1. Take Time [to Tweet] for Yourself
Throughout the course of one day, you send out hundreds of tweets—as other people. You silently smile to yourself when you think of something really good. When that giant company you were tweeting to actually hears your littlest client. When you get a retweet or an LOL from a top influencer—errrrrrr—when your client does.
You are so good at your client’s personality that you’ve become them. You have nightmares about messing up a tweet for them. You’re considering being them for Halloween.
But they’re not you.
Remember when you first “got” Twitter? You were a madwoman—a tweeting fiend! From the second you woke up and checked your feed to those brutal late nights laughing to yourself in an empty room. Embrace your insanity. Tweet the funny thoughts that come into your head while you’re doing your job.
Remember: You’re doing this for a reason: you’re really good at social media. Don’t forget to indulge every once in a while. Be silly. Or tweet about a great article you read.
Do you. It feels good.
2. Exercise
I’m not going to sit here and lecture you about what you know you should be doing. And I’m definitely not telling you to broadcast your daily gym routine on Instagram. (Please don’t.)
What I AM saying, is that you WILL go insane if you have an “All-Day Internet Job” and you don’t exercise.
The trick is to get there way early in the morning while you’re still in a daze—you don’t even realize you’re driving to the gym and then BOOM, you’re there. There’s no turning back now. And it’s not so bad.
Best thing about first thing in the morning: Ideas. Specifically: writing down ideas furiously in your phone notepad while trying not to trip and die on the treadmill.
Not an early riser? Walk everywhere. And listen to music. And don’t check your phone for like 20 minutes. Voila! You’re exercising and clearing your mind. You, my friend, are winning at life.
Last suggestion: Standing desks. I know, I know. They’re all the rage. But you just love sprawling out with your legs stretched and neck kind of awkwardly hunched over….FOR EIGHT HOURS STRAIGHT? No. Wrong. Stop that.
3. Treat Every Client As If They’re Your Only Client
You don’t need to tell me about how you post upwards of 10 tweets per day + Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn posts, for each of your clients, seven days a week, which is equivalent to, oh, I don’t know, THOUSANDS of posts per month. I know. I get it. Add on the 50 billion emails you get and yes, your life is insane.
And then, all of a sudden, you’re staring at an unhappy email. You made a mistake.
That’s when you have to remind yourself, first and foremost: Your clients are the reason you have a job at all. They work very hard every day to run their business. They work very hard for the money they’re paying you.
And secondly: You are good at what you do. That is why you’re providing this service. But you’re not superhuman. You will mess up once in a while.
So here’s what you do:
- Email them back immediately – this applies if they ask you for a big project when you’re in the middle of another one as well – even if you just say “Thanks! I am on this now” or “Thanks! I am working on it / going to get on devising my plan for this right now.” It shows that you heard them and does not allow you to forget to get back to the email as it withers away in your inbox whilst they feel ignored.
- Apologize. Profusely. — Because the bottom line is you did screw up. Don’t make excuses either, they aren’t interested.
- Communicate — Tell them your plan for fixing it. Boom. Problem solved.
- Never make the same mistake twice – which I know you won’t, because of that throbbing emotional scar and your searing tendency towards self-deprecation.
4. Mail Handwritten Thank Yous
This is advice that my Pops always reminds me of. I can’t stress enough how important it is to show people you care, during the GOOD times. Especially if they helped you out in some way.
For example, we had an accountant when we first started the company who would give us advice for free all the time. He’d always be there to listen when we called, dealt with the IRS for us and—well jeezus, dealing with the IRS for us is enough for WAY more than a thank you card. That guy deserves a trip to Jamaica—or, (here’s a crazy idea), RETIREMENT ffs.
But I’ll tell you what will really make his day: the thank you card we mailed him. With a handwritten note saying how much we appreciate him.
You just don’t see that every day anymore.
5. Don’t Hate
<—– Internet Fight
The Internet blows my mind every day. You make one wrong move and your life is ruined. People are tweeting increasingly horrible ways they wish you’d die. You can’t take it back—they’ll hate on you more.
So here’s a Metter PSA: don’t propagate the hate. Or just don’t get involved. Don’t bother with it at all. If you get pissed at something you see, or even worse, if someone makes a personal attack on social media towards YOU. On your personal account. Just stop, wait 5 minutes, and I guarantee you’ll have reasoned by that time not to unleash your inner maelstrom of hatred toward them.
I like to use the analogy of driving in Boston. I should be anointed a damn SAINT. A SAINT, I tell you. I’m applying for sainthood AS I WRITE THIS. For the amount of CRAP I deal with driving in Boston. If I got even a little bit angry every time someone did something dumb and almost killed me or the people around me while driving in Boston, my blood pressure would be so high I’d pop a freaking blood vessel every second I was on the road.
Instead, I’ve developed this weird, trance-like state when driving. It’s more like: defend yourself silently so as not to die, but don’t even bother getting angry anymore. Because this is the bottom line:
It. Is. Not. Worth It.
6. Have a Notepad for Ideas
You know what it’s like when you’re doing 50 million things at once—to the point where your tabs on three different browsers are so small that you can’t even read what’s open and you avoid your desktop like the plague because the stress of seeing it might give you a seizure?! To the point where someone GChats you with a problem while you’re exactly halfway through an article while a client is texting you while you have something copied on your clipboard and CAN’T REMEMBER WTF IT IS?!? AND THIS IS THE 5TH TIME IT’S HAPPENED TODAY AND—
A brilliant idea pops into your head. Second monitor. You see a tweet that triggers that lightbulb and for god’s sake—whether it’s StickyNotes, TextEdit or an actual notepad (GASP), write it down immediately. Or all is lost.
7. Have Fun
Hey, here’s a crazy idea: you do social media. Like, for your job. First of all, you have a job. And if this weren’t your job, you’d be doing this anyway. Because you like it.
And guess what else? Other people, good people, who own local businesses, are paying you to do something that you love for them.
And, and—get this: you get to write every day. You get to tell their story and write every single post so it reflects their personality. You get to take their vision and put it online for everyone on their phones right now to see.
Your biggest problem is having to be CREATIVE thousands of times per month. Guess what I call that? A challenge. Guess what’s not a challenge? Things that are boring.
And I’ll tell you one thing about our job: it is NEVER that.
So when you get super stressed, like pop-a-blood-vessel stressed, like “Lauren-your-eyes-are-bloodshot-and-you’re-only-speaking-in-grunts-right-now” stressed: take time to remind yourself why you’re doing this.
Because you love it. And it’s fun.
