On Instagram and borrowed audiences

It’s no secret that life on Instagram is pretty tough at the minute. Tried and tested posting strategies just aren’t working as they used to. And even when you do jump through all the hoops that Instagram seemingly requires of you - hello Reels - you still are left with engagement stats that make a ghost town looks positively vibrant.

There’s no doubt that Instagram is going through a midlife crisis and seems to have forgotten what it wants to be. In it’s quest to be like the other cool platforms it has ended up like someones Dad at a hipster party, slightly awkward and out of place. Desperate to be relevant in a room full of indifference.

Hopefully it will sort itself out soon and until then we just keep plodding on, trying to connect with our audience and to catch up with the people that we have come to enjoy hanging out with there.

I have seen a lot of weeping and wailing though from some quite big accounts. Obviously people’s businesses and incomes are taking a huge hit right now, especially those whose businesses centered largely around selling to their Instagram audience. And a lot of comments along the lines of ‘we’ve earned that audience’ or Instagram owes it to us to sort things out’.

And wow, that’s quite the statement to make. Yes, of course we have worked hard to acquire an audience on Instagram and we’ve certainly put the hours in to generate those likes and comments and sales. But, make no mistake, those people are still Instagram’s audience, not ours. At best we have borrowed them for a while.

It is very literally a case of building a platform on someone else’s land. Unless you have moved those people across onto your email list or other platform - that you own - then they aren’t your audience.

As attractive and photogenic as that Instagram basket is, it’s a good idea to move some of your eggs out of it. At least until Instagram gives it’s head a wobble and gets back in the game.

An email list is one way of doing that, another is through the use of Facebook Groups. Yes, I know it’s another Meta-platform and yes, I know that you still don’t own that either. But an active, engaged Facebook Group is still a really good way, right now to connect to your people. Whilst there is undoubtedly a demographic that prefers to be Facebook-free, over 70% of Facebook users say they visit the site at least once a day. An active Facebook Group with dynamic and new content is a great way to be visible and to show up on people’s social media, in a way that Instagram at the minute just can’t do.

I recently dusted off my 20k-strong Facebook Group - the Everyday Knitter group. I archived it in 2020 in a mid-pandemic state of overwhelm, back when everything just felt too much. But I missed it. I missed the daily connection with people, with friends. And I missed that feeling of belonging to a community. So I resurrected it and I’m thrilled with how it has just picked up where it left off. Sure, we lost a few members along the way and I had some dormant accounts to clear out, but of 20k members, 11.5k are classed as active in the group (according to Facebook’s metrics) and we have lots of chatty and engaged members in there on a daily basis.

Facebook Groups are something that I feel really passionate about, I really do think they can help small businesses connect to their customers in a meaningful way and that’s why I have written the Grow With Groups course.

If you have had ‘start a Facebook Group’ on your to-do list for ever, but have always been reluctant to give it a try, or you don’t know where to start then this is the course for you.

Why not take a look and see what you think? We start on Monday 4 July though, so don’t wait too long.

My best business tool

Photo credit: Dave Goudreau via Unsplash

I must have spent £100s, possibly even £1000s over the years on productivity and business apps and software. Show me a course on productivity or a snazzy new app that promises to revolutionise my working day or streamline my content creation and I’m all over it.

Nothing sparkles with more promise than the ultimate hardcopy business planner complete with freshly sharpened pencils and a vat of coffee in my favourite coffee shop.

But lately I’ve come to realise that my best business tool, by a country mile is my beaten up pair of trainers. 

Recently I was stuck on something. Nothing as complex as algebra or bringing about world peace but it was something I’d been mulling over for days and I felt as though I couldn’t move on with my other work until I’d solved it. All day I’d sat at my desk, as well as in the aforementioned coffee shop but the words just wouldn’t come.

The odd idea swam into my head and then floated off before I could even try to journal on it. Put simply, I was stuck and frustrated.

Back at home and with dinner in the oven I shoved on my trainers and went for a walk with my husband. Walking in companionable silence, each mulling over our day the idea suddenly came to me.

It was a perfect, brilliant light bulb moment and suddenly I knew exactly what I needed to do, as though someone had laid out a yellow brick road right in front of me. I didn’t even need to stop and make a note on my phone for fear I would forget it. The idea was so clear and perfectly formed it was as though it already existed.

