnout on Social Media
Have you ever felt burnt out, unmotivated, or uninspired by social media? Good news: you’re in the right place.
The pressure to post more content has led to the creation of a very predictable cycle nearly all creators go through. It starts with you having this burst of creativity and motivation. You're starting to post consistently for a few weeks, maybe even a month straight…and then all of it suddenly becomes completely overwhelming.
What happens next? You burn out. You stop posting altogether, and it gets pretty hard to even get back to posting a single piece of content here and there.
Again, if this sounds familiar, you are not alone. As a retired social media manager, I have 110% experienced this myself—not only while posting for clients but while juggling clients’ needs and also posting for my own accounts.
I’m not immune to the causes of burnout, and after a few times spinning around this cycle, I have found a few things that have really helped me ditch this burnout cycle for good, with a sustainable strategy being at the focus of the solutions I'm sharing for these causes of burnout.
First, I think it's important for us to tackle creativity versus motivation because these can be some of the first things we lose when we are burnt out on social media. Let’s dive into both of these and discuss how you can escape the causes of burnout to get both of them back.
Creativity
Creativity is really how you generate new content, new ideas, and new ways of showing up. If you're not feeling creative, the solution is probably to let yourself experiment more. Maybe you've gotten into the habit of posting things that are familiar or things that are a little out of date, and you just need to experiment and test new things. I really recommend creating some space in your daily routine for letting yourself play and having a little bit more fun with your content.
It's really hard to be creative if you really don't have time to actually create things and you're always rushing to batch or think up a new content idea. This can quickly become a cause of burnout. So give yourself some space, whether it's scheduling a content day dedicated to creating content, or just a time slot in your morning or your evening that you can dedicate to being creative.
Motivation
The other side of this coin is motivation, which is essentially having the actual desire to do creative things. Now, it’s really important that we create the expectation that you will not always be motivated to show up in your video content. In fact, you can expect motivation to be a constant ebb and flow. That’s why it's really important to get into the habit of creating.
Another thing that helps avoid causes of burnout is having a clear strategy to rely on, such as having content pillars, a clear posting plan, and a clear idea of the ideal follower you're actually posting for. When you find yourself completely unmotivated, you’ll have all of those things to lean on so you can still show up and be consistent.
If we're being realistic, it is not realistic at all to be motivated and creative at the same time or to expect that you’ll magically have both of these feelings available to you right when you need them. This unrealistic expectation can quickly become a cause of burnout.
The Causes of Burnout
Let’s talk about a few of the causes of burnout on social media.
Irritation with Apps
The first cause of burnout is being annoyed with apps like Instagram. I know this might sound silly, but the energy we spend despising an app that we use for free to grow our businesses is taking away from the motivation, energy, and desire to actually show up on that social media app.
And if we're being honest, social media is really not that serious. It is just a small part of how we market our brands. It's just a small part of our business, our day, our lives. So when we put it in its place, we realize that it shouldn't be taking up all this energy. It isn’t deserving of all the effort we put into hating it and ranting about it and complaining about new features or glitches or whatever.
If you’re constantly complaining and ranting about Instagram, your community can feel that. Why would they want to engage with a platform you so clearly hold so much contempt for? If you’re seeing low engagement and it’s becoming a cause of burnout and making you feel like you’re doing everything for nothing, it might just be because of your attitude.
Systems
The other cause of burnout is not having the systems in place to support ease of use with social media. It’s really important for you to understand that a system isn't a tool or another app you can get; it is a process, a workflow for helping you actually create your content without getting stuck in one of the causes of burnout. And yes, you do want to get to a place where you get an idea, you sit down and create on your phone, and you're in this flow state when it comes to how you're showing up on your social media. For me, this took years of sticking to my system and workflow, and that is what I lean on when I do not have the time and capacity to play on my phone and just post whenever the mood strikes me.
Here are a few things that you want to think about when it comes to systemizing how you are creating content on social media to avoid this cause of burnout. The first is having a place to actually store your content ideas—a document, a notebook, a note on your notes app, your favorite project management tool, a content calendar, whatever works best for you. Find a place so when you get an idea in that creative state, you put that idea somewhere you can easily find it again. This way, when you have the footage or when you have the time to batch or when you're sitting down to create content, you have a bank of content to pull from when you're at your most creative.
You also want to break down your workflow in your system. Creating content actually entails a lot of micro-tasks like idea generation, outlining what the content is going to be about, writing a caption, filming the footage, editing the footage, designing the graphic, and then actually posting and publishing it. There's this workflow that all of us have for every piece that goes into posting something, even something as simple as a reel. So it's important to facilitate each part of your workflow. It's important to have a place for each part of that workflow to live in your system.
The most important part about the system is actually setting aside the time to do it. I had this one client who was really struggling, and she genuinely felt like everyone had more time than she did. And I asked her, “Well, what are you creating your content?”
And she said, “Well, it's on Sunday evenings when I'd rather be with my family.” But she also said it was the only time outside of her business hours that she had time to create content. And that right there was the problem; content creation was on the back burner, and she wasn't treating it like the very important marketing task that it is.
I really encourage you to set aside a day every month, a day every week, whatever that looks like for you, to create your content. I know sometimes we're side-hustlers or we have families and you might have limited time, but even if there’s an hour or two that you can dedicate toward your content, toward your workflow, toward a system you have set up, you will not get in this burnout cycle of doing the content tasks when you don't want to be doing them.
Lack of Strategy
The last reason I see people getting burnt out on social media is just that they don’t have a strategy. They’re posting just to post, or even worse, they’re just aimlessly trying anything they're hearing. You don’t need to be trying any hacks, any tricks, or whatever's working for everyone else; you need to have a custom plan and strategy specifically for you. Whatever's working for me might not work for you, and you need to create a plan that's actually going to get you closer to your goals and not veer you off to a different path.
You want a posting plan and strategies that actually work for your brand.
End the Cycle
Now you know how to avoid these causes of burnout and how to escape this vicious cycle! Burnout on social media is incredibly common, but it doesn’t have to be inevitable. By putting these pieces in place to skirt around the causes of burnout, you’ll be far less likely to end up in this place again.
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