How to Prevent Burnout! Stop Making Social Media Tutorials

00:00:05
Hello, beautiful people. It's your girl, Ms. Ileane. And today, I'm gonna warn you to stop. Just stop. You're gonna think I'm a hypocrite, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. Stop doing this one thing that I've been doing for over a decade. And before I tell you what it is I want you to stop doing, I want to tell you why. You get burnt out, man. I mean, or woman. I'm telling you, you can get burnt out doing this.

00:00:45
And here's what I'm talking about. I want you to stop creating social media software tutorials. Yep. This is something that I've been doing for a really, really long time. I actually started back in 2,009, doing blog posts, which led to a podcast, which led to YouTube videos.

00:01:19
And I gotta be honest. I've actually enjoyed it over the years, and here's the difference for me. For me, one of the reasons why I've been able to enjoy making social media tutorials is because my business doesn't depend on it. In fact, I don't actually have a business. I do affiliate marketing, don't get me wrong, but I have a day job.

00:01:55
Okay? But here's why I want you, if you're thinking about starting, a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, specifically about making tutorials and teaching people how to use different software. Here are the things that I want you to consider, okay, because I might not be able to talk you out of doing it. You know? But you can't say I didn't tell you.

00:02:27
So here are some of the reasons why I want you to consider doing something else instead or at least making sure that you have other content that goes along with that complements social media software tutorials. Notice I'm being very specific about my words. Software tutorials. Number 1, You need to have some expertise. This is the 4th time I've gone live on TikTok.

00:03:07
However, I have done 100 of livestreams, probably 1,000 of live streams on other platforms. And I do want to say hello hello to everyone who's coming in. Thank you so much for joining. Please share this out. Please make sure you follow me for more fun, entertaining, and engaging content and live streams, if you like live streams, and I've been doing them on YouTube, I've done them on Twitch, Facebook, A bunch of platforms that don't even exist anymore.

00:03:42
Twitter. I've just done a lot. However, I want to be able to teach people how to use TikTok live, but I can't do that because I just started using it myself like a minute ago, like maybe a month ago. And I know that doesn't stop some people because some people will claim to be gurus about things that they have absolutely no idea how they work or anything like that, but that's not me. So I suggest, one of the things is that you have to have a level of expertise in order to be effective with your social media tutorials.

00:04:30
Okay? So if you don't have any expertise, don't don't come in here trying to do tutorials about something. You don't know what you're talking about because you're gonna be made to look a little foolish. Okay. Oh, I'll give you an example.

00:04:49
I signed up for a course and the person who does this course, they mean well, they're super smart, they know a lot about a lot of platforms. They are an expert at marketing. But this one particular thing that they're trying to teach, I already know this topic, and I'm not gonna expose this person because I really like them, and they're doing their best. But I hear them giving out some of the worst advice to people. I'm like, no. That's not true. That's not how it works. And I don't wanna be the one to step in and say, no. No. No.

00:05:28
No. So and so. That's not how it works. Because like I said, I like this person. This person has a lot of expertise in marketing in general, but they don't know this one specific platform like I know like the back of my hand because I do deep, deep dives on the topic.

00:05:52
So in order to be successful with doing social media software tutorials, you need expertise. Alright? Okay. And go ahead and share this out because I'm sure you know someone who's taken one of those courses where the instructor didn't know what they were talking about or or they they just started doing the thing that they're now trying to charge you $97 to learn how to do. Alright.

00:06:28
The next reason why I don't want you to get burnt out with doing social media software tutorials is before you start doing your tutorial now we're talking video tutorials mostly. Okay? You need to decide if you're going to screen share or not Because you're talking social media software, there's some level of showing people how to navigate through the specific platform and all that. So you either need to decide if you're going to screen share or not, or if you're going to do both, like, I wish I could do here. Here, I think I have to do 1 or the other unless there's something that I don't know that I need to change.

00:07:29
You have to have the right equipment and all that in order to screen share as well as be on screen. And I typically, if I'm live streaming on other platforms, I would use Ecamm Live, which would let me show the screen even on my iPhone, and I can show you what buttons to push, but most of the time people, they may not have that software or if you're relegated to doing a stream on mobile, you may not have that capability that you can screen share and be on screen at the same time, which is kind of a hindrance for me on this platform. But I'm just saying. Maybe there's something out there that I don't know, and I already admitted I don't know that much about TikTok live. That's why I keep doing it because the only way I'm gonna get better and learn things is to keep doing it.

