Despite its many, MANY well-documented failings, Instagram remains one of the best routes for writers and authors to get in front of your potential readers (caveat: IF you know how to use it strategically and effectively, rather than casually, which is an important distinction) but very often writers and authors tell me using Instagram just doesn’t feel good.
But what if there was a way to make it feel… better?
If you feel rubbish about using Instagram to find readers for your work, it naturally follows that you’re less likely to show up consistently. This then compounds the feeling rubbish because if you don’t show up, you definitely won’t see the results you want to see.
Often, writers are not sure exactly what it is that makes Instagram feel awful: you might have a vague sense of algorithms being to blame, or complaints about whose posts you see in your feed, but in my experience, the elements of using Instagram that make it feel rubbish usually fall into one of two main categories:
feeling like you’re failing at using Instagram
feeling horrible after you’ve been on Instagram
( plus a third broad category about the relationship between Instagram and our time. In a couple of weeks I’ll be releasing a second talky-workshop, workshoppy-talk, about this. Make sure you’re subscribed to my newsletter to receive it straight to your inbox.)
In order to deal with these feelings, one of the exercises I often get my 1-2-1 clients to do is to write their own Instagram Manifesto. Together we dig into their dissatisfactions and concerns, and seed alternatives because although Instagram has its own way it wants us to do things, it is, in fact, not the only way. What I’ve decided to do is to put that exercise into a workshop for you all to watch in your own time.
What I want writers and authors to understand is that it’s possible that we have more control than we think we have over how these platforms enact pressures on our lives.
What to expect from the Instagram Manifesto workshop
This FREE workshop-talk is a non-linear examination of the complex interplay between your life, emotions, desire to reach more readers vs what Instagram wants.
What you can expect is to deepen your awareness of how Instagram currently acts on your life, and how you can seed something more generative, that is, how can you set yourself up to use Instagram in a way that means it works for you and not the other way round?
There are two halves to the workshop that cover two things writers often tell me cause you difficulties.
What is success on Instagram?
How might you deal with tricky feelings about Instagram?
I will do some talking, and then give you some prompts to think about, and you can start and stop the video as you go if you want to - or don’t!
By the end of the hour though, I hope your eyes have opened to an alternative way of thinking of, and positioning, Instagram in your life.
Additional notes
In the workshop I refer to the following:
This video from Anti-Capitalist Business Coach, Bear Hebert
Coach, keri_l_jarvis
Mona Eltahawy’s book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution
And Instagram accounts from Hayley Dunlop, Abby Jimenez and Daisy Buchanan
If you’d like to know more about the TOO MUCH INSTAGRAM membership, where you can get more practical advice and guidance for how to use Instagram to find readers for your work, you can visit here, or here, to find out more details. Upgrade your subscription here on Substack for £12/ month or £120/ year ($15/ month or $150 per year) to become a member:
If you’d like to tell me what you thought of the workshop, I’d love to hear from you. You can leave a comment under this post, or email me on nicola@toomuchsocial.com
I’d also love it if you would share the workshop with your networks, either by restacking it here on Substack, forwarding the email, or sharing something on your social media channels.
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