Have You Missed Me?
The perks of hiring a social media manager and going offline.
Didn't think so! Because you've probably seen my face plastered all over our Instagram account. I reluctantly did some face-to-cam videos for our channel, (they aren’t my thing, but know it's important to show up on there) but here’s a secret, I wasn't actually there. You see, for the last 30 days I've gone social media free.
You heard it right, I, the owner and director of a marketing agency that does a lot of it’s work on social, deleted the apps and went Instagram-, Facebook-, TikTok and everything else-free, for one whole month.
This was on both my personal and business accounts, however, I must disclose that I was 100 percent across my clients accounts, just in a more analog way. Our account managers briefed me on the pipeline of work, kept me up to date and worked with me on account audits. I was also working away within Facebook Business Manager for our clients advertising accounts, but there was no scrolling. No Liking. No Discovering. No posting or messaging from me on my business or my own accounts. No just not scrolling the feed or posting content on behalf of myself or my business.
Why take up such a complicated challenge? Well, firstly I needed timeout, I was feeling the social burnout, particularly with my personal account. Mindless scrolling became an evening habit and I was feeling uninspired. But the biggest reason was because I wanted to show to clients the value in having a social media account manager. What better way to do it than to do it myself. Practice what you preach, right? So I handed the reins over to someone else for 30 days, and planned to record what I accomplished with the free time.
Enter the DTA account managers Rach and Kristy. I told them my plan and, like much of the team, they thought I was a bit nuts (granted, I am always on my account), but with some convincing, they were on board.
Because I know you like BTS details in these blogs, I’ll tell you what may account whiz kids then did. First, they built me a 30 day content plan, just as they would a client’s. Rach would man the account to respond to comments, DMs and to engage with our audience. She would also push everything from Planoly (great scheduler but not everything is automated). Monday and Wednesday Instagram Story takeovers would be done by other members of the team (something that can’t be preplanned), everything else would be scheduled. I approved the plan and in a day, filmed all the content they’d need from me to make it happen. Then they loaded and scheduled my videos and all the other content in Planoly and I signed off the images and captions, and tuned out.
At least that was the plan. Not everything went smoothly. There were a couple of occasions I let the team down either because I’d missed something personal or needed to adhoc pull together content because my purge deleted too much. Because I’m being honest here, I’ll be specific:
I loaded a reel in March to draft for an April posting but completely forgot that drafts save to a device not an account, so no one else in the team could view it, and when I deleted the app I also deleted my reel (silly silly).
I almost forgot one of my best friends' birthdays. I rely heavily on Facebook to tell me what the heck is going on because I often don't know what day it is, let alone the date. Thank goodness, by pure luck I'd put it in my calendar (unheard of for me to actually use my calendar for this) and at 8pm (again 8pm, I think I would have meant to do 8am) it prompted me (sorry Kristen, i love you!).
On a couple of occasions I changed my mind about content and last minute needed to text the team to change things up, which I usually would do myself.
A few times I wanted to reference something while talking to the team and couldn't show them because I'd deleted the app so they had to search for me. For clients, I wouldn’t recommend deleting the app, just not using it, but for me I had to delete it or I couldn't resist opening it.
During the month there were a number of Instagram updates that required me to do a Story on. This is how we did it: the team would brief me on the update, I then created a Story about it. For example the announcement that IG is testing the ability to turn on or off likes on your account. I’d provide the team the content and they put it in the schedule.
Other than that I was off social and the team took full control. And what did I do with the extra time? Get ready.
I average 5hrs 6 mins screen time a day. In four days, I clocked up 11hrs 23mins on Instagram. That actually makes me sick to think about.
In Offline April, I averaged 2hrs 14mins screen time daily, which mainly comprised of Maps, Gmail, Calendar, podcasts, Spotify, messages, Slack, Trello and Chrome. Not a social platform in sight!
My working days for the month did not exceed 8hrs (March me would have laughed at this). My admin list was complete and all the things my bookkeeper and accountant had been hounding me about was sorted. I had time to complete one Mastermind class, I also started two other courses.
At work, I spent more time being hands-on in my business. I reviewed the website, which is now under construction. I updated our email marketing mailing systems, cleaned up our onboarding processes, budgeted for 2021-2022 (who am i!!!), onboarded two new staff members, (I gave them my actual time, which I usually would have offloaded to another staff member). I reworked all our contracts and packages, planned for an exciting new marketing funnel, started the planning for an online program (been in my list for 2 years), recorded content for May and onboarded more clients in April than any other month since we restructured November 2020. As a team, we also completed more one-off jobs than any month prior and I had more strategy sessions in one month than I could usually find time for. Our account had more consistent, educational and fresh content than ever before, plus, we saw our highest month for engagement and growth. I put this success down to me being more present, having more time, being there for my staff and feeling more in control.
Personally, I made a conscious effort to go to dinner with friends at least one night of the week. Something I’d never normally do but being off socials, I actually had no idea what everyone was up to so instead of staying up-to-date virtually, I ate good food and engaged in great chat face to face with my nearest and dearest. Something I didn’t realise I so badly needed. I worked out more, cooked more (usually I’m Uber Eats’ number one client), I listened to more podcasts, watched documentaries, read two books, journalled daily, started practising meditation (although I’m yet to make this routine) made the sauna part of my weekly routine, went to the beach every day, played tennis with mates, helped a friend with their business marketing as I actually had the time to give without it feeling like a chore (I loved it), got to bed at 8:30pm and slept a full 8 hours, uninterrupted. A big thing for me because I’m not known for my good sleeping habits. The difference it made to my energy was astounding. In fact, the biggest thing I took away from the whole experience was my quality of sleep! After a week I really noticed a shift in my sleeping patterns. I honestly believe that not being on my phone all day and right up until bedtime allowed for me to actually feel tired, my brain switched off and when I was asleep, stayed asleep. I'd wake up feeling like I'd had a full night's sleep. I was also the least stressed I've ever been, and way more present. I had a number of huge unplanned events pop up in April that normally would have thrown me in a spin, but I was so on top of the business and life, I felt like time was on my side, so these events didn’t shake me.
If it sounds like I was busy, I was! I won't solely say that being off social was the catalyst to all this going on but I can say it spurred me on to get rid of bad habits, replace them with better ones and to prioritise my time a lot better. I didn't want to get bored and feel the need to jump online, so instead I allocated my time to things that kept me occupied, filled my cup and ultimately allowed for April to be epic! I knew that a challenge like this would give me some time back, but I didn’t expect it would shift so much in my day-to-day life.
So, May. Will I stay off the socials? No, I won't go sans socials forever, but I will be mindful of time spent on there. I will pre-record all my content and have the team continue to manage my accounts, I will continue to do all the new activities I took up during April and I will most certainly be off my socials while at work. I will keep downtime on my phone from 7pm and most certainly keep the friend’s mid-week dinner date, even if it is only once a month. It’s too good for my soul to give up.
I will also, most certainly encourage small business owners to hand the reins over to a social media manager as I have seen first hand the absolute benefits of doing so. I set out to prove that my team was invaluable, and honestly I have more than proved that. To all you small business owners, if you’re on the fence about engaging an agency to help with your accounts, let me be your push. I live, eat and breathe my business, I'm always down in the trenches with my staff and it's extremely hard for me to hand over what is my baby. But after this experience I won't be looking back. Not only am I better off for it, so is my business.
S x