52: From a Blank Calendar to Big Ideas: Beating Social Media Burnout

Staring at a blank content calendar?

In this episode of Practical Rebels, Veronique sits down with Savannah, HatchMark Studio’s own social media manager, to talk about what really causes burnout and how to get your creativity flowing again.

From leaning on your team for ideas to using AI the right way, they share practical tips that help brands come up with social media content ideas that actually connect.

Listen now on your favorite podcast platform. 🎧

Transcript

Welcome And Burnout Framing

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Practical Rebels. This is Verenik, and I am here today with Savannah, our social media manager, to chat about social media burnout and when you run out of ideas and how to keep your content fresh, when you are having to create a massive amount of content, and in Savannah's case, a massive amount of content for many clients. How you doing, Savannah? I'm doing good. Feeling good. Yeah, yeah. I feel like this is something that we talk about a lot here, just because when you are constantly kind of going through the turn of monthly content, it can get it can become challenging.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yeah, definitely. Sometimes it can feel like a factory and you're just trying to shove things out the door, but you know. We try to avoid that as much as possible.

Juggling Many Clients And Niches

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Yes, yes, yes. But you know. Exactly. All right. So, Savannah, do you want to talk a little like just a quick overview of like how do some of the I mean you work and manage with such a wide range of clients? What are a few of the accounts that you touch on the daily?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

I know it's funny. I was just talking about this with a friend last week and they were asked me what I do and what accounts I manage, if it's one, and I was like, no, it's multiple. And you know, is it one niche? No, it's multiple niches. And you know, we've worked with food trucks, we've worked in, you know, wedding catering, wedding bartending, the port. And now we're moving into some some other some other new niches. So I've got a wide variety.

Why Burnout Hits Single-Account Managers

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah, it's it's a little bit all over the place. And also, I think even just uh beyond Instagram and Facebook, we you know work with LinkedIn accounts for like thought leadership and more of the B2B corporate side. So it really does span a massive, a massive range, which can be even more challenging because you kind of feel like you have to know enough to be dangerous about a lot of things. Yes. So luckily we've got uh a few people on our team that help contribute to this, but yeah, it's a task that is always changing and always on. So one of the things that we just alluded to a few ago, but when you're managing like so many social accounts or managing, I just want to take a look at this honestly, too. From you know, I think most of the people that are listening are social media managers working on one account. So I know that's a bit of a different experience, but still that kind of always on to come up with content that's fresh across channels, that is relevant, that's up to date, staying up with trends, things like that. So when you are managing even just like one social media account every day, why do you think that creative burnout can set in so quickly?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

I feel like it's because social media is so fast. There's new trends every single second, and it's everything is everything is moving so fast. And it's not just trends as far as like trending dances go or trending audio goes, but even trending information. And it's kind of like you want to be on that same tidal wave as it's moving, but it can feel hard because sometimes you feel like as you're coming up with an idea to be on trend, the trend is dying. And it's like, okay, well, that's over. What's the next wave going to be?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Yeah. And like you said, just even beyond trends, like if you're working in something that is like we work with a medical publishing company, and just being aware of like what's going on in the market from a news perspective is you know, a whole other set of things. So depending on what your channel is, what content is like, you have to be like staying relevant all the time. What do you think makes coming up with the content ideas like harder than actually creating the post? Because that's what I've seen just from you know working alongside you and the team so long with this type of stuff. It's like once you have the idea in place, it all kind of flows. Like, even once you have a calendar in place, you seem to like start creating content and recording and spinning out reels, and they're incredible. But like it seems like, okay, what are we talking about next month? Like, what is the biggest challenge?

Ideas Are Harder Than Production

SPEAKER_00 4:11

I feel like the biggest challenge with that is wanting to be unique in a social space where everything is pretty much copy and paste on platforms and ideas. It can feel really hard wanting to be on trend, but then also be like a thought leader and come up with some unique content and trying to do that, you know, a month before. So you have everything planned out, but you also don't know what's going to be trending in a month or what social is going to look like in a month as it's changing literally hour by hour.

