Post Less, and Your Best Work Looks Better

Imagine an interior designer named Celeste Harrow who posts on Instagram nearly every day. She posts tile samples, a half-finished bathroom, and her coffee at the flower market. She posts a video asking followers to vote between two sofas. In March, she also posted the library she finished for Mrs. Oduya, the room she is proudest of.

In April, Mrs. Sorensen admires the library at Mrs. Oduya’s house, and Mrs. Oduya gives her Celeste’s name. That evening, Mrs. Sorensen opens Celeste’s Instagram. She scrolls past 30 posts from the last month before she finds the library. Most of what she sees is tile samples, jobs in progress, and Celeste’s own day.

She closes the app thinking that Celeste is pleasant and busy, and that the library might have been a lucky room. She asks two other designers to quote for her sitting room. She hires the one whose page shows a year of finished rooms.

Suppose instead that Celeste posts every other Monday. Each post is a finished room she would want a new client to judge her by. Under it, she writes a few sentences about one choice she made. She has hidden the samples, the coffee, and the half-finished jobs from her page.

Mrs. Sorensen opens the same account and finds 26 posts from the past year. Each one is a finished room, and the library is the fourth from the top. She writes to Celeste that evening to ask about her sitting room.

Celeste designed the same library both times. What changed was the posts around it. In the first version, the library was one good post among many ordinary ones, and Mrs. Sorensen judged them all together. In the second, every post was work of the same standard as the library.

So post less often, and post only work you would want a new client to judge you by. Here is why ordinary posts pull your best work down, and what three professionals found.

People judge a set of work by its average, not its total

In 2012, Kimberlee Weaver, Stephen Garcia, and Norbert Schwarz published seven studies on what they called the presenter’s paradox. People who put together a presentation tend to add every good point they have. They assume that each one adds to their case.

The people judging the presentation do something different. They form one overall impression, which works more like an average than a total. So a good point added to an excellent one can lower the overall judgment.

In one study, people saw an advertisement for a hotel. Some saw only its pool, rated five stars. Others saw the same pool and the hotel’s restaurant, rated three stars. Those who saw both would pay about $92 a night. Those who saw only the pool would pay about $109. When other people were asked to write the advertisement, 72% put in both.

Those were hotel advertisements, and the step to your Instagram is the course’s own. Here is the step. A client who scrolls your account forms one impression of it. Each half-finished job and each post about your day is the three-star restaurant. It is not bad, and it still pulls down what the client thinks of your best work.

That is how showing too much makes good work look ordinary. The client does not count your good posts. They take in everything at once, so the ordinary posts drag the level down.

A photographer cut his portfolio from 80 photos to 20, and the jobs got better

Scott Kelby is a photographer who writes books about photography. In 2009, he wrote on his blog about a photographer’s portfolio that a friend had asked him to look at. It had four pages of portraits. On the first page, he thought, “Hey, this guy is really good.” By the fourth, he thought, “Man, this guy has some pretty lame stuff.”

He left thinking that the photographer was just OK, because most of the 80 photos were not that good. If the portfolio had shown only the first page, Kelby wrote, he would have left thinking the photographer was great.

Kelby had been through the same problem with a photographer friend the year before. The friend had 80 photos in his portfolio, all in one style. He told Kelby that he could not cut them down to 20. The next day, the friend called and asked Kelby to do it for him.

Kelby kept the best 20. The friend was reluctant, and he defended a few of the photos that were cut. Then he took his portfolio down to 20. A few weeks later, he called to say it was “the best thing he had done for his photography in years.” He was getting “not only more offers for work, but better quality jobs as well.”

Kelby saw from the outside what the hotel study measured. The fourth page lowered what he thought of the first. The friend’s best photos were nearly all on his first page already. What changed was that clients no longer saw the other 60, and the offers got better.

A planner for royal weddings has no Instagram, and says that suits his clients

Alex Fitzgibbons runs Fait Accompli, a wedding planning firm whose clients include the Prince and Princess of Wales. In 2023, the magazine Spear’s asked him what it takes to attract clients like his.

“We don’t do any PR, we don’t do any marketing, we don’t have Instagram,” he said. “That probably means we’re better suited to some clients than others.”

He did not say who the others are. Spear’s suggests they are celebrities who want their weddings in the tabloids. The magazine also writes that clients at this level often want to stop their planners from using their names to promote themselves.

