Alright, let me just… let me get settled here. I remember when my cat used to sit on the windowsill. He’d do that thing where he stares at a bird and his jaw does that weird chattering thing like he’s trying to speak bird but he forgot the language. Which is honestly how I feel every time I open Instagram.
So I want to talk about something that’s been rattling around in my head. And I say “rattling” because it’s one of those thoughts that doesn’t come with a solution, it just comes with a feeling. You know? Like when you’re driving and you can’t remember if you locked the door, and you know you’re going to think about it for the next forty minutes regardless of what you do.
Here’s the thought: Instagram is not your audience.
I know. I know. Some of you just felt something. Some of you felt relief, like someone finally said it. And some of you felt a little spike of anxiety, because Instagram is where you’ve been pouring your energy. You’ve been making the reels. You’ve been doing the thing where you point at the text on screen like a weatherman explaining a cold front. You’ve been chasing the algorithm like a guy chasing a bus that’s already two blocks away and doesn’t know he exists.
And I’m here to tell you: that app does not love you. That app is not your friend. That app is a casino with a camera.
Let’s be honest about what’s happening. You spend three hours on a post. You craft it. You think about it. You rewrite the caption four times. You pick the thumbnail. You post it. And then you watch the numbers. And the numbers do… something. Maybe they do great. Maybe you get a little dopamine hit, a little zing, a little “oh, people like me.” And then the next day you post something else and it gets nothing. And you’re confused. And you’re a little hurt. And you start to wonder if you said something wrong, or if you’re boring, or if you’ve lost it.
And the truth is: none of that is about you. It’s about a machine. It’s about a system designed to keep you on the treadmill. The feed isn’t a stage. It’s a slot machine. And you’re not the player, you’re one of the symbols on the reel. You’re a cherry. You’re a bell. You’re the thing that might line up and pay out, but probably won’t, and either way the house keeps spinning.
I chatted to a guy once, I’m not going to pretend I remember exactly who, because I have the memory of a goldfish with a concussion, but the point he made stuck with me. He said: you don’t own your Instagram following. You’re renting space. And the rent goes up whenever the landlord feels like it. And the landlord can evict you whenever he wants. And he doesn’t have to tell you why.
That’s the thing. You can have fifty thousand followers and wake up one morning and reach four hundred of them. And you did nothing wrong. The rules just changed. The algorithm shifted. A new feature rolled out that prioritizes something you don’t do. And suddenly you’re shouting into a room that used to be full and now it’s just you and a guy in the back scrolling past you to get to a video of a raccoon eating a slice of pizza.
And here’s the part that really gets me: we all know this. We know it. And yet we keep treating Instagram like it’s our home base. We keep treating it like it’s the place where our people live. And it’s not. It’s where some of our people currently hang out. That’s it. That’s the whole truth of it. Some. Currently. Hang out.
“Currently” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Because the crowd moves. The crowd always moves. Remember MySpace? Remember Vine? Remember when everyone was on Facebook and it was fun and your aunt wasn’t posting conspiracy theories and the feed wasn’t just ads for things you already bought? Remember Tumblr? Remember when Twitter was where the jokes lived? Every single one of those places felt permanent. Every single one of them was a rental.
And the people you actually want, the ones who care about what you make, the ones who will show up when you make something new, the ones who will pay you for your work, the ones who will still be there when the next app comes along and eats the last one, those people are not a platform. They’re a relationship. And you can’t build a relationship with a feed. You can only build it with a channel you control.
Which brings me to email.
I know. I know. Email is not sexy. Email is the guy at the party who’s wearing sensible shoes and talking about the benefits of a high-fiber diet. Email is not going to get you the rush of a post going viral. Email is not going to make you feel cool. But email is yours.
Nobody can throttle your email list. Nobody can change the algorithm on your email list. Nobody can decide one Tuesday that your emails are going to be shown to fewer people because they want you to pay to boost them. You write an email, you hit send, and it lands in the inbox of every single person who asked to hear from you. That’s it. That’s the deal. It’s the most boring, most reliable, most durable thing in the entire online ecosystem.
And it’s not just email. It’s the whole category of things you own. Your website. Your blog. Your podcast feed. Your text list. The little corner of the internet that has your name on it and nobody else’s. These are the places where the relationship actually lives. These are the places where someone can find you on purpose, instead of stumbling across you in a river of content and then forgetting you existed nine seconds later.
