Too Many Socials?

So this week I took a moment to step back and consider why I am feeling the feels of overwhelm AGAIN!

You see as someone who is very much a go getter kind of person I just always have my fingers in lots of pies. I have always been like this so that won’t ever change!

It’s in my DNA and I like it!

BUT there have been times in my younger years when I have hit that dreaded burnout, and on more than one occasion.

Back in my very stressful corporate life I was signed off for 12 weeks and it was the nail in the coffin for that career. 

I arrived back after 3 months and promptly handed in my notice on my exceptionally well paid job with great prospects.

I no longer wanted to live a life when I felt so out of control, so bloody overwhelmed and so ill!

The salary was not important, my quality of life was.

I won’t lie, I am a control freak and I felt like I was not in control and I wanted to take control back, so I did!

It wasn’t easy but it was the stepping stone and scary decision I needed to actually embark on my now 22 year career in health and wellness so now I look back and say thank you for the experience that shaped the next stage of my life!

I’d like to say that burnout never hit me again, but then I’d be lying.

It has reared it’s head a few times and every time I curse myself for not acknowledging the very obvious warning signs and doing something about it.

After I had my son 5 years ago I really and consciously made the decision to look for the warning signs and as a result of that to make better decisions and choices.

The fact is that I am a mum to 2 young children and I am running a few businesses and my charity in Uganda and there is only so much of me to go around.

I want my kids to look back on their childhood and see their mum around, working but also spending quality time with them and not laid up ill!

So what has that got to do with the title about socials?

Well this week I started to recognise ‘the signs’ and I made the decision to just step back from everything and see where the overwhelm was actually coming from.

It was from my socials.

We are often told that we need to be visible everywhere for our best chance of success and to be honest I don’t agree.

A couple of months back I had made the decision to switch off my social notifications (best thing ever!) so it wasn’t that.

It was that I just seemed to have SO MANY social accounts to manage and I felt like I was juggling content and dropping the ball!

In doing so I had retreated a bit and hadn’t been posting as much because I just felt well ‘overwhelmed’!

I have my own socials for Nikki CP, then I have the socials for our travel Life In A Can.

Then I launched Phenix Tees and Totes and had the socials for them too and at the end of the month my husband is launching his new business and I will be managing the socials for that too!

I also have my Chrysalis Uganda socials too!

I just had too many socials!

So I made a few key decisions this week:

• One was to drop the socials for Phenix Tees and Totes and to combine it with the Nikki CP socials. It is after all a branch of my Nikki CP brand and so it will now be combined onto that one. Whilst I’d love it to have it’s own social presence it’s just not possible right now. 

• I started to do more outsourcing! I am exploring the power of Pinterest at the moment so I started outsourcing my pin creation for Phenix Tees and Totes so that in the absence of it being on FB and Insta it will have a presence on Pinterest!

• I have also started outsourcing some of my blog work. I know how important blogging is for SEO but I just don’t have the bandwidth for multiple blogs on multiple sites so I have reached out for some help with some of my blogs so that I can release the pressure. 

• I have gone through my calender for the next 3 months and have made a few key changes in what work I will be prioritising and I have made the decision to delay some of my plans. 

• We as a family have made some key decisions on how we want the next few months to look like travel wise and this has been massively helpful too! 

• I am also going to make a conscious effort to do more repurposing of content too which is an area I have been pretty crap at and need to get better at!

This is not about scheduling, this is about volume and basically being spread too thin! Ultimately, quality posting and visibility on a couple of socials will always be way better than sporadic attempts to show up in loads of different places!

This is also about my sanity and quality of life.

Life is too short to be feeling shite and overwhelmed and it is in our hands to recognise the signs when things aren’t working and to take steps to change things.

So my point of this blog post?

If you are spreading yourself too thinly then take time to step back and look at how you can organise yourself a bit better.

Look at what are the priorities and focus on them.

Choose the socials that best support your business, your vision and your message and are where you will find the majority of your ideal clients.

The rest can wait.

The world won’t end without them.