A few days ago I woke up to a message on my phone from my friend in Australia, it read, “are you okay? I saw you quit Instagram, what’s happening!” My message back was “I did quit, and I’m doing better than ever.” I was so nervous as I sent my last Instagram story two weeks ago, my final adios. I am not good with goodbyes, and the finale of anything really makes me anxious and sad. I was so fearful that I was flushing two solid years of work down the toilet, and that I would regret this in a few months. I thought I’d need to fill the void with something else..if not instagram and being an influencer, then what will I do? I will tell you what happened in the hours and days after stopping Instagram…I felt FREE. FREEEEEEEEEE. Like a huge brick building was lifted off my shoulders, like I could breath, like my life wasn’t under a microscope, like I didn’t have to keep up with this stupid agenda that I had created in the first place. Truth be told, I don’t miss it one tiny bit. Not at all. I miss nothing about it. I had started My Eclectic Grace 2 years ago to be a blogger, writing is my passion. I love blogging, I love sharing my thoughts and my design expertise. I thought I needed Instagram to succeed. Even though I had worked my way up to 11k followers in less than […]
Social Media Planning For Beginners
I created my Instagram account and blog almost 2 years, and I can honestly tell you that in those 2 years, I did not once plan out my social media content. I can also honestly tell you I was constantly stressed, constantly going off-brand and off-topic, and worried about what I was going to blog or post about next. This year I decided to try a new approach that intimidated me a lot: social media content planning. That may seem silly, to be afraid of something that is simply just planning! My day job involves planning out projects from start to finish for almost a year ahead, but when it came to my own creative game I had to really coax myself in. If you’re like me and you think that planning seems stressful, are afraid it will put you in a creative box, or maybe you’ve even tried it and it just didn’t work, I’m here to tell you it can! start small + simple I don’t plan for farther than a month out a time. At the end of December, about 7 days out from the new month, I planned for all of January. I bought myself a simple planner that is solely for my blog and Instagram. I found that planning out any farther than a month was challenging, especially because new opportunities arise during the month. I have a notes section in my planner where I just “dump” all my ideas and goals for the month. […]
How to be a successful influencer without 10K followers
When we start navigating the waters of influencing, it seems like getting to 10,000 Instagram followers is that milestone every influencer sets out to achieve. (For the sake of ease – when I say “influencer” I am grouping bloggers into the category as one collective meaning.) I’ll be honest, that was my goal too. I mean Instagram doesn’t even allow you to have that nifty “swipe up!” feature until you have the 10k badge. A lot of brands and collaborations require “10k plus followers” to even apply to campaigns. When I was first starting out – and I started with 3 followers in February of 2018 – I joined all the collaboration sites I could find, only realizing that collaborations and getting paid for any real influencing would be a goal for the future. I had to obtain the status of 10k first. Let me be really honest about something too. I grew fast in the beginning, I was over 1,000 followers in just a few weeks, however I felt like in my first year of Instagramming I was watching everyone else sky rocket while I just inched. I was moving, always forward, but it seemed everyone else around me was hitting 5,000..10,000…20,000 and here I was pouring my heart and soul into everything I did. Every picture I took I tried my hardest, every caption I wrote and rewrote. I studied the algorithm, I took courses, I engaged with true heart and intention. I grew, just slowly. It’s easy […]
