Two Years Later: The Astonishing Effects of Leaving Facebook and Instagram on My Personal Styling Business
As a personal stylist, my primary goal is to help every woman in my community have the knowledge and confidence to communicate her authentic personal style with pieces that flatter her frame and communicate her values. For over a decade, I’ve done this by offering up a framework for harnessing your unique personal style. Of course, an essential component to my work is illustrating my aesthetic. This is integral to growing my community and client base. After all, who wants to work with a stylist who doesn’t share your taste?
And what better way to share my point of view than with social media? In the first six years of my business (2013-2019), Facebook was a key component of my outreach efforts. I used it to grow my email list, promote blog posts and offer giveaways. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to market directly to my ideal client thanks to Facebook ads. I selected her gender, age, location and other brands she followed. Being a stylist based in Seattle, Nordstrom is the go-to for the majority of women here, so marketing directly to women who followed Nordstrom on Facebook was a no-brainer.
Truthfully, I only used the ads a few times because word of mouth was working well for me and, frankly, I felt a little uneasy about the whole process. Then I moved on.
When Instagram popped up, it was the ideal medium to highlight my activities, showcase local brands and boutiques and discover new makers. It was a lot more appealing to me than Facebook and by that point and I had cornered the market on #personalstylistSeattle without spending a dime.
But as the years went by, I became more and more concerned about the effects of social media on society. When the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, I started to realize that the average person in my world had not considered the amount of data that Facebook was accumulating about them. My ability to perfectly target my ideal customer thanks to Facebook ads suddenly seemed a little shady. Certainly, targeted ads are a given but in light of Cambridge Analytica, things seemed different. I mean, of course an individual knew that following Nordstrom, sharing her age and favorite hobbies was public. Right? But had it ever occurred to her that this information would be shared with advertisers? I don’t know. Is it wrong? I don’t know that either. Targeted ads do make life easier. How awesome is it for the internet to shop for me without me having to do a thing? But what happens when information is shared when we don’t want it to be or with folks we’d rather not share it with?
I started marinating on all of this and was less and less enthusiastic about Facebook and Instagram. In the early years, my business was also on Twitter. Though I never really got into it, I typically shared the same content I was sharing on the other networks in an effort to get the business out there. It served me well when I was featured in a Microsoft Office ad campaign, a huge boon for my business. If I hadn’t been on Twitter, I would not have been featured.
But, when Donald Trump was elected president, I left Twitter.
I wasn’t a fan of the new normal of allowing our elected leaders to communicate in 140 characters rather than being held accountable in interviews or press conferences. To me, being on the platform signaled my support for the company’s approach and I felt complicit in it. So, I left.
I’ll stop here to say it had literally no impact on anyone that I left Twitter. I doubt anyone noticed. That being said, I knew that doing so meant that I might miss a future opportunity, like the Microsoft campaign, that was so beneficial to the business. At the time, I concluded that making that decision was worth the risk.
So as the years went on and Facebook’s behavior became more and more concerning to me, I already had experience leaving a platform. Sure, leaving Twitter wasn’t a huge shift like leaving Facebook and Instagram would be. But, it was something. And when my concerns started piling up, I knew leaving social media (except for LinkedIn and Pinterest, two sites that were not complicit in the way that Facebook and Instagram were) was becoming more inevitable.
The importance of values
Values have always been very important to me and I think of Poplin as a values-based business. Shopping with intention saves money, time, has less negative impacts on the planet and encourages women to use their purchasing power in a way that aligns with their unique values. The Poplin method empowers each woman to communicate her authentic personal style, and ultimately increases her self confidence.
I also feel very strongly that every person has power and when you combine the power of many, you have a movement. Encouraging women to leverage that power toward the greater good is my happy place. It’s also an integral part of the brand.
