There are multiple social media platforms now available to keep us informed or distracted. Some of the more popular ones are Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube.
I will focus on Instagram for this article. I use this platform provided for business and pleasure.
The business focuses on the content I am putting out, people I am inspiring, leads that I am generating, connections that I am creating, and the impact that I am making. My sole goal here is to empower others through my work and give them the tools they need to succeed.
Personal use focuses on the content that I am consuming. The information that is inspiring me, educating me, engaging me to be better and know more, and the people I choose to influence my thoughts. My sole goal is to be inspired at a personal and business level to raise my game.
I have a personal creator account (@faraaz4real) and a business account (@aspiretoconnect)
These are the four things I have learned from my Instagram journey.
Who are you following?
Are they adding valuable information to your life?
Do you feel inspired and creative seeing their posts and IGTV?
Is the content they put out adding value to your life or distracting you?
Sex, food, and sleep are innate human needs, while education and growth are human desires towards betterment. The Instagram world has an abundance of all five elements mentioned above, so choosing how we design our information feed through the followers or hashtags we choose becomes challenging. The fine line of attraction vs distraction surfaces.
FOOD: Too much delicious food will make you hungry every time you scroll or it might just inspire you to cook something similar. I have reduced my food feeds to reduce my hunger distraction.
SLEEP: The holiday locations that inspire one to go there to relax, sleep, and connect to peacefulness. I have quite a lot of these and it has inspired a lot of my holidays so it feeds me more in creativity than a distraction.
SEX: Attraction comes in the form of personality and also the physical attributes of a person. There are a lot of beautiful sculpted personal trainers and models in the Insta-world. I had a lot of personal trainers on my feed and I was getting less creative workouts and more sexual distraction. Sexual thoughts occupy our minds regularly, so be careful of not creating your news feed as a stimulus.
EDUCATION & GROWTH: Instagram has opened up doors for us to have live access to so many inspirational sources, entrepreneurs, and people we look up to. Now we have a chance to see their IGTV and learn. There are so many insta-handles with beautiful motivation quotes, business strategies, lifestyle hacks, etc These are my favorite type of insta-handles to follow as it feeds my mind intellectually and spiritually.
Do an insta-audit of who you are following. See which ones in the categories above act as an inspiration and which one has become a distraction. Distraction means you logged onto to check your DM and 45 minutes later you are still there scrolling through someone making muffins while doing squats topless.
One of the great features of Instagram is the time limit. Every time I hit 65 minutes in a day, that is it. I stop using the app. It is important to set boundaries and respect them.
Another strategy that I have used to control the time element of my usage is setting periods of usage during the day. I have six ten minute windows throughout the day. The 5 minutes I have added to my daily limit is reserve time in case I need to do a marketing video or DM someone.
Having fixed usage times makes me consider business first, second pleasure in each of the ten min windows.
Creating Instagram posts can be time-consuming. Working directly on the platform can be very distracting and breaching the ten-minute window becomes a regular event.
So what I do is use websites like buffer.com, later.com, etc to schedule my posts. So set yourself time outside of Instagram to prepare your images, captions, videos, and then schedule it for the week or month ahead.
In this way, you are using Instagram for interaction on the posts afterward, DM’s, and IG stories when you go live. Automation saves you time and allows you to plan smarter.
The four strategies above have been fantastic in allowing me to manage my time, energy, and thoughts. Let me know what you think of it and how this audit has helped you.
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