“Whether we realize it or not, we define ourselves through stories. Understanding your own story is the key to understanding yourself, your world, and your capacity to act within that world.”
Your Story Is Your Power
I Did What Every Instagram Expert Says Is Stupid and It’s Working Great
I’m not an Instagram expert.
But I do know how to grow an audience, create value on social media, and share new social media tips every day.
I’ve done some experimenting with my For The Interested Instagram account in the past few weeks and it’s led me to suggest you try out a strategy the Insta-experts will consider to be blasphemy.
It’s complicated, so get ready to concentrate. Ready? Here goes…
“Stop. Using. Hashtags.”
Ok, maybe it’s not THAT complicated.
But it’s the opposite of what every Instaguru out there tells you to do to grow or improve your account.
And they’re right. If you paste 20 hashtags into each of your posts, you will get more likes and followers.
You’ll feel good about yourself and your progress.
You’ll declare your social media strategy a success!
And then you’ll get nothing out of it.
Because there’s a catch.
The majority of the likes and follows you get from those magic hashtags fall into one of two categories:
- They’re real likes from fake people. (See: people who don’t actually exist, aka bots.)
- They’re fake likes from real people. (See: people who only like and follow in the hope you’ll return the favor.)
Your hashtag-driven engagement is hollow —it’s not based on a true appreciation of your Clarendon-filtered work of art.
But it’s not just that your hashtags lead to meaningless likes — they also may be trick you into thinking your content is actually good!
When you stop using hashtags, you’re left with only one way to improve your Instagram traction — you have to actually produce great content.
Because without the “magic” of hashtags, your content has to actually earn its engagement.
This can be a rough reality check at first, but ultimately gives you a true sense of whether your content is good, whether it’s improving, and whether you’re building an audience that cares about what you do.
Weaning yourself off the hashtag teat may be scary, but it will push you to improve your content.
I stopped using hashtags a couple months ago and while my account hasn’t taken off overnight, it has experienced steady growth, adding a couple hundred followers during that time.
That couple hundred followers may not seem like much — and it’s certainly not an overnight success story — but it’s real.
And that gives me a significant advantage compared to the misleading data I received back in the hashtag days.
I know these new followers are (for the most part) real.
I know they pay attention.
And I know my content is good enough to drive continued growth of my account.
All of that is more valuable than anything I ever got from a hashtag.
I’ve got one more thing for you (unless you’re a bot)…
If you dug this idea and would like me to send you more ideas about how to get the most out of social media and life in general, check out my For The Interested newsletter.
Marketing Is Just Being Considerate
“Marketing means making it easy for people to notice you, relate to you, remember you, and tell their friends about you.”
What Makes a Community?
“We find ourselves working under a false definition of community — accepting any connection, any conversation, any link as qualification — and we end up with something that looks like a mob or a mass: singular, thin, and gross.”
20 New Social Media Tools to Try in 2018
“There are now more than 5,000 tools in the marketing technology landscape. So where do you start?”
Ten Career Mistakes You Can Easily Avoid
“Hopping from industry to industry has huge costs. You have to learn the industry, market, people, unwritten rules, you name it.”
What It’s like to Be the Parent of a Social Media Star
“Though parents are often inclined to see their kids as talented and exceptional, most would still be startled to learn that hundreds, or thousands, of other teens suddenly worship their son or daughter.”
10 Ideas For The Interested This Week
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.” – Steve Jobs
10 Ideas For The Interested This Week
“Ride the horse in the direction that it’s going.” — Werner Erhard
Don’t Let Anybody Tell You What to Do
Everybody’s got something to say about what you do.
People you know, people you love, people you hate. Even people you’ve never met in posts like this one.
They tell you what to do, who to be, and how to live.
“But nobody who tells you what to do actually knows what’s best for you. So stop listening to them.”
People don’t know you as well as they think they know you.
No matter how long you’ve known a person, they don’t know the real you. They know the version you choose to share with them which might be 80% of yourself, but it’s never 100%.
The advice they give you can only be as successful as the amount they know about you — the real you.
People tell you what they WANT you to do.
Even people with the best intentions are influenced by their own desires.
They want you to be happy and successful, but in a way that fits their own definition of those terms.
That definition may not match your own.
People tell you what they WOULD do.
The advice people give you is based on what they would do in a similar situation.
But what they would do is based on who they are, not who YOU are.
Their intentions may be genuine, but the reasoning is often misaligned.
People don’t know what you should do either.
Just because somebody has an opinion about what you should do doesn’t mean they’re right.
Opinions aren’t facts. Take them for what they’re worth.
People are jealous of you.
Not always. Not often. But sometimes.
It’s not pretty, but jealousy exists and it clouds the advice you get from certain people about certain situations.
People want you to change.
Just because somebody loves you doesn’t mean they love ALL of you.
They may want to change something about you and that bias colors the advice they give you. But the thing they want to change about you may be a thing you love about yourself.
People DON’T want you to change.
Other people may love you so much the way you are that they fear your growth may impact your relationship with them.
But it’s in your best interest to evolve into the person you want to become and the life you want to have.
Beware the person who fears your evolution.
Other people are not you.
Ultimately, it comes down to this.
You are the expert on you.
Nobody can know what’s best for you better than you can so trust your instincts, stop listening to others, and own your decisions.
You’ll be glad you did.
BONUS: One easy way to make better decisions for yourself…
One of the best ways to build confidence in your decision making is to broaden your expertise and deepen your knowledge about how the world works.
And I’ve got a secret weapon for you when it comes to doing that — my For The Interested newsletter.
Every Sunday I share 10 ideas (similar to the one you just read in this post) about how to get better at your life, work, and art.
It’s like a cheat sheet to help you make great decisions.
Want to check out the next edition? Click below to sign up: