How Getting Off Instagram has Impacted My Life & Business
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In this episode:
In 2020, I decided to stop using Instagram for both personal and business purposes. The main reasons were my pursuit of mental sanity and peace, and to focus on building my business in more sustainable ways.
I believe that the ability to assess and make decisions about where we spend our time and what we give our attention to is a crucial skill for creative professionals in the future of work.
The hardest part may be being willing to give up something good for something that could be great.
In this episode I’ll share:
What led me to make the decision to leave Instagram in 2020
What things I hoped to experiment, learn and test for my business during the time off Instagram
The benefits and consequences I’ve seen so far after almost 3 months off Instagram
Then, I’m answering a listener question from Jordan about how to start embracing her creative strengths and leveraging them in her career. I can’t wait for that discussion!
How getting off Instagram has impacted my life & business
First things first: the disclaimers
It’s interesting to me that an episode about Instagram is going to be the episode I have to preface with the most disclaimers. Over the past six months, as I planned and prepared to leave Instagram for business and personal use, I received a lot of feedback about my decision.
I’ve received a lot of questions, advice, skepticism and support alike when I told people about my decision and why I made it. What this has made clear to me is that people’s use and feelings about Instagram and other social media is very personal.
Unfortunately, I’ve also found that when I shared my critiques of Instagram, and the personal issues I had with using the platform, it often led to defensiveness from others. I never intended for my choice to make others feel like I was judging their decisions.
My goal in sharing my journey and experience leaving Instagram is not intended to lead others away from the platform, or diminish people and businesses alike who see value in using it.
Rather, my intention is to be a resource for people who have similar questions to the ones I had last Fall. Particularly, the question about if the time I was investing in Instagram had the ROI for my businesses that I expected.
I’m a strong believer in people making decisions for themselves, based on their research and personal goals. That being said, here are a couple of the disclaimers I want to get out of the way before we dive in:
Disclaimers:
I have nothing against marketing and marketing well. I fully support business owners and creators using the tools available to them to the best of their ability to help grow their businesses. My decision to leave Instagram is not a reflection of my overall views on marketing. At the same time, I’d like to make it clear I am not a marketing strategist. The information I share in this episode that’s marketing related--such as the practices that have been working for me to generate leads and book new clients--are offered to help you brainstorm creative solutions and inspire you to make the decisions that are best for you and your business.
I know COVID-19 is changing a lot of things in people’s businesses and lives right now. There is hardship on all angles, and a lot of uncertainty. What I cover in this episode does not adequately address all of the changes and challenges affecting business owners.
My experience on Instagram has included using it on a personal basis to document life events and stay connected with family and friends, as well as using it as a business owner with a service and content-based business model. Over the last few years I have experimented having separate personal and business accounts, as well as combining the two into a single “personal brand” account. I’ve also tried nearly all of the strategies for making Instagram content easier to create and manage, like batching content, scheduling and outsourcing my business posting.
Why I Decided to Leave Instagram in 2020
My relationship with Instagram prior to 2020
My relationship with Instagram has been tense for the past few years. I used to love it when it was just a place to share fun, creative snapshots of my life, and memories I wanted to document for the future.
But eventually, I started to use it primarily as a platform to share my work, ideas and build my personal brand. What started out as a tool to be creative and spark conversations quickly turned into a platform that I felt I had to use to grow an “audience” and market my content.
Instagram has been evolving crazy fast. Not only are there always new features, but the algorithm that controls what content gets seen is always changing, too. I’m not afraid of innovation or changing technology--in fact I love it! That’s why I love working with startup technology companies.
However, what I do have a personal problem with is feeling like I need to game an algorithm that rewards lazy conversation, self promotion and addictive behavior to market my business.
For me, initially Instagram felt like very accessible marketing. Sharing content and getting instant feedback on my posts and stories felt purposeful. But it also took an incredible amount of time for me to create that content, and an even more outrageous amount of my mental headspace was consumed by Instagram.
Many solopreneurs and small business owners feel overwhelmed by the marketing efforts they're trying to maintain.
