We spend too much time on social media, even as entrepreneurs. Let's not waste anymore time on social media that doesn't benefit our business. I put this episode together just for you.

Here are 10 Social Media Habits that you can change or swap for the sake of your business.

Listen to the Episode below:

In this episode, you'll hear about:

Swap watching Facebook Videos to ELearning
Swap listening to music to listening to Podcast
Unfollow negative people on your Facebook
Start following inspirational business persons on Linkedin
Switch spending time on personal Facebook posts to engaging in Facebook Groups
Switch dependence on in-the-moment activities, to planned activities for your social media (FOMO)
Track your time spent on Facebook & Instagram to remind you that you have work happening outside of social media too
Quit skipping ads and learn from them
Switch sharing of personal rants to purposeful stories that inspires
Instead of waiting for things to happen, take the first step through DMs

You know there's something about social media that actually attracts you to get sucked into it for a very long period of time. So here I have:

10 social media habits that you can change for your business

1. Swap watching Facebook videos to e-learning

There are just some statistics that I pulled out recently by doing a quick Google search, and I found that an average user spends 41 minutes per day on Facebook. Forty-One!

That's almost an hour a day on Facebook! So much time is wasted right there that you can use for better things.

We also learn that every user spends only 0.9 minute learning throughout the year online. I got this data from Udemy's 2018 year in review. Don't you think that's shocking? You would think that online learning is something that people are willing to do, but it's not the case.

So why then is this happening?

A lot of online entrepreneurs do not realize the importance of online learning. When you are building a business online, you have to figure out how you're going to get and attract customers or clients online as well. And the best way to do that is to go through online learning.

There are a lot of courses available out there like digital marketing, video marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and even how to put yourself across as a strong personal brand. So these kinds of courses are very critical to help you maintain your presence and level of authority online. As Benjamin Franklin clearly puts it, "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

So swap watching those Facebook videos and concentrate that 41 minutes per day on e-learning instead.

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
— BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

2. Swap listening to music to listening to Podcast

A joint study was conducted noting that Americans spend 151 minutes i.e 2 hours, 31 minutes a day on music, which is fine by me. That's okay.

17% of the US population listen to podcast weekly. They spend an average of 6 hours and 37 minutes per week listening to podcasts. That's about one hour a day and only half the amount of time spent compared to music!

So if you're already tuning into Fempreneur Secrets you probably fall into the group of people that are listening to podcasts weekly. So yay for you and I'm so proud of you.

There's just one extra thing that you should do on top of your podcast listening. Like we normally do in our episodes is we'd love for you to implement what's being shared. Do exactly what you listened to and see how you can help yourself upgrade your skills far faster than you would have done in a normal classroom setting.

Implement what's being shared (on podcasts you listen to). It can help you upgrade your skills.

So we do that on Fempreneur Secrets Podcast or through the use of our fact sheets that are being thought intoThe Secret Vault. So I'm going to list down all of these things that I'm sharing today in a very comprehensive guide so that you can utilize it for your own growth. You can find it on The Secret Vault.

3. Unfollow negative people on your Facebook

We always have that friend on our Facebook feed that just cannot stop talking about the negative in their life. They are always complaining, comparing or just not being satisfied with what's going on in their life.

In fact, there's a study done on social media's impact on mental health and well-being. There's interesting issues mentioned there that are true too many social media users. And I'm going to put the link to that article in show notes so that you can get a grasp of what I'm actually referring to.

So basically, what you need to do is to free yourself from this negativity. You don't need that in your entrepreneurship journey. What do you have to do is to simply hit the unfollow button —don't unfriend them because sometimes these people are very important to our lives and they are important to our personal relationships.

So just unfollow them, so that they don't appear on your feed that often. Unfollow them — and then maybe if you really can't do it any more, then unfriend them.

You have to understand that their negativity will be the one that will be pulling your emotions down and you wouldn't want that when you are struggling for your entrepreneurship journey. The journey is already tough to begin with, and having such negativity in your life is not going to make things any easier for you.

So just unfollow the negative people in your Facebook, even if they are the ones that you love.

