Building a Social Media Presence with No Budget

[PotooGryphon]

I'm definitely going to like, share, and comment the **** out of this post. Thanks for the helpful info <3

[michaelson]

I'm definitely going to like, share, and comment the **** out of this post. Thanks for the helpful info <3

Thanks!

You should post some tips too, I think you're doing a great job on twitter. You're very visible on my feed.

...I am terrible at twitter. I mainly only look at it when I'm using the restroom... so when you see the staff account retweeting then... just kidding!

[PotooGryphon]

You should post some tips too, I think you're doing a great job on twitter. You're very visible on my feed.

Oh well, tee hee

Pretty much the same tips apply to Twitter too. I think most people just want to follow an actual person and not a spam bot. Sharing a bit of yourself on all your social media profiles is a big plus, if you can, however for the sake on my own sanity, I've kept to being me on my top 2 most active profiles and being a spam bot on the rest of them.

Twitter, for me, has also been a GREAT place to network with an amazingly supportive webcomic community. Every weekend, there's are comic chat events that happen, where we gather to swap tips, self-promote, and mingle. Totally recommend it to everyone. #webcomicchat (Sat 8:30 pm EST & Sun 8:30 pm CET) and #comictalk (Sun 10 am PST)

Later, I hope to rope in some friends and family members to be in charge of my other comic profiles that I'm not active on. Like my husband is active on Facebook, I should totally make him head on our Facebook page. //glares at him

...I am terrible at twitter. I mainly only look at it when I'm using the restroom... so when you see the staff account retweeting then... just kidding!

All those favs and retweets D:

[ratique]

This is so very helpful! I am one of those people with no time and even less ideas of how to use social media to my advantage.

But the way you explained it makes a lot of sense and seems possible, even with little time and no budget. I will test it for sure!

[michaelson]

This is so very helpful! I am one of those people with no time and even less ideas of how to use social media to my advantage.

I think what's most important is working for your initial social media strategy in order for it to work for you in the long run. I think the hardest part is just getting started and getting the ball rolling. Once you create enough momentum, you'll see a steady increase in engagement and reach and the rest (sort of) takes care of itself.

Twitter, for me, has also been a GREAT place to network with an amazingly supportive webcomic community. Every weekend, there's are comic chat events that happen, where we gather to swap tips, self-promote, and mingle. Totally recommend it to everyone. #webcomicchat (Sat 8:30 pm EST & Sun 8:30 pm CET) and #comictalk (Sun 10 am PST)

Yeah! I wish I was more involved in the #webcomicchat. I try to read as much of it as I can.

Whenever I tweet at people, I feel super awkward because I'm sort of talking as Tapastic and not myself.

Anyway~ I think Twitter is a really interesting and difficult social media platform to navigate around. Because of the high density of content being generated on any given feed, I feel like there's a higher tolerance to spam? But I do agree that it's a wonderful tool when it comes to creator to creator networking.

Later, I hope to rope in some friends and family members to be in charge of my other comic profiles that I'm not active on. Like my husband is active on Facebook, I should totally make him head on our Facebook page. //glares at him

That's really the dream B)

[Dranif]

This helps a lot. Thanks, Michael.

Basically... put yourself out there. Even if you're not comfortable socializing in person (ME), you can create an online persona that's full of confidence or snarky witticisms.

I've been trying this really hard for a while now. I'm so used to avoiding people due to issues I've had with others IRL in the past that trying to create an online persona that shows an overly confident (and not weary of others) side of myself that's practically nonexistent is difficult.
Sure, I seem confident and (to an extent) social during #webcomicchat, but any other time I find it difficult. But hey, at least I'm trying.

[michaelson]

I've been trying this really hard for a while now. I'm so used to avoiding people due to issues I've had with others IRL in the past that trying to create an online persona that shows an overly confident (and not weary of others) side of myself that's practically nonexistent is difficult.Sure, I seem confident and (to an extent) social during #webcomicchat, but any other time I find it difficult. But hey, at least I'm trying.

I'm glad that you're trying, that's something to be proud of!

I do think it's difficult to create an online persona and interact with people that you know in real life - but it's definitely important to frame the discussion in the right way. It's like, "Hey, I made this thing and I'm super proud of it. Would you be willing to support me by telling someone about it?" You'd be surprised by how many people are willing to help and also how much help they can provide.

Kwon Hyuk Chu, who created Green Smile and is currently doing this really awesome series called XINK3R joined Tapastic when we first launched. I remember asking him for a quick shout out, and he went above and beyond, going on a bunch of podcasts and being huge advocates for us.

I reached out to my old high school art teacher, and she showed her entire class (got a few them to start some comics too!).

The point being, putting yourself out there is really brave, and I think people are happy to reward bravery.

Keep up the good work!

[PotooGryphon]

Has anyone tried IFTTT.com? (stands for If This Then That)

It's a site where you hook up all your social media profiles to it and then make connections.

So on, there are a lot of useful "Recipes" on the site to help automate online activity.

[jacintawibowo]

Tapastic has an FB page? :0
lemme just like this page and fix this oversight :V

So you have to diversify your posts. If you are updating weekly with comics, you should definitely have those as link posts, but build separate image based posts around it throughout the week.

I need to do this sooo much more on the facebook fanpage >__>

[jmhenry]

I guess it's worth one more attempt to make facebook work for me. :/

I did notice that images I posted up on my page got more attention than any links could. Should I just post sample pages and then link to my site?

