Inside the SPI Community, we’re Team WIN. That stands for What’s Important Now because time and focus are our top resources as entrepreneurs.
So what’s moving the needle most for your business?
Karen Whooley, whose question I’m answering today, is ready to leave Instagram. She’s doubling down on the top driver of sales for her crochet brand. That, of course, is her newsletter!
You know I’m an email girly, so it comes as no surprise to me that that’s where the bulk of Karen’s sales comes from!
But I don’t want her just losing her Instagram followers. Instead, we need to convert as many of them as possible into email list subscribers before bowing out.
Listen in on today’s AskLiz session because the strategies I share apply to anyone looking to move fans from social media to an email list. If that’s not you, it should be!
I walk Karen through a final week of posts designed to attract newsletter signups. I’m discussing live streams, carousel posts, special bundles, and more to help her step into the next chapter of her business without leaving fans behind.
Tune in!
You’ll Learn
- How to leave social media without losing followers
- Turning Instagram fans into email list subscribers
- Joining Team WIN and focusing on What’s Important Now
- Building a content strategy from your final week on socials
- Combining posts and bundles to encourage email signups
- The pinned carousel post you should leave behind on Instagram
Resources
- Send in your online business questions at SpeakPipe.com/LizWilcox to be featured on the show and get some awesome free swag
- Subscribe to Superfans Secrets—our weekly newsletter on the strategies behind building real relationships with your audience, delivered free, straight to your inbox
- Check out our special deal at SmartPassiveIncome.com/2026 and use the code SECRET50 to join the SPI Community at 50% off your subscription for life
- Connect with me on Instagram
Al 014: How Do I Leave Instagram Without Losing My Audience?
Liz Wilcox: What up, my SPI friend? This is Liz Wilcox here with another little episode thingymajiggy of Ask Liz. I’m really excited to dive in because today we’ve got an amazing member of our SPI Community asking a really, I would say, unique question. While a lot of us are trying to learn and double down on social media, our friend Karen is doing the opposite.
Let’s listen in.
Karen Whooley: Hi, Liz. This is Karen Whooley. I’m the crochet pattern designer and instructor in her 28th year, and I’m in the middle of a pivot, and that pivot you and I have talked about before. I’m moving from a more product heavy to a more educational business. And the question I have for you today is kind of an interesting one for me at least, is how to move away from social media.
I am having a struggle with Instagram. I’ve already taken myself off of Facebook and LinkedIn and X and all the others. I still have Instagram, I’m using YouTube, and I’m using Pinterest, and I’d like to get away from using Instagram as well and move toward just YouTube and Pinterest. So I’m curious about dealing with moving from using social media a lot to almost nothing, and how to bring my followers from Instagram to my email list.
My email list is still my biggest driver. For 28 years I’ve been sending out… At first it was monthly, now it’s more weekly, sometimes more than once a week, depending on what I’ve got going on. But I just need to find a way to, for my own sanity, to move away from social media. So thanks so much. I’ll talk to you soon.
Liz Wilcox: Okay. Okay. First of all, you and me need to congratulate Karen because she knows where she wants to spend her time and where she doesn’t. Over inside the SPI Community, if you’re not already in there, get in there. We are Team WIN, and WIN stands for What’s Important Now, okay? And Karen is figuring out that Instagram, Facebook, all of that is not important.
What’s important for her right now is to grow that email list. Why? Because she said it’s been that main driver of sales, right? And at the end of the day, Karen doesn’t have a hobby, she has a business. So congratulations. I don’t know if you’re driving in the car right now, you’re walking your dog, whatever.
Let’s give her a round of applause. This is me clapping, by the way. I’m trying not to annoy your ears. Anyway, let’s get into the answer. So we’re moving away from social, and also Karen mentioned she’s moving from, like, just selling products to becoming an educator, right? Selling the fact that she can teach you something.
So Karen, throughout this, I want you, any time I say, like, update or whatever, I want you to tell people, like, “Now I’m really going to help you. I’m doubling down on you. You’re not gonna just buy from me, you’re going to learn from me.” Join the email list. Join the email list. Join the email list, right? So we’re gonna move from social.
The first thing I want you to do is update your bio and make sure it’s pointing people to an email list and telling people you are education-based, right? It’s not… Actually, let me go to her Instagram right now. Right now it says, like, “Crocheting lace and fingering weight yarn, da da da, crochet crew, no DMs,” and then it points to her links.