00:08:32
Alright? So that's how you build up your expertise. That was my number one. You need to have expertise. You need to decide if you're gonna do screen share, talking head, talking to, 1 on 1, that's me and you. I'm just talking to you right now. And or if you have the capability of doing both. Okay, next. Oh, here's my cheat sheet by the way. Just so you know, I'm not reading off a prompt or anything like that.

00:09:02
I just jotted these notes down. Number 3. Number 3 reason why I'm telling you to stop doing social media software tutorials because you might get burnt out. Number 3 reason is because no one wants to watch the boring parts. Nobody wants to watch the boring parts.

00:09:32
So I watch a lot of tutorials, okay? As well as, you know, create them myself. Sometimes the person will start off as if everybody who's watching their video is brand new. So they start off with telling you, first you have to sign up for the plan. And it's like, come on now.

00:10:00
If I'm doing a tutorial for TikTok, I'm gonna assume the person already has a TikTok account. You know, you can just assume some things, But at the same time, you don't wanna assume that the person knows where all the buttons are on the screen. If I was just let's say I was just talking about how to add music to a video. I'm not gonna go through and tell you each and every button that's on the screen. I'm going personally, this is how I would do it, I would skip over all that.

00:10:34
But I know that most people don't. They they start from the itty bitty, like I said, sign up for an account, log in, open the app. Ain't nobody got time for that, y'all. Nobody wants to watch the boring parts. That's why it's super important that you know your audience.

00:10:59
You know their level of expertise as well. Because you can just jump right in and say, today I'm going to show you how to do whip wet wham on Facebook. I'll just use Facebook just to mix things up. And then you just open up the app and start doing whip whap and wham. Nobody wants to go through all this, you know, well, you have to go to the hamburger menu and click on you don't wanna hear that.

00:11:30
You just wanna get to the juicy bits. Just give me the juice. Alright. And so that can be a challenge. That can be a challenge for you and this is why people get burnt out because they realize that, I'm I'm missing something. I'm leaving gaps in someone's learning. And so you feel like, okay. I better at least record a video that says, this is how you open up. This is the link you need to go to to sign up. So that video was there so you can at least refer back to it.

00:12:06
I said, If you need to sign up for an account, make sure you watch this video. You know, I'm just telling y'all how to do it. But I don't want you to get burnt out on, you know, building like a rabbit hole for you and for your viewers, your audience, and your community to go down. Alright. Next.

00:12:33
The next reason why I want you to stop creating social media software tutorials is, How do we know exactly where people are getting stuck? How do we know exactly where people are getting stuck? So like I was just referring to, you wanna jump in and get right to the whip whap wham. But how do you know that those people that are watching the video, at that given moment, what level of expertise that they're at. Have you received questions or feedback and, comments from a prior video or on a Facebook group or you saw it somebody tweeted out and said, How does this, that and the other happen?

00:13:36
And I'll give you a great example. Yesterday, I was in a Twitter space and yes I still call it Twitter. Y'all know what I'm talking about. With my friend Andrew who has this really cool tool called Spaces Dashboard. It's like a discovery engine for Twitter Spaces. Now, of course, he's gonna do tutorials because it's his software. So, yeah. He definitely needs to do tutorials. Okay? And he needs people to know all the new features that are rolling out.

00:14:11
So this new feature that rolled out is that now people can do their Twitter Spaces from their iPads. Believe it or not, Spaces has been out for like 3 years, Maybe going on 4 years. You know, well before it became that other name. When it was regular Twitter and we had Twitter Spaces, people could not join or listen to a space or start a space from their Ipads. But now they can.

00:14:50
So little incremental changes happen over time and it was critical for him to make sure that more people know because the more people that use Spaces, the more people will sign up for Spaces dashboard. And by the way, in case you are interested, if you're a Twitter person and if you use Twitter Spaces, it's free. You go to spacestashboard.com and you can have access to that. And we had a fantastic space. Well, he had a fantastic space.

