Some social media advice for Artists

What's up guys? In this video I will talk to you about how to grow on

social

networks and how they have helped me launch my artistic career. I want to give you

some

tips and

advice

here and there on things to keep in mind. and I think this video will be very helpful for people looking to pursue a career as an independent creator, as well as people who might be in the professional industry and want to take advantage of

social

media

to showcase their work a little. I started my Instagram account in 2018 and never gained much traction.

I've been posting fan art for quite a while and over the last year and a half or so I've been able to get anywhere from 15,000 followers to 1.2 million viewing today, so all the learning experiences I've had on social

media

are still very fresh on my mind and I want to share

some

of that with you because whether you like it or not, social media is a big part of being an artist these days for most people and it's something we've all thought about at one time or another , so I have a few key tips that I think helped me figure out most of the things I wish I knew when I started on social media, tip number one, you need to prioritize your own growth as an artist over your growth on social media.

This is something I always preach to everyone who asked me for

advice

. This is what I think isn't really talked about. enough, especially in the social media scene where people are so focused on engagement, it's always engagement, engagement, engagement, how many likes, what's the engagement ratio, what's my subscriber count, what's my lift of followers, there is too much of this looking at the numbers and not enough. On the inside it sounds extremely cheesy, but this is the number one tip I can give to anyone looking to pursue a career in social media. You have to remember that when you remove everything, when you remove all the fluff, people follow you for the first time. quality of your content, that's all, if the quality of your work is not at the highest possible level, you will not get followers or engagement just by trying new things like, for example, posting at a different time, posting at a different time.

Frequency None of that will help you if you don't have the quality foundation of my social media experience. You know it's really hard to block out the distraction of looking at the engagement by thinking about what other people will like. You know this. It's something that will always be in your subconscious. It's something that you will always think about when you draw, but you just have to work on making sure that you don't let that take higher priority than your own growth as an artist. So here is my personal story. Well, when I started my account, I was making a lot of fan art.

I was concentrating on characters. I was trying to find characters that I think would be very popular. I was looking for. You know, I make a target. background or I make a color background, I make light or dark, what gets more likes, what gets more shares, what gets more followers. I was focused on that and I was thinking, well, what's the next character that could make it really popular with most people? I'll know and that's something I focused on for a couple of years and was pretty stuck, but what really clicked for me was when I decided, you know what the heck?

I'm going to focus on myself and my own learning. I know I have a long way to go in my own skills so I'm going to work on this and I'm going to try to express myself in an authentic way and that's where the paintings I have today come from. people can really connect with it, you know, I really pour my heart into this. I put a lot of feelings and emotions behind them based on, you know, very raw human emotions and experiences and they are things that matter to me and in The Process I'm learning that too.

I'm trying to develop my skills because I know I'm not the best artist I can be. I know I can improve and that's something I want to work on. It just so happens that people connect that way more than with artificial attempts to drive engagement, in short, don't do it for the 'gram, do it for you, don't let anyone tell you what to do, here's a snapshot of your priorities, okay, growing as an artist growing on social media this is the first thing, I think this leads perfectly to our second point, you know, talking about prioritizing yourself, you also have to invest in yourself, I think if the art is something you want to take seriously, this is something you want to do. every day and this is something that you are going to make money and make a living, you have to invest in yourself and for me when I started doing this I was a broke college student so it was very difficult for me. but I decided to buy a wacom cintiq pro 24.

This is a painful memory, but it basically wiped out my entire bank account, but I told myself this is what I wanted to do and I wanted to do it well, so I had to invest in my equipment and my setup to make it as comfortable as possible for me so that I actually sit here and want to work now. Do you need top of the line gear like this? I don't believe it. Okay, you can start with something very basic, but the point is that if there is something in your setup that is stopping you from moving forward, if your computer crashes every 20 minutes using Photoshop, invest in yourself, this is something you want to do, this is something that will eventually pay off.

For now, hopefully it will pay off later, but this is also one of the things I personally learned from this trip. You really have to invest a lot in the things you are going to do. I bought an expensive camera that I shouldn't have been able to afford. I bought an expensive microphone that I shouldn't have been able to afford. But you know, after working countless hours, all these things have paid off and I am very happy. that my past self decided to invest in my present health and I have been personally working with wacom products for my entire career in digital art, so if you watch any of my YouTube videos, I'm either working on this big boy or having them in the background and Honestly, it's an absolute honor to meet the Wacom team and be able to work with them, it's like a childhood dream come true.

You know, the point is that if there's something in your setup that's holding you back, whether it's your drawing tablet, your table, your computer, your camera, or your microphone, invest in yourself make sure you give yourself the opportunity to succeed and that brings us to the point. Number three is to maintain consistency. I think this is one of the hardest things to do to be a social media artist because you're working on your own schedule, so technically you can do whatever you want, technically you can post whenever you want, but to be successful you have to do it constantly.

I think consistency plays a very important role. By separating the people who quit mid-stream and the people who are successful, now when I say consistency I mainly mean consistency in your schedule, you have to hold yourself accountable to a good schedule, okay, you have to find something that works for you. you. Do you want to post every other day? Do you want to publish every three days? Do you want to upload a video to YouTube every week or every two weeks? Find something that works for you and run with it and make sure you stick with it.