That’s where I was last fall, and I knew it wasn’t a sustainable way for me to build my business. It may sound silly to people who haven’t experienced it for themselves, but the following questions revolving around Instagram were literally keeping me up at night:
Why am I working so hard, creating so much original, valuable content and not seeing returns?
Is there a way to market my business on Instagram that actually feels good and authentic?
Am I really cut out for this? I want to build relationships and trust with my followers, but I am exhausted.
How am I going to keep up? My engagement is down, but I just don’t have the energy to post or go live.
Instagram success vs. real-life success
So much of what “matters” on Instagram doesn’t matter anywhere else. Things can look real good on Instagram, but in real life, you could be lonely, in debt and have a business that isn’t sustainable.
I care a lot more about what my real-life life looks like, and if my real-life business is successful or not than I care if it looks good on the internet for observers.
And in order for my real-life to be good, I knew I needed to make some changes to reclaim mental clarity, focus and peace.
As for my business, I knew I needed to have some boundaries (read: I couldn’t be “always-on,” and didn’t want to share too many personal details or information), I needed to build trust and goodwill with my clients, and I needed to generate consistent leads for it to be good in real-life.
The cognitive dissonance between how I wanted to feel every day and the way I actually did feel using Instagram as a primary marketing platform became too great.
I wanted to build a sustainable business that gave me the confidence that I wouldn't run out of money or clients, and that would enable me to be present with loved ones, and have the flexibility to focus on my life priorities.
And the more I dug into what would need to happen for me to achieve those things, the more I realized that Instagram was getting in the way. That’s when I decided to make a plan to leave Instagram for the year of 2020.
One quick note on time spent on Instagram
In October 2019 when I officially decided I would leave Instagram in 2020, I was spending an average of 23 minutes/day on the app. I am well-aware that 23 minutes/day is on the low-end of what most people, especially business owners spend on Instagram. To be fair, I spent a lot more time working on Instagram outside of the app--writing captions, taking pictures, planning strategy, etc.
However, even if it was just 23 minutes/per day, here’s a stat that startled me: in just five years, those 23 minutes/day would add up to a complete month! 24 hours/day on Instagram for a whole month! For me, that was way too much time spent doing something that caused me a lot of stress and didn’t bring me much joy.
The things I hoped to experiment, test & learn about my business by leaving Instagram
My overarching goal in leaving Instagram was to define an approach to marketing my business that didn't drain my energy or leave me spinning my wheels.
I wanted to learn how to build a business model and marketing system that felt good to manage and generated consistent leads
I wanted to practice aligning my business to my priorities and values, primarily providing excellent service to my clients and being present and connected to loved ones
I wanted to learn how to think bigger about my business and focus on building an infrastructure that would allow me to scale
The benefits and consequences I’ve seen so far after almost 3 months off Instagram
Personal Consequences
Some family and friends don’t understand, or feel like I’m not doing my part to keep them updated
I miss out on pictures and updates from my friends, family and their kids that I so love seeing and celebrating
Personal Benefits
No mindless scrolling! I don’t fill my extra time with scrolling my feed. I feel much more calm and centered as a result. I also deleted the Facebook app and LinkedIn app from my phone, so I can only use those platforms from my computer when I’m working.
I never feel like I’m using personal moments or experiences for Instagram gain. I used to frequently feel a tension between simply enjoying great moments and activities, and wondering if I should share them or not on Instagram. Now, if I take a picture, it’s for myself or to send to a family member or friend.
Celebrations, silly moments, great ideas and frustrations are shared with people in my real-life instead of being posted on Instagram. Now when I experience something I want to share with others (good or bad) I always call a family member or friend. This has led to deeper feelings of connection and commitment.
Business Consequences
Loss of brand awareness from Instagram. Since I am no longer posting on Instagram, I have no visibility there. I’m not able to reach new people from the platform or keep the solid connection with my followers. This is a consequence that sounds really daunting. But the reality is, it hasn’t affected my business in a negative way. In fact, if you read the benefits below, you’ll see that my business has actually increased since leaving Instagram.
I potentially confused my followers significantly when I decided to leave Instagram. This is the one thing I regret. My communication that I would be leaving the platform was pretty abrupt and some people expressed that they didn’t understand I was going to stop using Instagram completely—they thought I was just stopping my business use of it. I was so burned out by December 2019 that I didn’t communicate my plans and intentions as well as I would have liked to.
Business Benefits
More ability to focus on business development and partnerships. My ability to think creatively and invest the time in building partnerships and collaborations was directly related to the time I got back when I left Instagram.
I was able to build relationships and make plans to partner with local organizations for workshops and classes
Reached out and began partnering with other career coaches for referrals and business collaborations
Pursued opportunities to be a guest on other people’s podcasts
Developed more consistent and qualified leads. This was one of my main goals. I focused my strategy on identifying where people would be searching and looking for solutions if they needed a career coach or job market strategy help. I also researched how people tend to look for and choose professional service providers. I decided to focus on Google and marketplaces where people already knew to use to look for services like mine.
Local Google listing: My career coaching business is online-based, and I work with clients all over the world. This is great for prospective clients who find me through my podcast or blog posts. However, I really wanted to serve my local community through career coaching as well. I created a DBA and Google listing for Albuquerque-focused career coaching and it has become my biggest lead generator.
Decision-Making Style Quiz: My decision-making style quiz is a free resource that helps people learn about their decision-making patterns and develop skills to improve their decision making. It is a resource that gets at the heart of what helps people make better career decisions. Once people take the quiz, they are sent a sequence of emails that teaches them about their decision-making style and also informs them on my services. I have grown my email list by 80 people in the past 30 days alone because the quiz performs so well in Google search results. Since April, organizations around the world have started using the quiz in staff and student trainings including a large UK retail brand, universities in Canada and the United States and a public school district in California.
UpWork: In my work to identify pipelines that would consistently generate leads for my career coaching services, I found that UpWork tends to get a lot of job postings for resume and cover letter writing, as well as interview prep and general career coaching. I created a profile and started applying for jobs. It wasn’t long before I landed a contract with a larger employer to serve ongoing clients in a career coaching capacity which has been awesome!
No comparison! Don’t get me wrong. I love cheering on other business owners and solopreneurs in their successes. But I definitely struggled with comparison and feeling like I wasn’t keeping up or matching up while on Instagram. Removing myself from the constant feed of other people’s content has given me SO MUCH freedom to create and work on my ideas. I didn’t realize until I left how much seeing other people’s work and projects could lead me to feeling overwhelmed and actually take away from my own creativity.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this topic, and what comes to mind for you when you think of how you want to manage your time, energy and well-being in the future of work. Send me your thoughts, opinions and questions by going to jenniferspoelma.com/contact and sending me a message!
Weekly Listener Question
This week’s listener question is from Jordan.
She asked, “I’ve been listening to your podcast and really relate to how you describe and talk about creative professionals. I’ve never really identified as creative, because I was always surrounded by people who seemed to be far more creative than me. But the more I think about my strengths, and the interests I have, I think I would identify as a creative professional. I guess my question is, how could I start embracing that identity more and leveraging it in my career?”
Jordan, I love this question!
It sounds like you are ready to embrace a fresh story about yourself and your career. You’re already off to a good start by recognizing the difference between who you actually are, and who you have been saying you are.
Creativity can come in so many forms. I think it may help if you do some reflecting to sort out how creativity feels most accessible to you. For example, curiosity and learning how things work and connect could be how you feel most creative, or maybe you’re really talented at brainstorming ideas and thinking outside of the box? You could be more creative when solving conceptual problems or physical ones.
The more you get in touch with what makes you feel most creative and engaged, the more you’ll be able to spot opportunities that would allow you to use those creative strengths and skills. You’ll also be able to better evaluate if your current position or company is really a place in which you can thrive creatively, and if not, what type of environment would be a better fit.
I hope that helps! Thanks so much for your question, Jordan!
If you have a career coaching question you want answered, you can go to: jenniferspoelma.com/contact and use the form there to send me your question!