Anchor Content And Distribution Strategy

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah, or like even what content is relevant. And I think that's one of the reasons that when we're thinking about social and probably helps a bit on how we approach it, is I see this a lot when you and Logan specifically work together, where he is creating content that is not grounded in social, but distributed on social. So yeah, he'll create like a blog article that is a long form piece that is educational or informational. And that will then be broken down into like a real, a carousel post, a static post, whatever it is, but like a few pieces of social content. So it helps support that. So I think that's like a good way that if somebody is struggling with content, like thinking beyond just okay, how does this show up on social? But what is the bigger picture content that we can utilize on other channels and use social as a uh basically output for it?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah, definitely having your like foundational content is the way I like to think of it, like the content that's evergreen, never gonna go away, you know, always educating your audience based on what you are. And I feel like Logan does an amazing job at distributing that again, like over different channels.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Yeah. When you're coming up with ideas, and I know this is something that we, you know, we try to do as much as possible. Sometimes we get everybody gets busy and kind of in their own holes. But I find that talking through content strategy with somebody else where you have another person to bounce ideas off of and talk about like a bigger picture strategy that's beyond like, hey, what's this single post going to be about? It seems like ideas like flow much better that way because you're not in your own lane and just kind of with it stuck in your head.

Collaboration And Storyboarding Benefits

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah, I would definitely say that's that's exactly the case because sometimes you get to see ideas through someone else's mind, like the way that you analyze content ideas or you know, just anything that takes creative seeing it through someone else's creative mind helps kind of strategize a new approach about it, you know. Not to say that your first approach wasn't the correct way to go about it, but to see it in a different light, you can add something even more unique to the concept by just having a conversation or time to storyboard an idea.

Digital Detox To Spark Originality

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Yeah. One of the things too that just kind of popped to mind, and I think this applies to a lot of people that are listening. I think that how we collaborate internally, and of course, you know, we have meetings every month to talk to our clients about what's coming up, we need to be aware of what we need to share. And then we do our brainstorming internally as well. But if I am the social media manager or marketing manager at some business, that is my whole focus. Like, don't feel like you're stuck in a hole by yourself. Go to your team and say, hey, what's going on in the business? What news do we want to share? What's going on? Like, what have you heard that's interesting out in the market that we can create a piece of content that shows our perspective on it or our take on it, or even like when you're talking about trends, like go to your team and say, what are trends that you've seen out there that would be fun for our team to do? You know, just being able to call in the reinforcements and lean on other people for that support and those ideas as well, can be used by anybody, whether you're working in an agency or you're working, you know, independently as the marketing team of one, you know, in a group. Do you ever get, because I feel like I know I do, I have a tendency to top between projects very intentionally. And that's because I will, if I spend too much time working on one single thing, I will get stuck and I will get in a total like rut and run out of ideas. I think this is why I could like I never worked in-house before Hedgemark. I was always like at an agency because I need that almost like popping between things to keep my brain rolling.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

How do you stay out of like a rut if you feel stuck in one thing?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Here recently, I have been taking time off of my phone to see what I come up with myself. It can feel really hard when you're scrolling through some type of social platform and it's like the consistent comparison game. And it's like, oh, that's a really good idea. Like, why didn't I come up with that idea? Or wow, that's really creative. Like, how can we spend this to work for us? Which does save time and it definitely speeds up creative processes currently. You know, you see new campaigns for big brands way faster now, but taking time to kind of sit without all the social noise and coming up with an idea that feels organic to myself. And like the reason why you're obviously in that position is because you are creative. It helps me feel like I know what I'm doing, and it's not this like imposter syndrome of just kind of competing with everyone else online. And that helps me get out of like a creative rut because I get to be back in tune with my creativeness as long as you have time for it, you know, and you you set it set aside intentional time to like delve into that so that it comes out with intentional motives and not just like the copy and paste from someone else's ideas.

Beating The Algorithm For Fresh Inputs

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah, I think that's there's so much truth to that that we've become so used to having this insane amount of information and influence at our fingertips that we forget that before we even had that, like we weren't we were little kids, like drawing. We're probably not going to the internet to figure out how to draw this exact like you know, you use your own imagination, you come up with your own ideas, and like somehow you just lose that along the way. Um, when we were flying, um, we were on a Savannah, Liz and I were on a trip last week for a client, and the Wi-Fi and the plane like wasn't working. And I I spent three hours on that second flight working on a talk that I have coming up, and I made so much progress not connected to the internet and had like several breakthroughs on just the flow because I wasn't distracted by like trying to research things or whatever, just like being completely disconnected. And I had like forgotten almost like that. That's an option, you know? We get so tied to our little and our big screens.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Well, even like uh what was it a week ago? We were coming up with copy for a new client and they wanted to see another round of copy, and the whole first round of copy was kind of like taken from inspiration from other accounts that are in that same niche, you know, using AI to help write some of the stuff. And I literally took like an hour without even looking at my phone and just started typing in a Google spreadsheet just to see what I could come up on my own, which felt really slow and it in a way kind of felt like I was wasting time. But I feel like once I finished that document and read the captions, I was way more proud of the outcome of them because they felt more unique to me instead of feeling like I needed to compare to like another brand that has like a cooler voice than I do or something.

Using AI As A Concept And Mood Tool

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Exactly. And I think that's one of the things too that we could even take more from how we like when we develop brand copy, you know, we're kind of sitting in a room throwing out ideas, and 75% of them are not great for headlines, and that 20-25% might stick for the first draft, then call from there. But like just putting yourself in it, and it can be, it doesn't even have to be by yourself, putting yourself like turning off the screen, turning off the search bar, turning off whatever tools you're using to create that copy, and just sit by yourself or with some coworkers or colleagues in a room and just like throw some ideas around and see what silly fun stuff or interesting stuff or different perspectives you come up with for captions, for content ideas, whatever it is. Just like it is an oddly new way of doing things, even if it's like the oldest way of doing it. I know it feels backwards. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. How do you battle like going back to like when you're kind of looking for inspiration or if you are doing, say, kind of research on how you know a certain industry kind of approaches content or getting, you know, when you're in kind of that research phase where you are looking for in inspiration, how do you fight like the algorithm? Like, how do you change what you see on your feed to go beyond just like what it's used to you searching for?

Listen To Your Audience And Competitors

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Yeah, it works differently on different platforms. So, you know, I'm logged into 10 accounts on Instagram, all different niches. And sometimes you see trends that cross-pollinate between each different account. But a lot of times when I'm in, like, oh my gosh, I just need a new idea for this one specific client, I'll log into another's because their feed is completely different, and I'll be able to see kind of what's happening in this ecosystem over here. You know, they have a whole different algorithm, whole different community, the way that people engage with each other. So it's nice to kind of switch it up to see what's happening. And like, I like to think of it as like, you know, another office. You're walking into another office, it's a different team, but you know, they have different things going on. So kind of introduce yourself to see new ideas on there. As far as TikTok goes, like the algorithm changes so fast. I can start liking like three of the same type of content, and then that content will start populating, and it will take about like a week for my algorithm to go back to normal. But um, you know, if I'm researching a certain industry in TikTok, I'll start getting like populated stuff to that. So that can help me with kind of experiencing different feeds just so I can see what's happening in other areas. Pinterest is also a great way of kind of going from another platform instead of just Instagram or TikTok, but to also find other ideas to switch up, switch up your feed a little bit so it's not stagnant and find some more creative ways to go about creating your content.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Yeah, that's so funny because I free I feel like Pinterest is one of like the oldest ones out there. I forget about it until I don't. And then there's some really great high quality stuff and inspiration. And it also feels a little bit more like I don't know, like a high quality because I feel like people are creating like longer form articles or creating compilations of articles and things like that, at least.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

I really like Pinterest. I'm an avid Pinterest user. Like since it's probably one of the longest apps I've had. I love Pinterest, and I've created a separate one specifically just for work. But anytime I go in Pinterest and I search an industry or keyword, it'll take me to new brands I've never heard of. Those small brands out there you've never seen, and they might be doing something really well. Versus, you know, on bigger platforms, you see those big brands, and it's hard to find the niche, the niche ones. And you know, you're just getting populated the same thing. So you're kind of able to find new content and like a whole new world. Like when I find a brand on Pinterest, it's like unlocking a door and walking in and just like, oh, because you've just found this like holy grail of like new ideas, new content, new inspiration.

Real-Time Moments And Brand Community

When You’re Stuck: Outside Perspectives

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, 100%. And what you just said about TikTok, I never even thought about it to use it as like a content caller. Just, I mean, obviously, this is what you're doing every day, but I noticed that when I start going down like a rabbit hole on TikTok, it will change. I mean, within 30 minutes, like your algorithm is completely changed. And I'm frustrated that by that because I'm using TikTok for like my personal stuff and interest. I'm like, oh, I went down this weird rabbit hole. I don't want to just hear about, I don't know, whatever random thing, you know, for the next week. But that is such a fantastic way to kind of like force shift it for the purpose of doing digging on something like intentionally going in, liking stuff to start putting you down that little path because it will correct itself eventually. But yeah, that's a really cool approach to it. I never thought about that. So you talked a little bit about like your experience with leaning into like AI if you're trying to develop some content or new ideas versus, you know, you're getting such better content and ideas if you are just closing the laptop and kind of free writing and doing it yourself. What have you found to be the balance there? Because like I find that that ends up turning into a lot of really generic stuff, unless you have it like hyper-chained on the brand, your brand voice, all that sort of stuff. Like, what is the way you've used it to help your workflow versus kind of just developing stuff that sounds generic?

