As many of my followers may have noticed, I’ve been posting to social media a lot more freely. Confession time. Posting to social media on my personal accounts has always been something that creates anxiety for me. Too often I allow myself to waste time over-thinking my posts always wanting them to be ‘perfect.’
During my last adventure to Central America I completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training, and in the process, I discovered a new method for engaging with my friends and followers on social media in a way that’s not time wasting, invasive or unencouraging. Today I’m going to share my new method with the blogosphere.
Step 1) Establish your mindset
Before you enter the realm of deciding where and how to post what you want to share, a good mindset is going to set you up for success in the long run. After all, you wouldn’t still be reading this post if you were looking for a one-and-done way for getting that next post out. Take a deep inhale, we’ll get through this at a steady pace.
Your life is exciting. You repeat the mantra “Om I Have Enough Ah-Om” and you believe it. The life of a yogi is that of service to others. Social media is a tool that exists in our generation for helping you be the best yogi you can be.
Now lay in Savasana, breathe deep, and let your proprioception meditate on that.
Step 2) Spend less time thinking about posting
Take a moment to ask yourself where your followers engage with you. Knowing where to post your stories first is the first step in overcoming social media anxiety.
As an influencer, you’ll want to be cautious about using disappearing story timelines on your social networks as your primary method of posting. It’s difficult to grow your influence when no one can see you have influence.
It’s important to have an idea of what networks you feel most comfortable posting to. You want to avoid thinking of all the different ways you can share what you want to share on different networks. Pick a network and get the first post out there. After that, if you want to share your post in a different format on another network go ahead and proceed to do that, just don’t get caught spinning your wheels worrying about which network to post on.
Now take a moment to check-in with yourself and how you best communicate. What makes you an effective communicator? How do you most enjoy communicating?
From a yogi’s perspective, what goes around comes around. To encourage more engagement on your stories you should engage with your friends and people you follow on their stories. Also, when people comment on your stories respond to them! Otherwise, you will slowly see engagement on your posts disappear.
Come back to your yogi mindset for sharing. Be of service to others, add value to the conversation, and simply put just be personable. If its adding value and gives your friends a peek inside what your life is like go ahead and post about it. Most often a short sentence of wisdom or a quote is all you need.
Step 3) Practice ‘Saucha’
Separate yourself from your posting, you are not the person portrayed there, it’s simply a tool that acts as a semi-permanent timeline of your thoughts.
Saucha is the practice of not cluttering up our day with busyness, craving shallow interactions and obtaining worldly junk. The ultimate form of this practice is striving to see the world and all those around us as sacred.
To practice Saucha on social media means you don’t have to post as frequently as you think you need to, or ought to. Changing your approach to how you use social media is the first step you need to take to create a healthier relationship most importantly with yourself, and second, with people you interact with digitally.
Your Turn
What helps you to be more social digitally? What advice would you give to others having troubles keeping up with their posting?