Here is the course’s view of what that means for a feed. A client who guards their privacy looks at your posts to see what you share about other clients’ homes and parties. A feed full of them tells that client that their own home could be next. So post fewer clients’ jobs, and a private client finds it easier to trust you. That is part of being known for keeping quiet.

Fitzgibbons can do without Instagram because his firm is long established and its clients include royalty. A professional still building a name has fewer people saying it. So the course does not suggest closing your account. It suggests showing less on it.

Why posting more in a slow month goes wrong

Imagine a personal stylist named Romilly Vance who has a slow February. She worries that clients will forget her. So she posts every day. She posts her own outfit, a corner of her closet, a poll about spring colors, and a shoot from three years ago.

That month, a client gives Romilly’s name to a friend, Mrs. Teller. Mrs. Teller opens Romilly’s account and finds her in her own clothes most days. The two client makeovers Mrs. Teller heard about are a long scroll down. Mrs. Teller thinks Romilly seems more interested in her own style than in her clients’. She books another stylist.

Romilly’s mistake was posting more to fill a quiet month. Each new post was ordinary, so each one lowered what Mrs. Teller thought of the makeovers.

The version that works keeps Romilly’s usual pace. In February, she posts one finished look for a client who has given permission. She adds a few sentences about why the look works for that client. She spends the rest of the month on the clients she has.

Posting less will not make clients forget you

Many service professionals worry that if they post less, clients will forget them. The apps seem to reward whoever posts most, and a quiet feed can feel like a closed shop.

Shlomo Rotberg is a wedding photographer and videographer in Baltimore. In 2022, he wrote about leaving social media on the blog of a photo-editing company. He joined Instagram partly because other photographers were on it. He spent a lot of time making his profile into a mosaic of photos, because “likes” seemed important.

Then he hired a company to manage his accounts, and the accounts began to cost him money. “I realized that 90% of my work was direct referrals either from previous clients or as a freelancer for others,” he wrote. His print ads and social media were “topping $600 a month and for only a tiny amount of bookings.”

So without warning, he deactivated his accounts. After four years, he wrote, “my overall volume of work has gone up as predicted.” He now shoots 50 to 100 weddings a year.

His Instagram is active again, and his staff post his photos regularly. “It doesn’t hurt to have an account to share what you’re really proud of,” he wrote. He also wrote that he is not suggesting that anyone quit social media all at once.

Rotberg stopped altogether, which the course does not suggest. A long gap can make a client wonder whether you are still working. Still, four years with no posts did not cost him work, because his clients came through people. Where he ended up is what this lesson suggests: a steady account that shows only work you are proud of.

How to post less and show only your best work

1. Open your main account and look at your posts from the last month. Next to each one, write “best” or “other.” A best post is work you would want a new client to judge you by. Other posts include jobs in progress, your own day, polls, old work posted again, and booking notices.
2. Set a pace you can keep for a year, such as one post every two weeks. Put the dates in your calendar. In a slow month, post on your usual day and no more.
3. Before every post, ask yourself one question. Would I want a new client to see this post and nothing else? If the answer is no, do not post it. For example, a home organizer would post a finished pantry, and not the pile of boxes from the morning.
4. Hide every post on your account that fails the question. On Instagram, “Archive” takes a post off your page without deleting it. For example, a dog walker might hide his photos of muddy paws. He keeps the posts about dogs that learned to walk calmly.
5. Cut your website down the same way. Kelby suggests 20 or 24 photos for one kind of work. Keep the jobs that show the work you want to do next. For example, a caterer whose page shows 60 events might keep the 15 seated dinners she is proudest of.
6. Leave your own day out of your posts. Your coffee, your car, and your busy week count toward what a client thinks of you, like any other ordinary post. For example, a music teacher posts a student’s recital piece, not her own practice warm-up.
7. Ask a client for permission before you post their job, and post fewer clients’ jobs than you have permission for. For example, a florist can ask, “May I post one photo of the tables, with no faces and no house?”
8. In each post, say one choice you made and why, in a few sentences. For example, a coach might write that he moved a client’s hard conversations to Monday mornings, when she has the most energy.

Next: You will see what to do the first time you say your new price out loud, and in the seconds after.