I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve always found it difficult to keep my Instagram content balanced between decent quality blog worthy images and more personal ones with family, friends and on nights out. I did touch on this in a previous post but I feel like things have got worse rather than better. When people unfollow me I can’t help but take it personally and feel like my content is at fault and isn’t always at a ridiculously high quality or similar enough to the successful bloggers or influencers. It’s easy to beat myself up about not putting more work into all of my posts, even though I have a full time job and want to do other things with my free time aswell as working on my blog and social media presence.
However, without wanting to sound like Ali G, I’ve always been one to keep it real and for my social media to reflect my real life, warts and all as it were. Also, to be honest I rarely have somebody around who can take good quality outfit pictures for me when I’m out and about. It seems to be a case of real life getting in the way of capturing the type of images I feel that would get the most engagement. Sadly, I don’t just happen to be BFFs with a professional photographer and most of my weekends are spent rushing around to wherever I need to be (on trains mostly) or resting as everyone needs a break sometimes. I don’t look like a model, I can’t wear body con and I have down days and times when I struggle to face the World so my life may not be ‘Goals’ but I prefer to be completely relatable.
It’s like a large amount of fellow bloggers, influencers or young people have a certain checklist for following people and if you don’t meet that criteria they hit the unfollow button. Without wanting to offend those who post the stereotypical blogger type content listed on the tongue-in-cheek checklist I’ve compiled below, it seems that if most of your pictures don’t follow these particular descriptions then it can be difficult to retain followers. It’s pretty brutal but it won’t stop me staying true to myself.
I’ll admit I occasionally post images like these myself when I’m in the position to take them or have them taken (minus the Victoria’s Secret one of course) but it seems that if every single photo isn’t like this it’s a turn off for some people. This actual blog post doesn’t look perfect either and this sums up what I’m trying to say really. (in a roundabout way) Real life isn’t perfect and what really matters can’t always be captured in a Instagram post. I want to enjoy life the best I can in the moment, rather than being a slave to my feed and agonising over what I do and don’t post because of what image it may project to others.
Chelsey Prentice 