Taking a Social Media Break While Podcasting – PCI 363

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Put the time and energy that you have been using for social media towards something more productive.

Speaker 1 00:00:07 When I took my latest break, I actually only looked at email twice over a 10 day period. And I was not on Facebook for 10 days. I may have roused some stuff, but I didn't actively engage anything. And it was truly, you know, it was like a truly a break.

Speaker 3 00:00:28 You are listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran, and McKenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcasting. With all the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting, welcome. Let's dive in.

Speaker 0 00:00:51 I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist here at Blueberry. And

Speaker 1 00:00:53 I'm Todd Cochrane, c e o, and founder of Blueberry.

Speaker 0 00:00:56 Today we're gonna talk about taking a break from social media while still maintaining your podcast. Todd, you've been doing this a long time and going back and forth with those. I know you have strong feelings on this sometimes. Yeah, I

Speaker 1 00:01:12 Do. But you know, um, sometimes we all just need to step away. You know, we need to step away from social media sometimes and it's hard 'cause it's right in the palm of our hands Right. At

Speaker 0 00:01:24 All times. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:01:25 And, you know, and, and I, I've had to really put myself in the penalty box a few times 'cause I feel myself getting, I get, how should we say it, over exuberant , too excited, too passionate, you know, and I just have to kinda like, I've, I remember writing a social post one time. It took me like 20 minutes. It was like this whole blast. I got the end. I'm like, eh, no. And I, you know, I felt better. I deleted everything. . Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:01:51 You got it, but you got it out for that, for that moment in time only for yourself actually.

Speaker 1 00:01:56 And I didn't post it, you know, so I, I think that we all just kinda get to that point where, where we need to need it, need a break. And, you know, when we go on vacation, it's a great time to really take that social media break if you can do it. You know, obviously you're in the restaurants or you're at someplace special and you know, you're pick taking pictures for Instagram or whatever it may be, but that's not necessarily for your show. It's just for you having fun. So that's okay. But for your podcast, I think it's sometimes it's, it's okay to take a bit of a break. And again, we're talking about social media, we're not talking about your podcast.

Speaker 0 00:02:31 Yes, yes. And, and a lot of the times people have their own social media as well as social for their actual show. You know, it, I feel like it's kind of 50 50 actually of people will have them separate. Some will just include it in what they already had. But we do have some points here of how you can manage this in a good way so that you're not, you know, losing what you've built up all of this time in just taking this break. So the first thing that we have on here is plan your break in advance.

Speaker 1 00:03:05 Yeah. I think it's important. And also decide how long you want your social media break to be is whether it's a week, month, well, I wouldn't do a month, but I've heard people taking a month break or a specified period. You know, having a clear timeframe will help you stay on track. And of course, notifying your audience.

Speaker 0 00:03:21 Yeah. Notify them, tell them what's going on. And then very important after that notification as well is pre-schedule social media posts, because that way you're still able to do something and still stay in their feeds, stay in their, you know, their heads, that type of stuff. Keep everything going, but you're not actually having to spend time in their day to day.

Speaker 1 00:03:42 Yeah. I think with all these great tools out there now, you may not even need to notify your audience. You're taking a break if you just kind of do the work in advance. If you're like, use Hootsuite or Buffer or one of those type of tools that allow you to schedule, you know, they, they, they just may think you are, you're but, but you won't respond to the post. It

Speaker 0 00:04:01 Really depends. Yeah. It, it's, you know, if you're not doing a ton of engagement before you take this break, then people won't notice. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:04:09 But oftentimes if they do post something and then you don't respond to something, then they may wonder. So it may be good to still notify that, Hey, I'm gonna be taking a little break, but we've got some stuff scheduled. You'll see some cool things, you know, to kind of make 'em excited and then I will respond in force when I get back. You know, that could be the, the strategy. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:04:29 Another part of it is, you know, you can take the social media break, you can still do your podcast, or if you wanna take a break from both at the same time, you just need to prepare ahead of time of I'm gonna batch record these, you know, do a couple extra to be released during said break. And then you can just schedule both of them. That is the beauty of technology nowadays, is that you can really be off doing whatever you want and people don't necessarily notice.

