Overcoming Social Anxiety for Business

The Fear of Posting (FOP) on social media can be a source of anxiety for businesses. Business owners aren’t sure what type of content to post, how to source and create that content, or how to ensure it ladders up to their business objectives. More than 50% of their consumers are active on social media every day. The average person has five social media accounts and spends around 1 hour and 40 minutes daily browsing these networks. Content creation for a business is very different to content creation for a personal newsfeed. Struggles with social media content include;

lack of time and resources, too many social media accounts
not knowing where best to position your brand
confusion about the best times to post
what to post and whether to use paid advertising
how much personal content to share
how to engage customers.

Business owners have FOP when they aren’t clear on what type of content to post.

What type of content should I post on social media?

It’s not about you.

The content you create for your social media channels is not the same content that you – as the business owner – would share on your personal newsfeed, or engage with. You’re not short on ideas, but how do you know that the content you create will resonate with the people you want it to?

Ensure you know who your ideal customer is. Get really clear on who those people are, what type of coffee they drink, where they go for news, and how you might get in front of them with helpful content. Write all this information down and then assign a name to this individual. Once you have given them a name, for example e-commerce Eddy, then you aren’t creating content for yourself, you’re creating content for Eddy. Create content that will make Eddy laugh, cry and want to watch that meme just one more time. When considering your ideal client, consider their behaviours, interests and demographics – this is going to be the key to your success in creating content for them. All the content decisions you make are for Eddy and no longer about you.

How to create content for social media

The next step is to create an editorial calendar for your business with your ideal client in mind. An editorial calendar is used by bloggers, publishers, businesses, and groups to control publication of content across different media. For example; newspapers, magazines, blogs, email newsletters, and social media outlets. Strategically, look at your events or promotions and how long in advance you need to promote them. You may need videos or images created for these promotions or campaigns.

Then start plotting any important events, dates, promotions, holidays, campaigns, and seasonal activities where appropriate. Overlay any promotions or special deals you might want to include in correlation with those existing events and activities.

Once you have the editorial calendar planned out, the next step is to create a content bank or a bank of posts. A content bank is a bank of posts which contains all your messaging for social media. You will have several columns that include date, message, image/video, link, on which platforms it should be posted and any tagging information. Create sample posts to support the events and promotions in your editorial calendar. Only 20% of your messages should be salesy in nature, so think about the other types of content you can use to support your goals. You might need third party posts, images, videos or even infographics to help tell your story.

By planning your editorial calendar and content bank in advance, you will have a better sense of what is coming up and hopefully the panic about social media subsides! We’ve given our friends (that’s you!) a free content bank here.

Visiobibliophobia

This blog post is not about users with Visiobibliophobia. Visiobibliophobia is an anxiety disorder that was first described by neuroscientist Justin Moretto. The disease was first outlined in an attempt to properly describe a growing fear of the popular social networking site Facebook but includes social anxiety no matter where you are posting on social media. Those with Visiobibliophobia generally have two treatment options; the first being deletion of social media accounts. For some subjects this treatment completely alleviates all anxiety, but for others it leads to fear of missing out (FOMO).

There is a significant hormonal release from engaging with social media. It seems the brain can’t tell the difference between ‘real’ social interaction like kissing, hugging, talking to someone we love, or social interaction via social media. Apparently, Tweeting, Face-booking and other forms of social interaction conducted across cyberspace reduce stress hormones and increase oxytocin levels, something which is known as the ‘cuddle’ hormone.

All too often, social media is reducing face-to-face social connectedness and increasing feelings of perceived social isolation or being an outsider who is unworthy of love and belonging. In other words, chatting with your pal on Facebook is not going to boost your oxytocin levels the same way chatting with them face to face would. That’s why it’s important to not let your online relationships replace your real-time ones.

Idealized representation

People only post the moments which are their best self, their highlight moments, moments when their kids are all looking at the camera (even if it took 45 minutes of crying from three toddlers to get the photo). Not many people post of when they stubbed their toe, lost their job or burned their toast. If you rely on social media to seek an understanding of what their life might be like – you are getting a one sided perspective.
Exposure to highly idealized representations of peers’ lives on social media sites may elicit feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others lead happier and more successful lives.

Create content to meet business goals

Once you know what your business goals are, you can create content to meet them. This requires planning. Any athlete will tell you that they didn’t get to the top of the podium without a well thought out and strategic plan: business is no different. FOP can be eliminated by creating content that you know is tied to business goals. By creating a plan you can align all components of the social media marketing mix into a compelling, strategic plan that ladders up to your business goals. Aligning your business goals with your social media efforts will help deliver return on investment.

By understanding your business goals, you can tailor your social media focus to match those goals. You can achieve key business objectives like increasing website traffic, creating consistent and quality content, building brand awareness and lead generation.

The content you want to create is easier than you think.

You can find free stock photos from our favourite sites like Unsplash and Gratisography. You can create great videos with Promo and photo collections with. The number of apps you can play with are endless, these are just some of our faves. If you don’t have a designer as part of your team, we like Canva for simple edits.

If content has you stuck, look to bored panda or Stumble Upon to help get you started. The Canmore Marketing Hub also can provide a quick, in-depth content bank on any topic, keyword or key phrase.

Business owners have a lot on their minds and social media anxiety and fear of posting is one issue that can easily be solved. FOP can be eliminated by creating content in the form of videos, images or words for your ideal customer, by creating that content in advance, and by creating posts which reflect your business.