Every day, I feel like I have to make a million different decisions. Most of those decisions affect my daughter so they feel like big decisions even if they really aren’t. As a people pleasing person, any decision feels like a lot, so it’s not all that shocking that I feel like I’m in a constant state of decision fatigue.

And as we explore this never-ending digital world where work seems to go on forever, I don’t think I’m alone. I think we’re all suffering some level of decision fatigue. Just ask any mom what’s for dinner tonight, and you might just see a frozen person who doesn’t know what to say next. Moms, dads, EVERYONE… we don’t want to make one more decision.

So why is your social media program forcing decisions on us?

Don’t think yours does? Let’s figure that out and what you can do together .

Photo album

I once had a client who wanted me to post five hundred pictures in a Facebook photo album for an event. I argued that this was a bad idea, but in the end, my pleas were falling on deaf ears. I’m of the mind that as long as I have warned you that something is a bad idea (and maybe I have proof of those warnings), I’ll do the bad thing if you keep insisting. So I spent a whole day trying to do this. Why? Because even Facebook was like, “Whoa man, this is a bad idea so I’m gonna throw a thousand roadblocks in your way to make it impossible.” But I had told the client that I was doing this, so I worked my way through all of those roadblocks.

The photo album predictably flopped. Why? First off, there was way too much for fans to go through and it was all released at the same time. It automatically triggered many decisions to be made. Should I like this album? Should I like the pictures? Maybe I should go through the pictures? And as fans grappled with these decisions, they saw the sheer number of photos and felt paralyzed about doing anything, so they did nothing.

What could we have done instead of freezing our fans? SO MANY THINGS. We could have done a highly curated video. We could have made multiple posts and used one photo per post to reminisce about the event. Basically, we could have made many kinds of posts that only asked one action from our fans instead of a huge photo album that asked many things of our fans who then had to make a decision about what exactly they wanted to do. We can save them that bit of decision fatigue.

Landing page

I know it’s insane to be mentioning that clicking a link on a website should bring you directly to the information you are linking to, and yet, I am still clicking on links on social media that take me to a random page. The information may be on the bottom of the page instead of the top or they just linked to the wrong page on accident. Instead of facing the decision fatigue of what to do, I just close the webpage and move on with my life. Pretty sure others do the same.

So when you are linking to a webpage, make sure you are doing a few things to make sure people take action rather than face decision fatigue. Obviously make sure you are linking to the right page. Then figure out if the information is on the top of the page or buried. If it’s prominently displayed on the top of the page, then you’re fine. If not, you have to figure out if the best thing to do is to create an anchor on the page, redo the page so it’s prominent or if you should make a whole new landing page for it. There are pluses and minuses to it all. Only you can really make that decision based on what information it is.

Making the information prominent and easy to find really helps prevent decision fatigue. It’s there and easy to do, so the action you want is more likely to happen.

Asking for multiple actions in one post

We covered what photo albums do, and it’s very similar to having more than one ask in a post. Let’s look at an extreme example: Some of those Instagram contests.

To enter, you have to follow one or more accounts (usually more because in the case of influencers, they’ve got sponsors). Then you have to engage with the post with a like or more commonly with a comment that tags someone from your network. And then for a bonus entry, you’re sharing it to your Instagram Stories.

I rarely see people entering these contests anymore. I think it’s for a very obvious reason: It’s asking way too much. You know, unless it’s a really big prize someone really needs and it’s rare to see that anymore. Maybe someone would share a post to their stories or maybe someone would tag a friend in the comments. But both? On top of everything else? Not gonna happen all that often.

On the other hand, if you’re focusing on that one call to action, your fans will do it. And you’re more likely to hit your goals for specific posts like that. Because your fans aren’t suffering from decision fatigue and are more likely to take that action.

There are countless other examples of how you might be causing decision fatigue for your fans. But these are the three that I am most likely to see. It all comes down to keeping your social media program laser focused on your goals and making sure you’re not causing your fans more work or decisions than they need to be doing. If you do that, you will do just fine.

Have you seen a post that causes you decision fatigue? Did you act on it?