Why I quit Instagram, kept Stories, and how over 2 years without regular grid content has impacted my business.
On the 30th of November 2022, I published my last planned reel on my Instagram grid.
I didn’t script what I was going to say. I just set up my phone on its little tripod, hit that big circle button and threw up the words that’d been skipping in the back of my brain like a badly scratched CD ever since I started promoting my business on Instagram 2 years earlier:
“I hate doing it. I hate creating posts for Instagram.”
Here’s the final reel.
It says, ‘Find me on Stories. This grid is dead.’
In the 2+ years since I published that reel, I’ve only returned to my grid 9 times, and every single 1 of those times, I posted because I felt like it.
But I’m jumping ahead of myself, and I know if you’re here reading this, then it’s probably because you’ve also been searching for the elusive EXIT off of Instagram, too.
And I promise I’ll tell you everything I know.
Just not yet.
Because this erotic small business owner fantasy comes with an important disclaimer.
When I quit posting on Instagram, I was not an influencer with 100,000 followers, so I couldn’t rely on viral popularity to prop up my brand.
I was just a very fucking tired small business owner, mum and carer to a then-toddler with additional needs, and marketing on my grid was (to me) on par with the mental exhaustion Bilbo Baggins experienced when he had The One Ring in his jacket pocket for 60 years.
Keeping Up with The Contentdashians
Marketing my business via posts, carousels, reels, and guides (lolz, remember that absolute fail of a feature?!) felt like being trapped in a never-ending season of Keeping Up with The Contentdashians. Every single morning I’d reach out for my phone, see EVERYONE on Earth had managed to publish something new, and then desperately check that fucking notification icon in the corner to see if, in the night, I’d gone viral or suddenly had 212 enquiries off a post I’d done 2 days ago.
In my mind, that meant I could finally STFU for a week and reap the rewards of 100s of hours dicking around on Canva.
I hated doing it, but early on in my business, I knew I couldn’t stop posting.
Because (and here comes the disclaimer) before you drop a marketing channel, you gotta make sure you have other marketing channels.
And just like everything I write online, please remember this is MY experience, not yours. So I don’t want anyone commenting that they went dark on Instagram with no backup plan, and now they’re a gazillionaire.
I’m a small business owner with almost 14 years of this marketing stuff in my bag, but I’m not Amy Porterfield. I don’t want to be Amy Porterfield. If you want to be Amy Porterfield, stop reading here because the rest of this blog is all about:
🏚️ The impact quitting Instagram had on my small business (good and bad)
🏠 How I’ve consistently marketed my business since
🏡 How you can quit your Instagram too
Ready?
Cool. Let’s get into it.
The impact quitting Instagram had on my business (good and bad)
I don’t want you to scroll through this tale thinking I’m some steely Maverick who had carefully and strategically planned for the day I’d finally quit my Instagram grid. Cos I wasn’t and I didn’t.
But just so you get a feel for the kind of person I was (and still am), here is my first ever ‘business post’ from my grid:
I published this on March 19th 2020, and it reads:
I’ll try but I can’t promise I’ll enjoy it.
My March goal is to link my business to my social media, so I’m testing out a few templates. I’m also an Aquarius, and I need my freedom, so if I suddenly stop trying, please know that being fecklessly negligent is an integral part of who I am.
And this was my feed a few months into my transition from personal to business account.
Visually, I was battling being a human AND being a business owner. Every time I posted a shitting Canva template, it felt like this creeping virus was slowly taking over my life. And plot twist, that virus was my business lol.
So, was I ever committed to making my Instagram my main marketing squeeze? Not really.
I’d worked in digital marketing for years before I started this business, and from role to role, the most consistent thing about me is how much I’ve always hated writing and creating content for <insert business’s> Instagram account.
What I loved and knew I could commit to was:
🖥️ Getting my website up and running
📝 Writing the occasional blog post
🤳 Showing up on Stories
💌 Eventually, sorting out a newsletter
And that’s what I worked on in the background, but in the foreground, I was a good lil business owner and hired a business coach and a social media strategist (not at the same time. I’m not a sadist) to try and fix my aversion to developing grid content for my Instagram.
Both of them tried hard to get me to develop a posting strategy (and Allah knows I tried). Still, every single time I heard that I needed 3 to 4 posts a week to get that traction, grow my reach and really establish myself, I’d have a Rumpelstiltskin-level tantrum and ‘X’ out of Zoom or my DMs feeling like my mum had just told me to go clean my room and also find a good husband and also stop being so dramatic (not going to happen).
So before you’re all, ‘Maybe you needed a coach/strategist/support network’, no, I didn’t. I know myself well, and I’m a very contrary person who hates being locked into a calendar. If I ran Britain (and I might one day), we’d all live and work according to good vibes, whether or not you’re on your period and how early we see the moon in the evening sky.
So, did my business suffer after I abruptly dropped off my grid?
Yes and no.
