SOCIAL MEDIA BURNOUT

It’s been six months since the lockdown had been imposed, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone is on their phones 24/7. It’s hard not to stay connected nowadays, especially when you are trying to run a business. Almost every company out there has a social media account to stay in touch with their customers and there are companies too whose whole business is based on social media apps etc. So what happens when you are repeatedly scrolling up on your social accounts & pages and worrying about how it’s doing? You get burnt out.

Now, what does social media burnout means? If you find yourself constantly on social media, rebooting your feed, and seeing a decline in engagement on your content…take a step back. You’ve got social media burnout.

Over-engaging has a worse effect than engaging. Why? Because too quick of actions can cause you to be blocked on certain social media websites.

Take Instagram for example. According to an article by Moblivious, you can be a shadow or soft banned on the platform for liking more than 350 posts an hour. You might think to yourself, “There’s no way I’m liking more than 350 posts an hour”, but when you get caught up in the funnel, how can you be certain?

Another sure sign of social media burnout is a decrease in stats. If your likes, comments, engagement rate, etc. have decreased over the past few weeks, you need to take a break to assess the situation.

Step back, and look at everything you have done in the past few weeks. When did your engagement rate/likes/comments, etc. decrease? What do your stats look like? Do you think it has to do with the content you’ve been posting? Or the timing you’ve been posting your content?

But the million-dollar question is how it can be detrimental to any business which primarily strives on social media. A decline in social media engagement can be critical, especially if your sales heavily rely on social platforms. Once Instagram has flagged your account or prevented you from engaging, it is a tell-tale sign that you need to slow down or stop.

People are no longer seeing your posts, which means your words are not being heard. If you have a new product announcement, maybe 1/4th of your loyal followers are only seeing that post.

It can also be the content you have been posting. Take a look at the content on your account to find out when your engagement began to decline. Identify what it is about those posts that could have been the beginning of your downfall. Once you introspect, start working on a new strategy. Social media burnout is preventable. Avoid overusing social media, reevaluate your social media accounts every week, and make sure to check your analytics. Every once in awhile, take a break to see the bigger picture of what you are doing. Make sure everything aligns with your business and is good enough to keep up with your competitors. Interact with your mates and make sure what is the ground reality.