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How to Beat Social Media Writer's Block
presented by EdCopy
For the longest, I felt social media would by my launching point. It seemed to be an easy starting point for engaging socially and raising awareness about my goings on. It would be simple. I'd take out my phone, drop a post on the people, then tap open the next app and drop a post on those people, then keep that process going every day ad infinitum.
But would you go figure? It wasn't quite that easy...
I'm getting better at using social media with direction and consistency now, but I didn't always have the knowledge and strength of will to apply that knowledge that I do now.
In fact, not that long ago at all...
I had to come to terms with the conditions of dis-ease in my life. That dis-ease came attached with the symptom: an ongoing inability to produce anything of value.
Neither my public school working days or my do-for-self working nights appeared fruitful. I needed a jumpstart activity; something that would let me gain some momentum and shake the barren condition I had fallen into.
Social media was a logical avenue to develop momentum through straightforward daily actions. I would practice my way into a better state of productivity by writing and posting something daily—
So much for momentum. I wasn't even posting weekly. There was no regularity at all.
Those were some of the most stomach-churning times. I had a responsibility to bring forth the relationships, the career, and the lifestyle conceived in my mind. But call me can't-get-right. Stuck was I.
I can still feel the frustration of being unable, day after day and night after night, to complete even the simplest tasks at home or at work without friction. So social media was going to be the do-it-everyday medicine I needed to break the spell. It would be easy. Just make a post. Simple, right?
Sure, but not for me. I mean, really. My productivity blockers were relentless. They even took up issue with my social media writing.
I'd be ready to write, then get stuck in my tracks, halted by an explicable but invisible enemy. That damned deceptive and wise devil with residence in my mind was planting his dirty tricknologies on my imagination— and he just would not get behind me.
I couldn't tap out, though. I wasn't convinced that I didn't have it in me. Besides, if I can't write a social media post each day, and I quit because of that, how on earth can I justify that? Social media writer's block does not hold up as a mighty enough blockade to make a decent case for quitting.
Then one day something really softly shocking happened to me. Someone asked me how long I had been trying to prove that I was "good." She wondered if I thought it was okay to be "not good."
It was an interesting question because when I thought about it, I learned something about myself. I recognized that I was stressed and struggling, but had you passed me in the campus hallways, looked at me and asked, "You good?" I had taken up a mask that demanded the response be in the affirmative.
"All is well," I'd respond. That's the function of the mask; to protect and disguise the wearer, so that he may perform and entertain.
I started sitting with my frustrations to see what they looked like when there was no mask to shine them up. I was talking to my frustrations; questioning them and trying to understand why they were messing with me and how I had pulled me into this slump.
Then I remembered that when seeking understanding, the wisest force on earths is a better source than my frustration.
So, of that force, I asked for help. And help was promised. I'd have to play my position and do my work with consistent action, but if I did and I believed that my help would come, then things could and would change. First, I needed to change. With some learning, planning, and practice, I began to post to social media regularly and gain momentum in my work by applying purposeful, replicable, writing strategies.
It was difficult.
For one, being a teacher can be exhausting. Getting to and through a school day was an eleven-hour chore in and of itself and work always came home. When I would arrive to my family, I'd already be too tired to map out, draft, publish, and distribute writings for social media spaces. So picture me when I would start on that work after my children and lady beloved had set to bed and grading and the likes were done.
I really was trying. Still, my results were the perfect ingredients for a case study on how to be unproductive. My efforts were for naught, and the conditioning of my mindset had become so debased that I sensed I had become something other than myself.
Since the pestilence was on us, all I wanted to do was tuck myself behind my chamber doors. There, I could think and work like I was supposed to.
But, each day, there I was again, leaving my chambers to go do some other man's work. And since night after night I kept failing to make anything shake after returning to the chambers, I started to feel like I might never pull it off.
It didn't help that deceptive whisper didn't want me to succeed, either.
You do not know how many times that wicked naysayer would say things like:
Just relax. Your workload is hectic enough as it is. You don't need to give yourself more work.
You can't even manage your email inbox. How do you think you're going to manage a business?
Why even bother? Do you know how to sell and fulfill services for businesses? No. Why? Because you're a schoolteacher. You know how to schoolteach.
It is at that point that I realized that all of these other things going on in my life, like having a lack of time and energy, or not enough knowledge— these weren't really obstacles at all.
They were excuses.
The only real obstacle I had was to get my mind right to get beyond my negative thinking patterns. I needed to trust that everything I'd need, I'd have.
I was blind to it, but I already had everything that I needed within me and around to make it all work. In fact, I had more than I needed and now I just had to put it all together one block at a time.
Don't get me wrong— I still needed to do a lot of other work in order to manage life's moving parts efficiently and reliably. But to target my social media writer's block woes, I studied marketing copy, sales copy, and content strategy. I listened to the lessons of others who had built successful education businesses by making content distribution a pillar of their operations. I learned a lot about using writing to address specific purposes.
Really, it all boiled down to learning repeatable procedures and systems through the processes of trial and error.
But then one day I boiled over; I had a breakthrough: I was studying a business strategy course that I bought from a brother on Instagram. It wasn't the first time I had gone through this course, or even the second time. I had seen all the course materials before and heard the lecture too. However, this particular time, one of the course concepts grabbed me by the shoulders and shouted at me, demanding that I apply it at once. And I knew why.
I had just cliqued up with a concept that showed me how to be more productive, helpful, and valuable with the ways I distribute ideas. First, I began putting the idea in motion with the sixth graders I had for language arts. They were working on argumentative essays, so I worked what I had learned into their classwork. The purpose? To see if it would increase content output. And it certainly did.
Instead of just writing an essay, students were sourcing relevant supporting materials and producing helpful, informational, content pieces to nurture their essay's audience. What started as a single essay became an essay with a supporting essay and at least three more "curated" pieces.
It worked well for students. I knew it would work well for me, too.
I was finally able to start producing content assets more frequently and with less mental strain.
How? Because I took what I learned and put it in motion. With a little pre-writing work and some information sourcing out of the way in less than twenty minutes, you'll be ready to write for social media consistently and without a trace of that so-called social media writer's block.
Listen, I know it is hard to post consistently on social media. Your time and mind have demands on them, but you have demands on your mind, too. I'm grateful that I made it work, but with respect to the purposes of every obstacle, I don't want any obstacle to last longer than the time required for it's intention and purpose.
And I just know that if I can do it, then you can do it too, young blood. You can do it, too.
Ready try your might against social media writer's block? Let me show you how I beat it and give you the steps I took so you can do it, too— you might just surprise yourself!
-kaml-