✌️ How I left Instagram & my 5-step plan so you can too

[0:03] Off the Grid is a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. I'm Amelia Hruby, a writer, speaker and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. On this show I share stories strategies and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Download your free leaving social media toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig and join us as we do it all off the grid.

[0:32] Music.

[0:35] Hello and welcome to episode 2 of Off the Grid, leaving social media without losing all your clients or customers.

I'm Amelia Hruby. I am a writer speaker and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. And I am your host, and intrepid fellow explorer here on this podcast, where we explore how to grow thriving feel-good businesses off of social media.

Thanks so much for joining me today.

[1:03] I want to kick off this episode by thanking everyone who reached out since episode 1 was released last week and basically said if I was going to sum up all of the comments something like…

Wow thank you so much for saying all of that. It really resonated and I feel it too. I really want to leave social media but I don't know how and I'm excited to figure that out together.

Maybe I added that last part a little bit myself but I was really touched by how many of you reached out to say that you have also been feeling like you want or need to leave social media and that you are actively seeking out ways to grow your business, to market and sell your offerings or your products without social media platforms.

That is exactly what this podcast is about and I am so excited to invite you along this journey.

So if you're just tuning in, last week's episode - episode 1 - was about four common myths about social media marketing for small business, and the ways that I kind of broke those down and talked about the discrepancy between what social media platforms tell us using them for business will be like, what we think it'll be like, and then how it actually feels and the reality of how our marketing can work for us.

So if you want to dive into that myth-busting together, go ahead listen back to episode 1 because today on episode 2 I am going to share how I left Instagram and how you can too.

[2:26] Now today's episode is going to be a little bit Instagram specific, because Instagram is the platform that I really worked to grow my following on and then publicly left. So it's the one where I have the most experience. But I think this episode will still be very applicable to you no matter what social media platform you might be considering exiting.

So you know if you're not a big Instagram person but you're on Facebook or TikTok or you're trying to leave Twitter. Whatever it may be, anytime I say Instagram today just insert your social platform of choice there and I think you'll find that a lot of the reflections and suggestions and advice are still really applicable to you as well.

[3:03] Now before we dive into my story of how I left Instagram and how you can too, I want to remind you that I already gave you all the answers upfront.

So you can listen to this episode or, if you want to know exactly right now how to leave social media, you can go download the Leaving Social Media Toolkit that I created to go alongside this podcast. You can get that at softersounds.studio/byeig

You just enter your email and then you will immediately get an email from me with a really beautiful notion dashboard has a couple of great tools in it for planning your exit from social media or for just thinking more creatively about marketing in addition to your social media marketing if you're not ready to exit yet.

[3:50] So in that toolkit there are three things: there is a five step plan for leaving any social media platform. I'm going to talk about that plan today in this episode actually.

The second thing there is a list of 100 ways to share your work in life off social media. That list is also going to play a role in today's journey, becuase I wrote it in the process my process of leaving Instagram and its really honestly just like a treasure trove of inspiration for how you might market your business or your offerings or your products differently in ways that you probably thought of or never considered for your business.

And then the final thing in that toolkit is a notion database to keep track of and brainstorm Creative Marketing Experiments for your business. So we'll get to that in a few episodes. I'm going to kind of use these three pieces throughout season one of the podcast, but if you want all of that right now just head to softersounds.studio/byeig . That’s softer sounds dot studio / b y e I G. And you can download it today .

[5:03] Okay deep breath inhale together exhales together. And now we're going to dive into the story of how I left Instagram and you can too!

So the story of how I left Instagram really begins I guess way back in the story of how I got on Instagram.

So if this is a movie, there's that moment right when I like hit log out. That's like the first scene like I got my phone and I'm like scrolling and I log out of Instagram for the last time.

We're gonna like rewind to like a decade before that and look at how I got on Instagram and we'll move back to that logging off moment.

[5:38] So I joined Instagram I think in late 2011 or early 2012. I was in college at the time I'm pretty sure that some dude I was crushing on was on Instagram a lot, and I was like I'm going to get myself a profile. And I remember that I didn't have an iPhone so I used my iTouch to create an Instagram profile because it was Apple only at the time.

