Some stuff I found helps:
- Before you even think about promotion, you need to make sure the comic you're making is as engaging as possible; the art should be as good as you can reasonably make it in the timeframe you have (and there's always room for improvement, even professionals have areas they could be better, so you should always be looking at tutorials, doing practice sketches and reading books if you're serious). The story should have a strong character or plot hook within the first few episodes. The text should be comfortable to read on mobile.
- Put lots of work into your cover. Strong contrast so it pops out, bright, eyecatching colours, at least one visible face and a good title font that fits the series and is nice and big so it's easy to read.
- Also put lots of work into all promo assets like your Tapas banner and make up some nice advertising banners.
Once you've done all of the above, then you can start thinking about promo.
- Upload your work to multiple platforms. Tapas, Webtoon, Comicfury, Dillyhub, The Duck etc. Pick at least two. Most platfoms perform better on certain platforms than others.
- Post updates weekly if at all possible for visibility.
- Promote your comic regularly on multiple social media platforms. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Reddit, Tumblr etc. You won't know where you'll get the best reactions until you try.
- Try different approaches to social media posts. Try making jokes, try using meme templates, try showing off cool panels, try summarising the story, try talking about how you make the comic. Try images, try text, try videos.
- Post on the forums and join and be active on discords like the Tapas discord and other comics discords. When posting in places like this or discord make sure you have a unique, memorable user icon and a link to your work in your profile, so it's easy to find.
