Episode 62: 9 Tips to Overcome Your Toxic Relationship with Instagram

Welcome to holistic marketing simplified a podcast for health and wellness professionals looking to simplify their marketing. I'm your host, Molly Cahill. And this podcast is brought to you by my marketing roadmap, which is a five episode private audio training that's kind of like this podcast, but not exactly because it's not available to the general public when you search on your podcast feed. So the great thing about consuming free content like this for me or on my Instagram, or my blogs, or whatever, is that yes, you will learn a lot, but you kind of have to go searching for what it is exactly you're looking for. This five episode private podcast is broken down in a logical step by step order. That's why it's called a roadmap. If you're ready to get started on your Instagram marketing journey, or if you already are started and you're just feel like you're kind of like overwhelmed with all of the different free information. This is a super clear roadmap with lots of tangible step by step action items that will get you from point A to point B for just $27. So all you have to do is head to Molly cahill.com/private. Training. And based on the reviews I've had so far, I know you won't be disappointed.

My name is Morgan Adams, and I am a Holistic sleep coach in Richmond, Virginia. And I listen to the holistic marketing simplified podcast.

Hello, and welcome back to the holistic marketing simplified Podcast. I'm laughing because when I first came on, I forgot the name of my own podcast there for a second. I am coming at you live from my living room floor? Because do you ever just need to change positions? DM me on Instagram and tell me like are you somebody who sits at the same spot all day? Or are you somebody who's kind of like a cat and like moves around the house? That's me. So today's episode is one of my absolute favorite things to talk about, which is transforming your toxic relationship with Instagram. I'm going to be talking about Instagram specifically. But these tips can apply to all of social media. The reason I have this early on in the podcast as Episode Three is because I feel like so much of your success is based on your relationship. You know, if you go back to Episode One, the whole premise of this podcast holistic marketing simplified is to make sure that you're doing something that you enjoy. And if you have this toxic relationship with social media, then you're not going to see any success. So let's dive right in. I first want to just say that your Instagram doesn't suck. I've had people tell me that before. They're like, Instagram sucks. And then I go look at it. I'm like, doesn't suck to me. I mean, and I'm sure you've heard this analogy before, I'm probably not the first person to tell you this. But imagine every single person who's ever liked or commented are followed or whatever was standing inside your living room or inside your clinic or sitting with you in your car. He's like, dang, that's a lot of people. You know, but like, for some reason. Now, that is 2023. Whatever we get seven likes, we automatically think that that's a failure. But that's seven humans, man. And you can also think about it this way, Madden back, say it's 1950. And I am at home and I'm like, You know what, I'm going to start a business. And I'm going to start a business where I teach women how to make casseroles. Okay?

How do I let people know about this business, and we will be really hard you'd be like knocking on doors and telling your friends and they'd be probably be going to their church picnics or whatever trying to get people to know about this casserole business. And if they had, like, overnight, seven people, 20 people 50 people knew about this casserole making business that you had cooking, then you'd be over the moon, you'd be like, Wow, I'm really spent spreading this message quickly. So if we can kind of reframe the mindset to be like, you know, yeah, seven is enough. 20 is enough. 50 Enough, like it's all relative, right? i In the very beginning, when I first before I niche down to serving health and wellness professionals, I was working with this really huge Instagram account, and I'm gonna be honest, when they hired me, so I met him at a conference live. So that was how they found out about me, and I'm gonna be honest, when they hired me to I used to offer this service called a mini makeover where I would look over your account and give you feedback of what you can do better. And when they first hired me, I was thinking, holy cow, I'm not gonna have anything to tell them they get hundreds of comments every post, but to them hundreds of comments was less than what they were used to getting. They were used to getting way more. So their engagement was quote down for them, even though looking, you know, to anybody else, you'd be like holy cow. That's a lot. So it's all relative. So just, you know, get in your mind, like just imagine a face by hitting each one of those numbers. So that's the first thing you can do.

And then also I want you to consider, if for some reason you went viral tomorrow?

