And Why Email Marketing is Better!
Last year, a friend of mine, who runs a business but is not an artist or maker, started sharing talk she was seeing that Instagram was going to be overrun with shopping posts. The logic was that since you can shop through IG (enabled by platforms like Shopify) Instagram would prioritize those posts.
I had to laugh because, in my Reels-filled feed, I was seeing the opposite. And that trend doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. Yesterday, I shared a video announcing that my newest book is available (with a link to the book using IGs shopping feature) and that video got a fraction of the views of other videos I’ve posted in the last few weeks.
I’m not sharing this to complain about Instagram (ok, maybe I am a little, because you know I can’t resist complaining about Instagram) but because I’m sure some of you are experiencing this as well. I even read a news article yesterday where the journalist quoted a coffee-shop owner complaining about how every year less and less of her audience sees her posts on IG.
This pain is especially acute if Instagram is the primary way you connect with your customers. (Which, if it is, you’re playing a risky game.)
So what should we do?
I wish I could give you some little trick to hack the algorithm so that your IG posts always get seen. But alas, I know no such trick. And I don’t see any reason to believe things will change in the future. IG has made it quite clear that they want businesses to pay for ads if they expect their content to be seen. (So I guess, in a way, my friend was right. Shopping is dominating IG, but it’s sponsored posts, not shoppable posts from people we actually follow.)
The best thing we can do is cultivate ways to connect with our customers outside of Instagram. (And any other social platform.)
If you guessed that the next words out of my mouth were going to be “email marketing,” well then you know me well!
But it’s true. Building your email list is an excellent way to buffer your business against the whims of Instagram. It’s a way to make sure you have the power to reach out and connect with your customers (and potential customers) who really want to hear from you.
And I’m not just saying this because my new book is about email marketing. It’s the opposite. I wrote a book about email marketing because I think it’s an essential strategy for connecting with customers and growing your business.
Especially in the current social media landscape, where there’s no guarantee that your followers will see your posts when you’ve got something new to promote.
The way I see it, we’ve got two options. We can complain about Instagram or we can cultivate more reliable ways to connect with our customers. The choice is yours.
Ok, you can technically do both. Keep complaining about IG while focusing on email marketing and other strategies, which is honestly what I’ll be doing. (Because I’ve heard people enjoy my rants about IG, and at this point, dunking on IG is just so easy!) But the point is, so much of what happens on Instagram is out of our control, and rather than just lamenting all the negative changes, it’s time to focus on other things we can do in our businesses.
Starting with email marketing.