Why Social Media Management Sucks for Solopreneurs

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just want to throw in the towel (and possibly burn it too) when it comes to social media management for business.

• I know I need it for marketing and to nurture my audience and to grow as a business.
• I know that this is a part of being an online business owner.
• I know that I can find things on Canva to make things a little easier on the design front too.

That doesn’t negate the fact that it still doesn’t feel natural to me.

Let me take you back

When I was in undergrad for my teaching degree, many classes warned upcoming teachers about the hazards of social media.

We were instilled with a sense of fear about the consequences of one wrong post and even wearing something less than professional like a swimsuit at the beach on our Personal social media accounts. 

We were told that if anyone found our personal page, we would basically be pushed out of our career.

So when you start with that narrative and then build onto it being a natural introvert and a neurodivergent who already has an issue with consistent executive functioning…social media can get a little tough. 

I started my business at the end of 2019, in that blissful state of pre-pandemic optimism. I was still hesitant of social media both on my personal page and on the business side of things, but thought that I could figure it out with enough research.

Then, with everything going on in 2020, I decided that instead of jumping in, I would procrastinate on the thing that terrified me most.

It wouldn’t be until 2021 until I really started applying social media to my business. 

I started with Pinterest (aka a place I didn’t have to necessarily show my face) and once that was pretty set, I added on Instagram using faceless content and Canva templates as much as possible.

I added in a branding photoshoot so that I could have pictures my self-doubt wasn’t afraid to share and used those and other faceless content whenever I could. You may even see many of those throughout my content to this day (because repurposing is queen)

I then tried pulling information from all the gurus about how to make social media work for online business owners.

It was a start…

But I still kept getting stuck in the “I hate this” mindset. I didn’t mind the design elements, but I was so busy trying to make products and work with my 1:1 clients that I didn’t really have the energy for that type of creativity or time commitment. 

So I hired a Fiverr social media manager for cheap and hoped that her expertise would liven up my content and make it consistent. Spoil alert…it did not.

Because I had no systems in place for her to follow and ultimately I didn’t know what I wanted from my social media strategy, her efforts and inexperience were not helping me save time nor easing my stress. 

I found myself consistently having to look over her content and make adjustments for grammatical inaccuracies and design aesthetics that just didn’t fit the brand I ultimately wanted.

The Gurus Don’t Know

To learn more about what I needed to do in this foreign space, I spent way too much time listening to the big wigs across my own Instagram account. 

You know the ones: spouting conflicting and unsustainable advice about 10 posts each day and everything is passive and just do ___ to make millions in a day.

It took months for me to realize that the stress of their “advice” was making things worse for my consistency with social media.

I was so afraid of getting it wrong, feeding my self doubt and perfectionism that was already entrenched in my daily thoughts. 

So I stopped and I backtracked…hard.

I went back to basics to understand my brand, my audience, and did market research for my particular audience and what they would like to see. I asked questions and thought about my own intrinsic goals for why I started my business and what I wanted it to look like.

It definitely wasn’t this.

But asking what would work helped me move past those worries of throwing spaghetti at the wall and wondering what would stick.

In asking for help, from my audience and a new experienced social media manager, I was able to understand strategy for my brand and what unique systems I needed to move forward.

I may not be with her anymore (because needs change and I was able to make things easier for me to do on my own), but she taught me so much about what I needed in my marketing. 

Learn more about my time with her in this podcast episode (Ep 53).

What Does Success Look Like

The takeaway here is to understand that your way of doing social media is going to look different than other peoples. 

Lean into that uniqueness.

As a solopreneur, you get to decide what you need and what you want out of your business and how things work within your business.

I created functional systems for my social media (and everything else) to make marketing more manageable for me as a solopreneur. 

And on the first Tuesday of every month I take you behind the curtain to see how I am doing exactly that.

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