Today I want to talk about striking a balance with social media… i.e. how I’ve learned to have a job in social media without spending ALL of my time on screens or thinking about being on screens or getting too caught up in the perfection of it all.

I will be the first to say that I have a LONG way to go… I have been known to work tirelessly on vacation and get a little too wound up about capturing the most picturesque Instagram photo, but I have to admit as the years have gone on being so “on” for the screens has seemed FAR less exciting to me than it did in the beginning.

The more in touch I’ve gotten with myself and truly the happier I’ve become in my REAL life, outside of the screens, the easier it has been for me to detach from it all when I need to. And newsflash: we all need to.

Let’s back it up a little bit. A few years ago I was pretty lost. I had just moved back to LA from NYC, I was very publicly recovering from an eating disorder and switching from the vegan label to a non-labeled way of life, I left a big heart of my heart in New York, and when I got back to LA it seemed the only thing for me to do here was to dive into my blog, full speed ahead.

At the time I was writing my first book (which you can find here), running a clothing line (TBV Apparel, anyone?!), blogging every day of the week and launching a TBB recipe app. I was a one woman show with no help and I loved it that way — I had my eye on building my brand and I poured my entire heart and soul into it.

There was a lot going on in my family life, my dating life (was in an awful relationship with someone who refused to commit to being with me but still spent every day with me), and my health, aka the very beginnings of my Lyme disease, was flaring up likely crazy.

To distract myself and to feel like I had a special purpose, what I kept doing was working, working, working, nose to the grind, creating more content, coming out with more ebooks and programs (which you can still find on the SHOP tab of my website), posting on social media, scrolling Instagram, the works.

What I was always praised for and also what I found great joy in was working. When everything else seemed to be spiraling out of control, I would think, “At least I have built this awesome brand — a brand that I am proud of that I can continue to grow and focus on and work on every day and that actually makes me HAPPY to work on.”

And while all of that I still true, I had WAY TOO MUCH ANXIETY about getting the perfect photo at the perfect time, all of the time. I mean like on vacation I would absolutely scream my head off at my parents if they could not capture a good shot (which was most of the time at first, they’ve gotten a lot better with the iPhone photo life now), and I even brought products on vacation with my friends to shoot because I was never not working, never not committed to working with 394839 brands.

Let’s just say that all in all I did not have a balanced approach when it came to using technology, and especially using technology to work.

Fast forward to now. So much has changed. I have lived in LA again for over four years, and I have settled into it being home. I now live with the love of my life and Huddy, and Jonathan is so good at reminding me to live in the moment and not get so caught up in what is going on with my phone & social media.

I have learned to LET GO of so much. I let go of my clothing line and my app, and that has freed me up to begin my podcast, which has then freed me up from doing so many social media & blog partnerships that I was once always shooting and creating content for. The beauty of podcasting is that once a week, I can sit down with a super inspiring person and chat with them, then record my intros & outros, and call it a week. It does not require sitting in front of a screen and scrolling, in any way!

I have also gotten very SICK… so those issues I was experiencing four years ago were my body trying to tell me that something was radically off. Now that I know what it is, I have been able to take so much time for deep healing and rest. Trying to get my life, energy and vitality back while battling Lyme is a full-time job in itself.

During this time I have found that scrolling social media never fulfills me. It is easy to lose an hour here, an hour there scrolling Instagram or editing my photos and planning my feed. And of course I still do that, because my career still requires it and I can have fun with it too, but I am not so obsessed as if its my full LIFE anymore. I have also found that when I scroll social media too much, it takes me out of my own ideas and creativity. I would so much rather create from a place within and then see what everyone is up to later.

Lastly, I have LET GO of those perfect “instagrammable” photos. Now I think the most IG-worthy photos are totally in the moment, expressing myself, being ME. Not photos from some fancy photoshoot on the beach — videos in my apartment making breakfast, unedited, real life stuff.

And lucky for me, that requires way less editing and time.

