Vol. 4. I'm quitting Instagram

No, this isn't click bait. For real... I actually already did, for my firm. I haven't posted to my feed since the very beginning of June.

I've been thinking and talking a lot about guarding my time, and getting aggressive with my calendar. And as much as I actually do like making content, my time is better spent on other avenues for growing my firm. I'll get into what I'm spending that content-creation energy on instead in a moment.

Yes, having an instagram presence is key (especially for my particular niche--Online Business). However... I've already built that. I don't need to keep posting right now to attract clients.

My client attraction comes from other places:

• podcast interviews
• referrals
• speaking engagements
• networking
• collaborations
• Google
• Youtube

Instagram is just a way I nurture my potential leads. But if we're being honest... where the real nurturing comes in is through my email list. Anytime I speak on a podcast, in a summit, or do a collab, I share a couple resources people can download & get on my email list.

What's my Instagram Strategy Now?

I'm literally strategizing on this as I write. I've been obviously pondering this for a while, since I haven't posted on Insta in so long. And I've had a direction I want to go, I just haven't had the space/time to really pour into it and get it rolling.

But eventually, I will be posting a 9- or 3-Grid. I've already done this on The Ambitious Bookkeeper. If you click on my Instagram, and go to my grid (where all the posts are) you'll see a cohesive 3-grid. 

We did this a while back when we actually cut back on weekly posting. If you follow me on instagram, you may not have even noticed that pretty much all we post now is reel clips when we release a new podcast episode, and a few posts when we're enrolling for programs.

I have over 8k followers on Instagram now, and you proably won't believe me when I tell you this, but each post/reel/story usually only gets 100-300 views. That is freaking DISMAL for the effort put in.

But Serena, you just did a podcast not too long ago with The Social Accountant about how you use their templates.

Yes. You are correct. I am a member (for my firm) and ran an experiment. And I did find that the investment was worth it to build more of a presence on my firm's page. I even had confirmation from several leads that they appreciated that I had a lot of content on my page when they were vetting me to get on a call.

But when it comes time to slash tasks from my calendar (or my team's) because of more pressing priorities, and getting the most bang for our buck when it comes to time spent... posting to my firm's insta was always the thing that got cut. 

Truthfully, I like creating content from my own ideas & things I know my clients & prospects are struggling with. And if I'm going to put in the effort (even if it's only 1-2 hours to modify the social templates, brand them, and joozsh up the captions) I'd rather spend it developing original content that is going to live on longer, be searchable, support my SEO and actually directly create revenue.

You might see where this is going:

YouTube.

I've been studying a lot about YouTube. Previously I was not a YouTube consumer so I didn't really understand the opportunity I was missing out on. 

But I've since opened my mind up and swapped my LinkedIn time for YouTube time. 

I've been building my channel slowly over the past couple years with my podcast. 

But many of you have spoken... You want more content on Xero. 

And the best way to do that (and also support my vision for my firm and what we're growing over there--more on that in future newsletters) is to pour into YouTube.

This means... I'm not creating a separate channel--at this point, anyway...

I'm going to leverage The Ambitious Bookkeeper YouTube presence.

I've already gotten clients for my firm from this channel, so why would I try to start from scratch? 

Instead of creating two YouTube channels, I'm going to go ALL IN on one and do the best job I can. 

I'm still in the ideation stages of researching topics, learning how to title things, learning from pro's and ... ahem.. carving out the time to actually film.

That is the hardest part.

So with that... that's what I'm up to behind the scenes. Stay tuned for updates, learnings, and hopefully very soon: brand new videos.

Comment below the kind of content you'd like to see on my channel!