Here’s the mental shift, and it’s a big one, so stay with me. Instagram is not the destination. Instagram is the flyer. Instagram is the poster on the telephone pole. Instagram is the thing that makes someone go, “huh, who is that?” And then, and this is the part most people skip, you have to give them somewhere to go. You have to have a door. You have to have a room behind the door. You have to have a place where the relationship can actually deepen instead of just… scrolling past.
If someone likes your post and you have nowhere to send them, you’ve just handed a stranger a business card with no phone number on it. You made an impression and then you let it evaporate. That’s the tragedy of it. All that attention, all that goodwill, all that “hey, this person seems interesting”—and it just floats away into the void because there was no net to catch it.
So you build the net. You put the link in the bio. You say, “hey, if you want more of this, I send an email every week, here’s where to get it.” You make it easy. You make it worth their while. You give them something for showing up—a piece of writing, a resource, a story, a recommendation, whatever it is you do. And then you do it again. And again. And you show up in their inbox like a friend who actually remembers they exist.
And here’s the thing nobody tells you: it’s slower. It’s so much slower. You’re not going to get ten thousand email subscribers overnight from a viral reel. You’re going to get twelve. And then twenty. And then forty. And it’s going to feel like you’re building a house with a spoon. But those forty people? They opened your email. They chose to be there. They’re not just an impression in a feed—they’re a relationship. And relationships compound. They show up for you. They tell their friends. They buy your thing. They stay.
I’m not saying quit Instagram. That would be stupid. The people are there. Some of them. Currently. Go where the people are. Make the flyers. Do the dances. Point at the text. I don’t care. But don’t confuse the flyer for the house. Don’t confuse the crowd for the family. Don’t confuse the rental for the home.
The platform is a river. It’s always moving. It’s always changing. And you can ride it, and you should, but you cannot build your house on it. You build your house on land you own. And the land you own is your list, your site, your feed, your inbox, your relationship with the people who actually want to hear from you.
So here’s my challenge, and I’m saying this as much to myself as to you, because I’m as guilty of this as anyone. This week, when you make something for Instagram, ask yourself: where does this lead? What’s the door? What’s the room behind the door? If the answer is “nowhere,” then you’re just feeding the slot machine. And the slot machine doesn’t love you back.
Okay. I think that’s it. I think I’ve said what I needed to say. The cat has moved on to licking his own foot, which is his way of telling me the sermon is over. Go build something you own. Send an email. I’ll be here.
My mission is simple:
Help creatives become better at marketing: so they can spend less time marketing and more time creating.
Because the world doesn’t need more reluctant marketers. It needs more creatives whose work actually gets seen. I’ve written two books to help you do exactly that.
DIGITAL MARKETING FOR CREATIVES
Digital Marketing for Creatives on Amazon UK
Think of this as your no-BS marketing manual for creative people.
It takes the confusing, overwhelming mess that is digital marketing and turns it into something practical and manageable.
Finding your audience. Creating useful content. Email marketing. SEO. Social media. Building campaigns. Getting your work discovered. Turning attention into sales.
Not because I want you to become brilliant at marketing.
I want you to become efficient at it.
Build the system. Do the marketing that matters. Ignore the nonsense.
Then get back to making things.
THE 21 MARKETING LIES CREATIVES TELL THEMSELVES
The 21 Marketing Lies Creatives Tell Themselves on Amazon UK
This one tackles a different problem: Us.
Because sometimes the biggest obstacle to marketing our work isn’t Instagram, Google, money or the bloody algorithm.
It’s the stories we tell ourselves.
“I don’t want to bother people.”
“I’ll market it when I have more time.”
“If the work is good enough, people will find it.”
“I’m a creative. I’m not a salesperson.”
“I need more followers before I can sell anything.”
Twenty-one comforting little stories that allow us to avoid doing the uncomfortable bit: putting our work in front of people and asking them to care about it.
The book takes those excuses apart, looks at what’s really going on underneath them, and, more importantly, gives you practical ways to move past them.
Two books. Two different jobs.
Digital Marketing for Creatives gives you the system. The 21 Marketing Lies Creatives Tell Themselves gets your head out of the way so you’ll actually use it.
Because you don’t need to become a marketer.
You just need marketing to stop getting in the way of being a creative.
That final distinction, one book gives you the system; the other removes the mindset barriers stopping you using it, is something I’d repeat across your website, Instagram and Amazon marketing. It gives people a reason to buy both books rather than choosing between them.
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