Speaker 1 00:04:57 That's right. And the blueberry tools support that. You can get everything ready. You can set the date and time that you want something released, and then when it hits, boom, it's online. Just as if you've never missed anything. I've got a friend that's getting ready to go on a six week European tour, part of it, photography. He's going on a couple of cruises and then in the end he is doing a 10 day run back from Italy or someplace, and he's coming all the way back to, uh, Florida. It's one of those, uh, mid-season transfers where they transfer the ships. So he's all worried about being offline for 10 days. I'm like, but just do the show in advance. Have it scheduled. It'll go up and you know, if you need some help with social media then, you know, delegate some of that. Ask your audience to help you out.

Speaker 0 00:05:40 That's a great way to do it as well, to ask your audience to just kind of keep them talking about it. You know, say, Hey, I'm gonna have this episode coming out on this day. I would love to hear what you have to say about it without you really having to be there in the trenches as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:05:58 And, you know, and then one thing that's easy, especially if you've got a, you know, you're building an audience. I've always asked who would like to help me with social media, who would like to help me with production? Who would like to help me with show notes? And it's amazing how many people that say, I got some extra time. And then you can delegate them access to an account. Of course you wanna vet them, make sure they're not gonna do anything crazy, but in tell the tone of voice you wanna be responded to. And I, I think you can, you know, you can do this and still get your break.

Speaker 0 00:06:27 Yeah. Actually I, that reminds me when I started working for you back in 2015, you know, you would have an example of something on your website and you'd say like, so-and-so did this. And I, for the first like six months, I felt like I was just hearing these people's names and I'd be like, oh, so-and-so does that part. So-and-so does that part. And I was like, wow, he's really cultivated a well-oiled machine here of people that he trusts that are just doing exactly what they should be doing. So delegating your social media is definitely an important part.

Speaker 1 00:07:00 And some of those tools also let you do auto responses even on blueberries page. I think when someone submits something, we'll send a, like, hey, we can't respond right now, but if this is a port thing, go to blueberry.com source port and or we'll get back with you as soon as we can. And you know, we're pretty quick on response, but where you can set up an automated response, I think it's good. Almost in any case, not all platforms let you do that, but those that do, you should have some sort of auto response.

Speaker 0 00:07:29 Yeah, I think everyone should probably use those a little bit more just for their sanity. . Uh, I know that I set them up for blueberry on some of our social channels that we were just getting questions that we shouldn't be dealing with in dms on various, uh, social media channels. And it's like, this could be better suited for a support ticket. And it's like we just put on the automated thing saying, if this is a question about this, please go here where all of our team will be available. That type of stuff can really clear your head and make sure that you're AO okay with everyone and that you're not just like blowing them off. Because a lot of the time, like people just get overwhelmed, especially if they have a much larger audience or follower group where they get dms that might actually be like very helpful and like a good connection or something that they wanna pursue, but it's just floating in like a sea of spam. And so that automated response could be like a better, more succinct way to get in contact with them.

Speaker 1 00:08:37 Yeah. And of course, you know, there's general strategies, you know, that you can really focus on too is is, you know, social media is this ongoing, I guess for better word, a drive? You know, it's like every, every so many mile markers you need to be putting something out, but you try to put out content that is, uh, more evergreen. You know, something that would be as people are, you know, flipping, flipping, flipping, flipping through your profile, they get stuff that's not so date centric. And it's, you know, obviously it's stuff happens at Christmas and Thanksgiving, there's gonna be those kinds of posts. But when you're on a normal, a normal progressive, a post on social media that evergreen content has, has lasting power and it actually might even raise your response rate up because those, most of those sites, if they see that the content's being looked at consecutively, then they, the logar will help drive more traffic to it. So yeah,

Speaker 0 00:09:32 It keeps that up there in people's feeds. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:09:34 The more, more evergreen of course. But we also gotta remember is hey, if you're out, your co-host might be available to do something too. So if you've got a co-host, that's a great way to turn over duties. Not, not all of us have a co-host like here, there's three of us. So yeah, but for my personal show, one of them, I've got a co-host, the other one I don't. And matter of fact, my co-hosts on one show he does most of the social media, so he took that over and I was like, whew, thank you.

Speaker 0 00:10:01 It makes it easier to break things up, you know, especially when we've done it in the past too with our social media where it was multiple people in different tones, different response times, you know, going back to the team, asking a question, getting an answer, someone else accidentally took over this messaging. Yeah. It can get messy . So, um, having someone a little more dedicated to it is good. They take that responsibility, you take something else. Yep.

