Pretending I was a tavern wench gave me this idea...

Here it is so you can steal it.

I saw the best social media post this week, if you follow me, you might have seen it in my stories as I shared it and had a tonne of comments and messages over it.

Here is the original post. Read it if you can. It’s joyful and will give you so many ideas for new habits that you’ll want to form.

But here’s what caught my attention, and it was in the comments section:

The ‘re-framing’ really stuck with me. How by putting a different spin on a thing, it completely changes your mindset.

I tried the ‘washing dishes by candlelight’ whilst listening a playlist like this on Spotify to pretend I was a tavern wench and it worked! It made it fun. I now also pretend I run a Medieval restaurant when cooking the family meals which is a chore I hated, but now don’t mind.

What has this got to do with social media?

This whole mind-set reframing, can be used for anything. And as I speak with a lot of people about social media, I wanted to see how re-framing could work here. Mainly because, with everyone I speak to, the general feeling I’m getting is that no one really enjoys it anymore.

Especially writers and authors.

We know we have to use it to get more eyes on our books and writing work, to make connections and to be visible, but then…we lose hours on scrolling, we don’t know what to post and when we do post, it’s soul crushing when no one likes, follows or even sees our stuff.

So let’s reframe that

What if, instead of seeing it like self-promotion, you saw it as a storytelling platform? An extension of your written word.

Instead of seeing it as a numbers game, counting the likes, follows and shares, you saw each post as an experiment, rather than a test?

What if, instead of seeing social media like work, a time-drag and something you hate, you saw it as a way to connect, have conversations and something you love?

Change it up

How about we make it a game?

I love a good game, and I think that by gamifying this whole process, it might become playful and fun again, if it isn’t already.

So in the same tone of fun as that original post, here are some ideas on how we can reframe our relationship with Instagram or any Social Media posting platform as authors:

• Bookish Reality Show

Imagine that every post you create is an episode inside a tiny mini-show called, The Bookish Life of (insert your name here)
Before filming yourself or hitting post, say out loud: ‘And now, here’s (your name) living her best bookish life! What’s she up to today?’

• Mini-Story Captions

For every caption, start it like you would a letter to your ideal reader, a small piece of flash fiction. Take a photograph for the content and put a text overlay inviting viewers to read the caption.

Start each one with, ‘Hello reader, let me take you back to earlier today when…’

Or, ‘In a world where the school-run gave me a writing idea, I…’

• Daily writing prompt?

Not you coming up with the prompts, but for every comment, DM or interaction, you use to for an idea for another story.

So if someone replies with something like, ‘what are you reading?’ You would reply with, ‘It started last Tuesday, when I went into the library and caught myself stopping by the romance section. I wasn’t sure why, but this book spoke to me by….’

Get the idea?

A quick win you can use right now

I loved this idea so much, I tried it on a reel I did and the results were encouraging. I got seen by 80% of non-followers and the views were higher than my typical reel.

Here’s what I did so you can too, it should take about 5 minutes to record, all you need is your book.