While checking out your newsfeed while lying in bed seems relaxing, studies show that people who check social media 30 minutes before bedtime are 1.5 times more likely to have a night of disturbed sleep.

With these in mind, we need to stop surfing social media before bed. To know how we can do this, keep on reading! 

How to Stop Using Social Media Before Bed

There are plenty of reasons why social media may have detrimental effects on your sleep. Here are some: 

• It keeps our minds active and psychologically engaged.
• The blue light from your phone suppresses melatonin production, which helps put us to sleep.
• It may induce anxiety and depression, which will prevent you from falling asleep.

To address this, the National Sleep Foundation recommends that you stop using your electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime. Here are some tips on how to do that:

Make your social media apps less accessible. 

The more steps you need to take to access the apps, the less likely you’ll use them. 

If the first thing you see when you open your phone is your Facebook app, it won’t be easy to limit your social media use. Following the saying – out of sight, out of mind, it’s a good idea to hide those apps. You can do this by remove them from your home screen and transfer them into folders. 

You can even go as far as deleting the apps from your phone. In this way, you have no choice but to use a laptop to check your social media accounts. 

Make your bedroom a screen-free zone.

Try leaving your phone outside your bedroom. Since we use our phones to “relax” or set alarms and reminders, not having your phone beside you will make you feel anxious. 

The good news is there are plenty of alternatives that you can try. Here are some of them: 

• Read a book instead of reading disturbing and depressing news online. 
• Set your wake up alerts using an alarm clock.
• Talk with your husband or roommate instead of chatting with other people. 
• Meditate instead of browsing your newsfeed. 

Turn off notifications from your social media apps. 

If you want to sleep well, you should remove all possible distractions. The incoming calls from your Messenger app or the nonstop notifications from your Instagram will keep you awake. 

Considering this, the first step in your bedtime routine should be to silence your apps. 

Tips to Get Better Sleep 

Aside from avoiding social media before bed, here are other tried-and-tested tips that can help you sleep better:

Invest in the right mattress.

Have you ever wondered why you sleep so well in hotels? That’s because they have the most comfortable beddings and mattresses. 

Studies show that using the right mattress can help improve sleep quality by up to 111%. If you are thinking of investing in a new mattress, this twin mattress review from SleepStandards is a great resource to read.

Optimize your sleeping environment.

We already know that the environment can affect the quality of your sleep. For the most relaxing sleep, you should minimize the noise, light, and clutter inside your bedroom. 

Temperature matters too. The ideal bedroom temperature is around 16-18°C. However, it would still be a matter of personal preference, so try testing out different temperatures to see which would be most comfortable. 

Establish a bedtime routine and be consistent with it.

Sleeping is something that we can’t do on command, but there’s one thing that can prepare it for sleep—a bedtime routine. Since routines are predictable, doing them puts your body in a relaxed state, leading to better and faster sleep. 

Here are some effective bedtime routines that you can try:

• Prepare your work clothes and write down your to-do’s for the next day. 
• Take a long hot shower.
• Drink warm milk/ tea. 
• Meditate or do yoga. 
• Turn on your sound machine or listen to your pre-bedtime playlist. 
• Turn off or dim the bedroom lights.
• Put your gadgets to sleep or silent mode. 

Final Thoughts

We can’t deny that social media is a vital tool in connecting people and keeping us updated and informed. However, all the goodness it brings doesn’t erase the fact that it prevents us from getting a good night’s sleep.

The key here is to use social media in moderation. Avoid using social media 1 hour or 30 minutes before bed. Instead of browsing your news feed, try to do things that can help put you to sleep. 

Make all these necessary changes in your pre-sleeping activities so you can sleep better and faster!

The post How to stop using social media before bed and tips to get better sleep appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Never stop posting new material

Never mind if it’s crap; just post something new, anything new, every day, especially on weekends and Leap Year. That’s because most viewers are masochists, wondering what kind of crap you will come up with next. Like this piece of &%%##.

