My Social Media Manager Quit… And It Forced Me To Relearn Social Media

[0:00]Okay, listen, if you want to show up more often on social media, but you are wildly inconsistent, please watch this video. Because a few weeks ago, something happened that forced me to completely rethink my entire social media strategy. My social media manager quit. Now, before you think this video is about to get like all spicy and dramatic like a high school burn book, I really hate to disappoint you. But there is absolutely zero tea to spill here and no juicy gossip to share. She's an incredible mom who decided that she wanted to spend more time with her kids while they're young, and honestly, I respect that decision more than anything. I am so, so excited for her during this next chapter. Although I really, really miss working with her every single day and it's only been a few weeks. She was one of my very first hires, worked with me for over six years and helped me build my business into what it is today. And listen, she did not just post content. She helped me brainstorm ideas and hooks, she researched trending topics, she planned my social calendar, and she designed my reals, graphics, and carousels in Canva. And most importantly, let's not forget, she kept me accountable to showing up consistently nearly every single day going on six years now. So, needless to say, when she told me she was leaving the posse, I panicked a little. Okay, a lot at first. I was like, oh my God, what am I going to do? But then I made a decision that surprised even myself. I decided not to hire another social media manager right away. As the online landscape continues to massively shift and evolve, I decided that right now was the perfect time to re-evaluate my entire social media strategy from scratch and get my hands dirty again in the place where literally my entire business started right here on social media. Which means, for the first time in six years, I am running my own social media accounts, just like I was in the early days when I was freelancing full-time and starting my own business on the side. Now, obviously, this time it's a bit different, right? I'm not starting from zero followers, and I have years of proven content formulas, templates, and processes to refer back to. And my social media manager was a total angel for documenting that all for me before she left. But when it comes to actually showing up, to researching topics and trends, to creating content and posting consistently, well, my friends, it is all on me again. And honestly, I'm kind of excited about it. I'm excited to tap back into the creative process. I'm excited to reconnect with my mission and re-establish what I want to say in this new era. And more importantly, to get a pulse on what's happening right now. And you better believe it's going to be scrappy because honestly, scrappy is all I have freaking time for right now. And as I was going through this process, I figured that many of you might be in the same boat, wanting to show up more consistently on social media and do it in a way that feels sustainable and authentic and scrappy and effective in as little time as possible. So today, I am sharing with you seven things that I am doing to make social media easy and fun right now. And honestly, the first one might surprise you. Tip number one, lower the bar. The first thing I realized after my social media manager quit was this. My super high standards would be the thing that would stop me from posting, and I knew that was going to be a big mistake. A lot of people think they need, you know, the perfect hooks, the perfect lighting, the perfect strategy, the perfect design, everything perfect, perfect, perfect. But perfection is the enemy of consistency. So lately, I have been asking myself a different question that is hard as recovering perfectionist. I'm not asking, is this the best piece of content possible? I'm asking, is this good enough for today? When you lower the bar, you naturally have a higher posting consistency. And many, many, many creators will tell you that most of their content gets average views and engagement. And often the stuff that they think is going to absolutely crush it, absolutely flops. Whereas the posts that they randomly made and it took two minutes to create will somehow be the thing that goes viral. So stop overthinking it, get scrappy, post the ugly, imperfect, awkward thing. Moving on to tip number two, stop trying to be strategic all of the time. I know this might sound kind of ironic coming from someone who teaches marketing and marketing strategy, but not every single post needs to be strategic. In fact, sometimes strategic is cringe. Have you noticed that the best content right now feels like the exact opposite of strategic? It feels like just super quick, scrappy, random anecdotes, off the cuff thoughts, observations, quick lessons or behind the scenes snapshots, you know, from your life and business. When you feel like everything you post has to deliver like value, right? You will eventually either run out of ideas or run out of steam, and then what happens? Yes, you guessed it, you stop posting. And ironically, a lot of my most viral posts or the ones that got the most views or the ones that were like the least planned out, right? They were the scrappy, unedited, you know, videos that I posted in the moment, rather than planning it in advance. Absolutely no editing because I didn't have time for that, just adding captions in the edits app and then posting. All right, tip number three, talk about what you're already doing. So one of the easiest content hacks ever is this. Document instead of create from scratch. And no, I'm not talking about becoming like a vlogger or like having to record every moment of your personal life, right? Remember, we are lowering the bar, not raising it. So instead of thinking, oh my God, what should I post today and trying to come up with a really creative idea, ask yourself, what am I already doing or thinking about today? And then share that, right? So if you're a copywriter and you're writing emails, talk about email marketing. If you're working on building a new funnel, maybe, share a little sneak peek or a screenshot of what you're working on and talk about what you're learning in the process. If you're working with clients, maybe share a little bit of your behind the scenes or a to-do list. You do not need to be constantly coming up with new or viral ideas. Social media isn't about that anymore if you haven't noticed. It's about simply showing up and letting people know who you are, what you do, and how you can help. And more importantly, building your personal brand to be approachable and present and available. And the easiest way to do that is to simply just show up and talk about what you're already working on. And honestly, you don't even have to do this on your Instagram feed. Instagram stories is an amazing place to simply document what you're doing if you don't have time to create a feed post, which lately I've been doing a lot of. All right, now that leads me to tip number four, create lazy posts. So this is something that I've started doing recently, and I'm telling you, it has been a total game-changer. I call them lazy posts because literally, they take less than maybe two to five minutes to create from start to finish. It could be a quote or a one-second insight, or maybe a little, you