Q&A Invite And Closing

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Mm-hmm. So, one way I've used it to help is like the first way, reverting back to the topic of copy. Like, if I write something and let's say, like, oh, I want it to sound more like an older brother, or I want it to sound more like a coach, or you know, your best friend texting you, I can take the same piece of copy I wrote and generate it through there and kind of ask it to give me a few different examples based on that tone of voice. But it still is, you know, can populate some of the same stuff. There will be times where I'll be generating things and it's the same thing over and over again, super basic, super dull. And it's like, oh, give me that spark. And then those are the moments where I'm like, okay, let me take some time to myself to see if I can figure it out. But as far as like social content goes, it has helped me a lot with kind of imagining what I'm gonna do before I do it. So, for example, we did a content shoot a week ago, but prior to the shoot, I had come up with the concept that I wanted it to look like so that we could get the approval before wasting, you know, an hour or so doing it for it to not get approved. So I was able to come up with the photo, have that generated in there and say, okay, yeah, this is this is what I want. This is like now that I know that it's gonna turn out this way, how do we make this happen?

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Yeah, that was, I think, the first time that I mean, we had a meeting, the kickoff meeting with the client. You had pulled up mood boards, and within the mood boards, instead of just having inspiration from other brands and just like, I want photos like this, I want content like this. You were actually able to like replace, like change the vibe, replace out the content. And, you know, he was like, Oh, yeah, that's great. So then we actually went and like sh used it to guide the photographer in their content shape. It was really cool.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

I feel like it helps a lot too for people who maybe, maybe this is the first time they've reached out to an agency or worked with something like this, and it can help them to imagine themselves in it. It's hard to see another brand that's not yours as the inspiration, and you're kind of like, okay, well, how will that work for me? So when I was able to replace, you know, subcans and images to look like theirs or you know, make it more a brand for them, then they could really imagine it and see what the outcome would be by the end of it.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Yeah, I think that's such a perfect use for how we can use those tools as like a helper to guide, as opposed to just like taking over creativity, which is, you know, I think everybody is kind of even between, you know, us obviously, but like people are definitely like pushing back against they don't want AI to be replacing, like you know, the human-made stuff. Exactly, exactly. So that's like the nice balance that's helpful. I want to talk a little bit about, and this is a strategy that we use when we're developing like a website, too. So what we tell people, uh the question I'm getting to is how can brands like listen to their audience to help develop their content ideas? So, like when we're working on a website, one of the big questions we ask is like, what do people ask you about your product or service all the time? Like, we start with the customer needs and then create content to answer those questions, blog posts. I mean, that's that's our podcast strategy, right? Like, what do people ask us about? And how can we create content that can help answer those questions? How does this fold into social? Like, how do you how do you pull out questions, things like that? Maybe like inbox, things like that that people are curious about.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