Thinking back, this is definitely part of a pattern and there’s definitely something that works for me in the simple repetitive soothing motion of walking. Something that calms my frazzled brain and helps me to make sense of the world around me. It’s no coincidence that during the Covid lockdowns our daily walks were the one thing that kept me functioning.

I can’t meditate to save my life. Just the thought of sitting still and deep breathing makes me want to twitch but simple, slow, mindful walking works for me every time. And I’m not alone. I found this wonderful article recently which sums it up far more eloquently than I could. It seems there is some solid science to explain the link between a good long walk and creative ideas.

I’m not ready to ditch the laptop and the coffee shop just yet, but I might just shove my trainers in the boot of the car for a pre-work walk around the block first.

Sometimes it's good to go back

“Never say never” was one of my Nana’s well-used sayings and, as so often, she has proven to be right. When I closed the doors to the Everyday Knitter Facebook group, almost 2 years ago, the phrase “never again” may have crossed my lips. It was an action largely borne of frustration and pandemic-induced overwhelm. Everything felt too big, too loud, just too much.

The much smaller Mighty Network group in comparison felt a whole lot more achievable, calmer. In short I felt more in control of it. And back then, control over external things was very much in short supply.

Obviously a lot has changed in 2 years - for all of us - and that’s definitely a blog post for another day. But one things that has changed is the set-up of Facebook groups - specifically the moderating tools that are now available and a number of automated systems designed to reduce the need for admin interventions.

I used to be a member of an official Facebook Admin group, and it looks as though a lot of the things we were crying out for back then have actually been implemented - which makes a refreshing change.

In addition to this I think it would be fair to say that I have experienced a few issues with the Mighty Network group in terms of it’s set-up and relative inflexibility in some areas. For a small group it works well, and for a larger group with integral courses and multiple teams it probably also works well, I’ve certainly seen it working well for others. But for me, for the size of my group and my team (ie me - solo) it doesn’t seem to work as well. And I’m not convinced that spending time, and money, in trying to make it so would necessarily be the best use of my time.

That’s not to say that the Mighty Network group is going away. There is a definite place for those amongst use who prefer a Facebook-free environment, and the group will continue in it’s present form, but I just won’t be developing any new things there for the foreseeable future

So, here we are. It seems as though I’ve gone full circle. I’ve now opened up the doors of the Everyday Knitter Facebook group and am once again standing on the doorstep, ready to welcome you with coffee, cake and a bit of knitting chat.

I hope you’ll decide to pop back in - we have a lot of catching up to do.

We bend but we don't break

It’s been a hard month. As many of you may know I have been taking a break following the sudden and very unexpected death of my father.

Everything still feels very raw and very strange as you can imagine, but now we have had the funeral I feel as though I can start to dip my toe into the online world again. Even though my brain is strangely scattered and forgetful - just last night I made coffee without boiling the kettle and then wondered why the coffee was cold :)

Everything has changed and yet as I log in here and sit down to write (with a hot cup of coffee this time) everything seems familiar and comforting.

These daffodils made me smile the other day - snapped on one of the many trips north I’ve made over the last few weeks. Just the day before they had been smiling happily in the sunshine before their enthusiasm was dented somewhat by a sharp snow shower. Like us though, they bend but don’t break. Their display might be over for this year but they retreat underground, look after themselves for a bit and then re-emerge triumphant next year.

I’m not sure I’m going to be doing any triumphant emerging any time soon, but we do go on. We change, we adapt and we grieve, but we do go on.

Most of my regular knitting is on hold - due to lack of enthusiasm - but I did pick up an old long-neglected sock WIP - which seems to have caught my interest. And I’ve been finding huge diversion in the new series of Bridgerton - both watching the TV series and reading along with the book. It’s very entertaining - not least because I’m not sure that those who adapted it for the screen had even read the book - I can’t believe how different the two plotlines are.

Still, it all makes for harmless feel-good fun, which right now is just what is needed.

Keep on, keeping on

If we don't need cosy knitwear now then I don't know when. With everything that's happening in the world right now, a to do list that starts with “must write blog post” seems unbelievably trivial but I'm firmly of the opinion that all we can do in the face of such terrible events is to “keep on, keeping on”.