know, snapshot of what you're doing behind the scenes in your business. And the best part is, for what I call these lazy posts, you don't even have to show your face. And I have two entire videos where I walk you through the best lazy post ideas, and I will share the link to both of those in the description box below. So you can go ahead and watch those next. But don't go just yet because I have three more tips left. And honestly, number five is something that I kind of had to learn the hard way and it goes against what I used to do and believe. And that is stop waiting for content batching days. So for years, I thought the only way to actually show up on social media consistently was to do content batching days. AKA, an entire day, usually once every month or so, dedicated to just filming video content for social media. Now, of course, the premise behind it is brilliant, right? Spend one day creating and get weeks and weeks of content. The problem was batching was actually a massive pain in the ass, especially for me who's kind of last minute and have a tendency to procrastinate. And if I know that I have a content day coming up, I will literally do all of it the day before, and I'll be stressed out and overwhelmed, and it was just a lot. And not to mention, it involved a lot of my team, too. So my social media manager had to, you know, plan out weeks of content ideas, and then I had a copywriter that would help me write some scripts. I then had to hire a videographer who could record the content and then edit it and then send it back to my team to review for edits and revisions and approvals. And then, of course, we would schedule it and then post it, which often meant that content was being posted an entire month after filming it. And internet time a month is like a decade. Not to mention, I would have to spend an entire day in the studio talking non-stop, countless outfit changes, which meant pure exhaustion, right? For this introvert. I know no one believes me when I say that, but I am. And if I wasn't really in the mood to do it, it would be even worse. And if I'd missed just one day because let's say I got sick or something came up, my entire content strategy would like fly out the window. So, instead, I have been doing something so much simpler. I just post when I have something to say. Huh, shocker. And I'm telling you, that is what is working right now. Nothing beats now energy in marketing, right? The more scrappier, the more relevant, the better. So forget fancy filming and outfit changes and all this editing, just post when you have something to say. Now, that might mean that I post three days in a row and then skip a day, and for me, that's totally okay. If I don't feel like being on video, I can also just post a carousel or something else like a reel with some B-roll. Consistency doesn't mean that you have to be on every single day, right? But you're posting consistently, maybe it's once a week or twice a week or three times a week, mix it up, whatever you do, just don't post and then ghost, right? Consistency is key. Now, moving on to tip number six, and this one was a big one, you guys. Repeat yourself more than you think you should. One of the biggest myths about content creation is that you need to have new ideas all the time. You absolutely don't. In fact, your audience probably hasn't even seen 10% of your content, which means you can repeat the same ideas over and over and over again in different ways. How many times have you seen a reel like three times, and every time you see it, you're you like laugh because you're like, oh yeah, I've seen that one, it's hilarious, right? We like repetitive content sometimes. In fact, I think it kind of calms our nervous system down when we see something that's familiar, right? So the same concept, the same lesson, it can be communicated in the same way, in a different format or in a different type of media, different type of social media. I do this all the time, not just in my social media, but in my emails and my blog posts, and yes, even here on YouTube. You don't have to recreate the wheel every single time if a message is important. If it still rings true, and it's still valuable today, tomorrow, the next day, then it is absolutely okay to say it more than once. In fact, redundancy in marketing is really powerful. The other thing that's important to remember is that people will follow you for more of the same content. So I want you to think for a second of all of your favorite creators. You likely followed them because you saw one of their signature posts, maybe it was on Instagram. And then you follow them because you're like, that's great, it's entertaining or it's useful or it's educational, and I'm going to follow them because I want more of that. Well, the same goes for you. One of the best hacks for creating consistently on social media is to create a handful of signature series that you can refer back to all of the time, so you're not constantly reinventing the wheel. Now, I have a few templated signature series that I post again and again and again. The content is new, but the format is rinse and repeat, and they work almost every single time. So test a few different content formats and formulas, find the ones that hit, and then make that one of your signature series. Boom, easy, rinse and repeat. And now on to lucky number seven, make posting easier than not posting. Yeah, the real key to consistency isn't motivation, it's friction. Think about it. If posting content means that you need like an hour of time at minimum to set up your lighting and you know, create the most flawless graphic in Canva and write the perfect caption, you will not do it. I know you won't, right? At least you won't do it very often, and I know I sure wouldn't. So start asking yourself, how can I make posting like ridiculously easy? Now, that might mean that you record on your phone and post a raw, unedited video, right? It might mean sharing messy ideas. It might mean that you dig up an oldie but goodie and then reshare it. Heck, it might even mean that you repost someone else's content that hits a valuable point or has meaning for you, and then share with your thoughts, give credit, of course, but that is great, great content. Because the easier something is, the more likely you'll actually do it. And honestly, that is the biggest mindset shift that I am making right now. For years, my content system was built for maximum quality. But right now, my goal is something entirely different. It is actually the opposite. It is consistency and scrappiness because that makes me seem more authentic, right? I mean, nobody can question a scrappy video, you know, as being AI, right? We are so used to seeing these perfectly polished, perfect videos on social media, and then we're like, is that AI? I can't even tell. And nothing sucks more than spending time creating a piece of content that people think you took two seconds to create. That's the absolute worst. So, instead, just show up authentically and consistently because the truth is, the people who will win on social media are not the ones with the best strategy anymore or the perfectly produced videos. They are simply the ones who show up as them, as human, like you. So, if you have been struggling to post consistently, maybe the solution isn't a better strategy. Maybe it's actually fewer rules, or fuck it, no rules, right?