Hi. This is Paul Zoliser. And welcome to the Entrepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request if you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app. It helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much.

Today. It's time for our monthly solo episode with yours truly, Paul Zellazer, the founder of the Awarepreneurs podcast. And our topic is Reclaiming Your Online Sanity a social media plan for Polarized Times. Now, recently, Twitter, now known as X, sent me a message that wanted me to post about it's my 15 year anniversary. I joined Twitter more than 15 years ago. Now, it's kind of hard to imagine, but I'm a bit of an old timer in this weird reality called social media. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because more and more of my clients are talking about issues of feeling social media overwhelm the connection between social media and their mental health and feeling like when they spend too much time on social media, it's not good for their well being. And we've certainly seen a lot of research.

For instance, some of the things that we've seen that very significant, organizations that I trust that are saying that here's a few data points. Number one, that when the overall number of hours that people spend more hours, they're on the top 25% or even top 10% of users in terms of hours spent per day on social media. The correlation between those robust users of social media and mental health challenges like depression and anxiety is way, way up. We also know that when people use more platforms, people who are regular users of seven for more social media platforms have more mental health issues than people who use two or less. We also notice, or the research tells us that when you use social media first thing in the morning and especially late at night, right before going to bed, that challenges with sleep and waking up more frequently. There's more and more research suggesting that and also more challenges with our mental health and our ability to focus. When we're frequently checking, like, let's say you're in the middle of a project or writing an email or you're working on a podcast episode, whoops stop? I got to stop that podcast episode because something interesting might be happening on social media. These kinds of behaviors are all correlated with more mental health challenges.

So today I want to explore with you, particularly right now as I'm recording this to go live on November 1 of 2023. There's some very poignant things happening in the world. It's beyond the scope of this particular podcast. But if you're listening, I think you know what I'm talking about. There is just a lot of charge and anxiety and uncertainty and that's translating into really intense, just snap conflicts happening on social media. My clients and colleagues and myself. Sometimes it's hard to know what to do with all that and how to make sense. So first of all, I just wanted to say you're not crazy.

This is a challenge. And the more that we use social media and the more sophisticated that it's become. The simple 140 character Twitter like being able to exchange ideas 15 years ago compared to the very complex and sophisticated algorithms of today's social media platforms, very, very different than the wide open. Like just everything that got posted on Twitter 15 years ago was available just in chronology of everybody you followed because we didn't have sophisticated algorithms. The more these algorithms happened, the more the world turns to social media for our news, the more charge we're seeing and the more conflict and polarization we're seeing on social platforms. So today I wanted to just say a you're not crazy and just start a conversation. This isn't the be all, end all. But I do have five tips I want to suggest that might help.

It's things that I try to practice myself as best I can. And it's something like I said, that I'm working with with clients more and more often that as they're making the connection between their own well being and how it can go down if they're not careful about social media or seeing negative consequences to their businesses. When there's an incident on social media where somebody comes after you with a lot of heat or says bad things about you or your business, in the modern marketplace of social media, how do we handle all that? And that there's some things we can do. If you know me listeners, I try to offer suggestions as well as just say hey, you're not crazy. This is a very significant thing, particularly for the kinds of people that listen to this podcast. We're dealing with hard nuanced, complex issues that oftentimes have decades or generations or even millennia of backstory and history and complications and trauma and conflict. So the kinds of issues that you listeners are working on are the kinds of issues that are most likely to have some sort of big conflict going on. Where social media? It's hard to hold those nuances, those complexities, those deep and spacious conversations that can really lead to the transformation that those of us who are doing impact work want.

They're oftentimes hard to happen when people come to social media in a distracted and oftentimes anxious or they have an agenda, right? You can imagine it's just not the best scenario to be unskillful. So these five tips that we're going to get into now, my goal is to again, I just wanted to acknowledge that it's a complex landscape and here are some things that for myself, after lots of research and lots of conversations. So these are things that I've been in dialogue for a long time and just wanted to share. Again, you're not crazy. And here are some tips that might be helpful. The first suggestion I have is to create morning and evening rituals without social media. Again, the research tells us when you wake up, and the first thing you do is grab your phone and start checking social platforms. That's not ideal.

And likewise, the last thing you're doing is looking at a screen, scrolling about what's gone on through the day. Not that we don't ever check, but right before bed, not so helpful. So my first suggestion is to create rituals again in the early morning when you first wake up, and at night when you're getting ready for bed. I've heard it called a bedtime wellness routine or a digital wellness routine. So a very simple one for me, for example, is when I first get up, sometimes I make a cup of tea, then I meditate, and then I exercise. And that can be a half hour combined ritual of those things. Sometimes it's more like an hour, an hour and 15 minutes. So I'm getting my day started with things that are recharging, my batteries, sort of getting me centered.

And when I do decide to check what's going on in the social platforms that I choose to partake in, I'm in a centered place. I'm ready for it. And I've had some centering practice time. I've started the day with well being and self care, and then I can go to social media and I have a different relationship with it. So again, tip number one is create morning and evening rituals that don't include social media and that allow you to kind of bookend your days with well being and care. The second suggestion I have for you is to prioritize social media platforms for your goals. Remember that data point that said that people who are on a very large number of social media platforms indiscriminately, like trying to be on them all, try to be everywhere. If you're a very large business and you have a big marketing team, or you can afford to hire it out to an agency with people who have expertise in all the different platforms, what you do on TikTok is very different than what you would do on LinkedIn to be successful.

For example, if you have a big team, okay, great, that's awesome. But if you don't have a big team, and most of my listeners don't, then be mindful and choose. Even though I started on Twitter in 2007 2008, I am not active on Twitter these days are now the platform known as Zach. I'm on LinkedIn. That's the primary social platform where the more experienced social entrepreneurs that have the most impact on my business, that I want to most stay in touch with, that are my ideal clients, spend the most time. It doesn't mean LinkedIn is the best place for you. The point is to know what that best place is and to prioritize it and not try to be everywhere. That leads to just a feeling of overwhelm.

And it's hard to be in a centered relationship when you're trying to be on seven or ten platforms. Now, I do have other accounts besides LinkedIn. I still post to my two, for instance, business profiles on Facebook and I'm on Instagram in a light, touch kind of way, because occasionally I get a message or there's some things I'm thinking about doing in the future where it might be helpful. So I'm slowly building up an Instagram account. But those are my secondary platforms, facebook and Instagram. I'm not on TikTok at all. I check Twitter maybe every two months, so you get a sense. LinkedIn is the primary place I have invested in staying up to date and what's happening and being an innovative there, building a robust network.

I have almost 10,000 connections on LinkedIn these days, so I've really worked hard to understand what works on LinkedIn and on other platforms, I don't even have an account. So you might think about which platforms fit your goal for most likely to move the needle on your goals and which ones are less important and which ones can you just say, you know what? Right now I don't need to invest in that platform? And by being intentional about where you invest your energy, you can reduce some of the stress and the load, and you can learn some of the norms. And who are the people who can have conversation with depth and compassion and ability to hold the complexities of some of the really hard situations that we as humans are facing on planet Earth right now. So I have three more tips for you. But before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing one or more important decisions in your impact business? And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living, but you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's going to cost you many thousands of dollars? You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support. Through Paulzelazer.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing one to three immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure so it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life.

You can find out more by clicking below. And thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. We are talking today about Reclaiming Your Online Sanity a social media plan for Polarized times. So we want to dive back into our tips. I have five tips for you. We had covered two of them before the break and now let's get into the second set of three tips. Tip number three is to develop a deep dive content channel.

For me, it's this podcast, for instance. So trying to have complex and multilayered and conversations about what's going on in Israel right now and the war on the Gaza Strip like that is a situation where there are thousands of years of history, an incredible amount of trauma, and people have really strong opinions. And as impact leaders, we oftentimes are invited and we feel like it's really important to go into complex terrain like that. But it's very different to go into it where you have time and space to unpack. And by definition, if you're doing an interview with somebody on a podcast or you have a YouTube channel where you're going to spend 20 minutes and really unpack something where you write a blog post and it's very thoughtful and you can say, well, here are some of the things that have happened in the past that maybe not everybody knows. Or maybe it's important to look at how a number of different things are intersecting to lead to where we are now. And given all of that history, here's what I'm suggesting. That's very different than trying to have that conversation where people know their attention is oftentimes not in a very deep and centered place when they're on a social channel on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter versus when they're listening to a podcast and they know that you take 30 minutes in your podcast episodes or whatever it is.

