When you're a Creator or Social Media Manager, sometimes the time, energy, and creative output required to maintain a social media presence can become exhausting. While from the outside, social media may be as simple as hitting publish on a post, people who work in social media every day understand how difficult it can be to keep up with the nuances of coming up with new ideas, keeping up with constant updates, and staying ahead of trends. For these reasons, creative burnout is normal, and while it's sometimes unavoidable, you can do things to avoid it.

What Causes Creative Burnout?

Creative burnout can be caused by:

• Overstimulation - Sensory overload can be caused by consuming too much content and spending too much time on social media.

• Analysis Paralysis - All of the different components of creating and publishing a post can lead to overthinking and, as a result, getting overwhelmed altogether.

• Focusing Too Much On Your Competition - While keeping up with what's happening in our industries is essential, focusing too much on what others are doing can overwhelm us and cause us to lose our unique creative perspective.

• Keeping Up With An Ever-Changing Social Media Landscape - Social media constantly adapts, and trying to stay ahead of the curve can become unsustainable and exhausting.

• Needing a Consistent Workflow - Being reactive about your content planning and creation versus being proactive makes consistency and sustaining your online presence more challenging and stressful.

So, what should you do if you're experiencing creative burnout on social media? Try the following things to get your social media spark back:

Take a step away from social media. This may sound counterintuitive, but burnout requires a reset and rest. Repurpose some of your old content and schedule it in advance using PLANOLY's auto-post tool so you can take a social media break without losing your consistency streak.

Be intentional about the type of content you're consuming. Following too many people in your industry or niche can make you feel like an echo chamber. A considerable part of social media is creativity, which requires inspiration. Instead of finding inspiration from people doing the same thing as you, which can lead to many thoughts like "they already did it, so why should I bother?" be intentional in getting out of your industry bubble on social media.

Go back to your social media strategy. Sometimes, burnout on social media can be caused by a lack of direction or purpose. If you feel this way, review your social media strategy and, if necessary, make any updates to it to reflect how your business or brand has evolved. Review your analytics to see common threads in what's been working to get re-inspired by your content. Use this information to experiment with different types of content, and when all else fails, look to comments and DMs from your audience to get a clearer view of what they may want from you.

Create a Content Planning and Creation Workflow - Like anything else, you need a sustainable process and workflow to simplify how you show up on social media. Add specific time blocks in your calendar daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly to work on your content. This includes research, scripting videos, writing content outlines, recording and editing videos, and creating designs. Set a specific amount of time to work on each part of your content and time yourself to prevent overthinking and paralysis analysis.

Leverage tools to simplify your content planning and creation process. At PLANOLY, we've intentionally built our platform to include features that help streamline content planning and creation for social media to help creators and social media managers avoid burnout. Here are a few of our favorite burnout-proof tools:

• Auto-Posting - You can plan your content ahead of time and set it and forget it to post on its own so you can spend less time on social media with Planoly's auto-post feature.

• Weekly Trend Report - Skip all the time you spend scrolling to find video trends to try with Planoly's weekly video trends report. Every week, we'll link to three social trend recommendations: trending audio, video ideas, and/or video transitions that you can repurpose into TikToks and Instagram Reels for your brand or clients. On your Web Dashboard, select the "PLAN" tab and make sure you are viewing the PLANOLY Calendar. On the Mobile App, click the Calendar icon at the bottom of your screen. Look for the "Trending Content Ideas" bar, which will be available on Monday of each week! After the pop-up modal appears, click "SEE WHAT'S TRENDING" to access this week's trending video recommendations.

• Social Media Templates: With PLANOLY's content templates subscription, you will receive customizable templates, captions, and hashtags curated each month by our team of experts that you can easily fit into your social strategy for just $10/month! You can learn more and access these templates here.

• AI Caption Writer: Planoly's AI Caption Writer auto-magically creates captions for every social channel in just a few clicks. With expertly curated voices, the AI Caption Writer can connect with your audience in the best way for your business. Share your post, who your audience is & what voice you want. You can learn about our AI caption writer here.

Social media burnout can be avoidable with the right mindset, process, and tools. Look to Planoly as your go-to tool to make showing up on social media more simple, streamlined, and fun.

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