Ways to stay sane on Instagram in 2024
A toolkit of barriers, tactics, ring fences, and reflections to help keep the social media platform we love to hate in its place
The sudden wave of Instagram-quitting on Substack in the last couple of weeks left me feeling like the last smoker at the party trying to convince myself ‘smoking in moderation’ is a thing.
In response I wrote Reasons to Stay on Instagram a piece which ended with a series of questions to ask whether, rather than dumping the platform entirely, there is an alternative way to use it; a way that mitigates the pitfalls while we take advantage of its strengths.
In ‘Digital Minimalism’ (possibly the most quoted book on the internet in the last fortnight;-) Cal Newport talks about the need for each of us to develop ‘a full-fledged philosophy of technology use rooted in your deep values, that provides clear answers to the questions of what tools you should use and how you should use them and, equally important, enables you to confidently ignore everything else.’
The tech isn’t going anywhere, Newport seems to be saying, so it is up to us - the users - to be active in our interactions with technology such as social media, in contrast to the passivity that has characterised much of our use of it so far.
We must approach with intention, rather than out of habit, and make decisions about what we will and won’t do, regardless of the capricious - but ultimately arbitrary - demands social media makes.
In the last seven years - through personal and professional experiences of the highs and lows, freedom and traps of social media - I’ve arrived at my own ‘philosophy’ of Instagram.
It consists of a set of practical tools - none of which are ground-breaking or particularly original - alongside a more personal, philosophical set of guiding principles that help me keep Instagram in its place.
The Philosophical
I can’t tell you what your Instagram philosophy should be, as that will be personal to you but I thought it might be useful to see an example. Below are some of my guiding principles for how I use Instagram in my business, and I invite you to use them - not as a plan, or even a blueprint - but as a toolkit.
Choose the ones that suit the work you’re trying to do, and leave the rest.
I’m clear about my reasons for using Instagram
Crudely put, I’m on Instagram to market my business, but that doesn’t mean I prioritise sales or growing a massive following. Instagram is a way that clients find me but as long as I have enough clients, it’s not important how many followers I have.
Instead…
I want to connect with writers and build a community.
I want to be useful to this community.
I want to be trustworthy, honest and respected in this space.
I want to teach writers how to sustainably and effectively use Instagram in a way that respects your time and creative energy.
I want to help writers get your writing and books in front of your readers.
I want to talk to writers about your writing and books because it is something you and I are interested in.
I define my own success
Dominant Instagram culture insists the value of your account and content is measured in followers counts, likes and video views.
I reject this, not only because it often seeps into giving Instagram too much sway in your sense of self-worth, but because these metrics do not align with my reasons for using the platform.
If my community are chatting with me in the comments, Dm-ing me their thoughts, saving my content or sharing it with others, I feel confident I am connecting with, and getting to know, my community and they are finding my content useful.
This is what success looks like to me.
I centre my audience, not the algorithm
Chasing the algorithm and trying to crack the code that will make content ‘go viral’ is a recipe for disillusionment and frustration.
Instead, I think about what writers want to hear from me: what will you care about, what will you find useful? I mix this in with some personal story-telling - not my deepest, darkest secrets; mostly about my own writing and reading life - and a sprinkling of promotional posts about my services.
Ironically, this often leads to consistently steady, respectable - if not stellar - performance. If my content is interesting to my community, they interact with it which then sends signals to the algorithm to show my content to more people. By not trying to please the algorithm, I end up pleasing the algorithm (at least a little).
I don’t do what I ‘should’
According to self-styled Instagram ‘gurus’ I should post every day at the optimum time as dictated by my insights. I should piggyback on viral trends. I should use Reels as much as possible and in those videos I should use trending audio, and This Hook to ‘go viral’. Apparently, I should want to go viral.
None of this advice is wrong, exactly. It can help content reach more people BUT these shoulds are short-term tactics, not long-term strategy. They are the seasoning you add to a meal to lift the flavours, not the meal itself, and no one can live on salt alone.
I don’t post everyday because I don’t have the capacity to create that volume of content, and the weekend is the weekend, even on Instagram.
I don’t post at the time Instagram says I should because its when I’m cooking or eating dinner with my kids.
I don’t recreate viral trends unless they’re super relevant to my audience.
I don’t prioritise Reels. Some of my ‘useful’ content works better in carousel form, and static posts with story-telling captions create far more conversation in the comments than any Reel of mine ever has.
I don’t want to go viral. When I’ve gone viral in the past (on my personal account) it has made me nervous. Who were all these total strangers flooding into my account? And my experience is that after you go viral for one piece of content, lots of those new followers don’t engage with any subsequent posts. That feels very weird and unpleasant. I prefer steady, genuine growth which makes me feel confident new people have landed on and followed my account for the right reasons.
I embrace the work
There is no form of marketing or promotion that I know of that requires no commitment of energy or time, and inspiration is over-rated when it comes to promoting your work. It takes consistency. Consistent - not constant - effort, and even more importantly, consistency of message and purpose (see the first and third principles in this list).
It definitely helps to at least like the platform (who wants to spend time somewhere they don’t like) but, just like in work, it’s helpful to accept there are going to be parts I don’t love and foot-stamping doesn’t help anyone.
I play
Playfulness and experimentation are key to my use and enjoyment of Instagram. When I feel the self-doubt creeping in, I think well, let me try this and see what happens.
When Instagram starts to feel stagnant or stale, I mix it up - I try something new, take a break, or take a risk. If it flops, my other guiding principles are there to catch me and remind me Instagram does not determine my self-worth, it’s a tool I use so potential clients and community members can find me.
These principles form the foundations of my ‘philosophy’ of using Instagram. However, ‘staying sane’ in the face of the platforms’ capricious whims and demands requires these principles to be fortified with practical actions.
