6 Comments

Thanks for this! I'm reviving both my insta accounts (helped by your August challenge) and have dipped my toe into the Reel world on my main professional account. The likes are SO low but one generated a good stream of comments so I'm focusing on these instead. Insta tells me one of them had 1.4k plays which I couldn't believe, even bot-generated that seems like a lot! On my 'less followed personal/still finding my way' account, a post I shared last night has really hit a nerve with a couple of folk and again I'm so pleased with the interactions that have resulted. Thanks for helping me focus on this instead!

Expand full comment

I love this because it suggests you're focusing on the things that matter to you, rather than what Instagram, and social media culture more widely, encourages us to focus on. I think this is such an important element to adjusting our relationship with social media so that it can serve us, rather than the other way round, but it's also really hard to achieve because we're constantly immersed in a dominant culture that insists metrics like followers counts, and reel views are how we measure success. Thanks so much for reading and sharing your experiences, Katherine ❤️

Expand full comment

This is such a helpful perspective - and something I think we all need to be reminded of from time to time. it's so easy to get caught up in the mindset that 'likes' equals value or even validity.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

Expand full comment

I'm so pleased to hear it resonated with you, Louise. I see redefining how we judge success on social media as part of the conversation about what success is more broadly. There is one version that the dominant culture wants us to believe it is the only way, but our job as critically-thinking, feeling, multi-dimensional human beings is to say, 'hang on does this actually work for me?!'

Expand full comment

SO helpful! Thank you. It’s so easy to get caught up in the metrics (eg likes and comments), without thinking about how the metrics might simply be reflecting the type of content. The 20% rule is helpful too - I definitely go way over that, so might conduct a little experiment over the next few months to see what tweaking that ratio does for my connection with readers… thank you again!

Expand full comment

You're very welcome. Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to comment 😊I love a good experiment - I'd be really interested to hear how it goes! I think that creating content that connects is also a way to make IG feel a bit nicer too - a bit less 'do this thing for me' and a bit more 'what can I do for you', (which is just as valuable if the 'do' is to make people feel seen and heard, rather than offering practical advice or tips).

Expand full comment