We’re going to talk about setting boundaries on social media with potential clients, with current clients, and with yourself.
There is a big chunk of this blog that is about boundaries with yourself because really, that is where it starts.
Setting boundaries is incredibly important because if we don’t set boundaries, that’s how we burn out.
If we don’t set boundaries with our clients, we become resentful.
If we don’t set boundaries with ourselves, then we’re just putting too much on our plate or we’re being distracted. We’re not getting the things done that we need to do.
Boundary setting, especially as an online business owner who lives with your phone in your hand, has to be a non-negotiable.
Setting Boundaries with Potential Clients
To me, potential clients are people that may one day work with you. This is if you’re talking with them on social media.
There’s really just one piece:
there has to be a cap on how much free advice you give.
One of my business mentors, Nina, taught me this. Yes, you want to give value. Yes, you want to show up for them. But you always have to turn the conversation around to give them a little bit of an answer to their question.
Then say:
this is something I coach people on when they work with me one on one, or this is something that you get access to even more information around this in my program X, Y, and Z.
Otherwise, if you’re just constantly answering people’s questions in the DMs, they’re not going to buy from you.
Let me tell you that I really struggled with this about a year into my business where I just wanted to provide all the value that all the guru’s told me I needed to provide.
I was basically coaching people for free in the DMs. There’s a line. There has to be a line, or else why would people ever pay to work with you?
This is a great time to direct them to your freebies, your opt-ins, your blog, podcast episode, your Facebook group, or even sending them specific posts that you’ve already created so that they can review them.
This is really important to do otherwise, and this is what Nina always would say, you get stuck in the friend zone. Which isn’t where you want to be.
That is the main boundary to have with potential future clients you’re talking with online.
Setting Boundaries with Current Clients
This section is setting boundaries with current clients specifically on social media.
Obviously, there are other places where boundaries and expectations need to be set but that is a different blog for another day.
From day one of working with a client, you need to set the expectations of where to contact you about what and when.
For me, if I’m working with somebody one on one, we do all of our business conversations in Voxer. If they start contacting me in the DMs on Instagram about business stuff, I am always going to redirect them to post it in Voxer, especially if it’s happening in the evenings or on the weekends.
Just because I’m on Instagram and enjoying my freedom of the scroll, does not mean I need to be responsible for answering your business questions outside of the hours that we agreed on.
Now, if one of my clients wants to chat with me in the DMs on a Wednesday night about The Bachelor, or about mom life stuff or share something funny with me, that’s fine. 100% fine.
I make it very clear from day one what should be an email, what should be in Voxer, what should be in the comments section of a group program.
You have to set that standard from day one. Then it’s your responsibility to stick to them and to direct them where they need to be.
Hey, girl, I hear your question. I need you to post this in Voxer so that I can properly answer it tomorrow.
Or, Hey, I looked at your reel, but I need you to post this in the group, and I’ll look at it tomorrow when my eyes are fresh.
At the end of the day, from a personal standpoint, nobody wants my opinion or advice at 8:00 PM at night because I am tired and my brain is barely working. So just as much as it’s for you to protect your own sanity, you also can’t give your best strategy advice coaching when you’re burnt out.
Set those standards immediately. It also really helps to make sure that you aren’t building up resentment with your clients.
Another boundary I’ve set is related to Voxer.
Voxer is what I use with my one on one clients. You can send essentially as long of a voice note as you want. It’s not like Instagram where you can only send a minute and then it cuts you off.
With Voxer, you can send 20 minute voice notes. I have had clients that would send me 14, 15, 18 minute voice notes. That’s not the purpose of Voxer.
From a coaching perspective, in listening to an 18 minute Voxer, first of all, we might as well just get on a call. Second of all, I cannot actively, appropriately, fully answer the questions that you’re throttling to me in your 18-minute stream of conscious Voxer.
BUT – sometimes we only know what we know. Sometimes you have to run into a wall before you can figure out what type of boundaries you need to set.
This wasn’t my clients fault – I had never set any expectations around what Voxer needed to look like.
I finally had to go back and change all of my rules on Voxer and ask people to keep their messages under three minutes so that I could really listen in, answer what they were asking for each specific message. That’s a real life example of what happens.
In my opinion, boundaries are there to protect yourself but also make sure you can show up and deliver on your promises.
