July 18, 2022
8 Ways to Stop Procrastination to Consistently Promote Your Business On Instagram
In marketing and promoting your business, you always need to stay top of mind. That means creating and posting relevant and valuable content regularly on social media to ensure your audience doesn’t forget about your business and the value you provide through your products or services.
Posting consistently and coming up with creative ideas that are relevant to your business and valuable to your target audience might be challenging. Sometimes it feels overwhelming to post content daily, weekly, and even monthly. When you encounter challenges, one of the first things you might turn to is procrastination.
Stop Procrastination
Procrastinating provides temporary relief as you tell yourself you’ll get it done tomorrow. But the relief doesn’t last long. Tomorrow comes, and you wake up knowing you need to get it done, but again feel pressured and overwhelmed — so you procrastinate again.
Procrastination then becomes an endless cycle of putting off the things you know you should be doing because you are too overwhelmed or scared to commit. This causes you to feel guilty, because you aren’t living up to the expectations you have of yourself.
When I started promoting my business Luxe Gather, a kids mobile spa bus, I was procrastinating because I was scared of putting myself out there. But I quickly realized that I had to be the number one advocate for my business, and it was my duty to inform others of the value that my business provided in helping parents create hassle-free birthday experiences their kids will remember.
Consistency matters
When it comes to creating and running a successful business, you must stop procrastinating and master the art of promoting your business on social media. You have to be consistent, strategic, and intentional about promoting your business if you want it to be successful. Here are eight strategies that helped me stop procrastination in its tracks.
Write it down
When you are launching a business, there are so many things you have to think about. From branding and marketing, to operations, to figuring out how to register an LLC, it can all feel overwhelming. So as you think about what you need to do for your business, grab a notebook and write down your to-do list. There is power in writing things down. This frees up your mind to focus on the most important tasks at hand.
Make a schedule
Posting two to three times per day on Instagram might not be realistic. Once per week might be more feasible for you, given your availability and bandwidth. Decide how often you would like to post on social media and assess your bandwidth to see if that posting cadence is realistic. Then create a schedule and stick to it.
Save ideas and inspiration
Coming up with content ideas can sometimes feel overwhelming. You might have a creative block when you try to map out a large batch of content in one go. One strategy I use to create social media content for my kids’ mobile spa bus and children’s book business is to save ideas and inspiration that I find as I’m scrolling on Instagram. Instagram has a feature where you can save posts for later within the app, but I prefer to create a note on my phone’s Notes App to keep all my social media ideas. I copy the URL to the post, and paste it into the document. It’s much easier to organize my thoughts and inspiration when I’m ready to create.
Batch and automate content creation
To save time and to be more organized and efficient, try to identify areas where you can batch, create, and automate your social media posts. You can use several existing tools to schedule your content to post to your social media platforms. One that I use regularly is Canva, which has a content scheduler that lets you schedule your posts. For me, it’s more convenient because Canva is where I usually create my social media graphics.
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Repurpose content
Where possible, try to repurpose your content across various social media platforms. For example, if you write a blog post, you can turn that blog into a YouTube video. You can then take snippets of your YouTube video to create smaller bite-sized pieces of content to use on your other social media channels.
Avoid distractions
When you’re working on creating content for your business, try to avoid distractions at all costs. As I often try to focus on creating content for my business, I get distracted by my phone. I will pick up my phone and start scrolling through social media, and before I know it, I have wasted an hour. Distractions are a thief of time. To avoid distractions, try using a timer or put your phone in another room.
Use templates
Templates are a helpful tool for creating and posting content on social media. Templates help you save time and energy, as they can be updated and reused easily during the content-creation process. You can buy social media templates online or create your own using Canva. Just make sure the templates match your branding and can be updated easily.
Create a habit
If you want to stop procrastination and see success, you have to be consistent. As with most things in life, this takes time and effort, and you must be patient and intentional. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results. Just keep trying and testing to see what’s working. Once you master consistency, you will feel rewarded. You’ll also feel a sense of relief, knowing you’re getting the things done you need to be successful.
Tiffany Trotter is an entrepreneur, author, and founder of BraveSelfStarter, a platform dedicated to helping self-starters to achieve success in business, career, and personal finance.