I'm having trouble seeing interaction on Twitter and such and I wanna know if you have similar issues and how your getting attention towards your social media.
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Aug '23last reply
Aug '23- 13
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I honestly don't.
The only way I get engagement is when I shitpost and joke around with friends or do commissions for them.
The only other times I get interaction is when I do fanart, but mostly because, I do engage with other individuals and fangirl over stuff together
Then the rest of my stuff receives almost no likes nor comments
Honestly, the best thing you can do is 1- follow trends, and 2- cater to a specific audience.
For 1, I don’t mean be a sellout, though honestly that works too lol, if that’s the route you want to take. But look at the trends going on in social media. For example- Instagram. Instagram is HUGE on pushing reels right now. I’ve gained 300+ followers the last 2 weeks and just hit over 1k because of the reels i’ve been posting. Most of them have been getting anywhere between 1k-35k views and hundreds of likes. The reason they do is because I often use a popular audio in the art community at the time or I do fun little trends that are going on. My most popular reel (as of right now) has gotten 35k views and almost 4k likes. All I did was use an audio that was like “artists, show an example of what you consider to be a ‘quick sketch” which was popular at the time. Took me 35 seconds to film and post in total (which is super annoying because my art i spend hours on barely breaks 60 likes sometimes lmao but what can you do). I gained 150 followers from that single reel alone. Super easy stuff man. Just know what’s trending in the moment and have some fun with it. Even just a 15 second speed paint with a popular song at the time will probably break 100 likes.
2- find an audience and stick with it. This is probably the best way to build a dedicated following, but also the hardest to deal with as an artist, especially if you want to explore other options in the future. Most accounts I know of with decent to high followings either consistently draw fan art of a very popular piece of media, or cater their art towards a niche group of people. Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail fan art is huge, for example. If your art is decent and you draw fan art for the games, you’ll probably get some pretty decent recognition by the community. Same goes for things like certain animes (JJK is a big one right now. Gojo and Suguru fan art blow up on every platform), cutesy fashion art, and the furry community. You’ve got to really find your niche on social media. But the obvious downside to this is that if you decide to stray from that niche, you’ll probably lose followers and likes and views will drop dramatically.
The hardest part to posting art on social media is that if you’re posting something that is perhaps more personal to you like oc art, works you’ve done in school, realism of people you know, etc, you’re going to have a heck of a lot harder time finding that audience you want. It’s going to take a lot more promoting, advertising, and connecting with other creators to build that audience.
This is a complicated matter... most of us need to be very active interacting with other ppl, liking their work or leaving a comment and such. I never had a magical wand (even though that'd be really helpful) throughout all of these years YOU have to be the active one in order to get traction to your work.
Getting attention on social media and getting attention on Tapas are quite different things in my experience.
On social media, people like content that's easy to share. Keep it as divorced from wider continuity as possible, and share panels, jokes, illos and memes that are easy to consume without deeper knowledge of your story and characters. It's a totally valid tactic to promote based on what archetypes are in your series, or what identities it showcases. Got a comic about a gay autistic person? Get on those hashtags. You're a south asian creator? Get on those hashtags. People tend to curate what they share on social media based on the identity they want to project, or things they think their followers will react to, so you have to play to that.
On Tapas, it's about an engaging reader experience, and a sense of connection to your work and community around people following it. You want polished presentation, a regular update schedule and strong characters. Make sure every update has something that a person could comment on, like a character moment, plot reveal, a joke, something sexy, something scary, something relateable etc. Then try to respond to comments as much as you can. Say something funny in your creator comments under the page to encourage a casual vibe where people can be silly; it helps!
Generally on both, try to seek connections with other creators. Offer help and advice, or feedback, draw people fanart, give out genuine compliments and tell people "well done!" for hitting milestones. It's incredible how many people undermine themselves by being mean and bitter to popular creators because they're jealous, when if they were just nice to them, recognised the common humanity, and how lonely comics can be when a person is making them to a high level of polish, they'd be making friends in high places that might some day help them out.
I'm sure the fascists, theocrats, and white supremacists that have taken over the site appreciate every artist who is still there offering them art.
I'm planning to talk more about how I'm making my comic on FB and TikTok. I read that talking about our work, how we do things ecc. can be more engaging than pushing the final comic/novel over the possible audince. Being passionate about it will inspire people who will maybe take a look at what I draw.
Twitter is a very community-driven place that takes a long time to build up a following & also doesn't react well if all you do is promote your own stuff -- not saying that's what OP does but it's a common mistake I see users make.
I made most of my creator friends via Twitter, when we'd hop into others' threads when discussing comic, hobby, or pet-related stuff.
^ Honestly this is social media marketing summed up 
I was once guilty of thinking all I needed to do to gain a following was to draw good and post it online. If you already have a following and/or are a god-tier artist that may work, but most of us have to put in a lot of work (which is harder the fresher you are).
If you're active, others are more likely to see your posts = the more you seem like a genuine human being = the more likely they'll feel comfortable to begin interacting with you. Basically Friend Making 101.
Also by being active, you'll learn not only the memes/trends/algorithmns (ex: the majority of Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts are reposts from Tiktok and their trends/sounds again, from TikTok) but also the different "cultures" of posting (ex: Twitter posts shouldn't have 5+ hashtags in them like an Instagram post. That looks like spam and will be ignored.)
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