First off, let’s start by acknowledging this truth. “The Algorithm” is not a physical thing. It’s not a person or sentient being who sits sits there, looking at our posts, grading them out of ten. They are not appraised by eyes that have a lifetime of emotion, and feelings and reasoning behind them. It’s a piece of code. Literally, just a string of characters and numbers on a screen. That’s what we are trying to please. Those little lines of code are what have us doing silly dances and pointing to captions on a screen.
Creative Block
In 2018/19 I had a major creative block and I didn’t make any new art for almost a year. I believed the lie that if nobody was, seeing or liking my posts, I must clearly be a rubbish artist. If nobody cared, what was the point? Basically the algorithm and being a slave to it made me feel like an imposter. It made me despise my creative efforts. I hated myself and couldn’t even pick up a paintbrush without that voice in my head saying ‘what’s the point?’.
I remember listening to a Podcast back in 2020 by Risen Motherhood and they said this:
Emily: Yes, and one thing that’s helped me think about this is just the fact that these are businesses. A business has a goal, and an end and the true customer of social media is really the advertisers. The moms with the profiles who are posting pictures of their kids are not the customers. We are the users of that and they–
Laura: Actually we’re what’s being sold.
Emily: Yes. Being sold.
Laura: Like we’re being sold in the end to the advertisers.
Laura Wifler & Emily Jensen, Risen Motherhood Podcast.
Understanding who is serving who
We think that we think we are the users/customers on social media when actually we are the product. We are the ones that are being bought and sold. (I know they are talking about private/personal accounts in the quote however, it also applies to the accounts we use to post pics of our artwork.)
The truth of it turned my world upside down.
We are lead to believe (by the people that benefit financially from us feeling insecure) that follower counts, likes and reach are EVERYTHING and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Instagram’s (Facebook/Meta’s) whole business model is to bury our posts in the algorithm so that we have to pay them to show/promote/boost them to get them seen. In the process we end up feeling like we are worthless and unlikeable because we invest so much in these like counts which have nothing to do with the quality or value we bring to the world and everything to do with Meta making the most money they can out of us.
So… in order to keep my mental health intact, I had a reality check. I questioned all the lies that social media numbers had lead me to believe and replaced them with solid truths. I was really reluctant to come back to Instagram, but it was kind of a necessity so I dealt with it!
As long as I’m here showing up on the off chance that someone wants to see my art, then that’s enough!
It still makes me feel so icky that I really wish I could do without it altogether. My phone tells me I spend about 3 hours a week on Instagram. I definitely would prefer to spend that time, you know, actually making ART! Not to mention the behind the scenes time spent writing captions and creating posts! (Although I do have a tip for spending less time making posts, which you can read at the end of this page!)
I decided that apart from the personal connections with other artists and small businesses I have on Instagram, social media doesn’t need to take up much of my limited time or bandwidth. I only have my account because it’s a non negotiable these days for a business.
I just want to reiterate that the one thing I do really value is the relationships I have with other users on Instagram!! I love having like minded friends who inspire me and make me laugh with their posts and we can have chats about the tougher side of things just like this! I’ve also made some lasting connections with other small businesses and made sales because people have seen my work on there. It’s not all bad!
Setting Boundaries
This post was actually based on a rant conversation I had with one such friend. We were talking about how a lot of people had seen their insights drop that week. I said that actually I hadn’t noticed but that was because purely because I didn’t actually check them anymore! (I checked; they had.) I then kind of went off on a rant (which is something I am apt to do) and I thought I would continue it here on the blog!!
It got me thinking about the boundaries I have put in place to guard my mental health and stay sane while using social media. So here are 5 of the ways I do just that.
Remember that you work for yourself, not the Algorithm
If you are self employed like me, I am betting that one of the things that appealed was that you could be your own boss?
It’s one of my favourite elements of working for myself. I get to choose what direction I take my business in. I can (mostly) set my own deadlines. I am in charge of what colours I will paint with today. I get to choose what sort of work I do.
At some point after spending far too much time researching how to beat the algorithm (only for it to all change the week after) and seeing reel after reel of artists making a joke of how they can only get seen by making videos of themselves dancing and pointing at their paintings, I realised something.
I was feeling like Instagram was my boss. The feed was the workplace I felt like I had to show up at every day with some ridiculous project that had noting to do with my actual job.
We get told over and over again by Instagram we need to make reels to be seen and we all post reels saying “Posting this because Instagram says I need to make reels now” and I’m feeling like, ‘hang on, this isn’t what I signed up for!’
The feeling of pressure is real. I’m betting that for artists and creatives, one of the biggest sources of stress in day to day business is “winning at social media.” Certainly for me it was. Having identified this feeling I try and remind myself (daily if I have to) that social media is a tool. It is there to serve me. I am not here to serve it.
I was feeling like Instagram was my boss. The feed was the workplace I felt like I had to show up at every day with some ridiculous project that had noting to do with my actual job.
Rebecca Flaherty
Don’t Check Your Insights
This might sound like the worst advice ever for an instagram for business user. But honestly, I have found it essential. I will first up say that before I decided to make a point of not checking my insights I was already pretty rubbish at ever looking at them 🙈. Some people are all about the numbers and the stats, tracking growth, seeing what works and what doesn’t but I am not one of them! However, I found that whenever I did check them, I would feel so disheartened. There is nothing worse than working your little socks off to try and please somebody (Instagram’s algorithms) and then finding out they completely blanked you and didn’t even notice.
The annoying thing is that more often that not is was whenever I followed “the official advice” and posted videos instead of images. 🙄 See, little algorithm, some people do still like looking at pictures instead of videos! I definitely prefer a still image of someone’s art than seeing it on an iPad wiggling around in a reel!
