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On the internet, you basically only see the success stories. But what’s it like when you try to be successful on Instagram—and you don’t succeed?
I’m an anti-success story. And I’ve decided to take a break from Instagram.
What even is success on Instagram?
This urban legend lingers stubbornly on the internet: “To be successful, you need thousands of followers. Then you’ve done it!”
Sorry to break it to you, but: Nope, this is not the case. And yet so many people aim for it. The truth is: Big numbers are of no use to you if people are not actually interested in your topic or you as a person. At worst, you regularly post content and get nothing in return.
Ideally, you share content on Instagram that moves, touches, inspires or entertains people. If more and more people decide to follow you and interact with you, you got yourself a community. Tada! If you can combine your community with making money, it’s the jackpot. And THAT’S success on Instagram, at least for my understanding.
A big Instagram following is not the norm but the exception
There are people who manage to gain thousands of followers on Instagram in just a few weeks and “monetise” their account, as they say. Or people who go from 30k to over 70k followers in barely 2 weeks. Whether that’s good, effective and actually sustainable is another topic.
I’ve seen these crazy Instagram growth stories many times. And I even experienced one of them closely as this happened to one of my Instagram friends. Sometimes all it takes is one reel that strikes a chord with a lot of people, and boom 💥 An account goes off the charts and gains thousands of followers, virtually overnight.
We’re often made to believe that this is the norm. But it’s not. As HubSpot writes in the 2023 Instagram Engagement report:
- Nearly 50% of all accounts have fewer than 10k followers.
- 26% of all accounts have less than 1k followers.
Which means: About 75% of all accounts have fewer than 10k followers.
If your account has a tiny following, it’s harder to grow anyway. As HubSpot writes in the same report: For large accounts, 2022 was a year of growth. For small accounts below 1k followers, growth has declined.
So, let’s take a closer look at my tiny account.
One year of ups & downs
At the time of this blog post, my account has just over 100 followers. And that’s a year after the account was created. 🙈 There were a lot of ups and downs. I’m now at a point where I have to confess: I’m exhausted of Instagram.
This feels particularly frustrating because I LIKE Instagram—or the idea of it. I like aesthetically pleasing pictures of coffee cups and books that make me feel calm and grounded for a moment. I like connecting with others. I like the feelings of not being alone, of knowing that there are people out there who have the same problems like I do.
But over the past year, it has been harder and harder to keep my motivation up to try building my Instagram following. I expected to feel more motivated over time with each small success I had on Instagram. Instead, my motivation and energy has been like this:
My motivation started very high in 2022 and had again a little peak at the beginning of 2023. Over the course of the last months, it dropped to an all-time low.
7 reasons behind my Instagram burnout
So, what has contributed to me being tired of Instagram for now?
1. It’s a full-time job
If you:
- make Instagram your main marketing channel and want to do it “right”,
- have no or little experience with social media marketing, and
- don’t have someone to do your Instagram duties for you
then it can very quickly become a part-time or even full-time job.
If you’ve never attempted to post professionally, it’s hard to imagine how much time can go into a single post. There’s virtually no limit to how much you can invest in it. In my experience, if you want to post something good on Instagram, you need to do at least this:
- Brainstorming and concept,
- Researching the topic & hashtags,
- Creating graphics or filming and editing videos,
- Writing texts and optimising them for the algorithm (also known as SEO),
- Scheduling posts manually or in a tool, and
- Interacting once you posted it.
You don’t just do these tasks once. You do them over and over again. At some point, you’ll need to put systems in place to keep up with your posting schedule.
2. It’s a battle for attention
All that energy & effort goes into a post that, at worst, disappears “into the void”: You post it, get barely measurable interaction & then that’s it. The post sits on your profile grid & you can start all over again.
This is a bit simplified. Ideally, the post makes people think. Or it leaves a lasting impression that you can’t measure. But to see if your strategy is working, you need positive measurable metrics at some point. Because otherwise how do you know if something is working? One option is to say “if there’s no interaction, it didn’t work”. And yes, surely something wasn’t right on some level that there was no interaction. But how long would you try different things and stick with it if you didn’t see any results?
So you just have to persevere, and put out new and different content on a regular basis to see if ANYTHING will eventually be working. I found it harder and harder to distance myself as time went on. I was constantly thinking about what I could post. And even at 11pm in bed when I was feeling tired and sleepy, my mind was still racing with ideas. I really wanted it to work, and that started to impact other areas of my life.