I like that she has no DMs, but I would say crocheting everything you need to know about da, da, da, da, da through courses, classes, whatever, right? That way it’s obvious we’re not just selling products, we’re teaching. And also her little name on there, it says Karen, crochet designer, author, and instructor. I would reverse those.
Karen, crochet instructor, author, and designer. So we’re just gonna- we’re gonna mirror, flip-flop it, okay? So that’s the first thing I would do. Then I would go live. Can we schedule a week where every day for like five days, it could even be four days, right? I assume Karen wants to, you know, have a strategy because she doesn’t wanna lose all of her followers.
She wants to point them somewhere, right? So my strategy would be to go live once a day for four to seven days, depending on her capacity, right? She’s getting off of social because she doesn’t have a lot of capacity, so I’m not gonna force you, Karen, to go live seven days, but if you can, that would be great.
So each day you go live, we’re gonna do two things. Number one, we’re gonna give one reason we’re getting off social media. So these lives are gonna be short. We’re thinking, you know, 5 to 10 minutes. The first few minutes, we’re just telling a story about a reason why you’re getting offline. And it could be, we could angle it, right?
You’re gonna go on YouTube and Pinterest, so a reason could be, “I’ve just found YouTube to be a better place.” The second one could be, “I’m just having so much fun over on Pinterest.” The third one could be, “I really enjoy spending time with my VIPs, AKA the people on my email list.” Do you see what I’m saying?
So go live once a day for seven days. You could also get vulnerable with the reasons. “I’m burnt out.” That’s a reason. Tell a story around it, right? And then what I want you to do to incentivize people to move over to the email list is give them some kinda deal. Now, this doesn’t mean like discount all your stuff to a dollar or anything, but you could bundle things.
For this week only, I’m hosting, you know, Instagram Be Gone bundle or something like that, right? And so you’re pointing to get on the email list because the only way they can get that bundle of products, that sale, whatever you decide, is to get on the list. Then I want you to turn, and Instagram already does this for you, but turn that live into a post.
The only thing you’ll have to update, like, is the cover, and I want you to update that cover so that it looks nice on your feed. Again, this doesn’t have to be perfect. What you do already looks good. And then make a proper caption that says like, “Hey, I’m leaving Instagram and in honor of freeing myself from endless content creation, I put together this bundle or whatever, right?
So pointing people to that link in bio from there. And then I would just make one final post and put that in there where you’re explaining your departure. Maybe you put a cover that says like, “Seven reasons I’m leaving Instagram,” right? That I would click on, right? Especially if it was pinned to the very top instead of like, “Hey, join my newsletter.”
Nobody cares. But they do care about the seven reasons you’re leaving Instagram, right? Especially if I’m on Instagram and I just discovered you. So put those seven reasons. Maybe it’s a carousel post. So you know what I’m saying. Carousel post is where it’s a bunch of pictures, and I can click through, and each one has, like, the different reason, okay?
And pin that. Explain your departure in the comments. And then again, make sure you’ve updated that bio so people can go over to your email list.
All right, Ms. Karen, I hope this was helpful. I’m really excited for you to have all this free time away from social media so you can focus and double down on Pinterest.
I think Pinterest is really underrated right now. If y’all are sleeping on Pinterest, don’t. So I’m really excited for Karen to try that out and also to double down on YouTube, where she’s clearly seeing some results, and all of that funnels into the email list where she’s getting the most sales, which is so, so exciting.
You know I’m an email girly, so I’m excited to hear that.
Anyway, if you want me to help you out with your issue, just like Karen and all the others before her, I would love for you to go to the link in the description, it’s called SpeakPipe, and ask me a question. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be on the next episode.
Psst, are you still listening?
Quick, while Pat’s away, I’ve got a special little secret just for you and me. If you love this episode and want more, like a lot more, you need to get yourself into the SPI Community. You know that’s where I’m hanging out as the Director. My friend, it really is where the magic happens. You get access to the full Superfans System, you know, Pat Flynn’s entire framework for turning strangers into ride or die fans of your business that actually buy from your business, right?
We’ve got courses, resources, implementation guides. It’s all in there. Okay, okay, listen up. This is the part where you and I can get really close to your monetization goals. I do office hours inside the community. That’s right. You can bring your business questions. You can screen share. Whatever’s holding you back, we will figure it out together.
But here’s the secret. The SPI Community, normally $99 a month. But with the coupon code SECRET50, you get 50% off. That’s less than 50 bucks a month for life as long as you stay active. This deal is just for the people listening to this AskLiz episode, so don’t sleep on it, babe. Head to SmartPassiveIncome.com/2026 and use code SECRET50 at checkout.
I will see you in there.