Having already decided that I was not going to make myself jump through hoops to please a piece of code, I realised that there was no point in checking how the algorithm was treating me.
Sure, when those little numbers are green it feels like validation. It’s like a little pat on the back. The hard work has paid off. It doesn’t feel so bad to let those numbers tell us “you matter, you are important, people like you, you are not wasting your time here.” But if we let that be our truth, then the opposite has to hold true too. When those numbers turn grey we will in turn hear “you don’t matter, you’re not important, nobody likes you, you’re wasting your time.” Which is simply not true. Who wants to open up their phone and be told that?
The numbers there on that insight page do not define us. They are not a measure of what we are worth.
The numbers don’t define us
If you can look at them in a purely analytical way and not have it affect you in any other way then go for it (and please teach me how!) but I’m betting if you’re anything like me it just isn’t that easy to detach yourself. When we share pictures of our art, our work, our creativity, we’re sharing part of ourselves. It is hard not to take those numbers on that insights page as judgement on our merit.
But there are a lot of things those numbers can’t tell you. They can’t tell you how many people looked at your post and smiled because you’d used their favourite colour. They won’t tell you how many people read a quote or you posted and felt encouraged that day. There are so many insights that those figures just can’t give you. I know it’s not like we can have proof that what we share on social media is doing any of these things. However, I have found that if I ignore the official insights I open up the app with a different mindset. Instead, the kind comments and conversations I have on there become the louder voice.
I feel encouraged instead of discouraged.
If I didn’t feel like it was a necessary part of running an online business these days, I would quit social media altogether, but for now at least, it just isn’t an option. So if I am going to be posting regardless of whether the algorithm deems it worthy enough of being shown to anyone else, then for me, there really isn’t any point in going and looking to see whether it actually did or not.
Don’t post at weekends
We get told to ‘post every day’ and that we will be ‘punished by the algorithm’ if we don’t. Then, we need to reply to every comment within 30 mins. FOMO creeps in and all of a sudden we are working a 7 day week. Replying to likes and comments when we should be concentrating on the movie we’re watching. ‘Just quickly posting to our stories’ (🙋🏼♀️ guilty) when we should just be soaking up the full blown goodness of the moment with all 5 of our wonderful senses.
The worst part is, it’s generally accepted that the worst time to post on instagram is at the weekends. But our fear of missing out makes us post anyway. That then negatively affects our mental health twice over because we aren’t getting a clean break from work and we feel discouraged because it wasn’t even worth it.
I did post at weekends until earlier this year when I decided to take the plunge and stop. I’ll admit I was a bit nervous as to whether it would have a negative impact (WIP still teaching myself not to care about the numbers 🙋🏼♀️) but honestly it was the best thing I could have done! I don’t honestly know if it did have an impact on numbers because I didn’t bother to check, but not having that feeling of it being a thing I had to remember to check at weekends was definitely worth it.
Be Excited For Monday Morning!
It also made me more excited to check back in on a Monday morning and see what all my artist friends had been up to!
If you know that weekends are good days for you to post on to social media, and you prefer to work those days and have other days during the week as “rest/refresh” days, then of course, you do you. Why not try taking those days off from social media too? Making it work for you and having some away time each week is the main thing, rather than specifically when it is.
Don’t post at times that don’t suit you
Hands up if your insights tell you that your followers are most active at times you’d rather not be on your phone? (Or when you’re supposed to be sleeping!) Hands up if you still post at those times? 🙋🏼♀️
Well, I used to anyway. Or, rather I tried to but I would always end up ignoring the notification because I was too busy or just forgetting about it.
Nowadays I post when it suits me. After 3pm would be a better time for me to post from a numbers angle. However, that is when I am picking my son up from school. I’m in ‘mum mode’ by then, so I don’t really want to be on my phone. Instead I post earlier in the morning during my working hours.
I have found that if you post at a set time, eventually it will even out and you will end up with followers who are active at that time too.
Hide like count
This tip is probably the one which has made the biggest difference to me. Comparison is a terrible monster. When the game is all about numbers, how can you not compare yourself with other people’s numbers? It turned me into a person I didn’t like or recognise. I found myself barely looking at the photo or caption to appraise it with my own eye. I was letting the number of likes tell me what I should think of it. How insane is that? I wasn’t much better than the algorithm, judging something purely on numbers.
When I was able to hide like counts, I wasn’t distracted by comparing the ‘rating’ underneath the image and I found that I enjoyed scrolling my feed again!
How to hide likes on your feed:
- Tap on the hamburger menu icon ≡ in the upper right-hand corner of your profile page and select “⚙️Settings.”
- Go to “🔒Privacy”
- Select “+Posts”
- Toggle “Hide like and view counts” on or off.
Bonus Tip: Save time by create content as you go
Another thing that used to stress me out was not having anything to post! I’d spend a whole day every month or so going back through all my files from the last few weeks. I would open the pattern tiles and adding them back into my pattern swatches to make posts out of.
I would also feel a sense of dread when I knew that my queue of images was nearly empty.
Whilst I am a fan of batch working, in this instance it wasn’t actually saving me any time!
I decided to have a template a template that I could open each time I finished working on a pattern. Then, before I saved and closed I could quickly add it into my template and save it for later. I can also easily add the pattern to any mockups for social media while the file is open.
I now have a folder which always has a ready supply of posts for me to pull from.
If you’d like to find out more on how to make a template in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and want some tips for integrating it into your workflow, I have a Skillshare class for that! I teach the exact workflows and processes I use for creating my social media posts so that I don’t have to dedicate much extra time to creating posts anymore.
I hope that some of these tips can work for you. Let me know in the comments of any ways you help yourself stay sane while using social media. Do you ever think you could manage without using social media? Maybe you have already quit Instagram? I would really love to hear your experience!
Have fun and stay creative
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