At some point you start to wonder: Do I also have to start posting attention-seeking content in order to get reactions? 🤷🏻♀️ Some of the things that are shared on Instagram are very questionable to me. Every time I see a child, I cringe. (This topic would deserve its own blog post.) I skip stories that feel too personal to me. There are just certain things I don’t want to know about a stranger or a fellow entrepreneur or solopreneur.
Everyone has to decide what they want to share for themselves.
3. It’s all about strategy & commitment
Do you think Instagram “can’t be that difficult” if you just “post a bit of thoughts and ideas” and “try to be yourself”?
I thought so too, and had to realise: Instagram is not a platform to “just start” if you want to do it seriously and reach goals. It’s bloody difficult. Especially when you don’t have a clear strategy, and can’t commit to the decisions you made. (Oops. 🙈)
Your messaging needs to be on point: You need to know what you stand for. And then you need to get that across in a way so your people think “oh yeah, I agree with that!”
In hindsight, my strategy was a total mess because I didn’t know better. Let’s go back in time a bit…
In 2022, I wanted to do “something with art”. It came naturally to me to start an Instagram art account. I worked on a painting habit, set challenges for myself, and posted pictures of my art and painting process reels.
At times, it was quite successful: One of my best performing art reels was a process video of a turtle. I filmed myself painting the turtle, put it online as a time-lapse, and chose a matching song for it. This reel got almost 300 likes at the time, and I got a lot of new followers thanks to it. (To me, those are still insane numbers! It still feels unreal looking at these stats.)
Over the course of 2022, I realised that art wasn’t “it”. To be brutally honest: I felt like my art skills weren’t good enough to pursue it professionally. I have a lot of troubles with imposter syndrome and feeling insecure all the time, so that didn’t help.
I’ve always wanted to be a journalist and a writer. Ask anyone from my childhood, and they will probably tell you that little Sina ran around telling people she will be a journalist in New York one day (anyone else getting Rory Gilmore vibes?). I couldn’t let go of the idea of having my own blog and writing about experiences in life. So, I decided without hesitation to change my account from art to mental health. And this was one of the most stupidestestestest decisions I ever made. 💩 It’s me, hi! I’m the problem, it’s me!
I had to learn that art is tangible—and mental health isn’t. It’s far more difficult to convey mental health messages than to talk about a painting. You have to figure out what metaphors to use & how to bring your own style to it. I believe we’ve all grown tired of avocados, matcha lattes, and the generic cookie-cutter mental health quotes. (I HATE avocados from the bottom of my heart, and could write an essay about why they’re the most overrated fruit on the planet! 🥑 Don’t tell anyone that I had to ask ChatGPT if an avocado is a fruit or a vegetable.)
When I switched from art to mental health, I didn’t think of it as a big deal. I wanted to get everyone who already followed me excited about the new topic. I thought it was better to start with an account that already had a few followers instead of starting from scratch. Yep… I was so wrong, it physically hurts.
I was putting so much time and effort into my stories and posts, but I didn’t get the things I was looking for. According to my Instagram insights analytics, a lot of my things were seen and viewed. But only the smallest fraction of my followers interacted. One follower even wrote me something like “what a bummer, I liked your art.” 🩹 Ouch, thanks for that, I guess.
It’s hard not to wonder: Why are so many people watching, but no one is interacting? What am I doing wrong? Why isn’t this working? — I was constantly looking for validation and didn’t get it to the extent that I wanted.
I wasn’t sure who I wanted to be either. On the one hand, I wanted to be personal, and on the other hand, I suddenly wanted to be the “professional and established entrepreneur”. It took me long to realise: I’m not that. I don’t even WANT to be an entrepreneur. And I’m certainly not established. I’m more like a hermit crab (others call it “solopreneur”). Freedom is much more important to me than all the money in the world. I don’t even want to have to manage a team or a whole company. This thought is sending shivers down my spine and not the good ones. 😵💫
This balancing act has led to me starting to censor myself at some point. All these doubts started coming up: Is it professional if I share a picture from my garden? Is it professional if I say that I’m not having a motivated day today? Is it professional if I say that there were problems with my email hoster & I lost mails? — Now I know: It may not be professional, but it’s human. That’s who I am & that’s what I want to get across.
My lack of strategy and commitment mixed with my own insecurities built up so much pressure that I have slowly stopped posting at all.
