Sustainable Social Media Strategy for Entrepreneurs with Chronic Illness

If you spend any time on Instagram or TikTok listening to the tips of social media gurus, you’ll hear things like “This is the number one way to go viral,” or “Do these three things every day to gain followers.” These tips can often feel overwhelming…so is that the only way to make social media worthwhile for your business? 

It’s so easy to feel like you have to be an expert at social media or you have to be posting every single day. That begins a cycle of setting unrealistic expectations for how you’ll use social media and how often you’ll show up, going full force at it for a period of time, then burning yourself out because it’s just not a sustainable approach.

Redefining Success: Quality Over Quantity

We’re busy women balancing our careers with chronic conditions, and our time is precious, so we have to make decisions every day about where our time will be best spent. Social media is one of many hats we have to wear, and it doesn’t have to become a full-time job in order for it to be a viable business tool.

Remember, not everyone needs to go viral or gain millions of followers. You’re a business owner after all, not trying to be an influencer. You can have a following that grows slowly and sustainably, and still have it make an impact on your business. If you’re focused on truly connecting with your audience and creating content that really resonates with them, then you will see an impact.

The Power of Consistent Content Planning

In a perfect world, maybe we would all post high-quality content every day, but that’s just not realistic. My advice for Chronic Bosses  DIYing their social media is to focus on a content plan that enables you to be consistent without burning you out,because that will make a difference.

So how can you create a consistent content plan? Here are my top tips:

Consider Your Skills & Preferences

You can look to best practices like the ideal length for a TikTok video or what content performs best on Instagram to inform your content plan and encourage you to experiment with different styles of content, but  that’s not all you should consider.

Think about what you enjoy about social media as a consumer:

• Do you spend all day on TikTok?
• Are you more likely to engage on LinkedIn? 
• Do you like long-form talking videos, or do you prefer short trends that make you laugh? 

Spend some time taking stock of your personal preferences when it comes to social media content – that’s where you should lean in. 

You can also take stock of your skills. Does speaking on camera terrify you? Maybe it’s not worth making that your primary focus. There is something to be said for pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, but that can also cause you to stall, waste time, and ultimately not follow through with your plan. On the other hand, if you love creating graphics in Canva, then creating those for social media will probably come pretty naturally to you and make the process enjoyable.

Lean into content that you actually enjoy and know how to create, and find a way to apply that to your niche. With this approach, you’re much more likely to be consistent with it for the long term. Over time, you might want to learn a new skill or push yourself outside of your comfort zone, but that can be experimental rather than the majority of your content plan.

Remember: your job is to run your business. You’re not a social media manager, so content creation needs to be something you actually enjoy doing. Otherwise, you’ll probably get burnt out and eventually give up on it.

Create a Realistic Post Schedule

Once you’ve decided what kind of content you’re going to create, you can think about how often you’re going to create it. Again, this is where we want to think about consistency. 

It’s really easy to say, “I’m going to post one post every single day of the week,” but you might find yourself struggling to maintain it over time. Instead, start by considering how much time per day, per week, or even per month you’re going to spend on social media, and this should inform how many posts you’re going to create. Rather than overcommitting yourself, come up with a realistic post schedule you can stick with, whether that’s one post a week or five.

You want to avoid burning yourself out and losing momentum. Focus on creating a realistic number of quality posts, rather than just trying to show up as much as possible..

Plan Your Content In Batches

Next, create a plan for how you’re going to go about making content and where this will fit into your schedule. Creating content involves three steps that can each be done in batches. Batching content is a gift for women living with chronic conditions because we can pull it together when we are feeling our best, and then schedule it out so we don’t have to stress about producing content when we are in a flare.

Step One: Brainstorm

I like to think about content month by month. Let’s say for example, you are going to post 12 times per month. Start by brainstorming a list of 12 ideas. Those ideas can come from anywhere! ! Here are some ideas to get the juices flowing:

• Check out the list of upcoming holidays and other events like “National Taco Day” and see if there is one you can connect back to your business
• Think  back to recent conversations you’ve had with clients and questions they have asked and answer those on your social media. If one client has a question, another probably has it too!
• Explore new research relevant to your work.
• Save posts you like when you’re browsing social media to help inspire your content planning process.

Once you’ve mapped out some ideas, outline the 12 post topics and match them to a content type (video, graphic, text etc). 

Step Two: Create

Next, create a plan for drafting the  posts. Will you dedicate one day a month to making all of the content? Will you work on it weekly?

Will you film videos on one day, then edit and write captions another day?

Create a plan that will work best with your body and the time you have available and block off the time on your calendar. 

Step Three: Schedule

The last thing you want to happen is to fall behind in posting the  content you worked so hard on. This is where scheduling comes in. You can use Meta Business Suite to schedule posts on Facebook and Instagram, and LinkedIn has its own scheduling tool right in the platform. If you’re using multiple social media platforms, I highly recommend using a third-party scheduling tool.

Tools like Metricool, Buffer, and Later allow you to schedule your content across all platforms in one place. There is no better feeling than looking at your content scheduler and seeing all of the posts planned out, because that means you can take a step back and focus on other parts of your business. Having your content done in batches also frees you up to spend more time engaging with your audience week to week, rather than constantly thinking about what to post.

Final Thoughts: Making Social Media Sustainable

As Chronic Bosses, we often have a lot on our plate at any given time. . Social media can be a wonderful tool for your business, but it’s not helping your business if it’s burning you out! That’s why I recommend taking this more sustainable approach to your social media content plan, helping you avoid the “Oops, I’ve ghosted my followers!” guilt.

Allow yourself to enjoy the process, because social media should be fun!

Author: Liz