Speaker 1 00:10:32 That point person that's there to, uh, take charge and carry out the, uh, social media posting of the day.

Speaker 0 00:10:39 . Yes. So next step is recharge and reflect. Basically use the time that you have actually set aside to step away. Well, you know, I think a lot of the time if people are gonna take a break like this, they get anxious about it and sometimes they'll like go back or just feel like they're sitting on their phone very tempted, those types of things. But our brains are, I don't really think they're meant to be on our phones this much they reflect on your podcasting goals. Like put the time and energy that you have been using for social media towards something more productive.

Speaker 1 00:11:20 When I took my latest break, I actually only looked at email twice over a 10 day period. And I was not on Facebook for 10 days. I may have aroused some stuff, but I didn't actively engage anything. And it was truly, you know, so I could truly a break and again, as much as I possibly could endure, I guess that's the best way to say. Um, now I paid the piper when I came back, but, you know, 2000 emails in my inbox and you know, a bunch of social stuff I need to respond to. But I think, you know, a lot of that was work related obviously. But I, I came back and, you know, I was kind of re-engaged and, you know, people could see that I was posting again and no one asked me where I had been. Uh, 'cause I typically don't announce my vacations too much from a privacy standpoint 'cause I I've gotten stalked in the past, so

Speaker 0 00:12:13 Let's avoid that.

Speaker 1 00:12:14 Yeah. So I kind of avoid that by not announcing where I'm gonna be. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:12:19 Actually that's just kind of a good point to make in general with all of our social postings is just keep your safety in mind. If you are at this place right now and your posting that you're there, as long as you feel okay with that, go ahead. But, you know, in Todd's situation of a stalker, people just, um, have more tabs on each other, like unknowingly or just of their own volition. Ki like you just, you know, people are just so willingly sharing this type of information that I feel like I know more about people's lives than I should.

Speaker 1 00:12:55 You know, I was just in Phoenix and uh, I had posted something about, I just loved the vibe of the city. I was there for, you know, essentially 48 hours and someone said, you're in, you're in Phoenix. And you didn't let me know. And I felt bad, but I had actually announced it on my show. I said, well listen to the podcast. You knew. So it wasn't one of those trips where I didn't hide where I was going, but someone was mad that I didn't announce on social that I was going. So, and it can work both ways too. And it was actually a long, I felt bad 'cause it was a fan that listened to the show for many, many years and I would've loved to have met for a cocktail. But, you know, it's just one of those things that I've got in the habit of not posting, you know, so much personal information on where I go. Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:13:37 The return gracefully in our show notes as well. When your break is over, announce that you have returned, you know, share some of those insights or some of the, like, just some of the fun things that you had or say like, I'm coming back with this like fresh new positive outlook. This is what I wanna do. That type of stuff. You know, a lot of the time if you're coming back, you have like work that you've done that you're happy to share. And this is, this is that time, you know, especially like people love hearing about new things . So this, this is the way to do it.

Speaker 1 00:14:10 And I, I think again, set your boundaries and, uh, manage your posting schedule to avoid feeling overwhelmed. And I think one thing's important too is, you know, there's been some recent news I'm kind of worried about, you know, what's gonna happen during the winter, whether or not, you know, we're gonna go into any type of, you know, restrictions or anything. But it's, so it's always important to prioritize your, your wellbeing. And again, taking a break just from social media alone while manage your podcast can be a positive step in, uh, in meaning that healthy work-life balance. 'cause we're not even talking about having to go to work, we're just talking. 'cause most of you are recording your show. And so have a, you know, regular j o b to go to or the ball and chain or whatever you wanna refer to it as. But, uh, , hopefully you don't have a ball and chain job. I, I, I had one literally before, but I wasn't, no, not literally, but close enough. But your audience will understand and appreciate your comments and, uh, your commitment and uh, and you'll be better for it and providing, uh, much quality, much higher quality content when you, uh, when you return.

Speaker 3 00:15:15 Thanks for joining us. Come back next week and in the meantime, head to podcast insider.com for more information to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. To check out our latest suite of services and learn how blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease. We couldn't afford the ease.