🏠 My top 5 takeaways from quitting my Instagram grid and how I’ve consistently marketed my business since then
1) My vanity metrics suffered
I stopped posting on my grid when I had about 1,600 followers. Thankfully, I’m not running a religion or a political party, so I never cared for having a massive following, but it did mean my account growth stagnated.
With no fresh grid content to feed the insatiable Instagram algorithm, I didn’t have fresh bait to draw new people into my business world. So, in the 2+ years since I quit, my account has only grown by about 100 people.
Did this worry me? A little.
But by the time I quit, I’d already started my Extremely Secret Email Club mailing list and had been consistently marketing it on my ‘gram and Stories. Plus (knowing how much I hate pitching in DMs and on social), I built out a detailed landing page for my mailing list with a conversion rate of 30% (which is fantastic), so my website pitches my email list brilliantly (no lead magnet required).
2) Stories are the ultimate sales channel
If you already know me from Instagram, you’ll know that the only part of my account I consistently use is Stories (and now Threads). I LOVE Stories because it’s like a visual diary of what I’m up to personally and professionally. I don’t need to curate it. I can show up, chat shit and leave. And because I’m a yapper and love to yap, it WERKS for me as a channel.
The last 7-days of top Story views.
I’m not sharing this to be like OOOooOooo 160 viewers?! The number (small or big, and let’s face it, it’s small) is insignificant. What I value is the community that tunes in and watches. Because after my mailing list, Stories is where I sell most of my gear.
Oddly, the most potent bit about my marketing is how, unintentionally and naturally, The Mere Exposure Effect nurtures a preference for what I do. I don’t need to show up on Stories like I’m shifting products on TikTok shop. I’m not telling people to ✨✨RUN, DON’T WALK✨✨ to grab a Business Blitz. I breadcrumb what I do like a tap dripping water on a stone. Eventually, and almost unconsciously, people get to know what I do, what I stand for, and what I’m like, and those Stories always end in sales.
Pressure to sell makes you a lousy salesperson, which is why I love Stories. All I’m doing is having fun, sharing my life, and being myself. I share wins and losses openly, and it encourages an active, fun DM situation where I get the support of a community, the friendship of other business owners, and the sales I deserve (without beating people over the head with my messaging).
3) The really important conversations I needed to have with my audience weren’t in the comment section under a graphic of 3 tips to help you write better web copy
Those conversations happened when something I said in Stories or Threads made people visit my website, read MORE of my stuff, and eventually book a call. So, my most significant shift was doubling down on getting people over to my website. If I could do that, I could usually get them on my mailing list too, and that’s where my big sales happen.
4) Dropping 1 thing gave me the confidence to drop more things (and pick up others)
The cool thing about quitting Instagram is once you’ve done it, you get cocky and brave.
You’ve jumped out of the social media plane without a parachute.
You’ve skydived into a sea of fluffy white clouds with no idea how close you are to hitting the ground on the other side of that cumulus cotton wool.
Will you shatter your kneecaps and land in a bloody heap on the floor?
Will you gracefully plop into a pile of 12,000 pillows?
Who fucking knows, and what a thrill it is.
My active mailing list and Stories meant I could drop all the Calendly booking buttons from my website and instead encourage people to email me. Having free time is addictive, and once I got a taste of the hours I freed once I no longer needed to sit and do wanky Canva graphics, I was dizzy with possibility. I love talking to potential clients, but I knew how much time those consults swiped from my writing time, client time, and free time, so I followed my heart and rage-deleted all my Calendly booking links.
Now, I only have calls once I’ve had someone land in my inbox.
The Final Boss I need to battle is figuring out how to improve my email response time because I’ve got more free time, but I’m also terrible at keeping up with my inbox. But that’s a problem for future-Nadia.
And with all that other extra time? I explored offline marketing! Last year, I developed my first-ever in-person workshop. Sure, no one showed up, but the effort I made went into developing pre-recorded workshops, which now live in my shop and bring me a tidy little monthly boost for coffee dates and bakery visits.
5) I’m living the advice I constantly give my clients
Over the 6 years I’ve been running this small business, I reckon 98% of my clients have asked me if they can do less social media. I’m not the only person who hates the constant ‘production line’ push to produce. I work with small businesses, solo businesses and startups with very little bandwidth. None of these business models have a built-in marketing team. So many clients want to build a leaner marketing machine.
I used to tell people it was possible, and I’d be speaking from personal experience because I’ve run a sales team with zero social media. I’ve run a marketing team where email was our primary sales and marketing channel. And I’ve run a community space where we heavily relied on social media and word of mouth.
I’ve seen all types of business work, but in all those cases, I had support. Colleagues. Other smart people helped make these things possible. I wasn’t alone.
Now I’m alone, and in cutting off my grid, my business gets to be a case study, an experiment, and a successful example of the YES I confidently give my clients when I tell them, “You can do it too”, and we strategise a more thoughtful, intentional customer journey for them (and you can do this with me at a fraction of the cost if you click that text-link and buy my customer journey workshop).