[michaelson]

I did notice that images I posted up on my page got more attention than any links could. Should I just post sample pages and then link to my site?

You sort of have to figure out what works best for you. I think worrying about click through initially is less important than fostering engagement because that is what is ultimately going to increase your overall reach. So I'd say if you are posting sample pages, make sure they're engaging - try to push your readers to comment, like and share.

You want to start having readers commit to actions because that directly translates to growth.

I need to do this sooo much more on the facebook fanpage >__>

Yeah, I think most people with facebook pages link dump often, which is fine. It definitely has a purpose and keeps things uniform, but I don't think that scales that well in terms of growth. You should link to your facebook page so we can take a look!

[jacintawibowo]

Yeah, I think most people with facebook pages link dump often, which is fine. It definitely has a purpose and keeps things uniform, but I don't think that scales that well in terms of growth. You should link to your facebook page so we can take a look!

Yeah I noticed an increase in likes when I started mixing the posts up between links and images. I need to do that more! Oh and here's my FB: https://www.facebook.com/JesnCin

[jonufele]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[fanyart]

Thank you so much for all this info, @michaelson ! I'm quite a bit behind the times when it comes to social media (just now I learned how to send a FB message! X'D ). I'm the least socializing person in real life so even making some presence here on Tapastic took a lot of courage, but it was thanks to my supportive readers. (Tapastic was the first site I became active on after years of not doing anything online).

I'm still most active here on Tapastic because I feel safe here somehow >.> But I've been trying to work out Twitter and this info really helps!

The idea of creating an online persona is very interesting, I think it's what happened to me because I still can't understand how I can be so "sociable" on this site

[meriamber]

Awesome tips! I currently use Bit.Ly but haven't really tracked anything using a spreadsheet and don't schedule posts either (I schedule them manually by writing them down in my diary to post on the day :P). I noticed that image posts tend to work the best on Facebook and Twitter too, they make your page look nice and colourful

I might try that spreadsheet idea, likely not forever, but for a period of time to see whether I'm on track or not with posts.

[Jrej]

This was great advice on using social media.
I had a hard time figuring it out at the beginning.
But I started conversations with fellow creators and I really had a lot of fun.

I don't make as much stats and experiments but I simply try to be a part of the webcomic community. Makes friends and see what's out there.
Hopefully people want to know more about myself and what I do in return!

[fanyart]

Ummm, can I ask for help with Facebook? Everything I do is shown on the timeline, how can I disable it at once? (I don't get this at all, who wants to be notified that I changed my profile photo? :/ quickly regretting the decision to revive my FB page)

[michaelson]

Don't forget that your comic must be good and interesting in order to achieve succcess, unfortunatelly 99,99% of the comics fail to match those two requirements, the market is so saturated with comics that getting noticed is almost impossible, your comic must be beyond good, it must be god like

I think part of the reason why it seems so saturated is because we're dealing with a relatively niche market or niche marketing circle. I think we should try and expand our horizons in terms of where we advertise and promote our own content.

I see the terms "getting noticed" a lot and it seems to imply passivity. I feel like this sort of inspires the wrong kind of mentality at times? Like, if you make good work, then one day you'll get noticed is probably not the best approach to creating a social media presence. For the most part, I think we view social media in this way because a lot of the already established creators do this with their social media accounts, just posting good content and they get a lot of likes. But what's important to think about is that there was a lot of grunt work put into establishing that type of reach and behavior.

I noticed that image posts tend to work the best on Facebook and Twitter too, they make your page look nice and colourful

Yeah, I think image based posts work the best for social media in general. One of the places that I'm really interested in is Instagram. An entirely image based posting platform. I know you can have clickable links on your profile, but other than that, it's almost impossible to funnel people to your site - YET - a lot of people use it for social media. It's fascinating!

I don't make as much stats and experiments but I simply try to be a part of the webcomic community. Makes friends and see what's out there.Hopefully people want to know more about myself and what I do in return!

Creator networking is definitely helpful!

Ummm, can I ask for help with Facebook? Everything I do is shown on the timeline, how can I disable it at once? (I don't get this at all, who wants to be notified that I changed my profile photo? quickly regretting the decision to revive my FB page)

You can hide posts from your timeline by clicking on the top right hand corner of the post and accessing the drop down menu.

[el_fury]

Yes, and it's awesome! Too bad it doesn't have any Tapastic recipes yet.

[el_fury]

Knowing peak traffic times on certain social media sites helps too! I've been using this to track peak traffic times for Tumblr. I think it's helped, though I have no data to back it up. Might be time to start using bit.ly!

And Instagram was fairly easy to figure out. People (myself included) tend to check Instagram at work, so I try to post around lunchtime. Also, it's the only platform where it's acceptable to spam hashtags. So figure out what hashtags are popular and run with it!

And take advantage of trending hashtags and try to stay ahead of the curve. On National No Bra Day I posted an "awkward no-bra hug" animation on Instagram with the hashtag #nobraday and it performed really well compared to my other posts.

Part 2 of your post really resonated with me. I'm one of those people who is embarrassed/anxious abut showing off my comics to friends and family. So I started at like 2 followers on each of these platforms and built up from there. I could easily get my content exposed to 300+ people on Facebook, but I'm so caught up in "But what if [insert super religious family member here] sees my comic about [insert potentially offensive subject here]??" that I haven't started a fan page, and may never start one. :c I thought I was the only one with that problem.