Instagram bloggers shouldn’t exist. Sorry, not sorry. I’ve gotten so wrapped up in Instagram. It’s mostly because I moved to NYC and there is just so much here that’s Instagram ‘worthy’. I mean I love a good brunch and picturesque seasonal activities and I love curating a feed that is visually appealing to me. But, the facts are that pictures of a cute New York street are going to get about 60% of the likes that a picture of me on that same New York street would get. But get this, sometimes I’m bloated or I ran out of my foundation so I don’t feel like being in front of a camera that will pick up every single miniature pore.
AND the thing that I hate the most about spending so much time on visual content is that I don’t even find the time to write anymore. I’m more consistent on Instagram that I am on the blog right now and that’s just not smart or as fun. It means that I can’t throw y’all as many bad puns and witty humor snippets. It also means that our blog kind of stalls. So, today I’m talking about all the things I realized were hurting our blog when we focused too much energy on the peripheral.
1. You need something that you can truly call all your own.
If you’ve been here for a while, you know that we don’t shy away from working with brands. In fact, it’s a lot of fun for us and helps make blogging a less financially taxing endeavor. Running a blog can get pricey and any revenue we make goes straight back into making the blog better.
Brands have been pushing the Instagram train for at least the past year now. I love scrolling through campaign requirements and seeing the bolded 10k on Instagram laughing staring my soul down. It would be extremely false to say that I don’t care about getting to 10k followers. Who wouldn’t want that dang swipe up feature and more friends to interact with! But, I would say it’s not worth obsessing over.
I had this great epiphany that if you really zone in on crafting your site or videos or photography or whatever, that will drive people to your social media. In a way, that Instagram personalities can’t. The internet is much bigger than Instagram. If it were to ever shut down or become less popular, you still have your site to call your own.
2. Social media platforms can die. RIP Vine.
I feel like Vine was an iconic platform and several Vine stars moved from the platform to film and TV to diversify. Your site is your ability to diversify. It gives you a chance to show a whole range of skills. Whether that’s digital design, writing, photography, or just an effortless ability to seem relatable.
Social media platforms can die. They can go out of style. And, as everyone and their mother likes to say. They are superficial, even with that one paragraph rant about how your wifi went out when you had an assignment due in an hour. @ myself.
3. People will come to your site and stay for as long as you engage them.
Social media platforms are fast moving. I mean twitter is sending you new tweets every couple of seconds. You’re entertaining or interacting or meeting new people in the matter of seconds or minutes. But, you can engage with people on your site or channel for hours. Have you ever found a blogger or Youtuber that you loved and just binged all of their content for what seemed like an entire day? I realized that’s the kind of online presence you want to create.
That binge-able, high quality, “wow, I love this” content is the ultimate goal. It makes a perfectly curated 9 square concoction {that no one looks at} irrelevant. Your social media should definitely be able to capture people, but your blog should make them want to stay and read and engage.
4. You’re not limited in how much information you can share.
I think a blog or Youtube channel gives you so much range for sharing. I mean I literally have already written 700 words about how I came to the conclusion that I really need to get back into making this blog 110%. You just can’t do that anywhere else. I get emails all the time asking for more advice or sharing some things that worked for them or whatever it may be.
I write long captions, but I’m not really into reading them. Instagram for me is so visual that I like to feel inspired scrolling through my feed. I like to see my blogger friends exploring and having a great time and living their lives to the fullest. I’m not really there to read a novel.
5. Your brand starts here.
It starts here. It evolves here. It lives here. I like using our blog as a starting point and that disseminates onto our social media. Y’all love when I share my affordable stylings and blogger events. I’ve started posting more of those “in the moment” snaps on Instagram stories and posting shots from my vlogging camera on Twitter.
Some of our readers love knowing what’s going on in our lives, but also love YouTube. Which means I felt good about my decision to also vlog my weekends in New York City. I tend to leave the random chunks of my life that aren’t on video for my What’s the Roast weekly chats.
We get very little views or impressions from social media like Instagram or Twitter which means these have to be last on the list of priorities. In fact, we push more people coming from our blog to our social media accounts. Pinterest is the biggest driver to our site but other than that it’s definitely outward from the blog to everywhere else.
I sat down to write three whole blog post for this week because I want to get back to that golden period content where I was interweaving school advice with my favorite recipes and sharing an outfit or two. I don’t want every blog post to feel random or irrelevant. I just want to get back to blogging when we created our most popular content and feel good about it again.
Until then…keep on keepin’ on,
