Things we learnt in 2021
2021 had its ups and downs, and brought ALL the lessons with it! Here’s what we learnt in 2021, and how we can apply those lessons to our 2022 strategy.
Surround yourself with humans who build you up, support you, and cheer you on.
It’s no doubt that throughout the year, you’ll have your setbacks, challenges, and bumps in the road, and my goodness! it helps to have a support network of people who will be there to catch up, cheer you up, and buy you coffee when things get rough. We wouldn’t be where we are today without our beautiful team (heyoo Aimee, Cindy, and Tony) as well as the many, many friends we’ve made over the years (a lot of whom were made on Instagram! And thanks to ‘Rona, we still haven’t met yet!)
Find your people, love your people, and take your people on your journey - it’ll make it easier and a heck of a lot funner, we promise!
Connect with like minded people in Facebook groups, join a Mastermind (we can’t recommend The Founders Team enough!), go to Networking events (you’ll see us at ALL The Belle Evolution events), or slide into people’s DMs. You don’t know who you’ll click with, but you’ll never know unless you try!
Rest.
Not just prioritising your 8 hours of sleep (but my goodness, is that important here), but learn how to rest when your body needs it.
We, as humans, were never created to hustle 24/7. Sure, the movies, the #GirlBosses, the media, and the hotshot middle aged white men all tell us to, but your run down, burnt out self will never be able to perform and deliver as effectively as your well rested self. The joys of running your own business means that if you feel like you need to take a walk at 11am, call it a half day on a Tuesday, or get that extra bit of sleep on a Monday morning, you can do it. Nothing is more important than your mental and physical health, and goodness we learnt that the hard way in 2021!
You don’t have to be on social media 24/7 to generate engagement, leads and sales. Just like taking a rest in your business is going to benefit your work long-term, so will taking a rest on socials. Some great tips to ensure that your social media is still working for you, even if you’ve switched off include:
Creating content with a longer shelf life. Reels, Pinterest posts, and LinkedIn articles continue to show up in feeds days, weeks and sometimes months after you’ve posted it! Unlike Stories and Instagram posts that will drop off the newsfeed 24-48 hours after posting
Setting up automated responses in your Facebook and Instagram DMs. Being able to direct enquiries to the right place without you even having to be there will mean that people are still finding the information that they need without you sending them links yourself 🙌🏽
Automate your social posts for the week. We’re not the hugest fans of automating everything for your social media (organic content and engagement will always be superior in our books!) but automating some regular content, particularly for those weeks that you know you’ll be busy or you’ll be taking a break, will ensure that there’s still content going up and serving your audience, even if you’re not.
Set boundaries.
Whether these are physical boundaries (I will not go to the office/study/that side of the guest bedroom outside of the hours of 9am-5pm), mental boundaries (Saturdays are for gardening and beach days, not work), or work-related boundaries (Just because that client needs a graphic created at 10pm on a Thursday night, doesn’t mean I have to create a graphic at 10pm on a Thursday night), boundaries allow you to prioritise yourself and those around you, and ensure you’re not devoting more time to the hustle than to enjoying the life you’ve built for yourself.
This one is much easier said than done, we get that, but even if that looks like setting a small but manageable boundary each month, that’s more than what you did in 2021, and we promise you’ll start seeing a difference in your world.
Instagram dropped the ‘Take a break’ feature at the end of 2021 and we’re here for it! Not only does it tell you exactly how long you’ve been scrolling for (eeeep!), it also gives you options to set up a prompt after your choice of time (10-20min is a good starting place!) to remind you to ‘take a break’. It’s so easy to lose track of time, and forget about boundaries, when you’re on cake decorating video number 452.
Alternatively, most phones have a ‘screen limit’ setting that will shut down any app after a particular amount of time. We’ve got an hour limit set on TikTok and Instagram, because we know that that’s where we lose the most amount of time!
Listen to your gut
Oooh, this was a big one last year! In the past, if a client wanted to work with us, we’d say ‘here’s the contract, see you on Monday’ no matter WHAT! Work was work, money was money, and even if it didn’t feel right, we’d still do it, because we felt like we had to. 2021 taught us that if our gut told us that they were going to be a nuisance client, it was right 100% of the time.
And for the first time in 2021, we listened.
That meant we got to watch dumpster fires from afar, rather than being the ones trying to put it out ourselves, and oh what a feeling that was!
This also applies to the types of people you follow on social media. Do you feel a gross jealousy, or lousiness when you see a particular person post on socials? Do you feel not-quite-good-enough when a brand you follow posts about their monthly sales report? Listen to your guts, and unfollow. No one will be mad, no one will get offended, but you’ll be feeling a heck of a lot better for it. You could even simply hide their posts (which means you won’t be unfollowing them!) temporarily which allows you to see how your newsfeed would look without them there.
Remember why you chose to do this in the first place.
When it gets hard (that’s generally in May and September for us) and you’re just about ready to call it a day, remember why you started in the first place. This is going to get you through those tough months and long meetings. This is going to influence your social media content and motivate you to post, even if you don’t feel like it. And this is what is going to shine through for your dream clients, and connect with your audience on a deeper level. Your why is the most important thing about your brand, your business, and you, and it’s something that you should not only hold on to, but should also drive everything you do in your business.
Your why should drive your entire social media strategy. If you’re creating for the sake of creating, and posting just because you feel like you’ll have to, your engagement will be low and your audience will see right through it.
Take a moment this month to think about your why. Why do you do what you do? What do you want your audience to take away from your business? Why they heck are you where you are? And how can you communicate that through every single Story that you post, Reel you record, DM that you send, carousel that you create, and image that you take?
Before you hit ‘post’ on anything, reread and rewatch and make sure it communicates your why clearly. If it doesn’t, adjust and change your language so it does!
2021 was a big year for learning, and often learning the hard way! But in 2022, we’re applying what we learnt in our social media strategy, and we hope that there’s some lessons that you can learn from here as well!
What was your biggest lesson for 2021?