Responsible for the schedules you set, for example when I upload a YouTube video, I currently do so every Tuesday and always upload at 11:45am. Eastern time. Now, is there any rhyme or reason to that time? It doesn't really give me a bigger commitment not really, it's just the moment I chose for myself that allows me to really take responsibility. Having that 11 45 mark there gives me a solid deadline that I could work towards, it's something I use to stay disciplined and stay active. schedule on Instagram, I am posting every three days and I am posting at exactly 12:00 p.m.

Now, does that mean that you have to publish at that time and not on specific days? It's actually something I fell into, it's a schedule that I just made up for myself sometimes you forget, sometimes life gets busy, but having the schedule here you know, writing it on your calendar or setting an alarm, just It allows you to stick to it, there's no room for excuses and we have no room for laziness, but you also want to take care of your mental health, so if something is really stressing you out, it's probably time to rework that schedule.

You know, find something a little more manageable so you're not stressed all the time. time trying to meet a deadline to a point where it actually has a negative effect on the quality of your work and speaking of consistency, there is one thing that I think really negatively impacts many people's schedules and that is low commitment to your work. it's something you really have to work on yourself, you have to do some mental gymnastics to get over these obstacles, uh, because it's hard, sometimes you put up a post, uh, and it does absolutely horribly, it just completely fails. , is it okay and you thought I was going to do it right, this will happen all the time, this will happen over and over again, you just have to get to a point where you accept this and move on, you really have to toughen yourself up so that every time you stumble you will Get up.

You have to understand that in the grand scheme of things this is just a small setback. This is not something that is going to derail your entire artistic career. The fact that this post or this video didn't do as well as you'd hoped. It's important to bounce back, get back at it, be consistent, and stay on that schedule so you can come back and slap that failure in the face. I'm promoting violence, but what can you do if I haven't covered those points? I think there's another one that was really important to me personally that really rounds out all of this and that is setting your goals.

Okay, you have to have goals, you have to know what you're working on for me personally. My goals were what I eventually want. This social media thing will grow enough for me to be able to sustain myself and that goal is something you would call a long-term goal or a stretch goal. It's something that's not going to happen in a very short period of time, it's going to take a long time. a lot of work and it's something you can work on to achieve the benefit of having a goal like this you can work backwards so for me personally I knew I wanted to do this so I looked at other

artists

who were already doing what I was doing. wanted to do, I took notes on how they make money, how they generate content, what type of content they make, how often they create their content, and what type of work they do in general, and I was able to reverse engineer that into a plan for myself to know that's cool at a certain time, I'd probably want to sell some prints at a certain time, I'd probably want to teach people on Patreon at a certain time, maybe I'll make an art book, you know, things like that that you could implement into your trip working backwards from your end goal so that you can eventually reach that goal and the thing is, having a goal is great for your motivation when it was a much smaller account that I found sometimes when I was posting. and I would get little engagement and I would be like, okay, why am I doing this?

I'm not even making any money, but I'm putting a lot of effort into it, you know, it's very discouraging, it could be very demotivating, but you know, sometimes. You just have to remind yourself that this is what I'm doing it for, that at the end of the day that's the goal I want to achieve and every single thing I do right now, whether it's a success or a failure, is just another stepping stone toward the ultimate goal I want to achieve, so these are the top tips I can offer to people who are trying to get into social media, whether you are an independent creator or a professional artist who wants to use social media.

These are some of the things I wish I knew when I started trying to grow on social media. Well, now you guys know about it, so I hope it makes your life a little easier, but honestly, I think social media is an amazing thing. take advantage of if you're an artist, you know this opens up so many possibilities for me personally. I didn't know anyone in the art industry. I didn't have a way to get into the art industry. There was no other way to get my work recognized by people other than posting on social media and now that I have done this I have increased my presence on social media now people know who I am.

I have met so many people that I would never have been able to meet otherwise. talk to you, you know, like other great creators that back then I never would have thought I'd talk to in my life and you know, here we are, we're just talking to each other, you know, getting to know each other and it's actually open. There are so many doors for me, you know, with new opportunities to work on big projects, really exciting things and also meeting other people in the industry and getting inside information on a lot of these things, so social media is definitely something.

That's a very viable thing to use if you're an artist or creative of any kind. It's a great platform to promote yourself, for people to know you and for you to potentially reach new opportunities and For me, personally, you know, prioritize myself, invest in myself and be consistent withthis and getting to where I am today, is something that I am very grateful to my past self for doing this. dream job for me and if your dream job is working as a content creator or your dream job is working in the industry but having a good presence on social media, you know like a ethan becker aaron blase snatty ilya kuchenov all the professionals who Turn out to take advantage of social media to do other fun projects for themselves, there are so many possibilities with this and if that It's something that really catches your attention, you're that person you look at and say that's my dream job.

Go ahead, that's all I have to say, you won't regret trying, what you will regret is not trying. That's it for this video I made specifically for Lightbox Expo 2021, so a big thank you to Bobby Chu. for inviting me to lightbox this year and a big thank you to wacom for reaching out to me, knowing me and being great people who make really great products that have helped me a lot in my artistic journey, so with that being said, I hope This video shed some light on the social networks and everything that has to do with social networks.

I hope this makes things a little less overwhelming for you and I look forward to seeing you all on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter or whatever. that you guys want to use thanks for watching this video and I'll see you in the next one. I still remember the first day they sent me the cintiq pro 24. I thought: what have I done? Do you know? looking at my bank account looking at this looking back at my bank account looking at this I was like this better work sam otherwise you're kinda screwed it worked bet on yourself guys invest in yourself believe in yourself, you have this