So I used my iTouch and I made an Instagram profile. I have no memory of what my original handle was. And I really created that account kind of like an online scrapbook. I would post pictures of my trips. I’d post pictures of cute fun things that I was doing. I’d post pictures of like where I was hoping that my crush would see them and come show up to find me wherever I was out in the world right — a little cringe-worthy now that I think back to it. But it’s definitely how I was using it.

And I really loved social media back then I had a part-time job writing Facebook and Twitter posts for a kind of an agency. And I wrote for tiny small businesses. I wrote for multinational global corporations — all sorts of different things. So I was very into social media. I loved writing for different companies and using different voices and doing a lot of copywriting. And being on Instagram just felt like a way to do that for myself.

[6:54] I was like great, I can be an Instagram. This is so fun!

Back then if you remember, businesses weren't on Instagram. It was really a personal app for sharing photos. It was very much a sort of like scrapbook. And if I go back to my earliest posts, I don't even really write captions — that was not a thing I was doing at the time.

But over the next five years I started to use Instagram to share my writing more and more. We started to see the move toward the long-form caption. Where Instagram was not just a scrapbook but Instagram as a Blog basically.

And in 2016 I launched a weekly Instagram series — actually a weekly blog series I was sharing on Instagram — and I was really building my personal brand and my writing portfolio on the app.

So over that time my platform slowly grew to I think over a thousand followers. I remember hitting 1000 that was like a huge metric or like milestone for me that I was so excited about.

[7:48] And then through that weekly writing project I ended up getting my first book deal. And I got an agent, I signed a contract and I was so excited because my first ever book was going to come out/ And actually that book became. 50 feminist mantras which I … just hit myself in the face with for those of you watching on YouTube.

For those of you listening along Fifty Feminist Mantras is available everywhere books are sold.

When I got that book deal, every publicist and agent and publisher and editor I talked to basically told me — you need to grow your Instagram following. you do not have enough followers and you need to grow your following so that you will sell enough books to make royalties and get another book deal if you want another one.

So after I signed my contract I put out some feelers and ended up hiring a social media strategist. I hired a designer to redo my website. I hired a photographer to help take professional photos of me and book adjacent things. And I invested a ton of time and money in growing my Instagram following.

I hired all those people. I took classes on book marketing on Instagram. I built out really like intensive content calendars. I mean we're talking about thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours at least poured into Instagram.

[9:20] Through all of that work I went from about 1,500 followers to just over 2,700 followers in the span of 12 months. So not quite doubling my following but I gained about 100 followers a month over that period of time. I would say I was growing organically but certainly not, like huge or viral growth.

So I was doing all of that I was working so hard I was feeling really tired I just remember like, I’d go to school and go to work during the day, and I’d get home and in the evenings I’d just be on my phone making Instagram posts.

I’d post during the day because I get the best engagement then, but in the evenings I just I cannot tell you how many evenings I spent sitting on the couch next my partner just like in canva on my phone or in Adobe spark which I was using at the time and just moving things around or rewriting a caption 18 times.

I just spent so much time there and I was getting tired of it.

So now we're heading that point where I decide to leave Instagram.

For those of you following along with our movie montage, we went back and now we're inching up and getting very close to that moment that I press log out for the final time.

[10:31] So how did I decide to leave?

Leaving Instagram for me it all started with a podcast episode.

If you've been following along you know that I run a podcast studio. I love podcasts and in late 2020 my at the time internet friends now I'd say close friend — not that those are mutually exclusive — anyway, my friend Mary Grace Allerdice published an episode of her podcast home—body called Your Deep Alignment is a Portal.

[11:05] It's in the show notes, so you can go listen to it after this. And in that episode she walked through her decision to leave Instagram as based on the ways that it was just not in alignment with who she is or wanted to be and what she wanted her work to do in the world anymore.

And that decision for her was based around some changes that Instagram was making to their terms and conditions, and she was reading those and feeling like you know what I can't do this anymore I can't be on this platform, it's not aligned with my values and I have to go.

