How do I not feed so bad as offlane initiator (axe, slardar etc)?

I'm trying to learn offlane but if my team falls behind at all I just end up feeding like crazy. Just played an Axe game where whenever my team grouped up and I blink initiated, I would just get instantly melted before my team really had a chance to follow up. Often we'd kill my call target but i'd just immediately die after. I ended up with twice as much deaths as the next highest death player on my team.

How should I be thinking of blink + stun combos? Should I only be blinking small distances if I think there's more than 1 enemy? Should I be hitting supports or carries? I know this will mostly be situation specific but i'm looking for some general advice because I need to stop feeding so bad and i'm afraid if I try it on my own without advice i'm going to end up just going in the opposite direction of not blinking enough and also being useless.