BB Ep 81: Balancing Social Media in Business and in Life with Jasmine Star

Balancing Social Media in Business and in Life   1:20 Five Ways You Can Create a Healthy Balance with Social Media 18:51 Maximizing Social Media for Your Business With Jasmine Star 40:20 Challenge to Just Be You Resources Business Boutique Conference The Business Boutique Conference is coming back to Nashville Oct. 24–26. If you want to learn how to grow your business and chase your dream, you don’t want to miss this event. To save $10 on any Business Boutique Conference ticket, use the code BBWRIGHT. Business Boutique Academy Waitlist We are opening enrollment for the Business Boutique Academy on October 25! Text the code ACADEMYWAITLIST to 33444 to sign up for the Business Boutique Academy Waitlist and be notified the moment enrollment opens! 2020 Business Boutique Goal Planner  The NEW Business Boutique Goal Planner is almost here! join the waitlist today by texting BBPLANNER to 33444. If you have a success story you would like to share with the Business Boutique community, email me at [email protected]. New podcast episodes are available every other week. Let's be honest: Social media is hard to balance. Most of us have a love-hate relationship with it, right? We love to check Instagram and know what's going on. But then we hate ourselves for wanting to check it all the time. When we open Facebook multiple times a day, we feel guilty for not paying more attention to our kids or our work. So, we swing between two extremes: being on social media all the time or feeling like we can't be on it at all. That's why I think it’s so important to talk about how to balance social media. Because the truth is, social media in and of itself isn’t evil. It's all in how we use it. In fact, social media has a ton of great benefits: It allows you to stay connected with family and friends who live far away. It gives you a place to share exciting updates—from new babies to new homes. It's like having a giant virtual album of multiple years of your life. It allows you to connect with different groups of people who have similar passions. When it comes to your business, it’s free marketing! I want you to take advantage of these awesome benefits, but I still want to encourage you to build healthy boundaries around your screen time so it doesn’t consume your life. Here are Five Ways You Can Create a Healthy Balance with Social Media: 1. Know when not to use it. There are times to use social media, and there are times not to use social media. Some examples of times you shouldn’t use it are when you’re: Having dinner with your family On a date with your spouse Having lunch with a friend In the middle of any kind of conversation with another human being Related: Ep 70: How to Be Content in Every Situation  When you check social media while someone is trying to spend quality time with you, you communicate that they're not as important as whatever is happening on your phone. To avoid the temptation to even look down at your phone when you’re spending time with someone, put it out of sight completely. Before you take out your phone to check what everyone else is doing or to post what you’re doing, you can also ask yourself some important questions like: Is it more important that I know what everyone else is doing right now, or is it more important that I experience what I’m doing? Is it more important that the outside world knows what I'm doing right now, or is it more important that I experience it myself? I’m willing to bet, almost every single time, these questions are no-brainers. So put your phone down. Keep it in your purse or your pocket and be where your feet are. Be present in the moment. 2. Pick your balance. I can give you all the tips and tricks to balance social media, but at the end of the day, you have to decide the types of boundaries you need. You have to decide what time you're on and what time you're off, and what times you're responsive and what times you're unresponsive. I don't want to be the person who’s available 24/7, blasting out every single thing I do. But I also don't want to be a person who's not present on social media at all. We’re all different—that’s why we all have to figure out the balance that’s right for us. 3. Check yourself. This is simply accountability. It's easy to set goals and put up guard rails around what you want to do. You can have great intentions, but it’s so easy to fall back into bad habits. That’s why I love the screen time feature that’s available on most phones. You can get a report at the end of every week that lets you know how much time you spent on your phone over the past few days. It’s an eye-opener. Y'all, I dare you to check what your average screen time was this week. Does it fit within the boundaries you want to set? Check yourself and keep yourself accountable to the life you want to live. 4. Don’t mix business with personal. Normally, I talk about this in terms of your bank accounts: Don't mix your business finances with your personal finances. But you don't want to mix your social media usage either. Of course, you should post some personal stuff on your business page and some business stuff on your personal page. What I'm talking about here is getting on social media to post for your business and then two hours later, you're scrolling through cat memes and stalking your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. This is where we get sucked into the black hole of social media. If you go to social media to respond to direct messages or schedule a post for your business, do that and then get out before you waste a bunch of precious time. Related: Ep 62: How to Stay Focused and Eliminate Distractions in Your Business 5. Take breaks. It's always good to take periodic breaks from social media. Whether it's one day, one week or even one month—figure out what that frequency looks like for you. For me, I usually take breaks when I’m on vacation. If I go on vacation with my husband, I intentionally don't use my phone. I don't check social media or post updates. It's an amazing gift you give yourself (and others!) when you’re simply present. And it feels great when you’re free to disconnect and not stay up to date with the rest of the world. Your experience with social media doesn’t have to be this love-hate relationship anymore. Instead, take the pressure off yourself and find a healthy balance that’s right for you. Maximizing Social Media for Your Business With Jasmine Star I'm so excited about my guest today, Jasmine Star! Jasmine is a business strategist and photographer, and she helps entrepreneurs grow their impact through social media. I’ve been a fan of hers for a long time, and I'm so excited that she’ll be speaking at our Business Boutique Conference in October! On this episode, Jasmine and I talk about: Starting small and turning a hobby into a business Understanding the power of one follower Positioning your business as someone else’s solution Creating the right content for your target audience Getting long-term results on social media  Related: Ep 55: Making a Social Media Strategy That Works Challenge: Just Be You One of the things I think is really important in business and in life is to be yourself. I want everyone to intentionally make decisions in their life that make them feel more like themselves. I know this sounds crazy, but all day, every day, we tend to make decisions based on what other people think, what other people want, what other people say and what other people expect from us. Related: How to Be More Confident But here's the thing: What the world actually needs is for you to be you. The decisions you make in your life should make you feel like you’re being true to yourself—not what somebody else expects from you. Many of you know I have a baby girl on the way. And part of growing our family meant I needed a bigger car. I've been doing some car shopping the last few months and even posted about the journey on my Instagram story. I asked all of you what your favorite SUV was because I was overwhelmed by all the options. There are a million choices out there! Well, the key word in my question was SUV. I was 100% certain I wanted an SUV because I'm an SUV kind of girl. However, in addition to all the responses I got from those of you telling me about your favorite SUV, I got equally as many responses from people trying to convince me I needed a minivan. And that group made a great case. I mean, I was actually pretty impressed with the list of features you knew off the top of their heads. Minivans might be amazing, but here's the thing: They're not me. I think they're right for some people. But to me, minivans at their core are practical. They're easy to get in and out of. They come with vacuums and DVD players. They've got sliding doors and remotes to make them open. But I'm not a practical person. So selling me on your list of practical benefits will never work on me. I would never want to drive a vehicle that doesn't feel like me. The car I ended up getting is a mom SUV, because let's be honest, that's also me. That's the stage of life I’m in with three kids. But it's not just about the car, y'all—it's anything in life. The same is true when it comes to what your business should be, what your dreams should be and what your goals should be—they should be you. If you hate running, you shouldn't make running a 5K a goal. If you hate yoga, you shouldn't set out to go be a yoga master. If you hate business, risk, responsibility and unpredictability, you shouldn't build a business. It all comes down to knowing who you are and what's right for you, and then making decisions that are in line with those values. I don't know what your friends and family are telling you, but I want to give you a challenge and an encouragement: You have the right to be you. At the end of the day, we all need to make decisions in line with who we are—and we need to encourage each other to do so as well. That’s why your challenge today is to figure out what those things are. What are the things that make you you? Have the confidence to live your life in line with whatever makes you more like yourself.