Would you be able to handle the influx of phone calls? Of DMS of comments? Would you have somewhere to put them? Would you have some type of funnel to send them through? Would you have a way to get them and capture them for your email list? Would you have a way to convert them to a paying patient or client? Think about that? And the answer might be yes. And if it is great, but if it's no, then I suggest you go back to Episode one and get those those marketing foundations in place. So not only episode one, but also just stick with me. And I'll be talking more about how to actually convert followers to paying patients or clients or leads on your email list or whatever. So yeah, so that's another question to ask, could you even handle the influx if you got it? And then another thing could you handle the trolls because inevitably, if and when you go viral, you then the meanies come out? I feel I just feel so bad for these people like is talking to Meredith from PG spoon today. And she's like, hurt people hurt people. I mean, I don't know she even gets trolls over, you know, Apple cookie dip. So if you can get trolls over Apple cookie dip, you can imagine what kind of trolls you could get going viral in the wellness space. Again, I'm not saying all this to scare you. I'm just saying it's something to consider. When you're kind of sitting here daydreaming, like man, I really wish this real would take off. It could be wonderful. It could literally change your business overnight for the better. But it also comes with its downsides, too. So that's that. So going viral and becoming an Instagram sensation could definitely lead to money in the door. But rapid growth like that does have a cost is what I'm trying to say. And there is more than one way like slow and steady works beautifully. And it's more sustainable. Almost always.

So just to give you some statistics to also help with this relationship that you might have of looking at your Instagram and thinking oh, it's just so slow and steady or it's you know, it's not performing well. I want you to get the the average monthly growth for a business account all across all of Instagram. The monthly growth and account followers for Instagram business accounts is actually 1.25%. So it is not that much. So chances are you are right on track. On top of that, whenever you're looking at your followers, like how many followers you've gained, don't look at how many you've lost as well and think why did that person unfollow me? You know why?

You wouldn't get this is a crazy stat to me. One in 10 Instagram accounts are fake. It's a bot one in 10. I don't have the stats for Instagram, but this just gives you an idea. So for Twitter, they say that Twitter removes about 10 bot accounts per second. So I have to imagine that Instagram is is pretty close to that. So you know the amount of spam DMS you get spam comments. The people that go out and like math comment things about this person cured me of herpes or whatever. Those are all those accounts when they get reported. They all get shut down. And since you probably have one in 10 of your you know, Instagram account or one in 10 of your followers are probably a bot then a lot of those followers that are quote unfollowing you aren't actively going oh my gosh, I don't like that. She just posted this salad and I'm gonna unfollow her. It's probably a bot that got removed and majority of them sure there are going to be some people who unfollow you because your content doesn't resonate with them. And I say cool. That's amazing. It's like a self pruning. rosebush. I have the weirdest analogy sometimes sorry. It you know, it's like a way to like, hey, if this person's never going to buy from you are never going to become a patient or client then why it's like dead weight. Right. So that's another way to look at it. When you're talking about losing followers. And I just think that's crazy. One intent is a bot account, a fake account.

Another point I want to mention on transforming your toxic relationship is the fact that you know I kind of mentioned we worked with a big name account. And that's not the only one we've worked with, for I want to say like pretty darn big influencers. And over the process of working with these people, we've gotten to know them, we've seen their video outtakes. We've seen you know, everything you know, and honestly like, I always say it's like AWS like I've seen behind the curtain. There's nothing fancy. They're just like us. And you know, I think I think once you've seen what's behind the Instagram feed, you know, like you've kind of seen how the sausage is made, then, I don't know I think that's why I just don't have that type of relationship with Instagram. I

Don't ever look at it and go, Oh my gosh, why am I not doing as much as that person because I've literally seen behind the scenes, and I know what it's really like. Another thing to consider when thinking about your relationship with the gram, is stay away from any content that looks like it's constantly talking about the algorithm or the algorithm, the algorithm changed the algorithm did this algorithm did that? Because it makes it very much like us versus them. They're working against you, not for you. When else in time, think back to my lovely casserole. anecdote. What else in time? Could you market your business for I don't want to say free? Because there's costs involved with even with posting on Instagram, right? Like, unless you're just the one doing it all day, every day by yourself. But you know, that's, that's a time cost, right? So I'm not gonna say it's free. But I mean, you're not having to buy an ad in the Yellow Pages, or a built pay for a billboard, or my first job selling advertising in a newspaper?

Yeah, so I mean, what else in history? Could we grow our businesses for this small of, you know, a marketing budget spent? I mean, never. It's crazy. And

the other thing to remember is, like I said, it's not about the algorithm and an us versus them, they literally want you to do well. So they're not out to get you, the more that you see success on Instagram, the more you're going to use it and the longer you're going to stay on it. And the longer you're on it, and the more you use it, it's better for them. So it's not us versus them, they're out to get you. The algorithm is not all as like, cloaked in secrecy as people make it out to be. There's always these people who think they're like, you have these like, crazy novel, I've hacked it, like if anybody ever tells you they packed the algorithm like run away, because it's simple as this, it learns so quickly. I have always wanted to have a vegetable garden. And we lived in Florida for so long and lived on basically an island with super sandy soil, it was really hard to grow stuff, I literally grew like nine green beans, we joked I was like $45, a green, green piece. But now that we're in Cincinnati, we have you know, we have a big yard, I'm like, Okay, I want to go ahead and start researching for the spring start gardening, I maybe looked up like two or three gardening accounts for like the zone of the garden amount on Instagram. And within minutes, my Explore page was populated with more gardening pages. And then just yesterday, I was looking up teeth whitening stuff. And then again, within minutes, I had like teeth whitening content on my page and teeth whitening content ads, I mean, you know, not to mention how fast the algorithms learned. So it's really not all that difficult. Just make sure like I said, there's when I go back to like be consistent on your, your content themes and the algorithm or learn this episode is not about that I could go down a whole rabbit hole about engaging and growing your community. But that's why it's so important to do the steps behind the scenes, the engaging and the growing community steps. And if you're not sure how to do that, you can just go to Molly cahill.com/engagement. And we'll link that in the show notes below. And that's just a step by step and walking you through how to grow community on Instagram. And that's another way to train the algorithm so they know what you want to see. And they know what type of accounts should be seeing your content. Another point in the non toxic bucket is that apparently the 2020 theory trend is not really a trend. It's just being real. I always say like thank goodness for that just being real. I think there was this pendulum swing of, you know, these grids were super perfect. And they had these like an Instagram like 2016 up to like maybe 2018. Like there's these perfect grids, these perfect patterns, light room filters, were all the rage, everything was like this perfect thing. And so I'm not saying you should swing the pendulum all the way over to blurry images, colors and fonts that don't go with your brand. And, you know, maybe like images that don't actually fit the Instagram square. I'm not saying you should like swing your pendulum all the way over to that to where you look just completely unpolished where people are going to be like, I don't know, like, can I put my health in her hands? Not sure. But it's just like be like a normal human, right, like a normal human in the middle like, not perfect. Not super sloppy, like just just in the middle. Okay, so I'm going to end this episode with nine tips that you can implement. I mean, I've already kind of given you some tips, but here are nine specific tips that you can implement today to have a better relationship with Instagram. Number one, beware of algorithm confirmation bias. Oh my gosh. Why is it that even when we know how these algorithms work, we still find ourselves I mean, they're designed to do this

