5 Tips for Work-Life Balance as a Social Media Manager
5 Tips for Work-Life Balance as a Social Media Manager
The simple truth of working in social media is that phones blur the line between work and personal life more significantly than you may realize. Our daily lives are tied so deeply with our phones that when we use them at work, they have a nasty tendency to intertwine. It’s nearly impossible to force our brains to recognize whether feel-good (or bad) chemicals are coming from notifications from work accounts or personal ones.
We’ve got a whole team of social media account managers that face the push-and-pull each and every day, and here are some of the things we’ve learned from them when it comes to finding work-life balance in the world of social media.
1. Set Boundaries
First things first, you’re going to need to set boundaries—not only at work and with your employer, but also at home and with yourself.
In the workplace, don’t feel obligated to work hours not specified in your contract or on weekends/ after hours where you already have plans. You should not miss a wedding to take Instagram stories of a work event. It’s OK to say no and to be clear with your company what your boundaries are. Some industries do require weekend and after-hours work, but do your best to speak up if all of your “free-time” is spent working.
When it comes to setting boundaries with yourself, establishing healthy social media habits with your personal life will inevitably bleed into your attitude with it at work. In practice, we mean following simple rules like not picking up your phone in the first 30 minutes of being awake (this might require you getting an old-school alarm) and before bed.
2. Use a Work Phone
If your company offers you a work phone, don’t hesitate to take it. Keeping all of your personal life as separate from your work life as much as humanly possible when it comes to something as huge as your technology is vital here.
If you can’t get a work phone, which is still pretty common practice in the world of social media (especially for smaller businesses), avoid using your phone as a work phone by not giving your personal number out. You can set up a Google voice number as a replacement and toggle it on or off when you arrive at/ leave work.
3. Keep Work at Work
This one sounds obvious, because peeking at work emails is common across industries and is an extension of a bigger issue: lots of people feel guilty when they don’t do work outside of work hours. We’re here to tell you that, if you don’t want to completely burn out at work, you’re going to have to push back on that attitude a bit.
We know it’s easier said than done, but in order to maintain work-life balance, you’re going to need to resist looking at your work accounts off the clock. The easiest way to do so is to turn off as many notifications as you can. Do you really need Twitter notifications on? Would someone waiting a couple hours for a DM or comment actually hurt? The answer is a resounding no.
We know this sounds impossible, but we promise you (probably) don’t actually need them in your day-to-day life. Give yourself and your attention span a break.
4. Schedule Wisely
We’ve all been in a downward spiral that began with looking for Reel trends, TikTok sounds, or influencer marketing inspo, and ended up being more wasted time than you’d like to admit. Everyone in this industry has been there and there’s no shame in it, it’s just part of the job. That’s why it’s so important to follow the basics of time management.
When you build social media-focused time directly into your schedule, it allows you to not only stay on track with your tasks at work, it also allows you to dive into work mode and get all of your off-platform tasks finished. That way, you can spend the amount of time you need to be on social—no less, and definitely no more.
5. Disconnect Completely
The farther you work through these points, the more apparent it becomes that maintaining healthy work-life balance is part of maintaining phone-life balance.
We live and breathe social media, but that doesn’t mean we think it’s healthy to have 10+ hours of screen time every single day. It’s important to find periods of time where we can disconnect completely from our phones—whether we’re stopping ourselves from picking up our phones at red lights to spending a few hours on the golf course with our phones tucked into our bags to leaving the phone in the car on a multi-day hike.
Life is about finding balance, and phone time is no different. So, no matter how you do it, make sure you give yourself the gift of time to be away from the constant attention grab of social media. You’ll thank yourself for it, and so will your boss when you show up to work with a happier, healthier relationship with the work you’re doing.