She says a lot of really beautiful, wonderful, more eloquent things in that episode. So again I highly suggest you listen to it and in fact Mary Grace will be on the Off the Grid podcast in a few episodes or later this season to talk about that episode and talk about social media and energetic sovereignty and small-business and energetic sovereignty.

So, stay tuned she's going to come help us sort it all out, but that episode really changed something for me. I listened to that podcast episode more than once. She has since reshared it on the feed, and I listen to it every single time it comes up even though I've heard it before, even though the lessons have sunk in. But it's just integrating deeper.

So as the episode was integrating, in early 2021 I really was just feeling that misalignment and I wrote an Instagram post called My Instagram Rules for 2021. And as I was writing those rules I realized that I had to leave Instagram.

[12:42] I think that came up for me because I realized that if I needed this many rules to be on this platform I couldn't be there anymore.

And in that post — in that Instagram Rules for 2021 post — I explain that. So I want to read you that post I promise this is not going to become a podcast where I just read you Instagram posts. That’s sometimes a pet peeve of mine and also we're getting off social media so I'm not going to do that often but this is this is my one time okay so stick with me.

Here's the caption I wrote for that post where the image just said my Instagram rules for 2021 —

[13:17] After spending countless hours creating for & engaging on IG this year, it’s become pretty clear that the tradeoff for building community here is getting too energetically expensive. It feels like IG is forcing me into a codependent, anxiously-attached relationship, and I am NOT INTO THAT.

Last week I spent time journalling about what kind of relationship I want with IG. And the truth is: I want to be off this app! Why? Two reasons:

1. I don’t like the effect it has on my attention span & self-worth.

2. I don’t like being complicit in surveillance capitalism & techno-autocracy.

So I made rules for myself about how I’ll get off this app by my 30th birthday in April. I’m sharing them here, because my fave thing about IG is sharing my ever-evolving process with you all! I hope reading my rules may empower you to create your own. Here goes:

MY INSTAGRAM RULES FOR 2021

[14:19] I no longer create content just to share on Instagram.

I no longer limit my voice, weaken my ideas, or redirect my creativity for the promise of potential virality.

I no longer judge the value of my work by the “likes” it gets.

I no longer cater to “the algorithm.”

I get on Instagram on Monday mornings to share my weekly feminist mantra. Then I log off and delete the app.

I occasionally get on Instagram during the week to promote an event or course I’m offering. I limit this to once every few weeks.

I occasionally get on Instagram to share my thinking behind & process for getting off Instagram. I limit this to once a month.

I love making friends on Instagram. I encourage people to sign up for my newsletter, buy my book, come to my workshops, or email me to schedule a virtual coffee date. I’m generous with my time and attention away from this app, but not on it.

I hope reading these rules reminds you that you have agency in this app & can choose how you show up (or not). I look forward to spending the next 3 months with you here, and I welcome conversation & collaboration with open arms. Love you, babes!

❊❊

[15:23] Whoa that’s a lot, right? Even just reading that I am amazed at how much I could fit into one Instagram caption back in the day.

Like that's a lot.

So many pieces of that really stand out to me. From the ways that I was sharing this sort of like Manifesto of things I’d no longer do…then did you notice the switch from like here's stuff I no longer do to like here's how I'm going to spend my time on the app? Like now I'm negotiating with the app, now I'm negotiating with my time.

And at the time you know I was doing that because I wanted to publicly set and share boundaries that I felt like I could be held accountable for or accountable to — not that I thought anyone in my community was going to be like it's a weekday and you're on Instagram. But mostly because when I say things publicly, I like to follow through with them. That's important to me in my integrity.

But I think I want to back up and go to the kind of two parts of my decision — the two reasons I wanted to leave Instagram:

#1 I don't like the effect has my attention span and self-worth &

#2 I don't like being complicit and particularly to available capitalism.

So to me that breaks down to kind of two parts to my decision to leave Instagram — how I felt and my values.

[16:40] I talked about this on our last episode or the first episode of Off the Grid. Instagram can make us feel like shit. Instagram certainly made me feel like shit, especially when I put all that time into writing something and it wouldn't get seen by anybody.

It made me feel horrible. It made me feel like what I said didn't matter or people didn't care even if I knew they just didn't see it.

It was so hard for me not to take things personally on Instagram. And that's something I've worked so hard on it other areas of my life. As I mentioned at the beginning of that post I felt like Instagram was forcing me into a codependent anxiously attached relationship,

I felt like Instagram was making me constantly check on the app to see if it was okay. That to me is a hallmark of anxious attachment.

Just like are you okay? are you okay? is it okay? did I mess it up? did I do something wrong? are we okay?

That like constant need for the affirmation, that constant checking, that constant stress that it is just going to fall apart any minute.

[17:39] I worked so hard to grow out of that in my interpersonal relationships in real life, and when I realized that it was showing up in my relationship with Instagram I was like I gotta get out of here.

[17:52] How many books did I have to read? How many hours of therapy that I have to go to to get out of co-dependent relationships with other people?

Why am I letting myself be in one with an app?

[18:03] I remember saying that to myself. I just had that conversation with myself over and over and over again.

I’d say — Amelia. You don't do codependency anymore. You worked so hard to find secure attachment in your interpersonal relationships. You can do that in your relationship with technology too.

[18:24] So that was the first part of my decision, just addressing my feelings, getting honest about how I felt and what I was willing to accept or not accept anymore.

[18:32] The second piece was the values alignment or misalignment with my values. That was the thing that Mary Grace’s episode really started to kind of like pick at or something. And then it just grew and I realized that I just by being on Instagram, part of what those terms and conditions at that time we're saying is that Instagram was basically stating that it had a lot of rights to track to track everything you're doing in the app and across your phone even outside of the app.

[19:07] And I realized that by being there I was just complicit in letting myself be tracked. And if I was sharing my work there I was complicit in like the people who are reading it and the app tracking them as well.

And so much of what is important to me in my work is really empowering all of us to make choices that feel good or feel aligned in our bodies and our lives. And I just realized Instagram was taking that away from people. Instagram was taking away our ability to make free choices.

And they were doing it in really sneaky ways. Like how many times have I bought something just because it showed up enough times in an ad?

Of course that's a choice I made, but the choice I made to buy that thing is so influenced by the tracking across the internet. The fact that I went to the site on my computer and I'm logged into Instagram on my computer so they noticed I went to that site so then on my phone I get the ads for it again.

Yes I'm making a choice to buy the thing when I press purchase, but that choice is deeply influenced by this tracking across the internet that's happening.

[20:12] And I just I decided I couldn't do that anymore. I didn't want to be complicit in that. I didn't want to be sharing my work in that space, because I felt like it made my work complicit in that decreasing of our agency.

[20:24] And I'm really noticing a deep like a sea change around this values alignment piece with social media.

In late 2021, Lush which is a global organic and natural beauty brand left Facebook and Instagram. And the reason they cited it was a values misalignment reason. They left because of the internal studies that came out the Facebook shared or that that we're leaked through Facebook or Facebook had to share. I think this kind of a whistleblower situation there. But the studies that show that Facebook had data that Facebook and Instagram harmed the mental health of preteen and teen girls or people socialized as girls.

And Lush took that information and said — this is one of our core clienteles, and we do everything we do in our business to try to support their empowerment and self-care and well-being, and we're not going to be on this platform that now we have evidence directly negatively impacts those things.

And so they got off of Instagram and Facebook.

And I like I cheered when I read that. I remember reading I think like Vogue coverage or something, and I was like yes this is what I've been feeling.

Instagram made me feel bad for a long time but that values alignment piece, that's when I was finally like okay I have to take action and I've got to get out of here.

[21:48] So it's both of those things in tandem is how I made the decision to leave Instagram.

That might resonate with you or you might want to leave Instagram for totally different reasons.

[22:00] One of the things I talked about in the first episode of Off the Grid is that Instagram actually doesn't have that great return on investment for some people. If you’re spending a ton of hours pouring yourself into the app and you're actually maybe not getting back that many sales in return, you might want to leave Instagram from a purely metric standpoint. Like this is not a good marketing channel for my business and it's not having that ROI that I want. That's great too.

However you landed here, however you got to this point of thinking I would like to leave social media, or I might like to leave social media next up I'm going to tell you how I actually left.

