Artists on Instagram: Don't Make This Mistake

Hello, thank you for clicking on

this

video. I'm Brooke Cormier and today I want to talk to you about my experience with Instagram as an artist. I have what you would call a love-hate relationship with Instagram, on the one hand it has helped me enormously. in my artistic career and I probably wouldn't be where I am today without it and on the other hand, I hate it, let me explain, last year, in 2022, I set a goal to reach 250,000 followers on Instagram and put things in perspective, I had about of 215,000 at that time. I invested a lot of my time in achieving

this

goal.

I was researching the best ways on how to grow your audience and following crazy suggestions like posting four times a day and doing as many times as possible. reels as humanly possible. I followed all the rules making a few of my own along the way and on December 17, 2022 I texted this screenshot to my family abroad. I did and guess what my life didn't change in any way. more money than I had before my art didn't magically improve. Somehow I'm not the best version of myself. In fact, worrying so much about this number has really taken a toll on my self-esteem, especially since I've been losing recently. a ton of followers for whatever reason and now I'm short of that 250,000 goal once again, which is the ebbs and flows of the social media hustle, my friends, I have to constantly remind myself of the number one rule I learned from being a freelance artist on Instagram and that's quality over quantity, as cliché as it may sound, it's incredibly true.

This old saying applies to two different aspects of your social media presence: one, your content, your audience, is extremely difficult as an artist. be constantly posting content because most of the time the content you're posting is the work of art you're creating and you can only create so much work before the last drop of your creativity withers and you start looking like this. It's crazy to think that it was okay for me to post four times a day, that it's a full-time job, and that I was devoting hours a day to my online presence. I would sit on the couch and edit reels.

I was looking in my files. for old paintings that I could repost, I was scrolling through social media looking for relatable content that I could post to my stories and searching Google for ways to beat the algorithm, it was exhausting and to be honest, although I reached my goal last year, I feel disappointed. that I put so much emphasis on quantity over quality if I had dedicated those work hours to painting instead of focusing on growing my audience. Not only would I have more money in the bank but most importantly I would be further along in the development of my artistic practice, okay now let's talk about your audience, breaking news, popularity doesn't pay the bills, in other words , the type of people who follow you are much more important than the number of people who follow you during my time creating real after real afterward.

Real after real. Some went viral from this. I got thousands of followers at once, which was really crazy, but the problem here was that some of these reels didn't even feature my art, they were just fun videos from the artist. life or relatable content for the struggling artist and the followers I got from these posts weren't even necessarily interested in my artwork itself, but simply followed me because they wanted a laugh or, at worst, me. they followed because they thought it was objectively attractive. I'm about to rant a little here people who comment you're in my photos a lot more in what world is that a compliment listen I had nothing to do with this faith and other than putting on a little

make

up now and then for a video of YouTube I put very little effort into this my art, on the other hand, I put a lot of effort, in fact, I have dedicated years of my life to promoting my artistic talent and for someone to tell me that. my beauty is more impressive than my artwork, frankly the slap in the face is just a bit of food for thought, so are these the kind of people I really want in my audience?

That's a rhetorical question, but the answer is no, the kind of people I want. In my audience are the people who truly support the work I'm doing, whether it's buying artwork and funding my dreams or just writing a nice comment with encouraging words to keep motivating me to keep summarizing quality over quantity, it's like that. It is important that you dedicate your time and energy to growing as an artist instead of growing on social media when you prioritize the quality of your work. Keep up the good work and so will the right people. In my opinion, Instagram has changed when I started my artistic Instagram account.

It was in 2015-2016. Man, those were the Glory Days. I'm talking juicy organic growth just from posting a couple of times a week. Now it seems like you have to post 20 times a week and just pray to the Instagram gods for mercy on your soul. In my experience, and I'm sure many people can relate, it's getting harder and harder to grow on this platform and it seems like the people who follow me barely see my posts to begin with, they don't understand it. I'm wrong. I think Instagram is a great platform for

artists

to post their work and it's certainly helped me in the past, but the only way I'm using it to

make

money now is by directing people to my website. from my Instagram page and then I hope they buy some of my artwork so I can keep making it and if people barely see my posts and they don't pay me for the amount of likes, views and followers I have. so I just don't see how the effort is really worth the reward anymore, which is why I've directed my efforts to You Guessed It YouTube with YouTube.

I actually have the opportunity to get paid for the content I post and I also think it fosters a more genuine connection with my audience because you know who is going to watch a 30 minute video of me making jewelry if they don't care about my job or me and Guess what your girl just monetized on YouTube, okay, and so far I've made a whopping 3.38 cents from my videos and you know what feels great and to be clear, I'm not leaving Instagram. I will continue to post and I am very grateful for the support I receive from my Instagram followers and I am also not saying that you should leave Instagram and move to YouTube if that is not what you want to do.

What I'm saying is that I just rearranged my priorities and that's for the sake of my artwork, my livelihood, and my mental health. I try to live my life without regrets, so I'm not going to dwell on the past and think about all the time I could have dedicated to my artwork instead of obsessing over my followers on Instagram, but I hope that if you are an aspiring or a full time artist maybe you can learn from my

mistake

and focus on what really matters and that is your art, don't let the numbers get you down and I need to listen to my own wisdom from time to time, thank you very much.

So much to watch this video I hope you liked it I hope you found it interesting, educational, entertaining throughout the whole thing and if you feel bad about social media then guess what, you are not alone, subscribe, like the video, maybe comment how many followers. Have you lost on Instagram in the last six months? I'm joking, you don't need to tell me that I hope you're gaining followers, but the right kind. I wish you all the success in the world of happiness in the world. I hope you're having a great day and I'm sending you good vibes.

I'm Brooke Cormier and I'll see you next time.