This week’s Motivational Monday comes on a Tuesday to start off the week before Christmas holiday. Rocky start to the blog, but better posting late than never posting at all.

New Year’s resolutions are coming, and I can’t even deny how often I made these vows. New Year’s resolutions are a great way to refresh and remind yourself of personal goals and changes you want to make to better yourself.

For this week’s Motivational Monday, I talk about curating your feed to control what you want to see, as well as how you should curate your content.

Curating your Social Media

Before we countdown, take a moment to look through your social networks. Is your feed listing things you want to see? Do you care about the posts that appear first on your feed? If you look through your list of followed accounts, are you seeing their posts?

Many social networking websites are changing their algorithm to show you posts that they feel need your attention. Consequently, this means missing out on posts from your personal life or accounts that you enjoy. Cleaning up your following can help the algorithm adjust because it has a smaller pool of accounts you follow to work from.

Simply put, I’m recommending that everyone start curating their feed and follow only accounts that are personal, supports their lifestyles, and is in line with the values they hold.

Personal Accounts (Friends, Relatives, Loved Ones, etc.)

Personal accounts should be that of friends and family members that you enjoy staying in contact with.  These are people that you want to speak to and continue your relationship with. When you follow brands, they compete against your personal relationships for your attention. On a similar level, accounts of associates or acquaintances that you don’t know too well are also competing with your closest relationships.

You should prioritize your feed to ensure your in-person relationships come first. Social networking is a great way to stay in touch and allows us to always be in the know of our loved ones’ lives, and I’m pro-social media for that point. 

Accounts that Support Your Ideal Lifestyle

Accounts that support your lifestyle are those that post content that aligns with your goals. Weight-loss journeys, daily cooking posts, and fashion and beauty accounts are all great accounts. However, curating your accounts mean choosing the best one of the many in the sea that aligns most with what you want to do.

Let’s say you have a New Year’s resolution to improve your rock-climbing abilities. If you’re starting as a beginner, the best account to follow would be your local rock-climbing gym instead of the rock-climbing expert who only travels to rock climb. The gym may post tips and pointers, specials, and events that you can utilize and take advantage of. If you follow the rock-climbing expert who only posts sponsored ads for equipment and photos of themselves climbing at the outdoors, it may be inspiring, but it’s not useful.  

With your lifestyle, you can slowly make small tweaks to get to your lifestyle goals, such as health, fitness, hobbies, aesthetic, and style. Curating who you follow is an example of a small tweak. These accounts that share their lifestyle with you help spruce up your feed with inspiring and useful content.

Accounts that Align with your Values

Finally, your accounts should be those that align with your values. Values is what someone finds great importance in their life. Values drive a lot of our decisions and our choices. They speak volumes to who we are as a person and what we want.

Accounts with shared values have community. For example, Facebook has been seeing an increase in groups sharing hobbies or events that can post and communicate with one another. Instagram, although only visual, will have active comment sections where other followers can interact with the content creator and each other. 

Accounts that align with values doesn’t necessarily mean religious, political, or philosophical views. It can be in the person who creates the content. If you’re more focused on family values, there are content creators who focus on sharing more about their family and their experiences. Same with minimalism or charity.

And the great part? Values change. Curating your feed means always ensuring the content you receive is what you want to see. If you find yourself bored of an account, you can unfollow the account.

Conclusion

Curating your feed means control of what you see. Nowadays, social networks are tying in advertisements with your feed to make it appear as if you follow the content. While we may not be able to control the order of how we see our content, we can control who we want to follow and receive content from. The time we spend on social networks can be utilized to be more helpful and inspiring when you choose to curate your content.

Have accounts you aren’t ready to cut ties with? Many social network websites have options to hide their content instead of cutting the cord completely. And when you’re ready to view their content again, you’re able to switch their posts back on with a click of a button. Check your social network’s support section for more information.