Dear Instagram, I'm ending it...

My dream has always been to be a brilliant potter and pottery teacher who happens to be on Instagram. Not an average potter who is brilliant at Instagram…

Hey gang,

This post is a little different to normal but it's something I really felt like sharing. After throwing all my toys out of my pram earlier this week, I angrily hammered out this post. I don't normally do that. I normally talk through my frustrations with my husband Tom or a pal and get over them pretty quick. But this felt like it had been brewing in my psyche for a long while and there was more to unpack than a quick chin wag over a cup of tea could cure. They say that writing things down and getting your thoughts onto a page is therapeutic. Well, that's probably true for most neurotypical brains but being dyslexic/ ADHA means it feels harder for me to express my ideas in words. However this time, it felt worth the struggle, I hope I do a good enough job...

It is with slight trepidation that I share this with you but I know you guys want to see the truth of what it takes to be a potter/artist, right?!...

The full blown todler tantrum happened after I saw Instagram showed my most recent post to less than 0.01% of my audience.

Just 73 people engaged out of 100,000. That is not a typo. 73 people out of 100,000. (This was in the first two hours of posting.)

Firstly, I know I have a lot to be grateful for. I am still a little bit baffled by the 100k people who find my work interesting/helpful enough to follow along. IG has brought me a lot of opportunities that I would not have had other wise. However, those followers have been hard won. In recent years, I have literally put hours and hours almost every day into content creation, thinking about new post ideas, useful things to share, filming, editing and writing captions... Social media has been almost a second full time job and I am sure you guys are well aware that you don’t get a £1 for every follower…I wish you did!

Instagram and I have been having a tumultuous love affair for 8 years now. It started out well...

Three months after I first quit my job and took my pottery business full time, I started an Instagram account. In the beginning, had very low expectations. I had no idea what I was doing. I treated it like a diary. It felt like a great place to share snapshots of what I was up to with friends and family who might just be interested in my slightly unconventional life path. This was before video, before reels, before even stories. To my utter surprise, my followers steadily grew, but so did its promises and seemingly it's power over me...

I will be the first to admit I became addicted to Instagram's potential. Like gambling, the next post could be the one! The one that sends me viral, the one which means I sell out of my pots, my classes, my online courses (despite what you might think, I am not one of those potters who sell out within minutes, I never have been). That carrot is forever dangled under my nose. I see it happen for others and I may even have a small taste of it myself every now and then when a post does better than normal for some unfathomable reason. It’s what kept me coming back, kept me rolling the dice again and again. It’s a trap! If only creating content was as quick as rolling a dice?! It certainly is not.

Slowly over time it’s become a toxic relationship. One that blows hot and cold. You can be flavour of the month one minute then get dropped like a lump of mud the next. It’s like that popular fit boy at school who you have flirted with in the lunch queue. He gives you just enough attention to keep you interested, but then ghosts you for weeks. To save your sanity your are mere moments away from deleting his number - then suddenly he comes back into your WhatsApp like …‘hey there gorgeous, remember me?…here’s some attention and some flattery…’ (I mean, this is a pretty far fetched metaphor for me as I’ve been married for 14 years 😂but I hope you get my meaning)

I have become far too reliant on Instagram for validation.

To make it worse there are those accounts who are seemingly untouchable by the algorithm, the one’s with hundreds of thousands, even millions of followers. They’re happily posting multiple snaps daily (which to all appearances took them seconds to create) and get thousands of likes in return. Many of them are already celebrities or successful elsewhere and dont need Instagram as much as Instagram needs them. See what’s happening here?!

Above: my first ever post from July 2015.

Instagram has led us all to believe we need them. The truth is we don't. I don’t. I was making and selling pottery before I had a single follower. I would be doing it even if there was no such thing as social media. Instagram has brought me into so many people’s sphere that I would have never come across otherwise. Of course, I am thankful for that. I also believe it’s probably a big part of why a publisher asked me to write a book. But if I look carefully at the analytics on my website, I can see I make more sales from my email list than anywhere else. Pinterest drives twice as much traffic to my website as Instagram. I rarely make any sales direct from Instagram these days. Maybe that is because my posts aren't being shown?! Yet I am still here. Still working. Still making pots. Still sharing (hopefully) useful things with you.

Not to mention that while my posts are not being shown to people who have chosen to follow me (and doubtless I am not being shown posts from other people that I have chosen to follow) I get bombarded with ads telling me I’m not youthful enough, not thin enough, how I can get rid of my neck hump (that’s a personal favourite of mine) … ENOUGH!! Spending hours creating content to share my art with the world and for it to not be seen just doesn’t feel good and is a waste of energy and emotion.

Sara Tasker, Instagram Guru and creator of ‘The Insta-retreat’ says we should be using Instagram like a tool. Only getting it out of our marketing tool kit when we need it. Not feeling forced into creating content when we don’t really enjoy it or get anything from it. ‘We dont feel this way about a hammer in our shed.’ 'We don't even think about the hammer until we need to put up a picture frame.'

I highly recommend listening to Sara's Podcast Letter’s from a Hopeful Creative.