So that is MY story with social media & I will share with you the tips I have found to be a little less “addicted” if you will, and live more in the moment!

My Tips! //

+ Never scroll first thing in the morning. I leave my phone in airplane mode while I sleep so that when my alarm goes off in the morning and I reach over to turn it off, I am not instantly bombarded with messages, emails, podcast updates, etc. I can wake up peacefully and take the first hour of the day to just CHILL. Sometimes I journal and meditate, other times I just lay in bed cuddling Huddy and being one with my thoughts — remembering my dreams, sorting out problems from the day before, getting in touch with the creativity that inspires me, thinking about ideas for a new project. The morning is not the time of day to scroll!

+ Create habits and routines off-the-screens that fill you up. I love my morning routine sans phones, including making iced coffee in the kitchen, listening to music, stretching and doing some yoga, and jumping on my rebounder to get my lymph moving. At night, J & I like to wind down without our phones and do some meditation together, connect in bed and chat about our days, play with Huddy, and either read or watch a movie together. I don’t count a movie as screen time because it is actually a great way to escape the social media / “what everyone else is doing” world and just be present and allow yourself to be entertained. Especially when you’re doing it with someone you love!

+ Let go of the perfection of that “perfect photo” or having the perfect feed. I have gone through a lot of phases with my Instagram aesthetic. At first it was all food, then it was very much food & lifestyle, then all lifestyle, then all yoga, then I got sick of ALL of that and felt like just sharing what I do in my life — whether that be meals or yoga or running or time with my babe at home or traveling or ANYTHING — and now it’s back to a little mix of all of it, with more of an emphasis on wellness. I used to get so worried that my feed wasn’t streamlined or consistent enough, but who cares?

If you focus on what your WHY is, maybe it will help those fears go away. For me, I have never intended to have the perfect IG feed. I may have gotten caught up in that for a while, yes, but I am so happy to have let go of it. My “why” is that I am here to inspire people, and I feel that the right people will come my way whether or not my feed is perfect or whether I always get the perfect photo. I am so much more interested in LIVING, and I have a feeling the people who are meant to follow me are the same way.

+ Add things into your life that help you clear your head. For me that is definitely exercise (a blissful hour or hour and a half where you cannot have your phone around, like a yoga class or a HIIT workout), and I like to exercise at the end of the workday around 5 or 6pm to “close off” the day. I put my phone onto airplane mode and then I just check out. I don’t need to answer to anyone, I don’t force myself to be on. I am able to reconnect to myself during that time and draw a line between the workday, “on” me and the totally real life me who is ready to step away from all the screens and just live. If its not exercise, maybe it is a walk outside or a meditation or even just making dinner with your family. It can be as simple as ever and still get the job done.

+ Think about what makes you HAPPY, and do more of it. I don’t know about you, but scrolling Instagram is not something I would count as something that makes me happy. But does it still take up a considerable portion of my time? YES. And it doesn’t have to!! When I remind myself what I love about my daily life: my morning routine, spending time with people, making dinner, doing yoga, being outside, exercising, being present in the moment with those around me… it makes it easy to step off of social media and take a break. It’s all about reminding yourself what you love and knowing that it’s there for you, you DO have time for it.

+ When you’re on vacation, come up with designated “online time” and then be completely present for the rest of it. This is something Jonathan came up with, and we have been pretty good about sticking to it when we are on vacation. We spend about 30 minutes in the late morning and either 30 minutes or an hour at the end of the day doing what we need to do online, from social media to emails. Then the rest of the day we just get to be with each other, play, explore, have fun, and take pics with our phones on airplane mode.

+ Remember that EMAILS CAN ALWAYS WAIT! And that makes social media comments & responses too. This one key point has been life changing for me. Spending less time on email is what my heart and soul has been calling for for YEARS. I like to group it all together and do no email/social media/scrolling days when I need them. Email can be just as stressful, it also means being “ON.”

+ Instead of scrolling your feed, search for your friends / fam to stay up to date on their feeds! I don’t really scroll IG these days. I have about 10 or 20 go-to’s that I search, from my mom to my best friends to other bloggers I love and admire, and I search them to see what they are up to on social media, which DOES make me happy. I like to engage and get inspired and support the people I love. But I don’t want to scroll down the rabbit hole of seeing what 34839348 other people and their fiancé’s mom’s friend’s daughter are up to. Ya know?

I hope this helps! Like I said, I still have a long way to go but avoiding that social media induced anxiety is so important. It may be hilarious for me to say that as a blogger, but because bloggers can sometimes be PART of the problem with the comparison trap and whatnot, I think it is as important for us to share as ever. Social media was way different when I first started blogging — it used to be a form of entertainment, it’s now a way of life! But we can take our life and our time back, we have that control, and it feels damn good when we do. Thoughts?! xo 

And even though I wasn’t posting on the blog last week, I was creating content for TBB like c-r-a-z-y. If you follow me on Snapchat (@jojoyounger), or Instagram then you know I was romping around L.A. with my OG photographer & blog creator, Morgan. Morgan’s talent behind the camera is one of those things that I will never stop being awestruck about and deeply inspired by, so having him here all week was a real soul-fueler.

( SIDENOTE: Soul-fueling might just be my new favorite phrase / purpose in life. #FuelDatSoul )

Wearing Band of Gypsies // Photo by Morgan Oliver Allen // Chasing the sun on the Venice Boardwalk

I have also done a lot of deep thinking about why I do what I do and how important it is to me to stay true and authentic to my core values of balance, inspiration, active/healthy lifestyle & high vibe, nonjudgmental living on the blog and my social media platforms. For someone as completely impulsive and spur of the moment as I am, putting careful thought and planning into the longterm goals for my brand is something that requires a lot of extra thought and time on my end.

I feel really good about what I came up with in terms of upcoming content as well as goals to work toward for the future, annndddd since you are my amazing readers I thought it was only fitting that I share those initial thoughts and plans with you:

1. Create & Share Only Content that I am in Love With / That Inspires Me (And Hopefully Inspires you!). As a blogger, we sometimes agree to campaigns that we are only partially proud of. We also take a lot of photos that are just subpar compared to what we know we are capable of. Finding a delicate balance between being a complete perfectionist and just posting things I am only moderately inspired by is a goal of mine moving forward. I see the MAJOOORRR difference between bloggers who put a ton of thought and effort into their content (think Julia Engel‘s Instagram versus one with a bunch of grainy iPhone photos).

I love the above photo because I feel like it showcases my laidback personality, my hippie vibe & is still totally natural and subtle (no professional hair and makeup, no stylist, no nada). It’s taken on the Venice Boardwalk, home to one of the most casual and “local” L.A. vibes there is, and the clothes are as gypsy-free and wanderlusty as they come (a.k.a MY STYLE in a nutshell). The image is high quality because Morgan is a rockstar, and the editing is on point and very on brand for TBB & the clothing line. All in all… This photo inspires me to create and share only photos that I am madly in love with. Not to say I don’t already do that whenever possible, but to put more of an emphasis on it is important.

2. Write more often for the blog & less detailed/long posts so I can get more out. You might have noticed lately that my last few posts were 3,500+ words. For a blog, that’s a LOT of words. I love sharing my life in detail with you guys, especially super important moments like the marathon, details of my book coming out, etc., BUT I also like the idea of putting content out more frequently which requires less detail. Not less quality, just less detail. This could also mean more posts that have a bit of writing and a lot of photos in them — another thing I love sharing!

3. More collaborations with organizations / brands / people that I TRULY believe in. Last week I partnered with the National Eating Disorders Association to raise awareness for #NEDAwareness week. I don’t think I have ever been so proud of a collaboration in my life — the organization hits so close to home for me, and I realize how important it is to raise awareness for a cause that needs as many thriving, healthy, body-positive women (and men) at the forefront as possible. Sometimes I get so caught up in my own projects and staying on top of my deadlines that I don’t get as involved with associations like NEDA as I would like to, but using my voice and my platform to speak up for what I believe in and want to share with people is really #1 in my book.

4. Have fun with EVERYTHING I am doing, & drop the things that are not fun and no longer serve me. Having Morgan here last week reminded me that I am ridiculously in love with what I do for a living. In fact, everyone I work with reminds me of that on a daily basis (Ty, Cole, Danika, Ali, Brandin, to name a few!) BUT having someone stay with me all week to create content for WORK just reminded me that what I do is honestly a total blast. I feel ridiculously lucky to do this for a living and have the freedom to switch between sitting in front of my computer writing in my pajamas and being in front of the camera all glammed up to everything in between. It can be easy to get lost in the shuffle and let my stress take over from time to time, but last week I realized/remembered there is no rush… A career with longevity means careful planning & taking my time, not leaping into any and every opportunity with abandon. Time. Patience. Breath.

Playing around at Playlist Yoga w/ Calv & Sophie after some videos we filmed last week!

5. More VIDEO content. There’s nothing quite like expressing yourself through video content… In a way, it’s personal in a way that writing just doesn’t have to offer. (Not to say writing doesn’t have its major strengths as well as far as expression goes.) I had SO MUCH FUN creating this video with Morgan, yoga videos we filmed with Calvin & Sophie (above), filming a “Best Friend Tag” video with Brandin (SO FUN can’t wait to share), and all sorts of fun behind the scenes “Day in the Life” vids. I have missed my YouTube channel and let it take a seat on the back burner for a while… Time to get back into it!

6. Lots of active lifestyle content. As time goes on, I realize and also LOVE that my main niche within the social media community is active lifestyle. I dip into other things like healthy recipes, food photos, fashion, health/fitness events, beauty, writing, eating disorder recovery, etc. BUT my main, main focus really is active lifestyle. I don’t ever want to let that part of my brand fall short — I really do get so much fulfillment from inspiring people to try something new when it comes to fitness / yoga / distance running / ANYTHING. More new & improved active lifestyle content to come!

7. Sharing more about my own personal health with you guys. I have recently been through a lot to find the healthiest version of myself and to find out what exactly has been making me not feel well for the last couple of years… And I am working with an incredible functional medicine doctor to get some answers. Tynan and I are working on a little YouTube video about my current health journey, but I also want to share more with you guys here on the blog. There is a lot to say! I have been waiting to get some answers before I talk much about it — so stay tuned.

Gettin’ that healthy lifestyle on with my delish “Mud Hut” Tonic from Lifehouse last week! // Photo by Morgan

As far as other things/ideas… There are a lot. These are kinda the basics. We are also about to do a full on revamp of TBV Apparel that I am beyond stoked about. What do you guys think? Would love your suggestions on what YOU want to see moving forward! You into my ideas?! XO 

First of all… What is it?

When I first heard about people purchasing their likes & followers on Instagram I didn’t believe that established bloggers or brands could really get away with it, so I wrote it off as something only super untruthful people did. Obviously it’s so against Instagram’s policy to do something like that, so I figured why would anyone credible risk it and put themselves into a position where they may lose your account if they got caught? (Let alone the whole authenticity thing… I mean, hello.) But I’ve since learned that there are many, many loopholes in the Instagram system & many thriving businesses that SELL likes and followers!

WTF, right?!

My first question about the whole thing was: WHERE do people even go to buy likes & followers? Isn’t it some sort of underground business… Wouldn’t it be sketchy to hand over your money to people selling Instagram likes?! So of course I looked into it myself to see what I could find. What I found were that there were ALL sorts of websites that sell likes and followers for a wide range of prices. All you have to do is type in your Instagram handle, choose the amount of likes or followers (or both) that you want, and cough up some money. Not even THAT much money, to be honest.

My Own Personal Experiment…

In good fashion, after I did some research about different sites in the business, I bought some likes (not followers, sorry, TOO weird for me after building a business around authentically growing my following) to see what all the hype was about and to be able to accurately critique the whole process. The first thing I did was purchase 500 likes for about $10.00. Sounds innocent enough, right?

While the transaction was going through, I was basically terrified that A) My Instagram account would get shut down for doing something against policy, B) Everyone would look at my photo and KNOW that I had just bought likes and that I would lose all of my credibility and authenticity, C) The website was fake and would just steal my money and run off with it, and D) That I would fall in love with the idea of “having more likes” and want to do it again and again.

Those were my fears. I’ll tell you what actually happened. The “likes” started flooding in pretty much immediately on the specific photo that I’d chosen. (Oh, that’s the other thing, you can choose a photo or spread the likes out over several different photos.) After about 5 minutes had passed, I had 500 new “likes” tacked on to my most recent IG photo. It seemed way too easy to be true… If it were THAT easy, and honestly that cheap, why weren’t more people doing it, I thought?

(By the way, don’t think I didn’t feel guilty as F throughout the whole process. I felt strange and so inauthentic even though I was really just trying it out of curiosity. But I will get to that in a minute.)

The Catch…

Then I realized what the catch was. Even though these likes were coming in and looked real, if you clicked on the people who had liked my photo, the first 500 people that popped up were literally robot profiles. ROBOT PROFILES! Not real people. I mean, I knew this wouldn’t be real people liking my photo when I was purchasing the likes, but seeming the robot accounts for myself freaked me out and then really sent me into thinking “EVERYONE’S GOING TO KNOW I BOUGHT LIKES NOW!!” I take my authenticity on the Internet very seriously, so although this may sound like a trivial freak out sesh, it had legitimacy in my head.

The way you can tell if a profile is real or a robot is basically by looking at it for two seconds. The robot profiles always have some kind of weird bio that barely makes sense– some I saw were, “Just got a divorce and looking for a good time!” “Say hi to me, I love Instagram!” “Motorcycles and chicks” “Life ROCKS!!!!” and many more simple, robotic sounding phrases that I just couldn’t imagine a real person crafting their Instagram bio would ever say.

The other way you can tell whether an account is real or not is by taking a quick glance at the account’s photos. Some of these robot profiles are set to private and they each have very few followers. The ones that are not private always have about 12-15 photos, with NO likes or comments, and just look faker than life. They are either random selfies of the same person over and over, weirdly filtered photos of cars / bikes / scenic views / anything, and you can just TELL if you’re a perceptive person at all that they belong to someone who is not real. They are accounts crafted by like/follower selling companies in order to keep their businesses running.

SOOOO MANY PEOPLE USE THEM…

Ever since I figured out how to spot a robot profile, I have started searching through the “likes” on a lot of people’s Instagrams… Just out of curiosity! I really wasn’t trying to dig up dirt on anyone or question their morals with their blog/business, but once I realized how easy it was to figure out whether someone’s likes/followers were real… I couldn’t help but look out of pure curiosity and wonderment! Plus, I started thinking, is this something ALL bloggers do and I’ve just totally missed the train?

Basically what I found when I started searching was appalling. SO MANY bloggers that I have followed and admired for years had tons and tons and TONS of fake likes and followers. Tons. People who have generally the same number of followers that I do who I’ve always wondered, “How do they get SO many thousands of likes per photo while I’m over here super stoked if I even get near 2,000 likes?” had so many robot likes. It shocked me. That’s not to say that some influencers don’t have a super high engagement rate (likes per photo), because there are certainly many that do, but specific people who I’d believed to be getting all these likes all the time were total shams.

In a way you’d think this might make me feel relieved because I always wondered why my following wasn’t quite as engaged as some other bloggers that I looked up to, but it actually made me feel REALLY uncomfortable and grossed out to learn that they were buying likes. I think the whole business of selling/buying likes and followers is so slimy. If you are a blogger or an influencer and you are basing your whole business and persona off of social media, buying likes is exactly synonymous to portraying yourself as something that you’re not. It is untruthful, and it’s also a sad display of your own insecurity.

Why is it not okay to just get a real number of likes and move on with your day?! Yikes.

I was pretty much heartbroken to learn that some of these people I’d looked up to were building their businesses off of dishonesty. This isn’t a very longstanding business: blogging as a career is a NEW thing. There aren’t THAT many of us doing that. So the fact that a whole range of people within the business are building their audiences untruthfully freaks me out about trusting people in the blogging/social media space in general.

Then I looked into it further and noticed it with a lot of people who aren’t even bloggers, but rather people trying to grow a business or brand on social media. In a way I understand it because of course having more likes and a bigger following makes you more credible… But if it’s not even real, then why does it even matter? How can you even feel okay with it?!?!

The worst part…

And here’s the whole part that really, really, really bothers me. As an influencer myself who has built an organic following on Instagram and various other social media platforms, the main way that I make a living is by working with brands and promoting their products on my social media. Brands pay influencers based off of their following number and the engagement that they get on their photos. I have 121k real followers on my Instagram, and some of my photos only get around 700 likes if it’s not super popular with my audience. That is TOTALLY okay with me because I understand that many, many people follow and don’t like to click “like” on a photo even if they think it looks good! That’s just the way social media works.

The fact that other people in the same influencer space as me are lying about their numbers and paying for them makes me really sad and bummed out, because they are probably getting paid more than the people who are being genuine about their following– and they’re also scamming the companies who hire them to promote for them. I for one know that they’re getting paid more than I am for their fake 5,000 likes versus my real 700 likes. It’s just a slimy, slimy way to do business in my opinion.

ALSO, it freaks me out that we get so much validation in our culture from the amount of likes we get on a photo… Let’s learn to take that feeling off the Internet and give each other a reason to feel real value in REAL life from REAL PEOPLE, yeah?

Ew the fakeness

The Up Side!!!

It does make me feel a lot better to know that those of us who are genuine will most definitely have longer lasting careers, because our audience base is real. Our audience actually reads our blogs, supports us when we have products to sell (like my upcoming book, woo!), comes to our events and engages with us on a daily basis. It’s AWESOME to know that the people who follow & like my photos actually like what they see, and I love you guys so, so much for coming to the blog and reading.

The other up side is that those of us who aren’t paying for likes & comments are saving the money we make from working hard and actually doing COOL SHIT with it rather than literally throwing it away on robot profiles.

The other upside is that now when I come across other bloggers who don’t buy their likes and followers (and remember, it’s easy to tell if you’re looking), I have SO MUCH respect for them!!! More respect than I would have before, because they are doing business the right away, the authentic way, and now I see how truly respectable that is when so many people out there aren’t being truthful.

I’ve also bonded with some of my closest blogging friends through having discussions about how much we value authenticity and realness in the blogging space (like Annie & Kelly, two of my BFF’s off the Internet who happen to have kickass, genuine blogs and social media accounts), so really, I know all hope is not lost.

And maybe some people care less about portraying genuine realness on the Internet than I do, and I get that. I know that for some people creating a brand or blog that LOOKS super duper awesome to the outside world is more important to them than what’s really going on. I guess I won’t knock it if that’s what works for some people.

When you read my book, you’ll learn another thing about me when it comes to WHY honesty is so important to me. I think if you’ve been burned in the past by someone dishonest and conniving, honesty takes on a whole new meaning in your life. So if you’ve never found yourself in that position (and I truly hope you haven’t!) then my penchant for honesty might seem like WOAHHH TBB you care so damn much!!! Yes, I do. I care a lot about portraying an honest, authentic life. That’s part of who I am and what this blog is all about– AND part of what the people I try to surround myself with are all about.

Thoughts on all of this? Would love to hear opinions from both angles… I’m all ears! The crazy Internet world we live in… Sheesh!