Instagram doesn’t light me up anymore — here’s what I’m doing instead

Instagram has always been a pretty core part of all of the evolutions of my current business and also in my very first business, which was an e-commerce health food business that I started back in 2016. The business that I was running when I quit my corporate job and decided to give this entrepreneurship a full-time go, then a couple of months later, I ran out of money and had to go and get a part-time job. I grew that business primarily on Instagram.

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Instagram isn't lighting me up anymore and what I'm doing instead in my business

 

The way Instagram was back in 2016, where you could almost just follow somebody and they would follow you back. That was the main form of marketing because you could get followers easily. Everyone who followed you would see your posts. They would click through there.

When I ended up closing down that business, I had kidney saturation about a month after I closed that business down and while I was recovering from the surgery, I was on sick leave from my part-time job, and I didn't have a business to run. I got really bored while I was on sick leave so I started my second business. I decided to grow into an agency. It used to be called Wildbloom, and I enjoyed that. Until I realized that growing an agency actually involved managing clients more than it meant doing the marketing work. Now I'm not great at managing people. I shine in doing the marketing, not in leading people, not in managing clients, or anything like that.

Around 2018, I found myself struggling to post as an agency brand on social media. I didn't enjoy posting as our brand. I want to post more about my stories and my experiences in the business space. So around 2018, when I launched this podcast, I actually pivoted and changed the Instagram account to Stephtaylor.co, which is my current Instagram account. And for a while there, it was pretty good.

 

Lack of a strategy

Back in 2020 and 2021, I was posting a lot of reels, but not too much. It was fun, but they were shiny objects that were really destructing, and since they were that shiny objects, I wasn't doing them consistently. But I was doing them whenever I was feeling bored or whenever I had something else to procrastinate. It was great for building up my Instagram reach and growing that number of followers. But since there wasn't a strategy behind them and because I was using them as a distraction, it wasn't the best or the most healthy thing to be doing in my business.

This year on Instagram, I hit 30,000 followers. I've started to notice the pressure that comes with what to post and I want to post what I think people would want to see rather than what I actually want to post, which is always been a conflicting thing for me. And especially when you can see that, each time you post something, you lose a hundred followers. That's not uncommon for me and that freaks me out a little bit.

There's this pressure and a question like “am I posting the right thing”? Is this what people want to see? Am I going to lose lots of followers from this? And I've also in conjunction with that. I've also been seeing diminishing results from Instagram. I know there are still people out there who are getting great results and have super-engaged audiences. And whenever I post a reel, it does reach a lot of people, it does drive some traffic to my podcast or wherever I'm sending them and that's all that.

 

You don't need to be on Instagram if you don't want to be

I have pulled back big time from Instagram and when I think about my goals in my business, Instagram's not my priority. This podcast is my priority. Growing my podcast is my priority because I know for a fact that my most engaged students and my most engaged clients are people who always listen to every episode of my podcast. I know that my email list is a huge priority because that has the biggest ROI in my business.

I go through phases on Instagram where I enjoy posting and then phases when I have nothing to post and I found that I create the best content when I feel like it. Which I know goes against absolutely everything I teach about consistency, but for me, as long as I'm being consistent and sharing content on the podcast and on the email, that to me is consistent enough.

Instagram is like the little fun cherry on top that if I want to do it, I do it now when I'm feeling burnt out in my business. We did a lot in quarter one. We launched Launch Magic Live. We launched Boost Your Brands Superfans twice and I finished writing and launched my book. That's a lot! So whenever I'm feeling burnout, Instagram is always the first thing to go. I think when you're not feeling excited about your life or when your life doesn't look Instagram perfect which is kind of was for me after quarter one, I was being a little bit of a hum at and not really going out and doing that much staff.

And for the first time ever, I wasn't feeling excited about checking Instagram either because I would look at these other people's stories and other people's posts and they were killing it and they were doing all these new, exciting things and it had me beating myself up for not doing more and what I really needed to do was just rest which as a business owner, is easier said than done, right?

I didn't really show up on Instagram. I think I posted two posts and maybe a couple of stories and it really surprised me that the launch went as well as it did. Like it was the same size as the last launch. Maybe a tiny bit smaller, but not much. The same size as the last launch without the ad spend because we barely ran any Facebook ads and that was really interesting.

