24/7 Social Media Strategy and Why It’ll Burn You (And Your Team) Out

It was 2018, on a Saturday in May. I was nervously pacing our small apartment, and I couldn't stop glancing at the glowing five-inch screen on the kitchen counter. Even though it was the weekend and I wasn’t required in the office, work was just a click, tap, or holler to Siri away. My boss at the time was waiting to hear if our CEO had approved our planned social media post for Sunday, and I couldn’t think, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat until I heard the final verdict. Would I be able to schedule and post our planned creative, or would everything our team had worked so hard on prove futile? Stay tuned…

There’s a common phrase amongst social media marketers: since social media doesn’t shut off after 5PM or on weekends, neither can you.

There’s a common phrase amongst social media marketers: since social media doesn’t shut off after 5PM or on weekends, neither can you. Even with the advent of third-party and native social scheduling tools, things still come up on social media no matter the day or hour, and bad things can happen if you’re not paying attention. Such as a hot comment section debate that, like a simmering cigarette butt in a dry forest, can and will cause utter destruction in mere seconds.

My overarching life purpose in years past was to be the always-on, always curating marketer that everyone expected me to be. I’ve always had a strong sense of urgency, but the advent of social media and the need for a 24/7 social strategy dialed that up a few notches.

If I could just dash out a few direct message replies as we walked into the restaurant on date night, I’d feel more accomplished.?

If I could just comment back to a few folks while traversing the Oregon Coast on a long weekend, our weekend posts would experience higher engagement and virality.?

If I could just check our feeds quickly on my Sabbath day of rest, I could make sure I reply to and screenshot any key influencer story mentions before they disappear after 24 hours.

It’s mindless and easy, so why not log in and get ‘er done? You definitely won’t get caught in any loops or create any unhealthy brain patterns…?

My Texan co-worker, Colin, regularly reminds our team “don’t make boulders out of pebbles.” I feel like social media marketing is overly susceptible to this phenomenon. We worry about whether we sent the post out at the right time for optimal engagement. We worry about going a day or two without new content. We worry about screenshotting every single story for later reporting (does anyone really read those reports, anyway? Please report back if so).?

When, in the end, does it really matter? Social media algorithms change constantly. If one post fizzles, just try another one on another day, or even try re-posting it another time. Did that one random post outperform our expectations because we planned it perfectly, or did it outperform by chance???

Back to my Saturday in May dilemma. For context, we were a small, scrappy team with a minimal budget. We wanted to post something a bit against the grain for Mother’s Day, so our CEO wanted to make sure he had eyes on it. We ended up getting the post out the door, but it was an incredibly stressful waiting period. Even though we eventually sent the post out, my weekend was shot and my stress levels were at an all-time high. It was at that moment that I realized, in a total “hit you in the face all at once” epiphany, that social media was impacting many areas of my life in a very unhealthy way. But, what could I do about it? I was good at this, and my day job needed me to do it. Right?

In the end, I transitioned into a leadership role at my current job at BibleProject, and have since been able to distance myself a little from the day-to-day rush of social media. That one change has had an extraordinary, positive impact on my mental health and personal relationships.

However—thank to many of my amazing teammates, I've learned some healthy ways to approach social media work. Something we’ve been talking a lot about as a team is the importance of rest. For example, there is a biblical principle of letting fields fallow (fields being taken out of crop rotation) for a year or more after so many years of production, so they can produce healthily in years to come. How are you approaching your day-to-day work as a marathon, not a sprint? Are you taking ample breaks away from work? Do you have your work social media constantly present on your personal phone??

I don’t have all the answers, but here are some helpful directives my team follows to maintain a healthy relationship with our always-on social platforms:

1. We do not post every day. We have a rule that we don’t post on Sundays, and we haven’t experienced any negative results.
2. We don’t reply to messages or comments on the weekends—we have an auto-responder set up to help set expectations for wait times.?
3. While we love to surprise and delight people who share our content or engage with us, we don’t reply to every comment or direct message. We try to point people toward our email inbox, as it’s time-consuming to craft thoughtful replies with just your thumbs.
4. We give our social media coordinator breaks often, and always cover for her when she is on PTO. We cross-train other team members on social media management for this reason.
5. We make the implicit explicit by setting clear expectations for team members managing social.
6. As a marketer, I have found building boundaries and rhythms with social media is critical to my professional success and personal well-being. Without intentional guardrails and time-blocking, we can all easily get sucked into the endless scroll cycles of social media.
7. While we text often, we try to save work chat for Slack only, and we don’t ping each other for work things on weekends unless it's truly urgent. We also clearly define what urgent means, as it can mean different things for different people depending on their inherent biases.
8. We regularly cut waste and don’t try to be everything for everyone by being present on every platform. We recently noticed that 90% of our Twitter posts garnered little engagement, so we decided to only post on Twitter for major launches or announcements. We optimize for two or three highly engaged channels and focus our energy there.
9. We have honest conversations about how social media is affecting us.

So, do you have any tips on creating a healthy relationship with social media marketing? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.?

Stay tuned for part two of this social media marketing blog series, where I’ll share more about the controversial topic of why I don’t think marketers need to maintain a personal social media presence. (!!)