00:15:23
I was allowed to speak and ask a few questions and of course, I gave him a lot of praise because I've known him since he introduced this Spaces dashboard and you know because like I said, I do these social media tutorials that's why I know you should stop doing them if you're getting burned out. If you're getting burned out. So let me clarify. Let me make sure that you all know who I am. Like I said, I started doing tutorials back in 2009, but here's the difference of why I will probably continue to do social media tutorials, even though I'm telling you to stop, is because I don't depend on any of my content for my livelihood.

00:16:20
I have a day job And so if I create tutorials and, the next thing that's on my list happens, it's okay with me. So, in other words, a tutorial may be super duper popular for months, weeks, maybe even years and then something happens and it's no longer popular. Now that causes someone who may be like you, who is depending on growing an audience, using social media to, you know, plant their flag in the sand, it keeps you on that hamster wheel. Whereas for someone like me, if you watch it, you watch it. If you don't, you don't.

00:17:17
Either way, I'm good. I know I put good information out there. I know I offer value. I know I'm here for you. If you have questions, if you need them, but it didn't put bread and butter on the table for me. Okay, that's the difference. And so, yeah. I can go on to my number 5. My number 5 because I'm alluding to it so much that I might as well just spit it out. The platforms keep changing.

00:17:51
The platforms keep changing and oh my gosh, this is probably the reason why I brought up Facebook earlier because I have a bunch of Facebook tutorials that I've done over the years and half the time oh, I won't say half the time 85 to 90% of the time, either the tutorial is no longer relevant within 6 months of me creating it because they changed the platform so much or or they don't actually make a change across the board. And this is something that Facebook does which I think is very, very, confusing. I'll be nice. I'll just say it's confusing because there's obviously, they're doing it on purpose. I manage several Facebook pages.

00:18:59
Okay? We all spend a lot of time on Facebook and here's one reason why. Because almost each one of those pages has different features. They have a different layout. They have a different navigation.

00:19:14
And it has nothing to do with iPhone versus Android or PC versus Mac or desktop versus it's all those things and more. And I know because I log into these different pages and I see completely different features. And there's no reason why the feature should be different. It's the same kind of page, the same category, and all the other good stuff, but the features are different. The navigation is different.

00:19:51
The dashboard is different. And so it's almost impossible, I think I realized it about 2 years ago, maybe 3 years ago, that it was virtually impossible for me to continue on with doing Facebook tutorials. With that said, my old tutorials are still out there and even though some of them are obsolete, because of this thing I just explained to you with different people having different versions, it still works for some people. So people are still watching those videos, they're consuming the videos like crazy and giving me good feedback and saying thank you, because they have a previous version. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with their phone.

00:20:46
It could be on desktop as well. So, I I think I went far enough down that rabbit hole for you to understand what I'm talking about. These platforms change. I did a tutorial about, oh my gosh, this cool AI feature. Well, I guess I should have expected that was gonna change.

00:21:10
Right? I did this cool tutorial about ChatGPT and using it with this specific device. And I'm not gonna say the device because I don't want anybody to, you know, get mad because that device is not on sale here. And the day after I did the tutorial, they came out with Chat GPT 4. I was like, I can't believe this.

00:21:37
I didn't see it coming y'all. I didn't see it coming. So, yeah, that's. That leads to burnout because, hey, I'm not going to, oh, here's the thing. Luckily, I did not post that video to YouTube.

00:21:58
I let that video be an exclusive for my newsletter subscribers. So, in a way, it was a good thing. I was gonna put it on YouTube, but like I said, the very next day, they changed chat GPT. They upgraded to 4.0 and the thing that I was talking about stopped working. It's working again now because, you know, they're they upgraded it to GPT 4.0.

00:22:24
But it just is another shining example of how the platforms change so quickly. You have no control over how they're gonna change, when they're gonna change. It used to be that they would give you a heads up. Some things they give you a heads up if something is going away. YouTube is about the best when it comes to letting you know features that are going to be deprecated or new features that are coming, features that are being rolled out, is rolling out in certain countries, it's rolling out on certain devices and not on other.