Right, they're designed to put us in this vacuum. And, you know, you could say that there is a, you could find an article of conspiracy theorists who think there is a red giant, monster sea turtle, who is living in the Great Lakes and it has been spotted in it is going to come find us. And you could like find that account. And then like the algorithm is going to start showing you other accounts that people think that this big, giant red turtle is going to come get you and then all of a sudden, your whole Instagram feed is full of people who are talking about how this giant red monster, Great Lakes turtle is going to come get you and you're like, you're talking to other people, and they've never heard of it. You're like, how have you never heard this? It's everywhere? Well, it's not really, it's just, it's just the algorithm doing its job. And it's feeding you more and more and more and more and more and more and more of what it thinks you want to see. What's funny about this is have you ever logged into like your partners or your friends, Instagram account or Facebook account, and you're like, you know, right away that it's not yours? Because you're like, oh, I don't recognize any of this? Content, right? So it's so easy to put our blinders on. Even when we know, we know better, it's so easy to be like, This is it, this is the only way I'm thinking in the world and was the only thing was going on, that's going on. So just just kind of try to put that like at the forefront of your mind. There's gonna be times you forget you, you fall into a spiral. But that is one tip. Another is to unfollow or mute. Anyone who has a couple different categories. One who makes you feel bad about yourself in any way. It doesn't matter why. There was recently a business coach who I was following, and she had these amazing tips. But I ended up I don't think I unfollowed her, I think I've muted her. Because every single video like her house was like perfectly bright white and perfectly lit. It was whatever background she had was, no matter what part of the house she was in, was always spotless. Her hair was always perfectly curled. It was like Kniphofia in a ponytail. She had like a really cute blouse on every day with like matching earrings and lipstick. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like she was talking about like selling to high ticket. I'm like, to high ticket clients. And I was like, oh my god, I'm never gonna get high ticket clients, because I'm never going to look like that. Like, I'm never going to be the person that's like, has this perfectly spotless house and has my hair fixed every day. Like, usually I haven't washed my hair in like three days.

And so anyway, I had to mute her just because I was like, Molly, that's ridiculous. Like, people come to you because you're relatable, and they see yourself. And like I said, and so she's got her demographic too, like she's gonna have people that come to her and hire her. Because she is so polished, like that's going to attract her people to her like a magnet, it just wasn't the right fit for me. So unfollow, or mute. If you don't know how to mute someone, you just go to their actual profile. And there's underneath their profile photo, there's the button that says following, it's like a rectangle. If you tap that, though, it'll open a little menu and you can hit mute.

I also encourage you, this is gonna sound harsh to unfollow or mute anyone in your industry or your niche.

I know, you're gonna think I'm like a terrible human. It's not that I don't want to support other people in the social media space. I have lots of friends in the social media space. And there are three or four that I don't have muted or and then I keep followed that I follow because I love them. And you know, that they share great tips and I learned a lot.

But going back to my point about become like getting, you know, down the silo of echo chamber. If you're only following people who do what you do not it's, it's good to do a lot of things. One, it can make you feel like you're not doing enough, like I said, and two, it can really stifle your creativity, because then it's just going to be back the same spin the same

exact graphic or the same exact type of information regurgitated over and over. If you follow other accounts outside of your niche in your industry that you're in. And we're not saying don't follow things, you're not gonna you know, make sure it's something you're interested in, right? Like that's the whole point of this, you need to be an enjoyable experience. When you open up the app, you want to see accounts that you want to look at, right? I mean, I follow like furniture flipper account. I love home decor. I love recipes. I love comedy. Some fashion bloggers like I follow all kinds of people outside of the social media space, because when I do want to go research something and I do want to consume social media marketing content, then I can just go find it. But if it's constantly fed to me, all day, every day, I always question myself like I'm not doing enough. So just give it a try. Might not be for you. Like I said I'm not saying don't just support other peers or call

And then just from a pure, you know, like, again, go back to the algorithm standpoint, like, if only you see those threads just like like this support each other. Let's go follow each other on Instagram. And that's great like I get I know that it's coming from a good place. But let's say you're a chiropractor. What good is it? If the only comments are the only people following you or other chiropractors, that's that does nothing that does nothing for growing your business. And it confuses the heck out of the algorithm because they're like, Wait, I thought you were based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Why are these people from all over? I thought like, you don't, I'm saying like, you need to make sure that people who are following you could potentially be your patients or clients. So that's another reason that I don't like to flood my account with people inside my own industry. My second tip, sorry, number one was like a fool it was like, my first step is like a number one with about eight sub bullet points. The second tip is to stay out of the common sections of viral posts. If you ever see a post, it doesn't matter how benign it seemingly is, if there are hundreds of comments, the odds are, there's going to be some meanies just stay out of the comment section. Don't look at the meanies look for the nice people.

