let’s be honest, social media was a two-headed beast when it comes to running a(n online) creative biz even before we added in a global pandemic. as we head into our third year of pandemmie life, there has never been a more important time to maintain a strong online presence for your business amidst lockdowns, rolling travel restrictions, and keeping staff and customers safe from new variants. there has also never been a more important time to build very strong boundaries around your social media usage.

fact: the dominant social media platforms (y’know, the metaverse et al) have straight up admitted (sometimes without realizing outside ears were listening) that they prioritize conflict and literally design their algorithms to encourage unhealthy interactions, pushing rage and hostility to the top of their ranking systems - and therefore to the top of your feeds - whilst stamping down those dangerous things like…chestfeeding parents and bipoc faces? le sigh.

fact: you cannot control everyone. you also cannot control whether a random stranger interprets your well-known sarcasm for sincerity, if someone is going to make a harmful comment on your latest post while you sleep, or if a post you create goes viral for all the right or wrong reasons.

fact: you can control how you show up on social media - or don’t show up, for that matter - and you can also use what tools are at your disposal to try to maintain a safe space for yourself and others online. e.g. the block button and turning off comments, in some of the more extreme cases.

my relationship with social media is ever-changing, and honestly will probably be constantly in flux as my business shifts and my personal life requires more or less of my time spent online. here are some of the current (as of the time of this writing) ways that i work with social media:

i use instagram and pinterest regularly, and otherwise pretty much avoid all other platforms.
instagram was deleted from my phone at least a year ago. it remains on my ipad so that i can access the ios features as needed, but i do significantly less mindless scrolling due to this switch.
98% of my grid content is pre-scheduled and usually in batches of 4-6 weeks in advance.
for the past half year or so, i’ve shifted the majority of my social media content into recycling content shared on my blog, podcast announcements, and class announcements.
my instagram stories occasionally signal boost other content, including fellow makers and activist causes, but i’ve primarily stopped sharing immediate news bursts since experience has shown that this can cause more harm than good (hashtags get hijacked or monitored by people/systems that are dangerous to folks on the ground, well-intentioned efforts at a small scale quickly become actually hindering if they go viral, etc.). my activism has been better served through things like the monthly donations to rotating causes and sharing confirmed signal boosts in my weekly newsletter.
i am currently working on adding a stronger pinterest strategy for my biz to diversify the platforms i’m using and also intend to hire this ongoing work out so that i can continue to use the platform as a regular user for enjoyment.
i’ve stopped paying close attention to the latest trends/fads/algorithm changes (doesn’t help that later has changed their plans so that you have to pay extra for analytics anyway). through experimentation i’ve discovered that implementing them usually requires a lot more labour on my end and doesn’t result in significant improvements in engagement or conversion. if you have a full-time marketing team devoted to staying on top of these, it can be helpful, but a micro-biz should not be made or broken based on their ability to produce high-quality reels every day.
through therapy, i’ve become even more attuned to my nervous system than before. when i start scrolling, my breathing becomes shallower, my shoulders raise towards my ears, and my stomach tightens. aka, all the most basic physical signs of my anxiety appear. i do my best to reduce my time on the platforms accordingly, and also avoid interacting with others when i’m in this disregulated heightened state.
i’m working on building a stronger newsletter list and relying on non-social media platforms like my podcast to communicate with my audience and have deeper conversations not inhibited by character limits or algorithms.

so there you have it. to be clear, i have made some of the most beautiful friendships and collaborations thanks to social media. i maintain easier contact with some of my dearest loves via social media too. and when i’m in a healthy headspace, i love social media for the ease with which we can share knowledge, share resources, take up space, and inspire/be inspired by others. it is not all bad. i repeat, it is not all bad. we just have to learn how to make the good outweigh the bad more often than not.

if you want to run a small biz with your knitting design but you’re not sure where to start or who’s going to be honest with you about shit like *gestures at content above*, the creative coven might be just the right fit for you. check out our self-assessment quiz here. and if you just want more community of like-minded fibre witches, join us in the creative coven community for our monthly knit/craft nights.

#bosswitch brain - social media boundaries