Holding it together, knitting it together - I'm sure there's a great community building metaphor here somewhere but it's beyond my slightly frazzled and overwhelmed brain.

There's so much I can't control right now, but I can make damn sure that I share the love for my new sweater - Reykjavik Soft by Meiju K-P and my absolutely new favourite yarn - Keld Aran from Eden Cottage Yarns. It's a wool/linen blend with amazing sheen and strength but with a hint of crispness. It worked perfectly with this colourwork sweater and even though a few of the rows were 3 colours at a time (a step up in my colourwork skills) it blocked out beautifully.

Full disclosure: I didn't read the pattern properly and ran short of the dark grey so I opted to do the bottom of the sweater plain without any additional colourwork.

I did the 2nd smallest size and used:

4 X 100g main colour Ash

1 X 100g Charcoal (dark grey)

1 X 100g Echinops (light pinky grey)

I’m just so pleased with how it turned out and now planning how many more colourwork sweaters I need in my life - answer: Lots!

It's OK not to share

It’s OK not to share: This seems like a bit of an odd subject for a social media post, but bear with me.

At the start of the year I set up a private Instagram account, just for me. The intention was to deliberately take a photo every day, to document what I’m calling a ‘tiny delight’ - nothing momentous, nothing earth shattering, it might just be a bowl of granola. But it’s a daily record of something I’ve done or seen that day, that made me happy and that I appreciated.

This was inspired, at least in part by the writings of two women:

Laura Pasha - author of Little Stories of Your Life - all about noticing the beauty in the mundane, everyday things.

Jo Dimmock - of @ochreandflax - and her gratitude and journaling practice.

So, if it’s private why am I telling you about it?

Ah - good question - I’m so pleased you asked.

It occurred to me while I was out walking this morning that, in an age where we are encouraged to share so much of ourselves and our thoughts online, that the deliberate choice to keep something back, to hold it just for ourselves is a really bold, assertive thing to do. It feels like a tiny act of rebellion in a world where oversharing is not just accepted but is actively encouraged. 

I wanted a place to share my ‘tiny delights’ in a way that was visual but that wasn’t just on my phone or in my journal. I wanted it to be somewhere separate from all of my other online activities but also somewhere just for me. A place where I can scroll through and see a permanent record of all of my daily ‘tiny delights’ that will hopefully help to perk me up, during those low moments which we all experience.

I’m keeping in mind the image of a determined toddler, with a very set expression on her face, arms crossed, saying calmly but fiercely “no, that’s mine”.

And I’m carrying that energy forwards into a few aspects of my online life this year, most notably with my Twitter usage. Twitter has been for the most part, my favourite online social media platform, the place where I am most free to be myself. Sadly though, for me at least, it’s become an increasingly noisy and hostile place where it’s all too easy to lose yourself amid the outpourings of so many other angry and frightened people.

As an empath, it’s something I have been increasingly aware of and the negative impact of Twitter on my mental health is no longer something that I can ignore.

This isn’t a grand ‘I’m leaving’ statement or anything like that. But simply a gradual realisation that I need to move towards something that serves me better - and 2hrs of daily twitter scrolling does not serve me well - at all.

Instead I’ve replaced the twitter app on my phone with the Kindle reader app (to supplement my Kindle and the physical books I have) and if I feel a scrolling urge I read a book instead.

I have set myself the target of reading 52 books this year (having read 25 in 2021) and I’ve surprised myself by reading 4 already. It turns out that 2hrs a day can really add up - who knew?

I’ll still be around on Twitter, and indeed I’ve curated a (private) list of knitty friends so that I don’t miss any updates, but I will be much more intentional about the debates and accounts I engage with. Reserving my energy and my attention for that which I can control, not that which I can’t.

I haven’t set any knitting-related goals this year - I’m not quite sure what that says about me - but there’s still time. For now I’m just happy that I have had a bit of a reset and I’m hoping that being more mindful in where I direct my energies will help me to be more present in other areas of my life - including my crafting.

How about you? Do you have any big (or small) goals this year?

If you’d like to find out what I’m reading I’ll be sharing this on my Instagram stories (and saved to my highlights) or I’ll be chatting about it in my bi-weekly newsletter too).