Instagram. Oh, Instagram. We've had a bit of a love/hate relationship over the years, but I've started to bring it back to love again. Let me show you how...
Instagram can be a time-sucking black hole of comparison, procrastination, and structured reality. With themes, flat lays, and almost-too-perfect-to-be-real holiday snaps, it’s hard to take a step back and asses the actual benefits of Instagram as a platform for your blog or business.
It’s hard to keep up with - I think we can ALL agree to that 💁🏻 I used to spend more time trying to figure out strategies and understanding the algorithm changes than I did actually posting new content.
"Should I switch to a business account? How many hashtags should I use? Why did this photo I took 30 minutes editing get 40 likes but this spontaneous selfie get 120 likes? What is life?"
These are all questions that I’d not only ask myself, but questions that members of my community would ask me on a regular basis. As a social media strategist at the time, it took a lot of guts to say “I honestly don’t know.”
I can only teach what has worked for me but I don’t work at Instagram or Facebook. I can’t tell you exactly what the algorithm favours; I don’t know for sure if being a business account is the best move; I sure as heck can’t tell you if ‘shadowbanning’ is real or not 😂
I can tell you one thing though and that is: Instagram is exactly what you make of it.
If you want to be surrounded by perfectly curated feeds, do it. If you want to push through all the changes and use Instagram as your primary sales platform, then do it. If you want to use Instagram to make meaningful connections and grow a community, You 👏 Can 👏 Do 👏 It!
I’m going to walk you through how I shifted my focus away from the aesthetic and vanity metrics of Instagram, and towards a focus on building a community and making connections.
Keep reading to learn more!