4. It’s all about understanding Instagram
So if nothing works—maybe you just haven’t figured out how Instagram works?
My account went rapidly downhill after I changed my niche. And now I know: It would have been better to start fresh with a new account. Instead, I actually went through the effort and trouble of archiving every art post I ever put online. I unfollowed other art accounts, followed new accounts, and even deleted bot and ghost followers. I did this because I hoped that my reach and my “engagement rate” would get better (that’s the ratio between followers and interactions on posts). But I think that only made it worse. It was so much effort, I can hardly believe I actually did it.
The bottom line is: You have to understand how Instagram works to not make it more difficult for yourself. You need to know which features to use for which purpose. You need to know which formats are best suited for your goals. And you have to be prepared to deal with bugs and changes.
Staying up-to-date to all the changes this platform makes is another part-time job. I’m convinced: If you decide to use Instagram professionally, then you have to accept the rules it sets. I honestly can’t hear it anymore: This whining and outcry that were widespread across the board with every major update. Especially during the “reels era”. It felt like every other person was complaining that it was unbearable to focus on video content. For some, it might really be unbearable. Sorry to break it to you, but if it bothers you that much, then you have to consider looking for another platform, or thinking about a new strategy. (Which is what I’m doing now, by the way. ✌🏻)
5. It’s about “showing off”
Sometimes, Instagram felt to me like “showing off”, and I learned that this doesn’t suit my personality nor my values. On Instagram, I sometimes felt like I was holding a mirror up to people. Like I was telling them how to live their lives. Like I was rubbing salt in the wound. Like I was giving unsolicited advice and trying to present my opinion everywhere. I had the feeling that I had to write a disclaimer after every sentence so that nothing would be misunderstood.
On Instagram, people are casually browsing. Maybe they’re looking for a distraction or entertainment. I’m not so sure anymore that this is the best place to share tips on how to improve your life when people aren’t necessary looking for this or are not ready to receive this.
I know I’m very privileged and have been very, very, very lucky in the life lottery. I know not everyone can afford my lifestyle. And yet I want to share food for thought and my experiences. Changes start small, and I want to encourage that. I want to make a positive contribution, and yet I often don’t feel “good enough” to do so. If you only have 2200 characters available like in the Instagram caption, it’s difficult to get that across appropriately. I find it easier in a blog article or newsletter.
It was also not particularly helpful that I have people around me who have proven to be envious, critical and very curious. (👋🏻) After certain conversations, I have wondered if every one of my steps is being monitored and analyzed. I still find it difficult to distance myself from that. These questions are a guarantee that my hermit crab existence will hit full force: “And what do you do for a living? Can you show me something? What’s your name on Instagram? Can I have a look at what you do? What, you really can make money with that?”
Please don’t get this the wrong way. I genuinely appreciate everyone who supports me, and I’m incredibly grateful for that! It’s not taken for granted by me.
I’m still finding back to myself and trying lots of things. I don’t feel comfortable when I feel like I’m being watched; when people “just take a look” but don’t provide any feedback at all. When I get the impression that I’m being pigeonholed; which results in me putting myself in a mental box because my people pleasing strikes. And all this mainly to make life easier for others.
It sometimes felt like sitting in some kind of a one-sided glass house: Others can look in, but you can’t look out.
I’m aware that not everyone can do what I do, and that people need to decide for themselves if they want to follow my account or not. But somehow I still feel unconsciously responsible for others and their decisions. And that led me to start questioning a lot of things, for example what I want to show in my Instagram stories:
- Do I want to talk about the fact that I sometimes start work not before 11am?
- Do I want to show that I spontaneously take a break and plant a raised bed in the garden?
- Do I want to show that I work late?
- Do I want to show that I work on a Sunday or a holiday?
- Do I want to show that I work alone and am accountable to no one but myself?
Do I want to show this when I know for a fact that some people who follow me can’t afford this lifestyle or don’t want to? When I know that some people will fill in the information gaps to their liking, whatever suits their narrative? When I know that they will gossip about me and my lifestyle and talk badly behind my back? When I know that this is all a work in progress, and that I haven’t reached my goals yet?