 

Three options that I realized when I'm not feeling inspired to do Instagram

 

To force myself to do it

Be consistent and just post stuff. Just showing up and just forcing yourself to be consistent, can inspire that creativity can create that inspiration. But it felt like a chore and I don't like that. I didn't stop my business to do stuff that I don't want to do. So why would I waste time forcing myself to do something that doesn't actually have as big of an ROI as other things in my business?

 

To outsource it

I haven't completely ruled this one out. Hiring a marketing manager and bringing somebody else into the team who can take over some of the marketing stuff. I haven't ruled it out. But with the way that things have been in the online business space and with so much uncertainty in the world, it's a pretty big risk to bring somebody else in right now when there's so much uncertainty. So I don't think I want to do that. I don't want to add extra pressure on myself at this point in time and again, is there going to be an ROI on somebody that I hired to do that? Probably not.

 

Either don't do it or only do it when I feel like it

I  did not rely on it being the main marketing channel in my business. Instead, it's more of a shiny object. It's something that I do for fun. It's something that I do when I feel inspired or when I want to show up there. And instead of putting energy into forcing myself to write Instagram posts or forcing myself to share the behind-the-scenes of my life. Instead, I put my energy into recording, awesome podcast episodes and that's why these episodes are becoming longer and a bit more in-depth. I'm also putting more energy into my emails. I've found that I've been sending daily business boosts to emails that are so much more engaged than people who are following me on Instagram.

 

I chose option three

I chose to not do Instagram or only do Instagram when I feel like it. People listening to my podcast were not showing up on Instagram and it meant that I had more energy to give to other parts of my launch and more energy to give to myself because it's really hard to show up with the energy that you need to have in a launch when you haven't had a rest. When you're feeling burnt out when you're exhausted from all of that stuff. Over the last couple of years, I've invested so much time and energy, and money as well through Facebook ads into building my email list. And it is by far the highest return on investment thing that I do in my business.

 

Things that you can expect going forward

 

Instagram

Let's just say TBC. I don't know at this stage. I will probably start posting a little bit more behind-the-scenes life content, when I do exciting things but most of the time my life's pretty boring. I'm okay with that. I'm an introvert. I love reading books. I love doing things that don't really require me to leave the house that much but having said that I'm going to Europe in July, so expect a little bit of travel content.

 

Podcast

You can expect more in-depth episodes. I've recently joined a podcast network. I'll look forward to more interviews, look forward to better quality content. You can expect some fresh topics and you can expect maybe a bit more behind-the-scenes business content, all of that. As usual, I do love hearing from you and I love knowing what would you like to hear on the show. What particular topics would you like to hear about?

 

Emails

There are Daily Business Boosters. If you haven't got it, if you haven't signed up for the daily business boosters, they are really good. There are only like sometimes just two sentences and each tip is something that I have learned and wished that I'd known six years ago when I was starting out.

I also put more effort into my weekly emails to my general email list. I write all of those emails myself and it's something I actually quite enjoy doing. Then once a month, my email list gets a monthly content wrap-up email because somebody in my email list gave me feedback that they don't see all the content, and it would be really good to see as a general overview. And that was a great idea. So now every month I send out an email to my list with links to all of my podcast episodes. If I've posted something on Instagram, I do a little summary about what that is and a link to it.

 

Other social media

I was quite enjoying Twitter, but again, fell off the bandwagon when I was feeling burnt out and just wanted to hide from the world. I might start showing my face there again. I haven't quite decided what my strategy is with that Tiktok. I've had a few people like the staff saying that you should be on Tiktok. I signed up for it and recorded a couple of videos but I'm not built for tick-tock clearly but to be fair, I haven't given it the time and the energy that it would require. I haven't ruled it out, but I think in this season of my life and my business, I just don't have the energy for it. But again, who knows? I love to explore and I love to experiment and I love to try new things for a few months. And then reassess, is this something that is giving me a return? Or is this something that is just a distraction or a waste of time?

You don't have to do anything in your business. There is nothing that you have to do. You've got to do what works for you, and if you don't want to be on Instagram, don't be on Instagram, easy. And if you are on Instagram and you are hating it, don't complain about it because you have the free will to say, “I don't want to be on Instagram”. You have the free will to outsource it or to make it, to make it work for you in a way that it doesn't burn you out.

 

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