00:23:04
YouTube is the most transparent when it comes to that. And I love that about that's one of the reasons why I love YouTube so much. Not transparent about everything. They're not perfect. But let me know last time you saw a Facebook, a tutorial from Facebook or even not even a tutorial a blog post, a news release, a help page that tells you that these these features, this feature, this feature, this feature, and this feature is coming, is out or is coming out or is being deprecated, but only on this device or that device or yeah.

00:23:46
They let everybody know that groups, going live in groups was going away. That's the last thing I could think of. But like, that wasn't a good thing. And they still never said why. People just came up with their own ideas. Like Facebook never said why they were deprecating the API for Facebook Groups. And so people said, it's a security issue. How's the security issue when you can still use the Facebook API for pages to go live? Now why is there security in groups? It's the same people.

00:24:23
Right? I mean, it's people. Facebook users. So, yeah. When people don't know, they just make up stuff.

00:24:34
And that they just made that up because Facebook has never said that it was a security issue. Alright, so based on the fact that platforms are constantly changing and they've got all these different layers and tiers and rules, Your content can't be evergreen. Evergreen content is like it's like the pinnacle of content creation. It could be perpetually repurposed in all different platforms and all different formats on, you know, in written word, in podcast form, in video, as shorts, as reels and stories and books and ebooks and courses and on and on and on. However, when these platforms change so much, especially when they make like a 180, or in some cases oh, if they make a 360 yeah.

00:25:55
They can make a 360 over and make your your head feel like it just did a 360. Can't be evergreen. You can't be evergreen. Now talking about platforms, which is what I'm doing today, like this right here is a piece of evergreen content. Because I want you to always know that doing social media software tutorials, especially for a living, leads to burnout.

00:26:41
It leads to stress. It leads to, a lot of anxiety and it also takes away your control. Because even if you're, you know, you have some insight or insider information on one platform, you're probably not going to have it on another platform as well. And so that leads you to constantly either try to guess what's going on. Here's one of the things that I noticed about Apple.

00:27:24
I noticed this about Apple. There are entire blogs, websites, YouTube channels dedicated to trying to get the scoop on what's coming next with Apple. Have you noticed that? Like, I don't know that there's there might be a couple that do the same thing for Android, but they don't do that for Google or for Facebook. Now you kinda pretty much can, you know, test the waters, you know, like, put out your get the temperature of how things are going with Apple, and then there's always this insider that leaks a little information.

00:28:19
This is the next device that's coming up and things like that. But sometimes it's wrong. There's even channels that rate the people that come up with these predictions. Oh, this person always has these predictions for Apple and they have an 8.9 rating on, how true their predictions have been in the last 5 years. Like, what?

00:28:51
This is a whole industry. People's whole entire livelihoods are based on features that Apple may or may not release and whether or not your predictions are right or not. Your level of accuracy at predicting what Apple was going to do. I couldn't live like that. I guess, and I think most of these folks have teams or they have some type of structure.

00:29:29
And I do want to say hi. I see all the emojis and all the the wonderful, feedback that I'm getting from folks. And I do want to acknowledge. I don't want you to think that I'm ignoring. Although, I don't have my glasses on. So I don't see individual names, but I just especially when you put emojis up, I can see those. And I so appreciate that. And I even see that some people have emojis in their names. So I'm thinking those emojis are for me and it's like, do they ain't for you? That's my name.

00:30:05
Emoji. So, anyway, I you know, what I'll do is I will try to post this somewhere where you could give me your feedback. Because I wanna know if you're someone who who is creating tutorials, how do you manage that stress? How do you cope with the constant hamster wheel of all the changes that happen on the particular app that, you're always reporting on or doing tutorials for or whenever they make an update or an upgrade and all that. And do you see your old videos, those old outdated videos, do you see them tanking?

00:31:02
You know, I mentioned that I used to do 2, tutorials for Facebook and some of them are still being watched. They are just being consumed like as if they just came out yesterday. And and but I still I refuse to continue to create new ones for Facebook because of the way it's fragmented right now. You know, there are some things that are still the same and that's why some of my older videos are still getting views and, I mean, they're they get a good amount of views even though those features I'll give you example. In Facebook, you can make avatar.

00:31:48
Right? I know you've seen it where you can create a little character that has the likeness of you and you can even pick out the clothing that you wear. You can pick out your eye color, how far your eyes are spaced apart. The shape of your nose. Whether you wear glasses or not.

00:32:11
If you have a mustache or a beard or do you wear hats? The they try to give you a variation of skin tones. Of course, you can never go through the whole spectrum of skin tones. Right? But a general idea, you know, I'll give them an a for effort as far as that is concerned.

00:32:40
And when they first rolled out those avatars, they had a cartoon type look. Then and I did a tutorial. Not only did I do a tutorial, I did a live stream. I did about an hour and some minutes long live stream showing people how to create their avatar, how to change all these different aspects that you could change, your hairstyles was another big thing, the eyebrows, the shape of your eyebrows, and all that stuff. Facebook has changed that.

00:33:25
It's not the same kind of character or cartoon character anymore. It is a completely different, look to it. But that old video still gets you. It's still like the number one watched video on my channel. People enjoy the fact that I take them through step by step because the process is still very similar, even though the, the avatar itself, the design and the format of it has changed.

00:34:07
But nobody else has come out with a video to knock me off of the search results for how to make your Facebook avatar because like I said there is just people just enjoy watching and it's, like I said, over an hour long livestream and yet it's very popular. But it's videos like that, that kind of, pushed me towards like not creating more videos for Facebook. But that was not really the straw that broke the camel's back. Oh, thank you so much. That was not really the straw that broke the camel's back.

00:34:50
I'll tell you the straw that really broke the camel's back for me with Facebook. And that was, in 2021, I believe, they started embracing podcasting for the 3rd or 4th time, but I'll just the other times were way, way, way back in the day. They started embracing podcasting. You could put your podcast. You could connect it on your Facebook page.

00:35:19
People could literally play and listen to your podcast episode while they were on Facebook and they had all these features rolled out even in the creation of reels and, you could do an audio story. They would transcribe your audio on your Facebook page. Then all of a sudden Oh, let me let me also add. They only rolled it out in the United States. They never even finished rolling it out across the world.

00:35:56
But then all of a sudden, one day, they decided, we're giving up on podcasting. Now mind y'all, I had created videos of every step of the way. I created videos when they were, you know, this is how you get your add your, podcast to your Facebook page. This is how someone listens to podcasts on Facebook. I did oh, I can't even tell y'all all the videos I did.

00:36:28
I did podcast episodes about it as well. And then they just decided, without any warning or explanation. No warning. No explanation. They just decided we're not doing podcasting anymore.

00:36:52
And it ain't because podcasting's not popular. Because like I said, this was, like, in 21 2021. So this was at the height of, you know, when we all were still stuck at home and they didn't even give it a chance. It wasn't even available for like 6 months. And maybe it just there was somebody who was at a higher position that realized how powerful podcasting is and then that person must have left, or quit, or got fired, or got kicked to the curb, or got promoted, And they said, well, since you're not doing the podcasting thing anymore, we're just gonna get rid of the whole kit and caboodle.

00:37:45
Wrecked my channel. Well, it didn't wreck my channel. It didn't wreck my channel, but it wrecked my views. It absolutely wrecked my views. But for months afterwards, people were saying, I don't have that option anymore. I know. They got rid of it. I don't see that. I don't see those buttons. I know they got rid of it.

00:38:08
That was crushing for me. And I don't want you to have that experience and I, you know, I'm not gonna just say that could happen on Facebook. It can happen on any of these platforms. Instagram, YouTube. You know? Y'all remember Adpocalypse? Okay? Twitter, this platform right here. Y'all know this could be gone. Like, you wake up one morning and it's like, oh, it had to get rid of it.

00:38:48
I don't want that to happen to you. I want you to think about creating evergreen content and creating content that can be repurposed. Someone did a tutorial the other day that I was watching and it was all about how to download your videos from Instagram. And the reason why they gave for you using this tool was not the reason I used it because I have used the tool myself. And the reason that they gave was so that you can repurpose them everywhere.

00:39:24
And I'm saying y'all should be creating that stuff on your computer or on your phone inside of, Canva or an Imovie app or something like that. Anyways, you could repurpose. Don't be depending on some app to come along so you can remove the watermark. Don't let that watermark be on your video until you upload it. This is a smart way to do it.

00:39:55
Okay? Don't use the TikTok app to create your video and then that watermark is there. Then you gotta find another app to take the watermark off. Don't do it like that. Create your video, then upload it to TikTok. Maybe you want to do some special editing inside of the Tik Tok app. Okay? But you have that raw footage. And when I say footage, usually you think of like a long video. It could be a 10 second video.

00:40:26
It don't have to be a long, long video to be footage. You have that raw footage in your possession without anybody's watermark on Now there's sometimes where you're just like, I know I'm not gonna repurpose this, then that's different. Like, for example, on TikTok, there's a lot of filters that you can do, like, really goofy videos. And I kinda like sometimes if I see something that I think is really funny or I think I could put my own funny little twist to it, then, yeah, I'm gonna use the TikTok app. I'm gonna use the TikTok filter, and I'll create the video.

00:41:02
And if nobody likes it, they don't like it. But if they do, they do. Okay? But it's only meant for TikTok. It's not meant for me. Oh, now let me go and repurpose that. First of all, it's not gonna make sense over on Instagram because they don't have those filters over there. And people gonna be like, what? What's this? Whereas on TikTok, everybody be like, oh, let me get that filter and see if I can create that video too with my little twist on it.

00:41:33
So, yeah. I had an ex boyfriend years ago that used to say, a thing ain't for everybody. That's because, you know, he ain't like me finding out about the stuff he was doing that he didn't want me to know about. A thing ain't for everybody. That's how sometimes when you create content, every piece of content you create doesn't have to be repurposed.

00:41:58
But when you know that you're going to create a really, really valuable piece of content, not a silly little dancing video or whatever. And I'm not saying that all dancing videos are silly because I've seen some serious dancing videos that have been repurposed on multiple platforms, and I watch them on every one because they're serious. I think J. Lo does some good ones. But shout out to J.

00:42:26
Lo because I heard her latest movie didn't, bring in the box office numbers by. So I just wanna send her some positive vibes. Inhale and exhale, JLo. You'll be alright, baby, with your fine self. Okay.

00:42:42
So I digress. So back on topic, just wanna close things out with the purpose of this video. And here's another thing. TikTok limits how many characters title. So if you got any if you were misled at all by the short abbreviated title that I had to use here, it wasn't my fault.

00:43:08
I just don't want you because I know creator burnout is a big issue. I don't want you to get burnt out by going down the social media software tutorial rabbit hole because I've been down that rabbit hole and it's not nice. It's not that easy to come up out of it either. So think more about making videos. I don't want to say like this one.

00:43:40
But that are not so much of go here, click this, move this to the left, tap 4 times because I'm not saying never do that. You can do those, but just know that video is not going to be evergreen. It's not. You're always gonna be on the hamster wheel of creating more videos and always mix in videos like this, where you're just riffing off the top of the dome. Yes.

00:44:12
I do have my little notes, But I've been on here for quite some time. I can't even remember how long I've been on here. But, and this is coming from experience. This is coming from, something that, oh, thank you so much for sharing, Lily. How you doing, girl?

00:44:34
This is coming from my experience, things that I have done. There's somebody else tomorrow or next week or next month that's going to tell you, yes, you should be creating tutorials. If you want to listen to them, go ahead. Take it from somebody who started back in 2009. If you value your downtime, If you don't want to get burned out by social media, it's okay to do a tutorial every now and then.

00:45:08
That's not what I'm saying. I just don't want you to put all your eggs in that tutorial basket. You know what I'm saying? Every now and then, just come on and talk to the people like I've talked to you today. And with that said, I want you to know, I always start my videos by saying, hello beautiful people.

00:45:36
And you know why? It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman or if you're non binary, I know that you have a beautiful message inside of you and it just needs to come out. It just needs to come out. Maybe something that I said was encouraging to you and made you think, oh, I should create a video. Oh, I should start a podcast.

00:46:05
Oh, I should write a blog post. And I wanna encourage you to let that beautiful message out to the world. Thank you for the hearts. I love you. I love you so much. And as I said, I start by saying hello beautiful people and I end by saying, stay beautiful.