Treat social media as alcochol

Social media for small business owners is a gift from above. Social media has enebled small business and I believe that without it – my business would not excist and many many other small businesses would not exist.

Social media is a tool for us to reach our customers, to talk about our business, to brand ourselves.

Social media is also a poison. Poison for our ability to concentrate, it rubs us of deep work, meainingful relationships. Quick dopamine – it’s addictive and dangerous. Avoid it at all costs!

My personal experience

I treat social media similar to alcohol. Very carefully. Too much and your productivity goes down the drain. Even more of it – and you are developing an addiction. This is no joke – be very careful with social media.

We always say that social media is very dangerous for kids, but it’s dangerous for us, adults, as well.

Many experts and podcasters are saying, “Don’t touch your phone in the first hour of the day. Don’t leave your phone in the bedroom.”
Imagine if an addiction therapist would say, “Don’t drink alcohol in the first hour of the day. And don’t have a glass of wine next to your bed in the bedroom”. Be more careful than that! Social media, especially now, with all the AI posts – it’s dangerous.

Measure your time spent on social media and become much more productive

At the beginning of this year, I started to check how much time I spend on social media. I can add a checkmark in my habit tracker if I have spent less than 30minutes a day. At the beginning, it was very difficult; I didn’t have many checkmarks.
I would go to my “screen time” app in the evening, and I was shocked, “but I only opened instagram a couple of times”. Yes, time flies. We are very bad self-absorbers. Check now – how much time have you spent today?

It motivated to be more strickt with myself. Now I don’t open the apps at all. Only to post some story, reshare my reels to stories. And then I check a little bit this and that. And sometimes when I’m waiting for something. Like, I’m sitting in the car while my wife run into a pharmacy. But almost no scrolling. And still – very close to 30min a day.

Whan I can say – now that I really almost never open the apps without a reason – I’m much calmer. It’s easier to concentrate. I can read a book without the urge to check my phone. I can write a longer text without distracting myself. I can plan better social media posts for my business…
Limiting social media has been enormous effect on my productivity. Try it!

Here are some examples how quitting social media has imroved my productivity:

no urge to check my phone while doing a long, focus intense tasks (writing);
I’m reading books again. And I can read for a long time (before I had to check instagram after every 10 minutes of reading);
I have much more time in the evening (before, evening time was wasted the most). Now I have started new productive habits – planning the next day, evaluating the day I just had, learning English, and reading books.

Use social media scheduling tools

Ok, but I need to post very frequently. Yes. We need to post, for our business. Use social media scheduling tools – post from your laptop.

Different gadgets should be assigned for different purposes. The laptop is for work. If social media is work, use your computer. Leave your phone for communication purposes.

Schedulling tools

There are a lot of those. I have tried 5 of them. Usually, while I already use it, I find one or another missing feature or limitation. Some of them are expensive. But know I have a tool that is really useful, and of course, I’ll share my experience here.

The Best social media schedulling tool for a small business (the one I ended up using).

I use Later.

I can connect social media channels (I have Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, Youtube shorts and X). You can also connect Theads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat).
There is very easy to understand, visual calendar
It’s easy to plan a post on multiple platforms at once, and you can adjust the post for every channel with ease.
You post directly to the platform, you don’t have to extra step through your phone.
If you uploud bigger video than 100mb (I always do, for some reason), the platform will scale it to meet the platform requirements.
Lots of easily understandable analytics. The analytics part here is awesome, very actionable insights.
Link in bio – right here in the platform.

How much does Later cost?

For small busineses the Growth plan will be most adequate – 37.50 $/month, or pay for a full year and get 3 months for free.

What I don’t like about Later?

There have been times when I get unexpected errors. For example, I got singed out of X, and it didn’t let me back in.

Why do I use Later?

I have tried 5-6 scheduling tools. With every one of them I, eventually run into some unexpected missing feature, that I found was important for me.

Some tools could not handle bigger videos. Some tools requared phone app, where you receive the notification and where you need to finish the post. Some tools were just weird, some complicated.

Later is easy to understand and does exactly what you expect. It just works.

So, how do you manage social media?

With never-ending anxiety? Or do you have a plan and scheduled posts?