So the suggestion is to develop, if you already have one, lean into that and bring those challenging multilayered issues into your content channel. And then you let people know you use the social media channels to let them know that there's a new deep dive episode or blog post or whatever it is. But make sure you have that space. So if something gets heated or it's very current but it feels complex in a social media environment could easily be a place where people with very intense emotions get into conflict with each other, where you can hold the kind of space you can create the container that allows the kind of nuanced and multilayered conversation that you want to hold. And on your content channel where you build that history, you build that muscle, you attract those kinds of listeners or readers, you're likely to have a very different experience than somebody who's trying to talk about very polarizing topics directly in the social platforms where there isn't necessarily that same norm of listening and compassion and depth. So again, that third suggestion is develop a deep dive content channel and lean into that, and then use social media to disseminate it, to tag people, to let folks know you just had an incredible expert who's really thoughtful. About these issues on, but bring them into the context of the channel you've created rather than having it primarily the conversation on social media channels themselves. Number four is that it's an extension of number three.

So use your content channel and don't try to have that conversation for me, for instance, on LinkedIn. So don't try to lean in there as the place, as your knee jerk reaction. Wow, there's something going on that's really complicated and nuanced. Let me post about it on LinkedIn as my first response. Again, try to retrain yourself and say, oh, when I do that, there's more ways this could go in a direction that doesn't serve me, doesn't serve the audience I want to help. So the first part is bring it to your content channel. And the second part is try to steer away from bringing those conversations directly to social media platforms in most cases. And then the last one is to take social media breaks, to take fasts.

And this can be a little challenging for us as business owners. Sometimes there's this sense of like oh, especially when there's a lot happening that's relevant to the kind of work you do or the types of clients you serve, or your customers have a lot of energy around something. It feels like these days there's always something up, there's a lot of intensity and there were a lot of big topics that humans are trying to make sense of. And yet I would say it's as important or more important than ever to give ourselves permission to take a break. Your business isn't going to come crashing down because you took a 72 hours fast or you took a week off. It's just like taking vacations. It can be hard when you're a business owner and you're wanting your business to grow, to give yourself permission to fully unplug and to go do something with your family or loved ones, to go have that nature experience, to go do a retreat, whatever those restorative things that you do on vacation. Well, it's the same idea with social media.

I would suggest in these polarized times, it's more important than ever to give ourselves the space to, on a regular basis, take a break. And whether that's a real weekend from Friday night to Monday morning, you don't check social from a work lens, right? And maybe not at all to really let yourself have that experience at least some of the time to take a week off. Or if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know that I do nature experiences, trail runs, and there's times if I'm in the Gila National Forest, the largest block of wilderness in the Lower 48 here in New Mexico, an incredible place. There's large sections of the Gila where my phone doesn't even work if I wanted it to. And that's for a text, let alone getting on the internet. It's just very rural when I'm in that kind of wilderness I recharge and my well being, I come home and the people who love me like, oh my gosh, you look so relaxed, so happy. It's like your eyes are sparkly. It does something for me.

So that's an example. Sometimes for me, it's just like going into nature. And it's not the only reason I go to these wild places. I love the feeling of restoration and rejuvenation that I get when I go to these wild places. But it also is an example of one of the times where I take social media fasts or breaks. You don't have to go to the wildest block of national forest land in America or wherever you are in the world. It doesn't have to look like that for you. It could be a meditation retreat or just know, I'm with my kid, my family is together on holiday, and I'm going to turn my phone off and I'm not going to check it for a day or two days or five days, right? So create those breaks where you're intentionally unplugging engaging in life off of a screen with loved ones, with food, with spiritual practices, with wilderness.

Go build something. Go write something. Go remember who you are as a human who's not primarily in that moment listening to large crowds of other humans, but what's that inner voice? What's that creative project? What's that spiritual connection wanting from you? Now make sure you have those times on a regular basis. So again, those five tips are create morning and evening rituals without social media. Number two, prioritize social media platforms for your unique goals. Which ones are you going to lean into and which ones are you going to either do lightly or not at all? Number three, develop a deep dive content channel, whatever that is for. It could be your newsletter. I know some people say I bring the most care and attention to my newsletter and sign up for that if you really want to have my deep thinking on the topics that I'm really passionate about and trying to be of service around.

Number four, don't attempt to primarily deal with harsh topics on the social platforms themselves, at least most of the time. That's more likely to get into those kind of very reactive conversations where that polarization vortex kind of happens on your page or where you're sucked into something that feels like it's not serving you and could potentially be harmful to your goals. And number five, take social media breaks or fasts build them in and remember who you are when you're doing things you love or things that are rejuvenating your batteries that have nothing to do with social media. So those are a few tips. This is a complicated topic. I hope that's helpful for you and I'd love to hear from you. How are you doing with social media? How are you doing with these very challenging topics that we're dealing with as impact oriented leaders, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or send me an email through the entrepreneurs website. Got a contact page? How can I help you navigate these times? Thank you so much for listening.

Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world. Sam.