One way would be um looking at your like your comments, like you said, your DMs, your inbox, seeing what people are frequently commenting on your post. That helps a lot to kind of restructure your your content, even good or bad. You know, it could be delays and product shipping and people asking questions, making content around that and showing your like authentic, true someone's behind this account, you know, depending on whether or not it would benefit you. That's a great way of utilizing that. Another thing, too, I look at is I'll go to competitor accounts and I'll go into their comments because there might be some comments in there that can refer back to you that you're like, wait, I've never thought of, you know, answering this question before. People want to know. Let's talk about it, which could be anywhere from like the process or how it's made or where's this coming from. Because sometimes I feel like a lot of the times the social people think that it's just, oh, this is the product, buy it. And it's like people want a relationship with you. So finding what people would ask you if you were sitting at a coffee shop with them and putting that into content does wonders for engagement and building community.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Yeah, listen to your people, listen to, and I mean it's it's it's social listening, right? It's that whole idea. But it's um, I mean, there are obviously tools that you can utilize to do that as well. But even just like paying attention, engaging with your audience and competitors, like you said, one of the things that I've found, and it is a kind of a form of that, when we are doing brand research up front, I've gotten so into utilizing deep research in chat to say, hey, I want you to provide, you know, getting a report, getting customer sentiment, customer feedback for the brand or competitors' brands and guiding it very clearly to review sources, to social media comments, to being able to scan Google reviews or, you know, if they're sold at Target or Amazon or whatever, those reviews and to get an idea of how people are feeling about it, like what they love about it, what their concerns are. But using those to kind of do a first scan that can help guide like where you go next with it.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Another thing, too, which is something I don't think we've dealt with, but I've noticed on social media that I always admire is like recently, as an example, recently there was like a Billy Eilish concert, and this guy grabbed her when she was like walking by. And this one girl in the audience, like, she she like got on to them about it. And people online were calling her like red bandana girl, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Well, then, like, Ticketmaster and other brands started like seeing these videos and were commenting on them, like, oh, we've reached out to her, we're gonna get her another like con like ticket to go to this concert, we're gonna give her the stuff, whatever. But like utilizing that in a way of like seeing like how to build community, like, oh, we see this, how can we help? Outside of just posting, is such another unique way to take on using social media.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Yeah, it's basically like an amplifier for what's going on in the world and how can you take that and and utilize it? Very cool. All right. So if somebody is, I want to end on this. Like, if somebody is that's listening is completely like stuck right now, what is your first course of action if you are stuck, if you are burned out, if you're out of ideas, if you just need to like kind of have a reset on you know, ideas when you see no path forward. Like, what's your best advice?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Okay, a new tactic of mine. I have recently, like, if I'm hanging out with friends, or maybe I'm in a conversation at a bar or something, I'll just kind of casually bring up like whatever it is I've been kind of stuck in a rut because you'd be surprised the information you get from people who aren't in the industry or people who are not on social media all the time or whatever. It's really helped me see things from a different perspective outside of just like I said, like, you know, diving in on social media, doing research. Cause as social media managers and people who work in marketing, a lot of our job is research. And sometimes you can hit like that research wall where it's like, I am so researched out. I feel like I have all this information, I have no idea what to do with it. And just kind of talking to people and getting their input, or like, hey, like if you were to, you know, see this come across your like social media page, what would you think of it? Or like, what would you see, what would you like to see from a brand that deals with this? That's helped me. And I'll just like pull out my notes app and kind of like if anything's stuck, I'll just like write it down really quickly, just to kind of give myself another perspective of people who aren't in the industry, not to say like talk about work all the time, but just to throw some spaghetti out there and see what sticks has it's really changed my perspective on things to come into the office with some fresh ideas that don't feel like burned out ones from just so much research.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Yeah. And I think that's also one of the things that we forget is, and this is true with brand work too, or when we're working on stuff for our own brand, it's like the hardest thing because we're so close to it. We know too much. Like just having a fresh perspective from somebody who knows next to nothing about it or isn't dealing with every single day. I think that's one of the things that we were actually so pleasantly surprised about with. We started working probably, I don't know, four months ago or so on the Port of Pensacola account, which has it's so much fun. It is like we love it so much. But it was one of those where when it started, we were like, oh, we're gonna see how this goes. Because, like, you know, we think that we know the importance of this, having this as an asset to the city. We know the cool work that they do, but are people gonna be interested in it? And the amount of questions that they get on the page that it's like, oh, we know that because like we're pretty aware of like how a port functions now, like just that outside perspective, crowdsourced perspective is like one of the most valuable things. Yes, you know. So I think you can take that and just like apply it to, like you said, sitting around a table with friends and saying, Hey, what do you think of this? Or what do you find interesting about this, or what do you want to know about this, you know? And then buy them a drink in exchange.

unknown 27:17

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Awesome. Okay, I think this is all super helpful. Um, what you do is incredible. I think the amount of just content that Savannah um works on along with the rest of the team. I know you and Logan work very closely on that in tandem, but it's really impressive. So just getting a peek into your process is helpful. I hope that there um are people listening that get some get some ideas out of this to avoid burnout. Is there anything else you want to add, Savannah? I feel like that was it. But if you have any questions, you can comment on our account or DM us. There you go. Oh, yeah. If you have questions about social media, we can answer them all and then create more content from it. Great point. All right, thank you so much for joining us. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share it, drop a like, drop a follow. It really helps us get the podcast out there. And if you have any ideas for future ones that you want us to cover, um, drop us a note and we'll see if we can get that answered. All right, until next time, thank you so much, and see ya in the future. Bye.