Make your content resonate

How? Simple; just promise gigantic benefits and amazing wealth and health. You don’t have to deliver on any of it, because, hey, this is social media — remember?

Make your page stand out

YOU DO THIS BY USING ALL CAPS AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION MARKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (See? You couldn’t resist reading this, could you?)

Know your target audience

You do this with lots and lots of spyware. It’s easy to install and spread, and then when you’ve captured more data than the FBI you can tailor your posts very specifically — and try a little online blackmail, just for kicks.

You can’t have too many promotions

Well, you CAN run too many promotions — but offering free ebooks and newsletters will keep somebody in your office busy and off the streets. There are too many idle young people around as it is.

Make your page visually appealing

You might try posting lots and lots of photos of me — I don’t know if that will actually help your page out, but I sure could use the publicity.

The post How to Engage Customers on Social Media appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The imminent extinction of couch potatoes

With the growing use of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, the traditional couch potato is becoming a thing of the past, like Happy Meals and grapefruit pills. People now waste their time surfing social media sites while sitting on uncomfortable stools in Starbucks or during long delays at airports. This has impacted the couch industry to such an extent that their lobbyists are now asking lawmakers for substantial subsidies to ‘Keep America Safe for Sofas.’

Government by tweet

From the Chief Executive on down, federal, state, and local administrators have eschewed the use of memos, press releases and press conferences, and even live interviews in favor of tweeting policy shifts and new regulations. The halls of Congress are practically deserted nowadays, as lawmakers tweet their ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ — usually from an uncomfortable stool at Starbucks.

Social media withdrawal symptom

Children deprived of their ten hours of daily social media interaction quickly develop nervous tics and begin to stutter. Doctors warn that social media deprivation in children can lead to the reading of books and other regressive behaviors.

Loss of reality perception

The real world can no longer compete with the Facebook universe, in which everyone leads such interesting lives that things like going to work and taking out the garbage have become vague, mythical superstitions. And blogs like this one ARE THE ONLY FACTS OF EXISTENCE YOU WILL EVER NEED AGAIN.

The post How Social Media is Changing Our World appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

At a news conference from their headquarters in Slickpoo, Idaho, the president of the National Institute of National Institutes told a gathering of reporters that fetal social media activity is “if not the elephant in the room, then at least the dirty diaper that no one wants to change.”  Ellen Hives Wooster spoke to reporters at length about the startling numbers of unborn children who use social media outlets to voice their opinions about such things as amniotic fluid and umbilical cords.

“These accounts have flown under the radar for far too long” she said on Thursday. “We’re tracking a veritable blizzard of ‘goo’ and ‘gaa’ and even some puzzling remarks like ‘oot.’ Plainly, this segment of the social media spectrum is beginning to assert its right to self expression.”

“It won’t be long now before online advertisers and marketers catch on to this untapped market, and that could make things problematical for parents” she further stated. “I don’t think mom and dad are prepared to see the birth of their child chronicled on Snapchat, for instance — from the inside coming out. And the attendant flood of display ads for everything from Gerbers to Pampers.”

Licensed medical midwives are also voicing concern over this new phenomenon. Professional midwife Tiffany Ziehehart during an interview on Fox News said “It’s scary to think that ten minutes after assisting at the birth of a child, that infant may give me a bad review on Yelp!”  

The post Average Age of Child’s First Social Media Account Drops Again appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

What’s in a name?

Your username is the key to other people finding you on social media. If you want them flocking to your sites, think twice before using something like httr://twitter.com/boogerbreath. Some handles that would be more successful are variations on such usernames as FreeBeer or IGIveMoneyAway.

Your profile photograph

Let’s face it; most people are as homely as five miles of bad road. So the purpose of a social media profile picture is to HIDE your natural features, not DISPLAY them. This can be done by wearing a colorful ski mask. Or photoshopping an old photo of Tom Cruise, adding a mustache and/or breasts.

