How do you feel about posting your art on social media?

[cookieroach]

Ok interesting! hope you reach 200 soon!

[Lady_T_Musings]

I love the idea of it since it can connect me to people I would never have found on locally. Audience wise, friend wise, and other content that I'm interested wise. Sure it can be nerve racking to branch out, but at the end of the day hopefully your doing what makes you happy and though your audience may change, there's always someone out there who will dig what you do (even if it's just you) haha. That's what I tell myself every time I post something that doesn't get any interaction with. It made me happy, so I try to focus on that. Everything else is icing on a moist brownie.

[cookieroach]

Seems like a good mindset. Do what you love, and if someone else can enjoy it as well that's a bonus! And for some reason I got hungry after reading your post.

[Lady_T_Musings]

It's the brownie talk. I make a brownie called the "mesolonely Brownie" that is just decadence. It's an undercooked brownie (scratch or box) with almond butter, chocolate ganache, and crumbled Oreos on top. Reserved for days where I just need a pick me up or a reward haha.

[NickRowler]

For original works, Instagram works best. For fanart, Tumblr works best. I have had little to no success on Twitter. You might have some success on Twitter with hashtag art challenges or @ tweeting smaller content creators.

[BrambleberrySquirrel]

I post my art on Twitter, Instagram and Reddit. I’ve never gotten any negative feedback amazingly. Even on stuff that wasn’t my best. Overall I think people are more positive than we give them credit for. That or just too lazy to go out of their way to be mean.

[Rhonder]

I have a weird relationship with social media (and art-based in particular).

I have no qualms about posting, general speaking. I don't mind having my work out for people to look at and potentially criticize, that's all good in my book.

But the actual process of using social media drains and tires me out lol I can't bring myself to use it frequently is a must for growth, and so it always just feels like a lot of effort to put in with very little results coming out @u@;; Especially instagram which I have a love-hate relationship with. I have a larger following there than Facebook or Twitter, but it's also the least user friendly platform. So a lot of the time if I can't be bothered to get an image ready to post on Instagram (i.e. make sure it'll crop decently to the ratio restrictions, and get it from my computer to my phone) then I just won't bother posting anywhere because my posts get like 10-20x more interaction on insta than anywhere else xD

I've as a result been on a pseudo social media hiatus kinda? I still check in and browse a bit but I've been sitting on a lot of art that I haven't posted yet because... I just can't be bothered to I've been recently focusing on just making my new comic as well as other platforms like Twitch which I suppose is social media-adjacent in some ways. Maybe once my comic gets closer to launching I'll be able to summon more energy for social media by way of necessary promotion lol

[cookieroach]

@NickRowler Thanks for the sugguestions!

@Golden_Acorn yep I think so too. I felt so silly that I worried about getting hate comments... and relief

[cookieroach]

Definitely takes a lot of work to stay active everywhere. But I think it's ok to not post everything either, and just actually work on your art. It can be so distracting and easy to be sucked into social media (at least for me). Maybe it's a good thing you can focus on your work!

[Rhonder]

Probably true! I would like to find a happy medium though. I should really get in the habit of just taking 1 or 2 WIP screenshots at the end of each work session and that would generate a fair amount of shareable content (even if not to post right away). Something I'll try to think about in the near future I used to basically do that when I would do traditional linework, but it was mroe natural somehow since I could legit just snap a photo with my phone and post right away xD

[MeltingCORE]

I do my best not to get obsessed with numbers. I feel like this can be detrimental to one's mental state. I also don't see anyone as my competition but rather my peers. That's helped me have a solid mindset when it comes to social media. With that being said, I really enjoy posting on Instagram. I tend to get a lot of feedback there and people are just so dang nice! I also enjoy Tumblr even though the only pieces that usually "take off" are my Kemetic pieces (which I'm still highly grateful for - the Kemetic community there is amazing ngl - been friends with many of them for years!) I used to have a Twitter account but this should tell you everything you need to know... I'm American. The politics got waaaaaaaay out of hand and I was seeing legit racism, sexism, etc. The site became a hellhole so I had to leave. But before I left, I enjoyed the art community there. People were generally super chill.

[cookieroach]

@Rhonder sounds like a good idea to post wips and not be perfectionist! I think seeing sketches and following someone's work process is just as interesting as the final artwork (if not more)!

@MeltingCORE I really like that thinking (peers instead of competition). I understand what you mean about twitter... but for some reason I still prefer it over instagram, it feels more like you can have a conversation there (for good or worse) compared to insta, at least for me

[MeltingCORE]

Everyone's preferences are different, no worries! Funnily enough, in terms of actual conversations the forums here are my go to place nowadays! (Also, I love your username haha.)

[domisotto]

The only thing I am worried about is indifference, when it is time to take a story down since it is not attracting any readers. This what to keep/what to delete is my biggest thing.