I love my followers and the connections I’ve found there. Instagram is how many of you first discover me. I am a forever grateful for that. I think that's why I have found this deliberate distancing hard; my Instagram community represents real people to me. But Instagram itself doesn’t feel like it’s worth the effort anymore. Instagram is constantly pushing us to grow. I dont need more followers. I just want the people who follow me already to see my posts.  But it's like shouting into a void.  Creating a business that works without relying on a third party (I mean look what’s happened to Twitter) is THE BEST course of action. I need to wean myself off the validation IG provides.

This leads me to the question: how I can be of service to my people and my art to be visible without selling my soul to the social media devil (Meta)?

I hate it when people announce they’re leaving the room. If you’re going to go, just go already!  It would be far more graceful for me to do a ‘French exit’ but this isn’t like a house party where I - slightly inebriated - shout into the living room 'I’m going into the kitchen now!', this is my business. It’s what literally puts food on my family's table and it would be dumb if I didn’t let you know what I'm doing and how best to keep in touch outside of those tortuous little squares. Because I really want to. I don’t want to loose those real personal connections...

My Patreon Pottery Club where I create pottery and pottery tutorials.

My Patreon (Pottery Club) still remains the BEST place to connect with me and where I dedicate most of my time and energy. Members will always get an exclusive tutorial every single month not found anywhere else. It's magic because it's not led by an algorimth. All my posts are here in chronological order. We also now have a chat feature which means we can DM and you can share pics of your fav pottery moments with me and the community. It’s such a lovely place to chat and connect over our love of clay. Patreon always get first access to everything I create, and all the unglamorous insights and behind the scenes. Members can pick my brain whenever they need to, no question is a silly question and you'll always get the most authentic me. You also get to tell me what you'd like me to cover in the tutorials. There’s a 7 day FREE trial so you can have a nose around and see if it’s right for you. Check out membership options here.

Outside of Patreon, YouTube is where I aim to create most of my content from now on. YouTube is a fudge load more work than IG because long-form videos take far, far longer to create but the content is evergreen so wont just disappear into the ether after a few short days. I also dont feel pressure to keep churning out content there. I only share when I think something will be useful and I have the energy and capacity to do so (approx once a month for longer videos and a bit more regularly for shorts). I know it’s not perfect, but at least the creators get some of the ad revenue (full disclosure: my ad revenue is only around £20 per month at the moment but it's better than the big fat 0 I get from instagram). If you subscribe to my channel - thank you 🙏 - pop your notifications on so you’ll be notified when I post a new video.

Don't worry, I’m not going to quit Instagram, I really enjoy being surrounded by my peers and other creatives. It's where I find inspiration and I LOVE seeing all your work (when Instagram shows it to me!) and I want to continue to support others with likes and comments as much as I can but I am quitting the pressure to post and I am not going to let it dictate my value as a potter, as an educator or as a person. I’ll only be creating content for IG when I really feel like it not because I feel like I need to keep up. If you are keen to support when I do post over there then you can togged on the little bell for my posts and reels. Go to my profile and you'll see it in the top right hand corner.

My dream has always been to be a brilliant potter and pottery teacher who happens to be on Instagram. Not an average potter who is brilliant at Instagram. Too much of my brain space is spent creating for that app and not creating for me. The irony of me spending hours writing this blog post all about Instagram isn’t lost on me.

Mailing lists are another area where all small creative businesses should be focusing on nurturing their audience. Even though writing isn't my strength, I know I'll be trying to foster the people who have been kind enough to share their email address with me. And of course my Patreon will remain my favourite place to hang out.

**{UPDATE}** Following on from the popularity of this post, I held a 'How to Build a Mailing List Workshop' for Pottery Club members . During the hour session we covered:

- why a mailing list is SO important

- how I built my 6k email subscriber list

- how to start growing a mailing list of your own

- discussing the different email hosting platforms: Mailchimp, Squarespace, ConvertKit

- what to write to your audience about

- how often to write to your audience

- GDPR best practices

The replay of the workshop is available to watch HERE. 

Why am I sharing this with you? Because as a fellow creative soul and a human you might also relate to outsourcing your validation onto others. Whether that's social media, friends, family or work colleagues. You may look at all the other creators and think 'I wish I had what they've got'. You might think, 'when I get to 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 100,000 followers things will be easier and I can relax'. Let me tell you friend, that never happens. Our capitalist society tells us you can never have enough. I am here to tell you, you are enough. You are worthy. You are worthy of love. You are worthy of joy. Despite the follower count, I still need to remind myself of this every day.

The time I get back - I'll be doing other important things, not least of which is coming up with new and better ways to support the people who make the biggest difference to me: you.

I trust that I can be authentic with you and share much more of the things that go on in my brain and in my heart even when they don't show my best, most polished (Instagram worthy) self. I’d like to thank my Patreon Pottery Club members who are my biggest supporters - I am so so thankful to them. And thank you so much for reading. I'm off to go hide under a table and nurse my vulnerability hangover.

Thank you for reading,

Kara x