Bio con brio

The secret to a great bio on social media is to concentrate on assertions that cannot possibly be proven, one way or the other. For instance, if you say you have a degree in philosophy from the Washington Theological Union, which, according to Wikipedia, closed down for good in 2015, how is anyone possibly going to call your bluff? Or you can claim to have spent your childhood collecting elephant dung at Ringling Brothers circus to donate to urban gardens. Since they folded up their tents and disappeared six months ago, who’s to know any better?

The post Your Social Media Profile appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Before there can be a bot there has to be a fetching little algorithm that meets a handsome young software program. If the two hit it off and run away to get married, the result is usually a baby bot within the next nine nanoseconds.

The infant bot takes a great deal of care and nourishment in order to reach maturity. It has to be bathed, fed, burped, and taught to know the difference between right and wrong so it can ignore said difference. Once it has been weaned from neutrinos it is ready to start crawling — and strangely enough, bots never learn to walk, but remain crawling all over the web like spiders. They begin analyzing their surroundings within a week of their birth, and are ready to go out and mindlessly mine data by the time they should be in high school — which they never attend, since their parents have split up and immigrated to the Halidon Collider in Switzerland.

The lifespan of a bot is approximately six months. After that, they instinctively migrate to the Bot Graveyard somewhere in Africa, where their ivory tusks lay bleaching in the tropical sun . . .

The post The Birth of a Bot appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The market for faux followers has never been busier than today, when everyone from White House wannabes to Hollywood has-beens boasts of having followers in the hundreds of thousands on Twitter and Facebook. Today a celebrity without a social media following edging towards a million is shunned like a leper. In fact, it’s no longer necessary to have any kind of talent or ability at all to become a social media influencer — all you need are enough followers, and companies will beat your door down to get you to sponsor their product. So how does one obtain enough followers? I thought you’d never ask:

Be prepared to pay well

Avoid organizations that promise a gazillion followers for just a few dollars a month. Otherwise you wind up with names like I.P. Freely and Otto Focus on your list. You should be prepared to spend at least twenty dollars a month so your list will include names like George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi.

Love me, love my bots!

Bots are people, too, you know. So treat those innumerable bots infesting your social media sites with love and compassion by sacrificing a black rooster during the full moon, saving the blood for Andrew Zimmern on the Travel Channel.

Use these keywords in all your social media posts:

Kardashian. Trump. Bitcoin. Rutabaga. Nostradamus. Kale. Unilever. Meghan Markle. and Deracinate. You’ll get so many real followers you’ll have to beat them off with a stick.

The post You, Too, Can Be a Social Media Influencer! appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

But social media marketers often go about advertising the wrong way, missing important niche markets and even driving away consumers. Here are several tips that will drive sales like mayonnaise on gelatin:

Make your brand name memorable

This is done with adjectives and superlatives, for example:  “Aged Ice Cubes” or “Overpriced Hamburgers R Us.” Then make sure the same ‘handle’ is used on all social media platforms — so that the name “Bob’s Puny Plumbing Supply” is used consistently on everything from LinkedIn to Snapchat. That way consumers won’t get confused and wander off into the woods looking for James Comey instead of making an online purchase.

Use real testimonials

By ‘real’ is meant stuff that nobody can trace back to anyone. And by ‘testimonials’ is meant so much treacle that the reader is in danger of coming down with diabetes. And by ‘use’ is meant ‘apply’ or ‘employ’ or ‘exploit’ or ‘utilize’ or “a large civet cat native to Andalusia.’

Know your target audience

Are they tall or short or skinny or fat or old or young? Do they scratch their arms during football games or cut up their spaghetti instead of twirling it onto a fork? And are they in this country illegally? If so, be sure to rat them out for the bounty.

The post How to Plan for Social Media Sales Success appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

“That chubby little momser knows how to wheel and deal” admitted Trump, the author of the bestselling book “The Art of the Deal.”  “In return for tearing down his nuclear arsenal, he’s asking for a solid gold replica of Mount Rushmore, life size! And that’s gonna cost. So in order to  spread the pain evenly, I’ve decided that everyone on Facebook and Instagram, and especially on Twitter, should cough up some cold hard cash for using their personal social media accounts. Of course, as President, I will claim executive privilege to avoid the proposed tax. After all, I am the Duke of Dicker and the Baron of Barter.”

