You Have An Influence

It's easy to feel lost in the sea of teacher Instagram accounts. Often you might feel like your reach is so small that what you're posting and saying isn't reaching anyone's ears. Here's the deal, though. No matter how big or small your audience is, you're impacting the people who see your content. If you're using Instagram, you have an influence.

It doesn't matter if your audience has 10 people or 10,000 people - you have an impact on whomever it is who comes across your posts and stories. Sometimes we spend so much time worrying about the size of our influence that we don't think about what type of influence we have.

Social media is different from real life in one main way: on our social media platforms we are able to carefully curate the messages we communicate. We can rehearse our stories, edit our photos, revise our captions, and delete our posts whenever we want. This means that we have a lot of control over how we use social media to influence the world.

Pay attention to what kind of impact your messages have. Is this the kind of difference you want to make in the world? I love this quote by Jane Goodall. She said, "What you do makes a difference. You have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."

What you're doing on Instagram makes a difference. You get to decide what kind of difference you want to make. This means you don't have to have opinions on the same topics as everyone else. You don't have to share the same kinds of photos or the same quotes as other people. You get to choose what message you share with the world.

The flip side of this is: if you're using Instagram, you're being influenced by the content that you read/watch/see. If we're not intentional about who we follow, our social media feeds can quickly become an echo chamber where we only see content that reinforces the beliefs we already have. Look to follow people who have a variety of backgrounds, opinions, and perspectives, who have different sized followings, who do or do not sell stuff, etc. Keeping a blend of points of view running through your feed can help you see the world differently.

Instagram can be a powerful tool to connect with people. How are you influencing your audience through your Instagram account?