Social Media Upgrade: The Mindfulness Method

What is Mindfulness and Why Should I Care?

Mindfulness has countless benefits, one example being the ability to be fully present with those we care about most. In the case of someone desiring to grow a following on social media, those people are the audience he or she is trying to reach. If you can put yourself in the right mental state to understand the experiences of these people, you can better provide them with what they need. In this article, we will delve into our favorite method which involves mental priming, entering the meditative state, and a unique method of idea generation.

Meditation is the Vehicle to Enter the Mindful State

Meditation allows you to be more mindful and mindfulness allows you to better meditate. Putting both of these into practice creates a positive feedback loop, which continually ups your mindfulness game as well as makes meditation easier and more enjoyable. The key to meditation is awareness. While you meditate, you are not only aware of everything occurring in your five senses, but you are also aware of what is going on inside–your thoughts, judgements, and feelings. An awareness of both the external and internal worlds is necessary in becoming more effective at reaching your audience. Okay, all this mindfulness stuff is great, but how will it allow you to improve your reach on social media? Read on to find out.

Preparation and Priming

Begin by sitting in front of your screen with a window open to a social profile you’d like to improve. Spend a few minutes just reading/viewing your posts and how people are responding to them. Don’t view any of these posts or reactions as good or bad, compelling or ineffective. Just read them curiously without casting judgement. After reading for a few minutes, shut your laptop or turn of your computer screen. Now it’s time to meditate.

Let’s Get Started

Before you begin, have a pen and pad of paper ready to go. We’ll get to the importance of these later. Find a comfortable seated position where you can relax, but stay alert. Rather than attempting to empty your mind–what most people think meditation is about–you get to do something much easier. Just sit and pay attention to your breath as if you were watching something beautiful on Planet Earth. Bring a sense of curiosity and amazement to this observation. If you think about it, your own breath is just as much of a miracle as what you see on the Nature channel. Treat it that way. If any thoughts pop into your head, allow them to pass on by your awareness as a leaf would drift down a river. You don’t need to chase the leaf down the river, you’ll just end up getting lost. When you notice you have become distracted, let your attention return to watching the natural flow of your breath. Now here is where the magic happens.

Magic Moments

After spending some time just watching your breath, you will begin the idea generation phase. Think about everything you just read on your social page in the most general sense possible. Eventually, something specific will inevitably pop into your head. When this happens, allow it. Instead of engaging with this train of thought, just watch it. Most of the time, it will be useless. Sorry, you’re only human. But sometimes while in this state, your mind will make a novel connection that has some real value. When this happens, don’t just watch that thought, willfully engage with it and see where you can take it. This train of thought becomes the new anchor for your practice. If any other thoughts unrelated to this train of thought pop into your head, let them drift by as you did when you focused on breathing. Eventually return to thinking about the new idea and begin to develop it. This is where the pen and paper come in.

The Mindful Brainstorm

When you are convinced you have become engaged with a great idea and train of thought, it’s time to write everything down on the paper. I mean everything. Keep going until you have nothing left. This can take several minutes. For example, you may think of specific people you want to share content with, or a way to increase your plays on SoundCloud. After you have exhausted that idea, congratulations, in front of you is your mindfully-generated brainstorm. I’m sure you have some experience developing a brainstorm into actionable steps. If you’d like more ideas, keep an eye out for next week’s post. Next week we will go into strategies for taking the ideas from your brainstorm and transforming them into useful information you can use to bring your social profile to the next level.

Next Steps

With this brainstorm completed, you can now develop strategies to improve your effectiveness on social media. Automation is one such strategy that we came up with. And the best tool to implement that strategy? Somiibo’s social media profile modules. Lucky for all of us, these will be released in the coming months.

We would love to hear from you. What are some of the ideas you came up with from your brainstorm?

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