Dear Helen… My Low Instagram Numbers Are Fuelling My Low Self-Esteem and Lack of Confidence
Don't conflate your self worth with how many numbers you have.
You’re reading the first Dear Helen column where I take a creative mindset issue someone has sent me and offer my own opinion on it. My advice is simply that. Advice. It is not a rule you ‘should’ be doing and it might not be for you but it is an alternative way of looking at a problem. Did you know paid subscribers get access to more content specifically created to help you become a more confident creative and less alone? More essays around the creative mindset, the non-fiction book club community (coming soon), bite-sized courses, archive access and lots more. Plus you’d be supporting all the free content I create (like this column). Upgrade your subscription below:
Instagram is the platform that many creatives flocked to over the last decade. It started as a place to share photographs and has morphed into something else entirely. Is it a short, vertical video-based platform? Is it a place to find your tribe, your community? Is it a place to share book recommendations?
Or is it a place to grow your platform? Who knows? Does Instagram even know anymore?
Because that’s the thing. There have been a lot of changes over the years. What was once a basic and straightforward platform where you could discover like-minded creatives has now morphed into something else entirely. You can still grow on there - I recently listened to an interview with Sarah Rossi and she did just that. But it takes a lot of work; a lot of analysis and testing to see what works, a lot of time and patience and the willingness to try new types of content.
It is almost a full-time job. And I’ve seen TikTok videos recently where it is said that Instagram is creating more hoops to jump through in order to do well. You have to create your reels within the app and use their editing tools, you have to upload to your main feed every single day and you have to upload something like six stories a day - every day. This is “all the work you have to do just to have a chance at being seen.” (Christopher Claflin on TikTok).
It is no longer simply the case of uploading, commenting on other people’s posts and growing your account organically at a steady rate.
So it just doesn’t make sense to base our self-worth, our creative confidence, on an app with rules where you have no idea what they are.
But that is what so many of us do - myself included.
Back when Instagram was a dynamic place I had grown my account to around 18,000 followers and would get anything from 900 to over 3000 likes on every photograph I posted. I was well on my way to hitting 20,000 followers. And then things changed. Facebook bought the app. An algorithm was brought in. Creatives began to get frustrated and the community element steadily started to decrease.
A few years later I’ve lost around 3000 followers. And my still photographs get around 50 to 200 likes. Granted my account has changed from focusing on table flatlays and nature with Stories about my chickens and ducks to simpler photos or reels of my writing desk and the occasional Story about my dogs. AND I’m not on Instagram every day. But growth is difficult to achieve and I know I’m not alone in losing followers steadily over time.
At first, when I started to lose followers I was embarrassed. I felt like I was failing; numbers were important to me after all. High numbers meant I was more attractive to literary agents and publishers. At least, that’s what I’d been told.
Now though, I couldn’t give a fig. So what changed?
Firstly, I did some research and discovered that it wasn’t just me that this was happening to. Creatives had to adapt to stay relevant on the app and I didn’t want to do that. I had a big lightbulb moment when I realised I was a writer and not an influencer.
Secondly, I started journaling and discovered information about the creative mindset. I had been oblivious for so long that the issues I’d been having with procrastination, sabotage and going off at 100mph in the wrong creative direction were down to my lack of self-belief, my feelings of being inadequate in comparison to other writers and creatives, and my biggest fear: success.
Thirdly, I did some more research and discovered other places to ‘hang out’ online. YouTube, Medium, Substack and TikTok were four platforms I experimented with. I’ve now settled on Substack and YouTube.
Fourthly, due to my work on my creative mindset and confidence, I started to look at these platforms differently. How could I use them for me? What can I do to get the most out of them? Instead of waiting for growth to appear how could I use them to experiment with my own creativity?
You and your creativity and how ‘good’ you are is nothing to do with the numbers you see on the app. Yes, there are excellent creatives growing there - but the woman I mentioned earlier, Sarah, has a small team of people working with her. She can invest time in social media because she has a strategy and she has help. How big your numbers are is less to do with who you are and how talented you are as a creative but with how well you invest your time and talent in social media.
FOCUS ON YOUR CONTROLLABLES
Don’t base your self-worth on metrics outside of your control. Focus on what you can control. And that is what you write and what you create.
Do some analysis. I know I say this a lot but your writing journal is your friend. Figure out why Instagram as a platform is important to you. Ask yourself is it really that important? Is it the right place for you to be? What is it you are aiming for with your creativity? If it is, for example, to write about books then maybe look at other platforms. TikTok has a thriving book community. Zoe Lea started uploading to TikTok a year or so ago and currently has nearly 10,000 followers and 285,000 likes. And Claire has started an excellent (and growing) Substack where she writes about literary topics. It is possible to start from scratch in a new place and to grow. Recently I’ve started uploading my TikToks and Instagram reels to my YouTube channel and my subscribers have spiked. Growth is still possible.
If Instagram as a place is important to you and growth is also important then get strategic. Experiment with what you’re uploading. Try reels instead of still photographs.
I know I’m making suggestions about how you can grow and I also said not to base your self-worth and self-belief on numbers. It’s like I’m contradicting myself. But it is possible to believe that your self-worth is not tied up in numbers and still want to grow.
I want to grow my Substack. I’ve talked about this on my podcast with Claire. The difference is I work hard on not conflating how good I am with how fast I grow or how many subscribers I lose.
I’ve been there. I’ve compared myself to others who have grown faster than me. But I’ve started to control what I can. I’ve created a spreadsheet of content I want to write about on my Substack. I’ve done research. I’ve put thought into what I want to write about, that is what I enjoy and what I have that’s worth saying.
I commented on one of your other posts Helen about the madness of chasing likes and trying to get engagement on social media. The way the algorithms work now it's pretty much impossible to get seen unless you have a big team behind you and lots of money for ads. 😬
Social media used to be such a joy and it was how I built my business. I was an early adopter of Twitter, Linked In and Facebook. But now I just get fed up with it all. Especially Linked In. I have over 15,000 connections on there or something daft like that but no ones sees anything really unless I play the algorithm game which changes by the week. I see my clients in my community posting daily on Linked In and no one sees it. It's soul destroying.
It seems like we're all here and loving Substack as it's different and encourages quality conversations. I just hope that it doesn't go the same way. 🙏
Hello, Helen. Thank you so much for addressing this issue and sorry for my late reply. I don't feel particularly attached to Instagram, but I don't like Tik Tok and YouTube is just impossible for me right now due to different reasons. I've tried having a blog, but that was a total failure because it turns out my followers don't like reading blogs. I get what you said, and everyone else here, but is still very hard not to compare. I've always struggled with self-esteem issues, and Instagram 'managed' to make me feel really bad at times. But I'll try to keep in mind what you said about 'how much someone invests in the platform', as I'm in no condition of doing more now due to mental health issues.