Your entrepreneurship journey has a bigger purpose and a bigger reason behind it. Whatever that reason is, I'm sure one of the reason is because you want a better life for your family. And if your family (usually extended ones) is the one causing the negativity, hey, it's time for you to actually just stop reading the negativity that they are posting. So that you can focus on making them proud and making them believe in you and the mission that you carry forward for running your business. So just unfollow them. Okay? Don't feel bad about it.

4. Start following inspirational businesspersons on LinkedIn.

There's a saying that if you want to have a balanced life separate work from home. I mean to say work from home life like you need to have a balance between working life and also your personal life. And I find that LinkedIn functions the same way.

LinkedIn is a work only social media platform. We don't have that kind of social media platform out there that only focuses on work except LinkedIn and that explains the 17 minutes average daily time spent per user.

You know you are spending so much time on other forms of social media because they are personal and content shared tend to be personal too — like cat videos. I mean seriously, who doesn't love watching cats playing like at the stairs or with socks. You know what I mean, right?

LinkedIn is used as a platform for connection and for you to engage with other inspirational businesspersons. Don't be alarmed if you find that a lot of these people are actually hanging out on LinkedIn and they are sharing very beautiful, insightful and very interesting content on their own LinkedIn profiles. And this is the kind of thing that you would want to continuously read on your LinkedIn feed as well.

So keep an inspiration of feed to continuously keep the entrepreneurial fire burning in you. And all it takes a for you to unfollow negative people that we mentioned earlier on Facebook and focus on following inspirational businesspersons on LinkedIn. Focus on LinkedIn because that's where the work is and you should be focusing there if you want to get some business. Okay?

LinkedIn is used as a platform for connection and for you to engage with other inspirational businesspersons.

5. Switch spending time on personal Facebook posts to engaging in Facebook groups.

When I learned about Facebook groups and its power, I was very surprised. There is a comprehensive guide by Adspresso is a subsidiary of Hootsuite that I will be sharing in the show notes that you can read further. This comprehensive guide has everything you need to know about creating Facebook groups and effectively being in a Facebook group.

Instead of engaging on just personal posts throughout the day, you can spend time engaging in groups instead. Be thankful and sincere when you are giving your tips, advice and even some sharing. When someone needs your help, help them out.

Keep being present because this is how you are going to get noticed in groups.

I spend a lot of my time on Facebook, not socializing but really focused on building engagements in Facebook groups. I am just building relationships that matter inside Facebook groups because those relationships has helped me so much in building Fempreneur Secrets and also helping me practice the things that I believe in. Helping people to believe in themselves as well as they are going through the entrepreneurial journey.

So, spend some time in Facebook groups that are targeted towards your niche. Stop spending too much time engaging personal Facebook post. I believe it will help you so much in your business — you wouldn't know it now because it takes a slightly longer time for you to see some traction in it — but it helps give you some credence and some authority, especially if your main focus is developing your personal brand online.

6. Switch dependence on "in the moment" activities to "planned" activities for your social media

I know, I know the fear of missing out (FOMO) is a real, a real, real, real problem and a real issue that everyone faces, especially in today's digital era. It tends to get you hooked on to do some of the things that you don't want to do, but you do it anyway. You do it now right there, right then.

Isn't it puzzling how you could just do that one thing because you have a fear of missing out but you can't do the things that actually benefits your business? Think about it.

Also, when you are doing planned activities, it saves you a lot of time, especially on social media. The biggest tip I can give you when you are planning activities for your social media is to have a social media content plan. Pan ahead of time. I've dropped some resources as well in the show notes so you can have an idea of what I mean by creating a social media content plan.

Now remember we mentioned earlier how the average user spends about 41 minutes per day on Facebook. Well, when your posts are scheduled, you can spend up to 60 minutes a week planning for the next two weeks. Crazy, right?

It means that instead of spending the time to post right there, right then in the moment, you can spend less time catching up and more time focusing on engagement instead.

What do I mean by engagement? I mean simply that you are communicating with your followers on the things that you've shared earlier. Like commenting on their post, giving them some mentions, linking them back to your website. These are the small and simple things that you can do in terms of engagement that can be done if you plan your activities properly.

So switch your dependence on in the moment activities because it's completely okay to be missing out some things and plan activities for your social media instead.