If you find yourself scrolling the comment sections, but no

matter me and your shoulder saying get out, get out. Unless you're there to leave a thoughtful comment yourself. And if you're there to leave a thoughtful comment, or to come in provide help, then that's a different story.

The next tip weekends are off limits, weekends are off limits, just completely.

I'm not posting on the weekends, if you want to like snap some photos over the weekend, and then do like a big photo dump on Sunday night or Monday morning totally fine. But I have found that if I don't have that strict rule

with myself that I am like constantly thinking about what I should be posting on the weekend. So I just strictly say weekends are off limits. Nights pretty much too. I mean, my husband always jokes that I'm impossible to get in touch with which is hilarious considering I do social media for a living. And also within the Instagram app, you can go up to your settings. And there's a way to set screen time limits to where if you've been on it for more than like 20 minutes at a time or 30 minutes at a time in one chunk that it will pop up with like, you know, take a break, kind of on the same theme as point number three is snap your SNAP or capture your photo or video now and post it later. So again, if you're going to do something fun, and you're like, hey, it's on the weekend, and I do you want to post this on Instagram, then don't feel like you can't, you know capture the moment if you want just don't feel like you have to like stop, go ahead and post it and all the right caption get everything you know, that's just gonna like really, that's gonna squash your joy. Another little hidden tip that you've probably never heard before, is to use the Instagram desktop. I do this all the time. Instead of just being on your teeny tiny phone screen. I should have looked this up before I started recording. But apparently there was a study done a while back about like the size of the screen. The smaller the screen, the worse it is for our stress levels, apparently. So I like to just go to instagram.com. And I like to you know, that's where I do a lot of my engaging. That's where I reply to DMS, I do so much from Instagram desktop, you can even post from instagram.com desktop, you can't post a reel, and get all of like the music and all that jazz. But you can post long videos and you can post like regular posts on Instagram desktop. So I love using Instagram desktop. My next tip is to reuse and repurpose the heck out of your content. Remember how I said people need to hear things 21 times in order to take action. Just if you are feeling overwhelmed or burnt out with creating content, scroll back if you throw them scrolls grab you can even screenshot the same exact photo if you want. Tap the three little dots on the post and hit edit on that post. And that's how you can go grab the caption and copy and paste it and then you just hit save again, you're not actually editing anything. Or if you're on Instagram, desktop, you don't even have to do that. You can just go copy it, copy the caption.

Another tip is to pay attention to the metrics that I call your invisible metrics, which are reach and things like saves and shares. Those are the reason I call them invisible metrics because if somebody's coming to your profile, they can see how many people are following you. They can see how many comments you get. They can see how many likes you get, but they can't see the reach the saves the shares. Reach is simply the number of unique people who saw your post. So even if they didn't stop to, to like it or comment or save it

Whatever just it appearing on their feed and them seeing somehow that counts is reach. I love that number as a marketer, because

it's, it's say, okay, whatever this my brand got in front of somebody's eyes, whether or not they consciously realized it, or I can't tell you how many times and you've probably done this too, you're scrolling through Instagram, you stop and see a carousel that you know piques your attention. You scroll through the entire carousel, and then you keep scrolling. You didn't take the time to like it or comment or anything, not because you didn't love the content. It's just like, that's just the way you use the app. So I like reach because it really captures that people, the people who are kind of like the more silent lurkers. And it's a really great metric to measure over a month. So like, if you look at your your professional dashboard from your Instagram profile, I like to always see that my reach is in the green. And if it's not green, then that's when we can start to troubleshoot. My next tip is super simple, follow feel good accounts. I love Upworthy there's like the good news movement. I love kind of all of the the funny, Millennial Mom memes and you know you This is how you know you were raised in the 90s and all that kind of stuff. So I completely follow feel good, fun accounts, and it'll make you realize there's still so much amazing, beautiful good in the world.

My next tip is to read

some silly just hanging, read physical books and magazines when possible. I love Oh my gosh, I get real simple magazine I get every month, I used to intern at cooking light magazine and college. Fun fact, I love magazines, physical books, you will spark so much creativity by reading a physical book or magazine. And then you can gain ideas to use on your Instagram from there. And that's another way to kind of get out of that silo. And also, just to have something analog can be so amazing for your brain, you'll get so many ideas, trust me just try it. And my last tip is simple. It's always my favorite tip, seek real human interaction, do not let the screen replace just regular human face to face interaction. If you've never heard of the book, do nothing. It's called do nothing by Celeste Headley. It's a great book in general. But one of the things I really loved from the book is it talks about how longevity is associated with our social interactions, our real life social interactions. So if you think about it, when we used to live in tribes, and we literally could not have survived on our own, and we are still very much hardwired to have that real human interaction. And you know, I've been fortunate we've moved a lot but I've always had a great group of girlfriends just because the military like that makes it a little easier to to meet other people. And now that we moved to Cincinnati, we're not military anymore, but my daughter is in kindergarten. So you know, we've sent notes in you know, her folder like hey, so and so's mom. MJ is Mom, give me a call. And like I've got I've now got like a group of mom friends here. So there's so many ways to meet adult friends to make adult friends. And just making sure that you take the time to pencil that in and put that on your calendar is so so so crucial. Just to quickly summarize, the tips are to unfollow and mute ruthlessly, beware of the algorithm, confirmation bias and the vacuum that you can essentially live in without really realizing it. Stay out of the comment section. Wait unless you're there to leave a thoughtful comment or to help. Weekends are off limits and SEC screen time limits. Snap and capture your stuff now and post it later. Use Instagram desktop reuse and repurpose your existing content. Pay attention to the metrics that you can't see behind the scenes, like reach and saves and chairs instead of just comments, likes and followers. Follow feel good accounts like Upworthy and the good news movement and funny memes. Read physical books and magazines when possible, instead of getting in a doom scroll. And as always seek real human connection. Please reach out to me on Instagram and let me know which one of these tips you're going to implement first and this is not that's not a rhetorical like the thing that all podcasters say like please do me like for real please do I love talking to you. I love chatting. I've gotten so many messages already. Like, hey, you told me to say hi and I'm saying hi and I'm like yeah, I love it. So please come say hi. I hope this was helpful and hope you have an amazing day and here is to transforming that toxic relationship with social media.

Thank you for listening to holistic marketing simplified. This podcast is brought to you by my marketing roadmap, which is a fun

I've episode private audio training that's kind of like this podcast, but not exactly because it's not available to the general public when you search on your podcast feed. So the great thing about consuming free content like this for me or on my Instagram or my blogs, or whatever, is that, yes, you will learn a lot, but you kind of have to go searching for what it is exactly you're looking for. This five episode, private podcast is broken down in a logical step by step order. That's why it's called a roadmap. So you're ready to get started on your Instagram marketing journey. Or if you already are started, and you're just feel like you're kind of like overwhelmed with all of the different free information. This is a super clear roadmap with lots of tangible step by step action items that will get you from point A to point B for just $27. So all you have to do is head to Molly cahill.com/private. Training. And based on the reviews I've had so far, I know you won't be disappointed. I'm really proud of this training. And I know personally, I've bought 2737 $17 products before and felt like I really didn't get that much out of it. I guarantee you, you will learn something from this five episode, private audio feed. So again, it's just Molly cahill.com/private training. And it'll also be linked below in the show notes. I cannot wait to hear what you think. And hey, you know, every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast. Well, that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce to bring you free information. So in order for me to be able to continue doing that we need more people to find out about the show. So if you could please just take like two minutes out of your very busy day to leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram stories and tag at Molly a Cahill. That's c h i ll I would greatly greatly appreciate your support. I truly appreciate you so much. I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.

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