What Happens When Instagram Drops You Like A Bad Habit?

Well, hasn’t 2020 been a year for the history books? So much has happened. Not least the birth of a grandchild which thanks to Covid19, I’ve yet to meet. With the separation of family, deaths of friends, personal and staff’s illness’s, election madness, general sadness, mixed with the real estate mass exodus from NYC to the ‘burbs, and all points upstate, working without admin, and even an aggressive take over attempt of my company, I really didn’t think there was much else that could be thrown at me. But then it happened...

After three years of daily grind learning the ins and outs of Instagram, spending at least two hours (sometimes much more) posting, photographing, commenting, etc., etc. I woke up last week to discover that according to some bot over at Instagram we had broken some rule or another (totally unbeknownst to us) and our account of 17,600 followers was canceled. Stumped out. POOF! GONE! Never to return!!! Wow, that was a waste of time and money.

Oh, how these social media applications have us by the proverbial balls. Made us stop and think for sure. After the initial shock, and the indignant consternation wore off, I started thinking about what just happened. All the cool kids are on Instagram. But now we aren’t. But what did Instagram really do for my company?  We don’t sell a product online, we aren’t promoting courses or retailing. Why would I want the account back?  Really? I mean, even if we were even able to make contact with someone over at Instagram to make the argument as to why we should be reinstated, and were successful,  I’d likely be constantly stressed out that POOF everything would disappear again! Why would I do that to myself?  Then I got to thinking, Instagram is owned by Facebook, so is it just a matter of time until FB pulls this stunt on us also? Yes, we definitely did get some business from the platform, but enough to break out into a cold sweat about losing? Not really. In actual fact, we get more business from other social media, which is more easily managed, and the darn algorithms don’t keep changing quite as often. 

So why did we spend so much time and effort on Instagram?  Was it an addiction? I think that might have been part of it. Staying ahead of the competition’s followers was definitely a big part of the challenge, seeing our followers beat the “BIG” names was always a turn on. Constantly taking courses to keep up with the “Jones’s”, even flying to San Diego to participate in the Social Media Marketing World convention back in early March before Covid19 hit. All that money invested, and at the end of the day, what for? I definitely have gotten to know a lot of millennials, who I likely wouldn’t have met without networking via Instagram, but most of the ones that really matter are not lost, they are true friends, who know how to use other methods to communicate. Most reached out asking what happened? Where are we? Did we know we were GONE from Instagram?

What would we do without IG?  

Well, with less than a week since we vanished, I can happily report that we are anything but GONE. In fact, @globalpropertysystems may never be seen on Instagram again, but we are where we feel happier being. We are more confident, more secure, and actually having more fun in the process. More importantly, more clients than ever have contacted us using “other” platforms. Even our existing clients, who were initially disappointed not seeing their properties on IG, are assuaged by our new, (and improved) presence elsewhere. Go figure...

So Zuckerberg and Mosseri, life’s not all about your Instagram. And just like 2020, I can actually say, I’m more relieved than sad to see you go. 

Cheerio!