7. Track your time spent on Facebook and Instagram

Track your time spent on Facebook and Instagram to remind you that you have work that is happening outside of social media too. Like I mentioned earlier, the average time spent on Facebook is about 41 minutes per user and average time spent on Instagram, well, it's about the same.

So right now what do you need to do is to actually open up your Facebook and your Instagram accounts. I will put up a link on how you can do this as well.

So next what you need to do is to set a tracker for you to track time spend on Facebook and Instagram. And set a notification to inform you once you have hit that mark. And when you will hit that time, you've got to stop. Because then it means that you are spending too much time, way too much time on social media, and not enough time on actual work that helps you run your business

8. Quit skipping ads and learn from them

We have a lot of instances where we are watching YouTube videos and as I mentioned in point number one, which is you need to do some e-earning and sometimes e-learning takes place on YouTube as well.

With the pre-roll ads on YouTube, it is a very important for you to spend some time watching them. That'd give you some form of knowledge and creativity as to how you could potentially do your ads as well.

When you are dealing with online marketing, you need to learn from your competitors as well and you need to get inspired by other people's ads. Mind you, it's not easy to find inspiration ads are very private and they only appear in final view when you need to see it.

When you are dealing with online marketing, you need to learn from your competitors as well and you need to get inspired by other people's ads.

So spend some time looking at it and seeing if you are the right target audience. Then have a thought about whether or not the ad functions properly and also if the content that is being shared in those as least to the right action. Would you click on the button or whatever it is that they are trying to promote?

So if that is the case, learn from it and see how you can develop quality ads like theirs so that you can generate a higher ROI for your business through Facebook and Instagram ads and eventually through YouTube ads as well.

9. Switch sharing of personal rants to purposeful stories that inspires

Oh my God! I do not know how many times I actually have to share this.

A lot of the people that I know on Facebook, of course there's a high chance they are not running businesses. They tend to rant about their personal life, about the things that's happening at work, about the things that they don't like about their clicks or even their family and their friends. And I think we should just keep all this personnel rents in our minds and if we can't and we have to tell someone or we have to let it out, seriously just go back to the normal way of writing a journal will you? Because some things are just better to be kept private and the dirty laundry shouldn't be aired dry in public. Do you get what I mean?

So instead of showing personnel rants, think about purposefully sharing stories that inspires and creating content that motivates. So share stories that are meaningful to your potential clients or customers and share stories that motivates them to take action to get into your business. I mean, that's most important in when you are doing social media marketing for your business isn't it?

Share purposeful stories that inspires

So just remember that when you are sharing purposeful stories that inspires, you need to come from a place of heart and you just need to share sincerely.

You share sincerely for the betterment of your potential clients or your customers. They will feel you and they will feel your authenticity. They would trust you, they will like you. And that is very important in building long-term relationships. Start switching the sharing of personal rants to purposeful stories that inspires.

10. Instead of waiting for things to happen, take the first step through DMs

Last one, instead of waiting for things to happen, take the first step through DMs, private message, direct messages, or even Facebook Messenger. So we receive an average of four new leads a day to DMs without ads. We have a lower conversion rate of 4% through DM, but without the volume of leads that comes in it's hard to convert.

We're satisfied with that now because we run a service based business and that helps us get a good revenue. So imagine this, if you get the numbers that I get, let's say you get four leads a day. And if you were to multiply that by 30 you have 120 leads in a day. And if your conversion rate is let's say it's 5% it means that for every 100 leads that comes in five or convert into sale.

Let's say you are in the service based business and each offer that you have in your business costs $1,000 per client. So you have five clients that convert to sale and each of them spend $1,000. That's $5,000 isn't that amazing? And that all happens because you take the first step to communicate with potential clients through DMs, PMs, Facebook Messenger, or even LinkedIn meal.

So just take the first step because you never know when someone actually needs your service and they have been looking all around to find you, but you never appear in front of them.

Just stick that first step and send messages to your potential clients and to your potential prospects because the higher the number of leads that you have, the greater the chances of conversion. And when a business and their strategies converts into sales, the more money you make. I mean, who does want one that, right?

So here are the 10 social media habits that you should change for your business that I highly recommend. That's it.

That's all that we have at the 10 social media habits you should change for your business. So let me know how you found today's episode. If you love this episode, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast. It will help me so much to know what type of content to produce for you.

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