Be so for real, you didn’t think you’d get through this without a single sales pitch? 😂
🏡 How you can quit Instagram too
I can’t give you a 10-step plan to quit Instagram because, the truth is, some people need social media, and every business is different. Without sitting and talking to you about your circumstances, I’d say a 10-step universal quitting plan is reckless, and I don’t want you to tell your mum I ruined your business.
Despite my love-hate relationship with Instagram, it’s still a faster path to sales than launching a website without traffic. I’ve worked with plenty of clients in this position, and in their case, they DO need social media because their digital footprint is so tiny you’d have to hire like 43 airport sniffer dogs to try and get a scent of their business anywhere online. In this case, they usually have a website that doesn’t have enough content to rank meaningfully.
However, I CAN give you the 6 steps I’d take if I did this Instagram quitting thing all over again.
1) Prioritise your website
Optimise your pages. Hire an SEO expert like my mate Sarah (not being paid for this plug, lol, she’s just a brilliant client, and I can vouch for her expertise and results).
2) Free option: work on your organic SEO by writing detailed blog posts
Post frequently about your area of expertise. The more high-quality, long-form content you publish on your website, the higher your rank with search engines. Especially if you weave in key phrases like “I quit Instagram”.
3) Experiment with your marketing.
I don’t believe in 1-size-fits-all business models. I believe in custom sizing, which is a perfect fit for you. If you love a specific channel, put more time into it. The more you enjoy your marketing process, the more you’ll naturally do. You don’t need to have LinkedIn or need to have X or need to have Instagram if you’re going to spit and curse your way through every moment you spend on there. Remember, you built a business so you could (hopefully) enjoy a somewhat flexible lifestyle.
That won’t happen if you’re shackling yourself to FIVE POSTS PER WEEK or 10 SALES CHATS PER DAY.
My mailing list, Extremely Secret Email Club, runs in seasons. Each season lasts three months, and I send 12 emails, 1 every Friday morning. Once the season ends, I stop emailing for two to three months and resume my client work.
Would I make more money if I emailed every day or every Friday all year round? Yes, probably.
But I don’t have the capacity to do this, so I don’t. As long as you explain to your audience what you do and why you do it, and it doesn’t feel like you’re constantly taking random action, then the right audience for you will accept that this is how you operate. No biggie.
4) Let go of the numbers game
10,000 followers, 5,000 subscribers, 843 likes, 87 comments, 39 DMs, 1,248 views.
None of those numbers matters if they aren’t converting into paying clients who love what you do, want to work with you, get excellent results from you, refer you, and return to work with you again the next time they need help.
The minute you stop equating those vanity numbers with success, you’ll become more focused on the numbers that matter to your business. There’s no point in spending hours and hours editing pictures and videos if they aren’t generating eventual sales. Period.
You’re better off consistently taking quick and dirty action than constantly aiming for a perfectly polished rectangle feed.
5) Turn your Instagram grid into a beautiful museum/thrift shop
Even though I rarely post, whatever is there still gets used! I frequently switch my pinned posts, so if I do get passing people traffic (and I do), it looks like I’ve cleaned the toilet and put out some lovely flowers for the guests.
I’ve also made it extremely clear that I don’t post on my grid, and if people want to find me, it’ll be on Stories. I think this CTA has really helped bump up my Story views because I’ve been clear about my exit, and this is why I always find fresh viewers hopping on for the ride.
This is my current bio. I have a clear CTA asking people to check Stories or subscribe to my emails. Never assume people will automatically ‘get’ how to interact with your business. You gotta tell ‘em.
I also upcycle the hell out of the posts I wrote. So much of the excellent copy I came up with has ended up in emails, blogs, and even in some of the briefing material I create for clients.
The work you put into your grid before you quit is never wasted. You can even do this thing all the cool kids have been doing in recent years. I think it’s called the ‘9-post grid method’, where you plan and arrange the top 9 posts on your profile so they showcase all the most essential stuff you’d like your ideal clients to know about your business.
Example: 1 post could be about your services, another could be an amazing case study, another could be a post about your mailing list, etc.
6) Start a mailing list and take your audience off social media with you
And I’m not saying this in a fear-monger-y, SOCIAL MIGHT SHUTDOWN TOMORROW THEN WHAT WILL YOU DO?!?!?! way. I just mean, if you like to write emails, this is an excellent option if you eventually want to wean your business off of Mark Zuckerberg’s poisonous teat.
And if you want to get started on step 6 right now, then boy, oh boy, do I have a treat for you.
I offer a self-paced email marketing course twice a year to help you transition from quiet, drafts-folder dweller to send-button-smashing FREAK. In 8 emails delivered over 4 weeks, I share practical, instructional support to get you off the grid and into that inbox. It’s called Hit Send, and you can sign up for the waitlist for the next 2025 round below:
