As a social media manager, I get bombarded constantly with all kinds of news, opinions and trolls, either directly or indirectly on a daily basis. In addition to running my clients’ accounts, I also keep an eye on the social environment of different platforms, and stay up to date on current trends and do research on new post ideas.

With everything that’s happened in the past few days, it’s been a challenge recently to stay positive. As a black-owned business, I’ve made it pretty clear without getting too political in the past where I stand with social issues. As an American, it was extremely sad to see the violence took place at the capitol this week. The climate online was extremely incendiary and unavoidable.

Here are a few things social media managers and business owners who run their own social media accounts can do to protect their mental health during a very polarizing time in history. This is what I try to do as I as wade through the constant flood of news, opinions and sensitive content on my clients and my own social media pages.

1 – Meditate and Exercise

This is one that I struggle with doing consistently. It’s always useful and effective though. If it’s been a rough morning, long day, or if I can feel my brain shutting off, sometimes getting up and moving my body or letting my mind have a rest gives me the reset I need to jump back into work.

If you don’t have time for the gym or to do lengthy meditations, try to set your phone on airplane mode, avoid all your notifications and take 5 minutes for yourself. Find a spot away from your desk/office space and let the worries of work completely go for those 5 minutes. This does wonders!

2 – Set timers and limit yourself

I set timers to start engagement, schedule out posts in advance, and set timers for how long I will be online. This is something I recently started doing, but it’s been super helpful in monitoring my time across all accounts. In the past I would know I was doing either 15 or 30 minutes of engagement, but would just look at the clock instead of actually setting a timer to remind me when I went over the time.

When it comes to limiting myself, I don’t engage with trolls or get into huge arguments. It takes a lot of energy and time to argue, and in the end what really gets accomplished? If its necessary to make my political stance clear I will do that, but I will not engage with people who are just looking for a fight. Unless this is on brand for your business or personal brand, I would avoid engaging with argumentative followers as much as possible.

3 – Don’t follow triggering accounts

You don’t have to put yourself in a bubble, but try to limit yourself to the niche of your clients, and follow accounts that are relevant, inspiring, and follow your digital marketing strategy. This strategy works for your businesses, accounts of businesses that you manage, and even your personal social media accounts.

I recently cleaned up a few of the accounts I follow on my personal account, because it was getting to be too much. If accounts are not valuable, inspiring, entertaining or informative, then I don’t have any use for them. Of course, with current events avoiding the news completely is inevitable, but cleaning up my following helped me avoid much more inflammatory content recently.

You can also block certain words or phrases on Instagram, or on Facebook you can block certain types of content that you don’t want to see.

4 – Control comments

This one is a little controversial, and totally up to you as a business owner. Personally, I delete spammy comments, inappropriate comments, and or comments from people clearly trying to solicit my clients instead of doing business with them.

I don’t delete all negative comments though. Sometimes its helpful to address negative reviews and resolve them publicly, so your customers can see you are active on your accounts and care about any problems your customers might have. Usually this is best done by apologizing for their frustration, offering some words of understanding, and trying to move the conversation to a private form of communication to solve the problem more effectively.

Instagram has a feature that allows you to automatically block offensive comments as well.

5 – Stay connected offline

Getting buried in work is very easy to do, so set a time of day that you will not be doing any work at all and get in touch with someone you’re close to! In this digital age there are so many options for staying connected with people you love.

Although this is hard to do in a pandemic, it’s very necessary for your mental health and well-being to stay connected with friends and family outside of social media. Try to hop on the phone, text someone close to you, or do a Zoom or Facetime call to see someone’s face.

Just remember, you’re not a droid

You’re human and humans can get overwhelmed by the constant bombardment of information we have going on nowadays. So take some time for yourself, breathe, and keep your head up!