Does your company have employees working in social media as marketers or managers? Many do, and yet most are not aware that employees working on social media are at risk of what is known as ‘social media burnout’ – a form fatigue and exhaustion caused by too much time spent on social media.
Dealing with social media burnout is not easy, especially for employees whose jobs literally require them to spend lots of time on social media. That is why it is important that you know what you can do to help any such employees avoid burning out, and get the help they need if they do suffer from it.
Monitor Social Media Usage
A good place to start is by monitoring the social media usage of your employees. If you want you can use Controlio, a computer usage tracking software, to do that. It will let you check exactly how long each employee is spending on social media as well as their overall active/idle time so you can then take action if you feel it is excessive.
Knowing how long a given employee spends on social media can help you to then take other measures too. For example you could try to shuffle around tasks and responsibilities between employees so that no single employee is forced to spend too much time on social media.
Additionally the activity data from Controlio will help you to see whether or not your employees are taking sufficient breaks. It will even let you gauge their productivity with its productivity score – and if it starts to drop that may be an early sign they are stressed and at risk of a burnout.
Provide Support When Necessary
Sometimes all that is needed to avoid social media burnout is the proper support. One way to provide that support is to ensure your employees are equipped with the right tools to reduce the overall time they need to spend on social media.
A good place to start is with tools designed to assist with some of the mundane or repetitive tasks that social media managers and marketers need to do. Nowadays there are tools that use machine learning to effectively automate many tasks. In fact you may want to look into tools like Text Optimizer that aren’t exactly designed for social media but can still be of use.
Next, you should make it a point to ‘check in’ on employees on a regular basis. Naturally you’ll want to check in if you notice any signs of them burning out, but you should also ensure make it a point to meet with them periodically regardless and ask them how they’re doing.
Make no mistake although these steps aren’t groundbreaking, they can make a world of difference. Cutting down repetitive tasks can make it less likely for employees to burn out, and assuring employees that you’re there for them will make it more likely for them to reach out if and when they need help.
Interesting Related Article: “Habits to Prevent Burnout as a Business Owner“