Are you an overthinker?

We normally associate entrepreneurship with doers, but at the same time, it’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to be overthinkers.

After all, people who run their own businesses tend to have high standards – they are often perfectionists.

And, they have to be. After all, when you are running a company, there is no one around to hold you accountable. At the end of the day, you have to hold yourself accountable.

This can lead to overthinking, especially when there are tons of options to consider.

The world of social media has exploded, and there are now tons of strategies, tools, and pathways for business owners to consider.

On top of this, we can access all kinds of data – colourful pie charts and tables and bar graphs – that will help us make decisions about how we want to use social media.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing.

Having too many options and too much data can be distracting and slow down your process. It can even completely paralyze your progress.

Often, the time you spend analyzing data and thinking about the thing you want to do could have been better spent doing the actual thing and seeing what happens.

But, we often don’t do this because we overthink.

Overthinking is counter-productive, stressful, and debilitating. What’s the point?

Be smart about your social media marketing, but at the same time, don’t overthink it.

Here are 3 questions to ask yourself when identifying if you are overthinking your social media strategy, and what you can do about it.

Are you catastrophizing?

What’s the worst that can happen?

If this is your immediate first thought, you might want to pull on the reins – you’re catastrophizing.

Letting your mind race to the worst probable outcome is not only counter-productive, it’s often a waste of time.

Because really – what are the odds that the WORST thing will actually happen?

Furthermore, when it comes to social media, in most cases, the WORST thing that can happen is (brace yourself) NOTHING.

That’s right – NOTHING.

No one reads your blog, no one clicks on your link, no one downloads your lead magnet, no one cares about your content.

It’s like it never happened.

Not exactly devastating.

Maybe your ego will get bruised. That’s bad, but it won’t mean the end of you or your business.

You will survive.

So… go do the thing.

Are you afraid of backlash?

I know what you’re thinking… what about backlash?

First of all, in order to suffer major backlash on social media, you have to have a decent following and an engaged audience to begin with.

So, if you’re new to social media, or you haven’t earned a strong presence on social media and you’re already worried about backlash, you know you are overthinking.

After all, if no one knows you, who’s going to backlash against you?

No one.

Now, if you DO have an engaged audience and you are worried about alienating them, there are 3 points to consider…

First of all, at this point, you should theoretically know enough about your audience and where they would stand if you posted something controversial or different.

Second, if you post the content and it doesn’t get received the way you hope it’s going to be received, congratulations – now you have valuable new information about your intended audience.

All the analyzing of all the pie charts in the world may never have brought you this well-earned information.

Backlash is very valuable information.

And third, sometimes backlash is a good thing. Sometimes you WANT to alienate a certain audience, because you know it will endear you to the right audience.

If you try to be all things to all people on social media, your message will become watered down and boring, and it won’t stand out.

So, don’t be afraid of turning some people off, because they are not your people. When you turn off the wrong people, you turn on the right people – these are the ones you can relate to, who are aligned with your brand values, and who will be strong followers and clients.

Do you seriously think you lack resilience?

Resilience is your ability to recover from a setback.

If you’re worried you will never recover from a social media gaffe, you might want to re-evaluate your faith in your resilience.

Remember, if something goes wrong with your social media strategy, in most cases what this will mean is that your content will be forgotten with little to no engagement.

It’s easy to recover from nothing – nothing happened!

All you have to do is make sure you don’t over-invest in something that isn’t a sure thing.

And, if there’s backlash, remember to treat it like valuable feedback and act accordingly.

Look – as an entrepreneur you’re going to have to develop resilience. Chances are, you’ve come back from many setbacks on the entrepreneurial journey.

Resilience is part of the game when you are a business owner. You are resilient, so stop over-thinking your social media strategy!

When it comes to social media, it’s easy to overthink things, because we have so many options and data available to us. Know the signs of overthinking and what you can do about it if this is a problem that affects you. Ask yourself if you are catastrophizing. If you are, understand that the worst than can happen on social media is often nothing. Do you fear backlash? Try re-imagining backlash as valuable feedback. Do you question your resilience? Understand that as an entrepreneur, you were made to roll with the punches. Now, stop overthinking and go do the thing!

If you’re ready to take your business blog to the next level, check out my FREE eBook, “How To Blog Like An Entrepreneur” here…