Like, ideally, you post, you get fans, life is beautiful. But when the situation is not ideal, it's hard to figure out the relationship with the social art sharing site. It's sort of like getting a public failure stamp if you have a lot of dead works.

I really dislike Instagram, because I feel like I am on a mute button or something & I don't like making graphics. Whenever I open it, I feel bad if I don't like everyone's posts, but I am too awkward to post anything interesting myself. Just, like, quotes... but in 2020, who cares about quotes...

[Darth_Biomech]

I feel like I'm doing something wrong since whatever I post barely gains any traction. My absolute record is a whooping 25 likes on Twitter. It vastly outstrips my usual rate of 0-3 likes.

[Shanny8]

I'll post other art stuffs that are not my comic here in the forums and on social media...for the most part, it doesnt bother me. I do post "snippets"(not full entire pics) of Patreon exclusive art that I create for my account on that site; I do create art stuffs that I can post a full pic of it.

Kind of hard for me to gauge if a piece is well received on Twitter coz I dont get many likes on it, but also- I post comic update notices or promotion- and I can see a correlation to the increase in my views here on Tapas. It's vice versa on Instagram- I can see the likes on a post, but hard for me to translate how it transfers into views/subs on here.

Since Pillowfort just started for me this year, I still feel like I'm screaming in a vacuum there; not enough eyes on that site yet...I'm trying to debate if I should put any energy into Tumblr again- I still have my account there, I just haven't posted anything since November of last year. I also think I forgot my password as well(LOL) since I havent been on there in a while.

[AmazementComics]

Man, when I first started posting stuff for our comics, all I could thing about is how well it would be received. I still do. I know it's not a good mindset, but the fact of the matter is this. So often I look at comics that have an Instagram and see that they have 1000+ followers and X amount of likes, when their level of artwork is more or less similar to mine.

Regardless, I'll still continue to post on social media, but it's a real bummer when you're not receiving at least a decent enough audience...

[Caro]

I feel like my relationship with social media has changed a lot over the course of my career. Early on I really focused a lot on instagram and tumblr (before it was on the decline) because I was really intent on making it a career and was going down the self publishing route. Then I started to get work through it too and the numbers and it was easier to sell my books and merch and everything. So back then everything I had posted felt like it had to be a engaging and shareable and only the best of the best (which admittedly wasn’t very good because I just wasn’t as good at comics as I am now!)

Now I kind of just use social media with the mindset of sharing with my friends and catching them up on what I’m working on. Occasionally my obsession with numbers kicks up again and I’ll post a little thing I know would make the rounds but then it passes and I go back to just posting whatever art I wanna post. But since I’ve amassed a relatively large following on Instagram basically any post I make is guaranteed SOME engagement and new followers.

I’ve also really started using twitter seriously this past month or so to keep in touch with a lot of my comics friends since cons are cancelled and I miss them and also because its better for industry contacts and industry chitchat and I’ve noticed that my work does a LOT better on Twitter now than it used to (compared to my first attempts years ago) even though it still feels like a relatively new platform to me (I literally just figured out the difference between quote tweets vs retweets). I also have a higher concentration of people in positions of hiring me for work on Twitter than I do on Instagram where most of my followers are just readers so I’m less concerned about making big spreadable posts and getting my numbers up high and more concerned about uhhh who I could approach for work (COVID hit my finances hard)

[a.g.meade]

Ah, social media. I don't have any issues posting my stuff on Instagram or Deviant Art. My art used to get more interaction when it was worse, so I know it isn't about quality but instead about algorithms and understanding how social media works in general (which I have tried and have given up on). That probably sounds defeatist, but I assure you that it isn't - it's actually been quite good for my mental health! There's nothing more frustrating than putting all this time and effort into artworks and researching hashtags and social media strategies, and then... nothing changes.

These days, I pretty much use both platforms once every couple of weeks to post random OC illustrations... and chibis! Who doesn't love chibis?!

[erma]

I used to be eager to share my work on social media, but lately the thought of it makes me nervous. I'm trying to work through these fears and am starting to post again, though. My anxiety has skyrocketed during the quarantine. Oh boy...

I was very active on Twitter a couple years ago, and I started to notice that every day there was a new 'hot take' about things artists shouldn't do - whether it was about technique, composition, character ideas etc. Maybe it was just the accounts I was following, but it also felt like there was a lot of drama going on. I ended up quitting. I went into a huge art slump in 2019 and deleted nearly all of my art accounts because I didn't feel like I was good enough.

I recently started posting on Instagram again, with a fresh account, and I reach out to my friends for critique more now. The content I post is mostly stuff from my design portfolio. I still haven't fully gained back the confidence to regularly post things about my comic or my characters, because of the fear that I'll accidentally do something wrong or that people will find my stuff annoying. So far though, things have been going very well, and the fear is slowly starting to feel less intense.