I crossed the 700$ profit mark on my Instagram page but then collapsed. ☹️ Lesson learned.

3yr ago

2 replies

Little background context. On 26th May after losing my job due to the pandemic, I decided to start my Indie Maker journey and started an Instagram Page on Programming. https://www.instagram.com/logica... I posted for 3 months without any single break, spend my whole days replying to people, and improving posts. After 74 days of consistent postings, I crossed the 10000 followers mark and got my first advertisement proposal for 10$. I didn't have any plan to advertise on my page but sell my own courses. Still, what's wrong if you are getting free money. So I accept it anyways, my page was performing at a 20% engagement rate. I know it was huge, but I was literally replying to every single message and comments query for 2 months all day, so I can say I remember more than a thousand of my followers by name. Due to the different styles of posts, I got noticed by some local universities and some big players in my country like CodeChef, geeksforgeeks, unacedemy etc. Fast forward to September, I made around 720$ (close to the monthly salary). I was at 27K followers at that time but observed stagnant growth in August month. I was so much addicted to the numbers that it started affecting my daily routine. I lost my sleeping regime and get caught with the horrible habit of refreshing post insights every minute, all day. I was not able to think of anything other than that. I got so frustrated that I stopped posting and went on mute for the whole 2 months (October and November). Meanwhile, I tried working on some other things (will soon reveal them here). Current Status I started posting again this week. It's a long gap, too many queries I have responded to followers, and still going well. Meanwhile, I lost around 1500 followers. But this time I am avoiding the numbers as much as I can. I am focusing only on good content. Lesson Learned These vanity metrics will take you nowhere. You need to be mentally strong to handle the numbers and probably immune to figures. Just focus on good work. Algorithm change is a problem with every social platform. They will suppress the reach no matter what you do. Does this happen to all?

Replies

Tatiana Kukova, PhD @kukova_tatiana

Your story is the story of identity change. The identity standard is the essence of who you are because it points to what you think about yourself. Addictions come from the meanings that you give to yourself. In other words, "focusing on good content" is part of your current identity. This means that your identity standard of success has recently changed. "Good content" has become a priority. This "addiction to numbers" and "vanity metrics" reveal to me how you followed your identity standard of success in the past and how it manipulated you. You say that "you need to be mentally strong to handle the numbers and probably immune to figures", but if your identity standard of success is all about numbers and figures, it is virtually impossible to do it. No matter how many times you say to yourself that you should be "mentally strong", you'll follow the meanings in your standard which I have described.

Dec 8, 2020

Rajan Verma (Aarvy)@rajanverma

@kukova_tatiana Thanks for these words.. 1 year down the line i can really understand the mistakes and vanity metrics i was running after. It should always be the quality if not anything it gives you peace. Rest is just marketing tactics that needs to be learned.

Aug 15, 2022