[00:00:00] Mia Fileman
Are you tired of empty promises and stolen ideas? Me too. Got. Marketing is a podcast for marketers and small brands who want real talk and clever strategies without the bs. Running an online business is hard, but everything gets easier when your marketing starts performing. I am Mia FileMan, your straight shooting campaign loving friend here to talk marketing, running a business, pop culture, and everything in between.
Let's dive in.
Hello, friend. This episode is going to be controversial and I'm okay with that, and I very much welcome the debate. The question we are gonna answer today is, can you still grow on Instagram if you do [00:01:00] Instagram your way? What do I mean by this? You post three times a week on Instagram or whenever you feel like it.
You use Instagram for posting photos and carousels, but you never make videos because you don't like making videos. You want to share your offers and talk about your business and your brand and your products on Instagram, but you are not comfortable with sharing. Elements of your life, you know, behind the scenes and making that kind of lifestyle content.
And you want to use Instagram as a traditional marketing channel where you go, you post, and then you get back to everything else on your to-do list. And my honest feeling, my honest assessment. Is that you want to have a very polished and professional approach to Instagram rather than, you know, scrappy and messy and a bit chaotic.
And my honest answer is that I just don't think you can [00:02:00] anymore. I. So bear with me a few years ago, I would say up to 2021, you could still do that. You could still grow on Instagram and do it your way and not have to play to the whims of the algorithm. But if we are being completely honest, in 2025 and beyond, you are just not going to grow.
And I know of. A lot of people who are stuck at 290 followers or a thousand followers, and they are stuck there for months, if not years. If your Instagram account has not grown in over a year, and I mean a decent growth, and is it really worth it? That's the question I wanna put to you. Okay. Now, I'm a huge proponent in you doing marketing your way 100%.
This episode, though, is about whether Instagram is the best place to do that, because the kind of content that is working on Instagram [00:03:00] is very much influencer style, creator style. Click Beaty, lifestyle focused content, right? If your content is not click worthy, if it's not entertaining and you are doing, I guess what we would call more traditional business content on Instagram, you are just simply not.
Growing and then it begs the question whether it's worth the considerable investment in time to be showing up on Instagram at all, because Instagram is needy. You know, you can't just do a written caption. You need to have an image that's a requirement. You also should still be using hashtags, not because people follow hashtags, but because of the SEO searchability element of hashtags.
And then you've got the link in bio. You can't post links and like Instagram has these, these needy elements to it that other platforms simply don't. Most of my content on LinkedIn has no image [00:04:00] whatsoever, and I put the links right in the caption and I'm willing to accept that LinkedIn is going to downgrade by post, but I still get good reach, so whatever.
Whereas Instagram is a lot of work. And so is it the best use of your time to be plugging away on Instagram if you are not going to be creating the kind of content that Instagram wants you to be creating, because that's the reality they want you to make. Really entertaining, highly performative. Click Beaty content.
That is what they are pushing. Have a look at your Instagram feed. It is all lifestyle content and comedy skits and day in the life videos and that kind of content. Is very TikTok unless you are willing to play the game. You know, using trending audio and making this day in the life content and jumping on trends and you'll just be treading [00:05:00] water.
And so then it calls into question whether there is a better use of your time. Instagram is an all or nothing channel. I honestly believe you can't half as it. And if we didn't already have an existing audience on Instagram, I would not start an Instagram channel for my brand today, actually. So we started with Instagram for campaign Delmar, and we did exclusively Instagram for two years.
I have since added LinkedIn. And LinkedIn has not just caught up but overtaken Instagram in terms of where my leads come from now in a much shorter time. So what that tells me is that my audience are very much LinkedIn. It is a lot less work for me to do LinkedIn five days a week, and that I don't really need to be investing as much time into Instagram.
Unless I have the, the money and the capability to do that, but [00:06:00] it is not a requirement for me. Does your marketing feel like guesswork? Be honest. Join Marketing Circle the membership for female entrepreneurs who wanna nail their strategy boost. Their creativity and create marketing that actually pays off no cookie cutter templates and broken dreams, just practical marketing, training, mentoring and support To help you grow your business, you'll work directly with me, a legit marketing expert, and tap into a brains trust of clever business owners who bring their expertise, ideas, and support to the.
We are capped at 45 members, so apply to join today. We are still all in on Instagram because it is an an important part in my channel mix, and I've been doing it now for four years. So we have an existing audience there. However, having said that, there are people in my community who have said that they're not seeing my [00:07:00] content because we are living at a time now where Instagram doesn't even send your content to your followers.
Right. The follow account is actually irrelevant. It will just send the content to whoever, which is good for virality. But is it good for business? Is it good for making sales? If people who are following you and have said, yes, I want to receive content from Campaign Delmar and keep in touch, if they're not even getting my content, then this is making it a very questionable channel for your business.
So I'm having very open conversations with some of my members who are just not a natural personality fit with Instagram, right? They don't love making reels. They don't wanna use trending audio. They don't actually wanna use trends at all. They are great writers. They are deep thinkers. They're academics, they're intellectuals.
And I really want them to sit with this idea that maybe Instagram just isn't the best [00:08:00] place for them. There are options people, there are heaps of options. So Substack is going from strength to strength. Yes. It's hard to build an audience on Substack. It's hard to build an audience anywhere. Try building an audience on Instagram.
I would argue it's easier to build an audience on Substack than it is to build an audience on Instagram. So go all in with Substack, give it 110% effort. Engage with that platform, collaborate with other Substack writers, post in the discussion forums around Substack, and build up your audience there, which is an owned channel versus Instagram, which is a borrowed channel.
Or if you are not ready to give up on social media, which is fair enough because honestly, every brand should have. A social media presence. Then decide whether Instagram is the right social media platform for you. It could be like me, where you actually go all in with LinkedIn. LinkedIn has changed. It is no longer just [00:09:00] B2B.
It is no longer just for service-based businesses. There are e-commerce brands all over LinkedIn. It is no longer just for corporates. A huge exodus of Instagram has. Come to LinkedIn from the entrepreneur, startup, solopreneur freelancer community. There are great people on LinkedIn. The other option is Pinterest.
It is the kindest place on the internet. Gambling, political, or weight loss supplements are all completely banned on Pinterest. There's also no comment section or dms. Uh, it is a sensational search engine, so maybe if you are a lifestyle brand, definitely a product based brand. Then maybe Pinterest is where you should be going all in couple of other options.
I have built my business through thought leadership, pr. That is how I have increased my reach and got new eyeballs on my content. I've written for leading business and marketing [00:10:00] publications. And then the other option that we shouldn't overlook is local area marketing. If you work in a particular geographic area, then go to networking groups, do a letterbox drop, letterbox drops, have a sensational ROI put postcards in cafes, run a local event, host a meetup.
This is going to be such a quicker path to conversion for you than just adding to the digital noise. So to wrap up this episode. I want us to think deeply about whether it's time to reassess our relationship with Instagram. Please don't just fall into the sunk cost fallacy, which is that you have been plugging away at Instagram for 1, 2, 3 years, and now you are unwilling and not excited about cutting your losses.
But honestly, sometimes that's what we need to do to grow. Thank you so much. That's a wrap on today's episode. I would absolutely love to hear your [00:11:00] thoughts. Is it time to break up with Instagram?
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