Setting Boundaries on Social Media with Yourself
Boundaries on social media with yourself. Personally, this has been my biggest struggle. The biggest time waster.
I’ve gotten leaps and bounds better about it though and I am going to share with you how.
Now let’s be honest – it’s still something I struggle with every once and again where I’m like, all of a sudden I look, I’m like, what am I doing? Why was I on my phone for 15 minutes?
One of the best things that you can do is for me,
I really curate my newsfeed. I only follow people that make me feel happy.
I don’t want to follow people that make me compare myself to them, that make me feel crappy or annoyed or just frustrated.
Sometimes, I need to mute people for a while because I love their account but for some reason, I feel some type of way when I see their account. Now, that isn’t about them – it’s about ME but I have the right (and you do too!) to protect your sanity by unfollowing or muting then.
I’m also very cautious about following news, news sources or super niche Instagram accounts that are talking about politics because it doesn’t make me feel good. I don’t want that to pop up on my feed. I want to actively search for the information when I’m in an appropriate headspace to look for it.
My feed is very curated to things that make me happy pretty much all the time.
So that’s a boundary to set with yourself, first and foremost.
Second, I take at least one day off a week where I am not creating anything.
There are no stories. There are no posts. There’s no following up in the DMs. There’s nothing.
The other thing that I do that really helps set boundaries is I set a timer for engagement. Engaging outwardly on Instagram and on social media in general is something that’s very important to help grow your account and to just remind your followers that you’re around and curate that community and trust with your people.
Engagement is something that, for me, I could go down the rabbit hole and spend three hours doing it and feel very much not accomplished and very frustrated.
I set a timer for engagement, about 10 to 15 minutes a day. This is something that I talk about in my engagement workshop that I have. You can grab it and it will walk you through exactly how I do engagement, why it’s important, a couple of different sample schedules on how to do it.
If you’re like, I don’t even know how to do engagement at all, go check it out.
I set a timer, so it’s only 10 or 15 minutes a day versus 90 minutes of going down the rabbit hole like it used to be for me.
The other thing that I use, which my friend, Cara, turned me onto and I have become obsessed with, it’s absolutely worth the paid version is the app Opal.
Opal is an app that allows you to block apps on your phone. And I mean, REALLY block them so that no matter what you do, you can’t get into them until the time has expired.
This is great if you just have the bad habit of picking up your phone and scrolling.
The app is super customizable. So you can do different groupings of apps.
I have a social media grouping. I have a business grouping where I will block all my social media, my email and Voxer.
Then I have “all the distracting things” group where it’s social media, email, my digital to-do list, all the games on my phone. It’s a deep focus. Which I use when I’m creating content or need to be deep into a project
Then you can also choose the length that you want to block. You can set up a schedule. I have it set up for family time where every day from 5:30 to 7:30, it locks me out of everything distracting because that’s when my kids come home from school. We’re making dinner. It’s the bedtime routine.
On Fridays, I actually automatically block all social media, Voxer, email, to-do list from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM, because Friday is my get down creative day or it’s a personal day.
Unlike the screen time or the app blocker that comes with the iPhone, this one has something called deep focus and you cannot override it. It’s actually been once or twice it’s been frustrating to me, but you can’t override it. You have to wait until it expires. There’s no button that lets you get into Instagram or skip over or take a break or anything, and that’s what makes it honestly amazing. I could ramble on and on about how much this app has helped my aimless scrolling habits.
It has brought down my screen time and my aimless scrolling drastically. It’s so fantastic. I have a code for 30 day trial (linked here) if it’s something that you’re interested in trying.
Maybe this is just me, but I know a lot of other people do it. I chronically pick up my phone almost like a tick. It’s out of habit. I don’t want to look at my phone. I just pick it up. At night I will block my phone or I’ll put it in the other room because a commercial will come on and I’ll just pick up my phone. I don’t even want to look at it.
It’s really helping me break that negative habit.
Those are all of the boundaries with potential clients, with current clients, and with yourself and little tips and tricks on how to set them.
If you try them out, I would love to know how it goes. Take a screenshot or share this blog to your Instagram stories and tag me. Tell me that you’re going to try to set some of these boundaries.
Don’t forget to check out the Opal app and my engagement workshop.
Helpful links:
Grab my engagement workshop HERE
Try the Opal app with the free, 30 day trial HERE
Follow me on Instagram HERE
Listen to this podcast episode HERE