[Music]

[22:38] Hi Off the Grid listeners.Amelia here interrupting our conversation today because I want to share with you one of my favorite marketing tools.

When I left Instagram I invited all of my followers to subscribe to my mailing list in order to keep in touch with me, and I promised to send them monthly-ish notes on a lot of the themes I used to talk about on social media.

I've used many email service providers in my day but my favorite of all of them is Flodesk.

Flodesk is a gorgeous, easy-to-use email service provider that helps you create beautiful, thoughtful emails. And even better it's really set up to help you create easy to use landing pages so people can join your list, and workflows so you can automate sending messages to folks who sign up through different pages.

Flowdesk is how I run all of the welcome sequences and lead magnets at Softer Sounds. It's also how I run the Leaving Social Media Toolkit that you might have downloaded after listening to this podcast. I'm surely not sending those emails out myself manually Flodesk is doing all of that auto-magically.

If you'd like to give Flodesk a try, please use my affiliate link below in the show notes. You'll get a discount, I'll get a kickback, and we will all send more beautiful emails together.

Again check out the affiliate link in the show notes. For now we're going to get back to this episode of Off the Grid.

[Music]

[24:12] So let's dive into what happened after I made the decision to leave Instagram. So again if we're in that movie montage — the movie starts at the moment of logging out for the last time, we went all the way back to when I logged in for the first time, then we fast-forwarded through some years to when I realized I needed to leave, and now we're in that last stretch between when I made that decision and when I left, the actual logging out moment.

So I decided I was going to leave Instagram it early 2021, and then the Instagram post that I just shared was when I announced that I was going to leave and when I was going to leave.

[24:43] I told everyone I'm leaving Instagram by my 30th birthday. I gave my twenties to this app, and now I'm out of here! I remember thinking that to myself.

So what did I do next?

Basically from that point on, everything I did on Instagram encouraged people to get on my email list.

Because my number-one rule of leaving any social media platform is don't ghost your community there. Don't ghost your followers!!

If people follow you there, they just assume that your stuff is going to show up and they'll see you forever and they don't need to do anything else. If you just stop posting or you just log out or delete your account, they’ll just never see you again and honestly a lot of them won't notice.

So I spent a lot of time telling people I was leaving and sharing with them how they could stay in touch. And I gained hundreds of email subscribers through that kind of campaign.

As a friend of mine —Patty from The Fiery Wall — put it, she's like you launched your exit!. Yes, I launched my exit. I did this whole content campaign around telling people I was leaving. I did a lot of work encouraging people to join my email list.

[26:04] Then I also did a number of different things in the back-end of Instagram that I'll just briefly tell you.

I requested my data from Facebook. If you're going to leave any platform, I highly suggest requesting an archive of any of the data that they have of yours or collected on you. Request that and download it.

I also archived any post that I didn't want up when I wasn't present on the platform. My Instagram had thousands of posts on it and if you go look at it now at the archive that still live, I have I think about just over 200 posts up. I archived a lot of things that I was like if I'm not here to monitor comments or to respond I don't want it here. Now you can also turn off comments on your posts. It's funny, when I left Instagram that was not really a thing you could do. Things change all the time and that's something you have to be okay with if you exit the platform.

[26:53] So I archived my posts, then I went through and organized my story highlights to be kind of highlights of my work or different aspects of my work I wanted to be there over time.

I changed my bio and my #linkinbio. Now it says like I'm not on Instagram find me at my #linkinbio and my #linkinbio is just one of those one-page links with a bunch of buttons on it that tells people where they can find me.

So again, when I was leaving Instagram—

I decided I was going to leave.

I announced when I was leaving and when.

I gave people another place to follow me.

I shared a lot of content that invited them to follow me in that place,

That's where I first shared my 100 ways to share your work and life off social media list. I also shared a list of different tools I was using to replace Instagram, Facebook, Google and Amazon in my life. I shared a lot of just content and free resources around this decision and all of that funneled people to my email list.

[27:50] While I was doing that, I was getting my profile on the platform set up to serve as an archive. Now you might decide that you want to just take your profile down and be gone, but for me I really felt like I wanted to leave an archive of myself and my work online. I wanted to share in the five-plus years of content that I had been posting and trying to build an audience around.

So in order to set up that archive—

I archived or deleted posts I didn't want up when I wasn't there.

I created some story highlights to introduce people to the biggest aspects of my work that were on my Instagram.

And I changed my bio and #linkinbio.

[28:28] And then well we're at the moment, guys.

Now we're at the moment where I'm going to log off for the last time.

On April 9th 2021, I got on Instagram stories and videos and I told people I was leaving.

[28:45] I made a little video that's like — Hey y'all, today is April 9th 2021, if you're watching this live I’m leaving Instagram; if you're watching this in the future I left Instagram on this date. You can find my work here here and here. I kind of directed people around the profile. Then I saved those stories in a highlight that said I think start here and then I logged out.

And that was it. That was the moment I logged off.

And the rest is history!

How corny of me. Sorry I couldn't help myself.

[29:15] Now on to the next part. I'll keep this pretty short and sweet to be honest guys because it's in your Leaving Social Media Toolkit — how can you leave social media too?

In the Leaving Social Media Toolkit, I’ve shared five steps for leaving any social media platform. And you'll notice that they map onto my process for leaving that I just shared.

So I’m going to walk you through those five steps in brief right now.

[29:43] The first step is decide that you're going to leave and when.

This step can take years. It might take you years of wanting to leave social media before you actually exit the platform and that is okay. There is no rush. Take your time.

So your first step is deciding that you're going to leave and when.

[30:04] Your second step is announcing your exit and sharing how people can stay in touch with you.

For many of us, this will be an email newsletter, but for you it might be a Discord group it might be a Facebook group. It might be you know something else entirely it depends on the group that you're leaving, although I realize I just said like Facebook which is another platform people are leaving. But whatever, I'm not here to judge what platforms you stay on and what platforms you leave

Either way, I highly encourage this — again the number one rule is don't ghost your community. Give them somewhere else to connect with you.

If you are a business owner, you want to continue to nurture the people who've been paying attention. Don't just abandon them.

[30:46] It will hurt your business.

And I'm here doing all this work in this podcast so that you can leave social media without hurting your business, right? So step two is announce your exit and share how people can stay in touch.

[30:58] Step 3 is request your data from the platform you're leaving and archive it offline.

So just Google “download my data from wherever” and they'll give you different things. Some of them don't allow you to, but many of them do. Just get that data and save it so that you have it as a record of everything that you did there.

[31:19] Step 4 is change your bio, profile, story highlights, whatever might live on on your profile if you're leaving it up. Change all of that to share that you're no longer on the platform and how to reach you.

So again for me that was my bio, my #linkinbio, my story highlights on Instagram. It might be slightly different for you.

And once you've done all that, step 5 is sign off, babe. You're done! That's it!

So again, those five steps are:

Decide that you're going to leave and when.

Announce your exit and share how people can stay in touch.

Request your data from the platform and archive at offline.

Change your profile to share that you're no longer there and how to reach you.

And then sign off! Log off. You're done. You have officially exited social media!

[32:00] So now we've hit the first half of the promise of this podcast, right?! Off the Grid as a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. Well here we are. This is your plan for leaving social media.

Some of the stuff we just did is going to help you not lose clients or customers. We're going to talk a lot more about how to continue gaining new ones after you've exited in upcoming episodes.

Okay, I feel like I just did a sprint. I feel like that was 30 minutes of sprinting through this whole movie of my time leaving social media, so I am going to go ahead and sign off of episode 2.

There are some really exciting things coming up in our first season of Off the Grid. Great things are still yet to come, so I hope that you will subscribe to this podcast and please please share this episode with a friend who you think might want to leave social media.

[33:04] In our next episode I'm going to talk about that list of 100 ways to share your work and life without social media, and I’ll give you some really juicy creative ideas for what comes next once you've left.

Again you can download that leaving social media toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig

And until next time, y'all — I can't wait to see you off the grid.

[33:33] Music.

[33:39] Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free leaving social media toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig. That’s softer sounds dot studio / b y e IG.

This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by purple planet and our logo is by n'Atelier studio. If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help.

Learn more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time we'll see you off the grid.