Although details of the tax plan are still vague, inside sources say that the plan calls for a ten cent poll tax per tweet and five cents for every like on Facebook. Wishing someone a Happy Birthday on any social media platform will automatically incur a charge of twenty-five dollars.

As to how this major new tax will be enforced, Trump was very succinct “Old Kimmy boy is going to lend the IRS a platoon of his personal enforcers — these guys break kneecaps like breadsticks. They never heard of the Supreme Court!”

The post Trump to Tax Social Media appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

But if you insist on reading further, here are just a few of the data tidbits that Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and the others are gathering about you and squirreling away until they can sell it to the highest bidder.

Your blood pressure

Your blood pressure is a reliable indicator of your overall health. The higher it is, the more likely you are to kick the bucket from a stroke or something — and online merchants want to know just how long they will have you around to gouge. That’s why Amazon is now asking customers for their blood pressure every time they order.

Can you boil an egg

If you can’t, you are still dumb enough to fall for ads about fat-burning foods and male enhancement exercises. Plus, you will automatically be able to live stream Fox News 24/7. So watch out for those hard boiled egg surveys when you log in to YouTube.

Your Zodiac sign

If you’re a Virgo you always buy organic chicken. If you’re a Pisces you bite your nails. All twelve Zodiac signs reveal your innermost fears and dreams. And once a marketing agency knows your sign they can make you buy their product — or else turn you into a werewolf. So never go online without a nice fresh eye of newt.

The post What Data Does Social Media Have on You? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

This is especially true for those addicted to social media — who cannot conceive of life without Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and numerous other social platforms on cyberspace. To find out if you are teetering on the brink of social media addiction, ask yourself the following impertinent and useless questions:

Do you sleep with your mobile device?

You do? Does it snore? Will it scratch your back if you ask nice? How often does it have to get up at night to use the bathroom? Anywho. Studies show that people who sleep with their tablets or smartphones are more likely to wake up with Borg implants than those who don’t.  

Does Facebook seem more real than the people around you?

That’s because the people around you are morons, every last one of ‘em. While everybody on Facebook is so nice and rich and clever. Why would you ever want to deal with your stupid nextdoor neighbor when Sally on Facebook is going to show you how to split the atom in your microwave?

Are you reading this post and taking it seriously?

You are in deep doo-doo. This post is nothing but clickbait, meant to boost numbers so the website owner can sell it to some poor numbskull for a fabulous profit. And you’re helping him do it! Go stand in the corner.

The post 3 Signs That You’re Addicted to Social Media appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

“We used to do that with meat, y’know” the Pontiff told reporters at the Vatican this week. “Everybody ate fish sticks on Friday. But now we are asking our beloved members to please abstain from all social media every Friday. They can read a book instead, or go to the movies, or watch television. I think the LDS Church is moving in the right direction with a one week hiatus for their young people, but we in the Catholic Faith go by the age old credo of ‘nihil potestis facere non possumus facere melius.’”  (Anything they can do we can do better.)

Just hours after the Pope’s announcement the International Islamic Council held a press conference at their headquarters in Bayonne, New Jersey, to announce that from now on the month-long Ramadan fast for faithful members would be a social media fast, not a food and drink fast.

“Everything is in the Koran already — who needs social media anyways?” said Ibrahim Suleiman Schwartz, a bystander with an interesting beard.

And not to be outdone, the B’nai B’rith issued a statement today saying that social media is no longer considered Kosher, and should be eschewed by all practicing members.

Meanwhile, the League of Militant Atheists have proclaimed their intention to immediately take over the entire social media spectrum, now that the religions of the world are abandoning it. League president Boris Badanov told reporters in Moscow: “Hoo boy, we in da hot seat now, right Natasha?”

#Satire

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