The Practical
Physical boundaries
I feel no shame in admitting that sometimes it takes physical obstacles to prevent me unintentionally falling into a scrolling session.
I see this as akin to putting the biscuits back in the cupboard, rather than having the packet lying open next to my keyboard as I work. The latter makes it far more likely I’m going to hoover half the packet in one sitting and make myself feel sick.
Here are a selection of the physical barriers I use to help me manage my screen time:
I never double-screen. In the evening when I’m watching tv my phone stays on my desk in the kitchen.
I never take my phone to bed. This helps prevent late night and early morning scrolling.
I use a set of bluetooth earphones. I often listen to podcasts or audio books when I’m doing domestic work and these earphones mean I can leave my phone behind, therefore getting in front of any temptation to scroll.
I put my phone out of reach when I’m working on something I don’t need it for e.g writing long-form pieces or content planning.
Time management
I’ve had a difficult relationship with this term ever since a boss advised me to better manage my time by putting my toothpaste on my toothbrush the night before (wtf) but sometimes you just have to call a fish a fish and get on with it…
To help me be focused with my time, I’ve created a checklist of things I do each weekday on Instagram. I usually do some of this around the time I post, although I don’t post every day:
reply to any new comments or DMs
scroll my feed for a few minutes (set a timer if I need to) in the morning, at lunchtime and in the afternoon, and interact with anything I like
watch Stories (5-10 mins) and interact with them - send emojis, respond to polls or send a DM
This is not to say I don’t ever scroll for entertainment (or escapism) it’s more that I separate casual use from work use of the app. This checklist provide purpose and helps me spot when I’ve drifted into aimless scrolling.
What I’ve found is the more I consciously notice - without judgement - when I’ve fallen into an unintentional scroll, the better and quicker I am at interrupting this behaviour.
Finally on the time management front, contrary to popular advice to batch content creation - for example, producing a month or more’s worth of content in one or two days each month - I block out time in my diary to plan fortnightly (see below) and create content weekly.
This suits me as through trial and error I’ve found that the further in advance I create a piece of content, the more likely I am to hate it by the time I post it. Content planning and creating more frequently won’t suit everyone but works for my Magpie brain.
Planning
A plan reduces the strain of thinking up ideas on the spot, and helps you to show up consistently.
In my experience, people have different ‘sweet spots’ of planning - for some people it’s a month ahead of time, others a quarter, and some people love to have a whole year’s worth of content planned out in advance.
Fortnightly planning works best for me but while the frequency and calendar length of plans might vary, all plans share these key features:
every plan needs a clear idea about who is the target audience. I want to reach my existing audience and I want to reach new people. This reminds me I will need a mix of content to reach both of these audiences - content that will appeal to people who already know me a little, vs content that will introduce me.
every plan needs a direction of travel, an objective, or a goal. I set this for a month at a time, but do two content planning sessions within that.
every plan needs a realistic assessment of capacity. There is no point planning to post seven times a week when I only have time to create three posts. Even if I manage seven posts a week at first, I’ll probably run out of steam and then feel terrible because I’ve ‘failed’. Be realistic.
every plan needs post ideas. This is the last part of the puzzle and is guided by what I know about my ideal audience, my existing audience, my objective, and how these overlap with my work.
Take care of yourself
Instagram can exacerbate existing mental health conditions and should be approached with caution if you’re in this position, but even if you’re not, you won’t show up consistently in a space that makes you feel crappy.
Curate your feed. For example, I purposely do not follow or interact with news accounts on my work Instagram account. I get my news elsewhere. I also mute or unfollow accounts that trigger unhelpful feelings of comparison, and if I want to quieten down my feed to focus on accounts I follow, I turn off suggested posts.
Take regular, intentional breaks. Instagram is a noisy place and if you notice your head is so busy with other people’s thoughts that you barely know your own, it might be time to take a break. It might be a weekend, a full week, a whole month or longer, but stop intentionally, and set yourself a return date. Prepare your first few posts in advance so they are ready to go. Make these posts something simple, such as a reintroduction to you or your writing.
I don’t want to give the impression that keeping Instagram in it’s place is easy - our attention is Instagram’s currency and the app has a multitude of ways to hook us in every time we open it - but I do want to make it seem possible because, used with intention, Instagram still has value to offer.
Outside of my work, if it wasn’t for Instagram I might not have embarked on learning about subjects as diverse as dog behaviour, neurodivergence, and anti-racism to name a few.
Instagram has meant I can learn from people posting about their lived experiences, who show me perspectives I might otherwise not have considered.
Instagram is where I met my writing group.
Instagram is where I found and first connected with my first client when I retrained as a social media manager.
And one of my current clients is someone I met years ago, through Instagram.
Community-building on Instagram can enrich and improve other parts of your work. Here I’m thinking specifically of Substacker,
who told me almost all of her paid subscribers have come via Instagram. Although this may not be typical it does illustrate that an engaged community Over There, can translate into something new Over Here.In short, Instagram is far from a busted flush and while we can’t do anything about the way the platform is set up, we can do a lot to change the way we interact with it.
My hopes for this piece are that it might have given you some ideas for how you might change the way you approach Instagram, or perhaps just some things to think about. Either way, thank you for reading and feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments.
I find you so thoughtful Nicola in what you have to say. You always help me reframe my love/hate (certainly a lot of dislike!) relationship with social media and find a way to re engage. Thank you.
This is helpful as well, thank you. I like the thought of being myself on Instagram rather than what I'm expected to be. That's rather liberating. I am however still bamboozled by the thought of putting the toothpaste on the brush the night before - what WAS this person thinking?!?!