Towards the end of 2021, as more and more issues cropped up, it became evident that staying on social media was in direct conflict with my values. So, in December of that year, I announced that Poplin would be leaving social media. There were so many reasons, but opted to highlight the five that concerned me the most. They were:
Most human trafficking on social media takes place on Facebook and Instagram
Women are repeatedly victims of online abuse and Facebook does little to stop it
The platform’s role in the January 6th Insurrection
Right-wing misinformation is some of the most-shared content on Facebook
The Facebook files that give us detailed information from inside the company
Shortly after, I said goodbye to my many years of dominating #personalstylistseattle when I deleted the business accounts on both platforms. (fun fact: deleting a Facebook account takes time and effort, and the obstacles to getting rid of the account that are intentionally put up further solidified my commitment to the decision.) Armed with a new strategy to engage more with LinkedIn and Pinterest, I crossed my fingers and braced myself for backlash.
After Leaving the Platforms
As it turned out, a decade of talking about openly about values, combined with the increased publicity around the consequences of the actions of Meta, were enough for my community to cheer my decision. I did not receive one negative reaction to my stance. No passive aggressive jeers about being inaccessible. Nothing.
In fact, I was surprised by the number of people who celebrated my action. Many told me that they also felt disillusioned so while they still had Facebook accounts, they hadn’t been on “in ages.” Of course, they still were active on Instagram (like Facebook, it is also owned by Meta), and liked the idea of protesting Meta’s behavior but couldn’t see a world where they’d leave Instagram.
It’s been over two years since my big move and I continue to hear from folks, especially other small business owners who talk about their desire to leave the platforms but their fear of the negative impacts to their businesses. They often ask me how my decision has impacted the business, curious to hear if there’s been a hit to the bottom line.
As it turns out, I think the move has made the business stronger. Whether or not individuals agree with my stance, it aligns with the brand. Poplin is all about identifying your values and making intentional choices based on those. At the time, leaving the platforms seemed extreme. While I knew people who had never been particularly enthusiastic about social media, I certainly didn’t know any business owners who had left a social media platform at all, let alone for these reasons.
The Impact
From a personal perspective, I’m elated that I made that choice. I’ve eliminated the guilt, frustration and constant struggle about my participation on the platforms. But there have been significant downsides. Most information relevant to our son is communicated on Facebook, with the information literally unavailable anywhere else. It sounds dark, but before leaving Facebook, I would hear about the death of someone in my larger circle or a friend I hadn’t connected with in years. Without Facebook or mutual friends, it’s hard to make sure I don’t miss that sort of information. It’s also the primary way that some of my friends update multiple people about their families, and missing that easy access to information is tough.
To combat this, I am much more intentional about texting folks, coordinating in-person friend time and reminding friends that we aren’t on the socials so they keep me in the loop regarding interesting news.
On the business side, there have also been pros and cons. Focusing my energy in a smaller number of communication channels has increased my efficiency and the quality of my communications. It saves me time and I have fewer places to check for messages and updates. Deleting the business Facebook account meant that I lost several five-star client reviews, making it more difficult for potential clients to learn about Poplin. To combat this, we’ve leaned into Google keywords as well as Yelp and Google reviews. Fortunately, more than ten years of content gave us the benefit of solid organic SEO, and hundreds of clients means an existing client base and beneficial referral network. Frankly, the most frustrating repercussion of leaving the platforms has been paying for expensive online business courses that lean heavily on Facebook for Facebook Live sessions and Facebook Groups, virtually eliminating my access to valuable content with no alternative.
The real question is: did I lose money by taking my personal styling business off of Facebook and Instagram? Probably. I don’t, and can’t, know for sure. But, what I can tell you is that it hasn’t been enough for me to notice. We continue to grow year over year with 2023 being our biggest revenue year yet. The quality of clients continues to be high — a collection of interesting, kind women who are a great fit for our approach to styling and I’m truly grateful for the ability to be of service of to them while making business choices that align with my values.
Thanks to Kara Swisher’s recent book that, among other things, highlights the lack of government regulation on social media companies and brings the consequences of ignoring the importance of prioritizing individual privacy protections to light, it finally feels like my decision to take my business off of Meta platforms may not seem so extreme.
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