Photo and flat lay by Éva Nemeth

I’ve had a bit of a go slow on Instagram these last few months… at first I put it down to a really busy year and the resulting tiredness and of course the fact that at this time of year, there aren’t as many local, seasonal flowers as I’d like to be working with. But if I am honest with myself, I’d be the first to point out that there are plenty of natural materials with which one can work at this time of year. Our garden is teaming with hellebores, my very favourite flower (I have so many favourites), there is blossom in some trees and my studio is full of dried flowers saved over from summer for exactly the moments like these. Instagram shows me images of snowdrops in trugs, beautiful hyacinths leaning delicately towards the light in the window, frost covered pink blossom captured by a keen ‘grammer who rushed out in her pyjamas to get the shot (girl after my own heart), and arrangements of witch hazel and hellebores look beautiful on a Sunday morning in January. Over Christmas and the early new year, I devoted three weeks to the reading of books and binge watching Father Brown, so I’m not sure I can really claim exhaustion at this stage. So why the hesitancy?

It’s fair to say that the changes in the Instagram algorithms around 18 months ago have made it very hard to gain traction for many of us, and certainly growth levels have slowed down considerably. For a while, I didn’t realise that this was an across the board scenario, but eventually it became apparent that many were struggling. Two years ago, I used to love teaching companies and individuals about the algorithm, explaining how it worked and how to use it to one’s advantage. A year ago, I started saying no to invitations to talk about this for the simple reason that I just don’t understand it any more. But also, if I’m honest, I wasn’t sure I liked it either.

At the end of the day, it could be argued that it’s just an app on an electronic device that we should be able to see quite simply as a marketing tool and/ or a way of engaging with like minded people, and we should be able to filter the rest out. And I know, as I type this, that that is exactly the right approach. But, as someone who is prone to the occasional moment of navel gazing, I can’t help but notice and think about the intricacies beyond that. Furthermore, by placing just one question “What do you like about Instagram?” on my Stories, and receiving over 80 responses (for which, thank you), I know, from the amount of people who replied “nothing” that I am not alone. What interested me most was how many people who currently don’t like Instagram were on Instagram answering my Stories about Instagram, and I thought that that, my own experiences and most of all, some of the positive responses which stopped me in my tracks, were all worth sharing.

When I first realised I wanted to do something within the world of flowers, I was full of fresh faced excitement (even in my early 40s). After 17 years of jobs I didn’t enjoy, that barely paid my enormous London mortgage and sometimes left me choosing between a tube fare and lunch, came first an auto immune disease caused by “environmental” factors and then, a year or two later, a diagnosis that no body wants to hear. I realise that, for some, I’m covering old ground here, but bear with me. Along with drastic surgery came four years of opiates and pain management, including electrocution which I really would not recommend under any circumstances. I was coming out the other side and what better than the gentle world of flowers? I’d been posting photos first of Hilda and then of flower arrangements after attending the odd day class here and there. My account grew little by little and then later on, more and more. It should be acknowledged here - because it is very important - that a lot of that growth came from kind friends within the industry that I made along the way. They tagged me and promoted me and opened me up to an audience I might not otherwise have had. (I’ll come back to this later when we get to the good stuff).

Gradually, it became apparent that it wasn’t all sweetness and light. I noticed people on Instagram sometimes mocking others by referring to their use of flowers or props (not because they were harmful to the environment, just because they didn’t happen to like them). I also learnt that people can say not very nice things by DM and accidentally send them to the person they are writing about. When it happened to me, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been, so I took it on the chin, didn’t respond and made a note to be only kinder still when commenting on that person’s feed. I’ve also received some more brutal, deliberate DMs, based on incorrect assumptions about my life, and I’ve done my best to handle those with kindness too. I also noticed that, perhaps saddest of all. friendships were increasingly being damaged by Instagram, and at this point I began to retreat into myself. I decided to write a list, which I called, rather eloquently “Good Instagram” and “Bad Instagram”. ‘Bad Instagram’ was much longer and looked rather like this (I’m hoping it will make you laugh as much as I did when I read it back to myself);

Too time consuming

Not seeing feeds I want to

Very limited visibility and slow growth

Unhelpful comments (only occasional)

Unsolicited advice (I like to be inspired but I don’t always enjoy being told what to do)

Being copied

Wondering why other people are surprised when they are copied

Worrying when my direct messages are ignored

Not having time to answer all direct messages from other people

Wondering why I’ve been unfollowed

Wanting to unfollow but being afraid of hurting someone’s feelings

Realising Instagram have both followed and unfollowed on my behalf anyway

Not knowing how many times to post about a class as unsure who has seen it due to the algorithms

Seeing the same thing marketed over and over again

And so I sat in my kitchen, gazing at my navel from the stool that I sat in, drinking tea and wondering what it all meant. These were the reasons which precipitated the grinding to a halt of IG and not Father Brown or a lack of roses in the garden. And if it hadn’t been for me sending out that one question one day on Stories, I might still be there now. And the irony is that it was the other echelons of Instagram that got me back here. And this is why.

I sat at that place in kitchen for a good few days (except for the occasional break to sleep, wash and change my clothes) or at least it felt that way. It was probably just for an hour or two each day whilst I mulled things over. On one of those afternoons, there was a knock on the door, and there on the porch I found a very dear photographer friend of mine (no prizes for guessing who, if you’ve been paying attention to the credits in this post). She suspected I’d been feeling down and brought me a Christmas present… she had made me a book that contained photographs of all the work we’d done together in 2019, the shoots just for fun or because I’d planted too many tulips, the shoots at classes I was teaching and other things in between. I could have cried - but didn’t, quite - but there, staring me in the face, was evidence of everything that had been achieved. And more than that, it was made for me by a friend I had made because she once DMed me on Instagram to say that she’d noticed a little brown dog that looked like Hilda out walking on a farm not far from her home. It also reminded me that some of the classes photographed within that book might never have happened if I hadn’t first gained some traction on Instagram. And so I revisited my “Good Instagram’. which looked like this:

New friends

Connecting with like - minded people

Marketing

Looking back through grid is a good way of measuring progress made

Not a very long list, then, but a start, a step in the right direction. I knew I had to carry on wth social media if I want to market my classes and most of all, I value the friendships forged on there very highly indeed. But still, I needed motivation. And so I typed a question of just six words on my Stories. Thanks to all the responses I had to my aforementioned Story on Instagram, by the end of the day I was able to add the following (in many cases I received multiple answers that were identical or very similar and these have been combined as one entry, I’ve also tried to quote verbatim where possible) :

Inspiration

Creativity

Making friends first on Instagram and then in real life

Meeting like minded people (these the top four)

Aspirational content

Good way to learn about what and why behind #nofloralfoam

I get sales in a personal manner and no longer have a website as IG is better for me

Enquiries received

It helps me decide what I really want to do for a living/ career

I learn SO much

Sharing experiences and perspectives

Seeing different parts of the countryside, flowers, communities, plants

Enjoying snippets of people’s real lives

Looking at pretty pictures (I love Pinterest and Instagram is like an interactive version of that)

Seeing other people’s dogs

Witty banter

Hearing about new varieties of flowers and plants

Making me tidy the small corners of my home before I post photos

The feeling of having the world in your pocket as you see creatives from all over the globe

Generally it’s a happy place (though I’m in a right grump with it today)

… and lastly, this one… to me, perhaps the most touching of all:

I care for my elderly Father and if I didn’t have Instagram I would struggle to create anything at all. TBH, it’s a bit of a lifeline.

And just like that, I have a multitude of reasons to keep going. That last entry, in particular, made me think. I haven’t really aways thought that deeply about who sees our feeds. I’d had a couple of messages early on from people who were unwell and used Instagram as a means of distraction, some who told them that my story of recovery had spurred them on. It also reminded me of how much I enjoy other people’s feeds. In the beginning I was absorbing all the flower inspiration that I could. Then my focus shifted to also include aspirational images of interiors as we worked on our house. And now I have to quickly learn how to become a gardener so that I can manage that part too and hopefully be able to grow at least some of my flowers for my classes. I’ve also had messages with offers of help and advice, even access to trade accounts (sssh) and I realise that the kindness and goodwill and desire for other people to succeed far outweighs the incidents outlined above. I mentioned earlier that without flower friends promoting me - and even coming to my early classes when they surely had little to learn from me! - I would have struggled to succeed, or at least to grow as quickly as I did. I love having a giggle with friends on our posts, often laughing at the things which we didn’t get quite right. I’m very interested in other people’s dogs. And most of all, has there been any greater success than the messages sent out around the need to stop using floral foam and to use seasonal flowers? When I came to the world of flowers and social media a few short years ago, I felt a little out on a limb on these issues, bar a few notable exceptions who have been carrying the flag for far longer than I. But now we are awash with messages of seasonality and sustainability and what a wonderful thing that is!

I’ve also been following @h.e.l.e.n.m.a.r.i.e recently. I’m not normally a fan of inspirational quotes, but I make an exception for her account as what she shares really does make a difference. I thought I’d share a few of them with you here, ones relying directly to Instagram, just to make you smile the way that I did.

And so now I sit here, re-reading these quotes over again, reflecting on the last few months and then on the last few years, and am re-writing my new, positive rules for using Instagram. First of all, I am going to limit the time I spend on Instagram each day to a maximum of one hour. (If you think that still sounds like a lot, I won’t tell you what it has been at its worst). This will almost certainly free up more time to spend in the garden, which is where I should be spending my time anyway. I’m not going to obsess so much over the number of followers and am going to be extremely grateful for the ones that I have (I already am, I’m just reminding myself of this part). I shall continue to celebrate other people’s successes as much as if they were my own (okay, almost as much). I’m going to focus on the things that matter most to me, regardless of the numbers of “likes’ I receive, namely flowers, garden progress (remembering to share any plant names or information along the way), nature, nurture and of course the importance of seasonality and sustainability. There will be mentions of improvements we are making in our home life as we try to move a little closer towards zero waste and I’ll try to share the vegan recipes that didn’t horrify my husband on Stories… it will be a reflection of me.

If you’ve made it to the end then first of all, thank you. I’d like to offer you a virtual bunch of daffodils as a seasonal symbol of new beginnings. I hope that if anyone else has been feeling as I have, that it helps to know that you’re not alone and that actually, if we think it all the way through, the benefits far outweigh the pitfalls of Instagram. I hope to see you on there very soon - maybe we’ll be sharing exciting news of projects that came about because of social media. You never can tell.

Instagram - Friend or Foe? Algorithm or Attitude?