6. It’s all about managing your levels of desperation
One of the reasons I have pursued Instagram so persistently is because I desperately wanted it to work, and I desperately wanted to build a community. I still want to reach out to people and help those who feel understood by me. I’m still convinced that it is so valuable to connect with others and to feel understood by others who go through similar experiences. Taylor Swift manages to do that in a brilliant way (she’s my favourite musician, by the way. Who could’ve guessed!? 😇)
I’ve been scratching my head about how exactly to build a community. I absorbed so much information that at some point I was totally overwhelmed. Honestly, I admire some of the big Instagram accounts for their loyal and cool communities. It takes a lot of time, energy and dedication to build a loyal community on Instagram. I tried it too, but realised I didn’t have the stamina for it. You need a LOT of patience for that. You have to give a lot more than you get back for a long time. And I don’t have that energy right now.
If you want to build a community on Instagram, you have to stop doubting yourself all the time. Self-doubt lurks everywhere. Usually, it strikes when you don’t expect it and can’t handle it. Especially when you, e.g., post polls with the intention of finding out what might help people… and then you get 0 participation. (Yep, that’s what happened. More than once. And yes, I should find out why it didn’t work. But I don’t have the energy right now to do so).
I had the feeling that my desperation was starting to take over. I was no longer mentally relaxed, I was over-focused. Posting wasn’t fun anymore. And your audience can tell if it’s not fun, and if you’re desperate.
7. It’s a constant comparison game
You probably know the quote: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” (I don’t know who originally said that. The internet isn’t exactly in agreement about that.)
And oh boy, that is so true. Comparison is human nature. But it often backfires and does us more harm than good. Especially on the ‘gram: It seems like it works for everyone else but you. Because who shares failures? Who talks about product launches that didn’t work? Who talks about ideas that failed? Who talks about financial difficulties and 0 sales? Who talks about how demotivating social media sometimes is?
Others make it look easy when it’s not. So many people who seem to work alone have people helping them. Or they work non-stop to get the workload done. Or they have a never-seen-before discipline, or have a killer productivity & time management system. Or they’ll have a burnout soon and don’t know about it. You don’t see that but you still compare yourself to them. And try to be like them. And then you feel completely drained.
I consumed so many things daily and scrolled endlessly. Inevitably, you’re confronted with how others do it. And if you’re not careful, the comparisonitis kicks in. I unconsciously adopted formats and ideas because I thought it was cool and thought it would work for me too. Instagram can seduce you into always wanting and doing MORE. Before you realize it, you have fallen into a new hamster wheel.
My creativity and my own voice got lost along the way. And now I want to reclaim it.
Learnings from this Instagram failure
My “failure” has many different reasons. My own part in it is pretty big:
- I don’t have the resources to run the account professionally. I’m a one woman show. And at the moment, other things in my business are more important. (For example, stuff I should do for my accountant. I didn’t forget you, I promise! 😅)
- My strategy was wonky from the beginning, and it only got worse over time.
- I haven’t been able to post consistently. Again and again, I posted consistently for a few weeks, but I couldn’t maintain the pace.
- I made some pretty big beginner mistakes because I didn’t understand the implications of my decisions (like shifting from art to mental health).
- I didn’t feel comfortable sharing so much about my work & life, but I tried to pressure myself to do it anyway.
- I was desperately trying to make it work but desperation doesn’t get you far in life.
- I compared myself all the time to others and lost my own creativity and voice on the way.
And, lastly: I don’t have the energy right now to pull my account out of the swamp I created for myself.
I expected Instagram to give me clarity, validation and success when I didn’t even know who I was or what I wanted myself. The bitterness and feelings of failure remain. It’s hard to admit this in a time when everyone wants more, grows more and even the cat next door goes viral overnight.
I learned that I need to find my own way, and that the best I can do now is to take a break from Instagram.
If you’re also frustrated by Instagram, try this
These five mindset shifts might help you:
- Instagram is a marathon, not a sprint
- You only see what others have decided to share—you never see the whole picture or the big picture
- You tend to only see the ones you think are more successful than you
- Be clear about what you want & how to achieve it
- Consume intentionally, scroll in a limited time, and stick to it
If none of this helps in the long run like it did for me: Try to find your own way, or take a break from Instagram like I do. You can invest the time and mental freedom you gain from it in other projects. 🙌🏻
Thanks so much, you’re the best ⭐
What a long catharsis post! Thank you for reading this far. I hope it gave you some insight behind the scenes. And maybe it inspired you to rethink a thing or two.
I will definitely look for new ways. My newsletter is one of them! *insert shameless newsletter ad here*
Title Image Credit: Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash