It's nigh impossible to promo on social media but we need social media to promote

[VibrantFox]

i don't know what category to put this in but i'm having a crisis about it and we're gonna share in that since i imagine it affects a lot of us

social media is one of the big avenues we're told to use to boost our work whether that's comics, novels, games, music, commissions literally whatever work you do BUT as time passes and trends change and what get engagements evolves it becomes harder and harder for creative folks especially to grow on these platforms and mind you they/we are a pretty large portion (maybe maybe not) of content on these sites and yet it's ridiculously tough to get traction on them.

like i've been on twitter for about...7 years.... which is a pretty long time but whether due to consistency or content or whatever it's been super hard to grow. like i have a little over 500 followers which i'm very happy about; hell i didn't think or know if i'd even get that many but to stay in that range for this long is more than a little maddening. i've tried to hop onto trends i thought fit my interests or were relatable enough to my content, hashtags, art trends, memes the whole lot (hell even got a mini comic reposted on know your meme if that means anything or is good/bad idk) but it's like really really really hard to figure out what the hell to do.

and i know- i know people say "dont look at the numbers, it's not everything just work on your stuff and keep at it and you'll grow" and yet i'm doing that and ???? like i literally have come to just avoid those little advice threads and motivational posts because a lot of it at this point just feels empty and then when small creators ask for a boot or retweets or whatever we're suddenly selfish or beggy or whatever so i'm just....having feelings about social media as a whole and perhaps a little deeper than that questioning what i'm doing pursuing a dream that i'm becoming less and less sure if it can become a reality

BUT all of ...that...said how are you lot keeping afloat in this thing we call social media? or even more keeping your sanity? :]

edit: just wanna add this is less an "asking for advice" thread and more a "this is the only place i can really rant so i'm ranting" thread. to folks leaving advice very cool, thank you but also i've seen a lot of these tips before but i appreciate your desire to give assistance

[surenlicious]

The algorithms of the big apps are...not always pleasant to dance with. Ratio is always in flux, and while you cannot always predict what will take off, having a few posts people can recognize as "hey its this person on my TL again!" might help. That could be in terms of a personal art project, comic stuff, heck even novel stuff, just something that makes people recognize you.

As for numbers, they DO matter. They can help you get commission clients, make folks buy your prints and merch, and get you patrons on Patreon. It's the obsession with them I hope doesn't happen for folks, that's the posion. I am rooting for folks to hit high numbers and what not because you deserve being seen and loved.

[ninjashira]

To be totally honest, I basically do not do social media. I have a Twitter and an Instagram and almost never update anything on it. I'll post art on there when I remember to, but it's maybe once a month, and it's never popular. And I never really use my social media to promote my webcomic because I kind of hate making promo posters and graphics.

Basically the only promoting I do for my comic is here on the forums and in one Discord server for my college club, and I just hit 1,400 subscribers, so I'm very happy with the audience I've got. I'm not gonna stress myself out worrying about social media algorithms or whatever, it's just not worth my time or effort honestly

[SurvivALIST]

I see. I see. I'm not someone who can help you fix that problem but:

Did you try other kinds of strategies to promote your work? You can't just stay stuck with your usual strategy of promotion. Word of mouth from others is a powerful tool but it doesn't have to be on social media. You can just keep mentioning it everyday until you're known for your work. Doesn't matter what other people feel because your convos only focus on your masterpiece. Just let it out to anyone. Include your masterpieces in any topic of conversations you're involved in.

This may be a crazy idea but at least they remember you for it.

[Kaydreamer]

I've never had much luck growing on social media either. And I've been around for ages, from way back in the DeviantART days, through the heyday of Tumblr, and now with Instagram and Twitter. My largest following ever on social media is still my main Instagram, with 1100-ish followers... but my reach there is garbage. My second biggest is Twitter, with 700-ish, but again, most of my followers don't see what I post. And those numbers are tiny when compared to successful online artists.

Where I do find social media helpful is in using hashtags and @'s for Tapas and Webtoon. My comic has been selected for promotion by both sites now, and while the Tapas team would have found it through these forums, I know the Webtoon Canvas team found it through my tagging them on Twitter. Those promos were pretty game-changing - not financially, but the Webtoon one quintupled my audience there, and the Tapas one nearly doubled the one I built here.

If your main reason for persisting with social media is to promo your webcomic, I'd definitely recommend posting comic-relevent art and using the creator tags Tapas and Webtoon recommend. I don't care much about my social media reach, but I care very much about people reading and enjoying my comic!

[sarrowsmith10]

If I may make some suggestions that have helped me grow my audience on social media:

*For twitter, I try to be active every day, even if its just one post. I upload little sketches or WIP. I also recycle art that I've already posted every so often, so I'm not constantly making new content. Since I make a webcomic, which is made up of lots and lots of panels, I use those panels as content that I can also be uploading. People are curious about the context and so it helps drive people to my comic.
*For twitter, I also try to participate in art-shares and the occasional trending hashtag. Especially if its related to art I've already drawn.
*Hashtag weekly conversations are also great to join like the #webcomicchat on Wednesdays and other comic promo convos on twitter.

*On facebook, I do similar things, like upload sketches and works in progress, often recycling things directly from twitter. I try to avoid putting twitter links in facebook posts tho, as the algorithm doesn't like that.

*I also recently joined a bunch of discord channels for creators, the most important one being a collaboration channel, where you have to participate in at least 1 collab a year. It was a great way to make friends, get feedback and get to be in those fun collabs that creators do. My discord peeps also help me engage on other social media platforms.

*I'm on Instagram but not for art, only cat photos to share with my friends. I have no idea how I got followers there, since I don't promo at all. Perhaps cat photos and videos are the secret haha

[VibrantFox]

@surenlicious i'm glad you were my first reply and i'll do my best to try and remember this

@SurvivALIST i 100% hear you tho between being an introvert who doesn't much leave the house but also struggles communicating with folks it's a little easier said than done. i assure you tho it's one of the first things i'll bring up in conversation when folks are like "oh so what do you do?" but the reaction depends entirely upon whether or not they're a person who consumes the kind of media i create or they're the "oh so you don't have a life/you don't have a real job/ you art is just a hobby" kind of folks and the latter are part of why i'm not usually eager to share. but i'll try

[SurvivALIST]

"oh so you don't have a life/you don't have a real job/ you art is just a hobby" kind of folks and the latter are part of why i'm not usually eager to share.

If you know that these people are like that, don't mention about your art or your profession directly to them but just mention the concept of such art. They may have an entirely extreme reaction to your work but focus on a concept that they may have a lot to say on. You can even mention your art or profession indirectly like "Hey a friend of mine is doing..." this and that without them knowing it's actually you.

You can promote your concept of the art instead of like the usual mouthful pitch of art details. Just take it casually but do your best to have that remain as one of the prevailing topics of the convos. It's getting there...

[rajillustration]

Oh I feel you on this one. What sucks about people on twitter who are like "Enjoy the small following now, it's so bad up here" and they have...like over 10K followers. When you are invisible, it is so hard to get any sort of traction, that the likelihood is that we will never actually make it "up there." I personally have about 200-something on twitter despite being there for 10 years and being an artist in the concept art range, which is supposed to be very popular there (and I also did a ton of fanart and art memes over the years so, youknow, I'm bitter about my lost time, basically. I've done art every day. I've done not art every day. I've done all the big hashtags. I've had posts go viral. I've done tons of hashtags, I've done no hashtags, I just don't freakin care anymore.)

About last year I hit this tipping point, where I spent like 10 hours on that meme where you draw 6 fanarts, and not only was it pulling tooth and nail to get people to give me 6 things to draw fanart of, after drawing it and making it look pretty damn great, it got no traction. And like I posted it during a pandemic, when the rest of the world was on fire (and you can't complain on social media, so I just had to wear a happy face and pretend like I was OK when I really, really wasn't OK) and like...that was the last straw for me. Hell am I doing? I'm too good for this. And too old for this (at 30)

And I think it's really important to know when you're too good (and old) for this. When the really popular art twitter accounts are kind of assholes and I realized I didn't want to be friends with those people. When NFT's went nuts and a huge portion of the community sold out. When you post in portfolio day hashtags, and see that a large majority of people in the hashtag who float to the top and take all of the screentime, are people who a.) have a steady art income and b.) do not need this hashtag even if they were looking for work.

It sucks, and I feel you, and I cannot really complain about this really anywhere else or I would lose followers, and that's what sucks most about it, is feeling like I have to subtweet if I want to say anything at all.

Usaully, when that type of burn out happens, it's time to detach and do something different--and I have on twitter for this past year. Most if not all of the jobs I get through art are through direct marketing, not passive marketing. Passive marketing doesn't work for me because none of my followers RT and I don't have famous friends. No one sees me. But with direct marketing, I contact people directly.

...But...with comics there really isn't direct marketing. We say there is by posting on subreddits or discords--but that's still passive. The only direct marketing I get is here and when I can literally apply to front page contests. That's it.

So this is a problem where you sometimes get into this bubble that you can't get out of--and this can be true outside of social media, too, where you have a project that isn't new anymore (or a twitter account that isn't new anymore) and it basically hit it's max potential. It plateaued. And like there's algorithm reasons for why this might happen, but I have such a bad plateau on my twitter account, that I actually made a new one to promote my comic because I just can't trust that my art twitter will ever gain true traction over there.

And like, I find that making a new account has been fine. I'm glad I did it. It has like 12 followers because it's very new, but at least I log in over there and I don't feel this apathy and burn out like I do with my other account. So that's helped, because I have to do it, like you said--I have to put in the time to make a post at least when I update. Will it ever get notice? I don't know, but I do know it has pulled in a few views onto a comic that only has 70 subs so that in itself is better than using an art account that probably has a lot of dead subs atm.

Anyway, this was kind of a long rant, just know that I feel your pain, and yeah, it does feel hopeless, and yeah, we have to do it anyway, but you're not alone in feeling like that. Sometimes it honestly is such a freakin grind, and maybe one day I'll strike gold and get RT'd often enough that this period of my life will be a thing of the past...but I feel like at that point in time, twitter will be hella dead, haha.

Freakin social media.

[SagaHolmgaard]

It's so difficult... LOL I'm just trying to to "what's expected" and post consistently, announce my comic updates and hopefully make content that people find value in seeing on their timelines. And other than that I just try to "hang out", and talk to the people I've grown to enjoy seeing on my timelines and be generally a nice person. I reached 300 followers on Instagram this year which felt like a really cool milestone, and I celebrated with a DTIYS which got me maybe 20 new followers.
Though the more I learn, the more it feels like the best way to grow social media is to be out there in the "real world". Hoping to sell at some cons once the pandemic is over, maybe talk to the local newspaper about an interview, or similar. I dunno how that'll work out for the growth of my social media, but it beats trudging through the same mud of hashtags and trends that I have been trying for the past few years.

[VibrantFox]

@rajillustration no i think this was roughly the kind of reply that i was looking for

like i fully expected the usual advice stuff because some folks method of responding to someone whose upset is trying to help them by giving advice or trying to provide a solutions (some ppls nature is to try and fix it's fine) but more than anything i just kinda wanted to rant especially as someone who bottles in almost every emotions because i'm "annoying" when i'm happy or "complain to much" when i'm mad so at this point it's kind of a "screw it" moment

my 26th b-day is tomorrow so while i'm trying to be happy and celebrate that there's definitely the crushing anxiety of "what am i doing with my life" so the replies that are just letting this kinda stuff out are honestly a breath of fresh air reminding me i'm not the only one going nuts out here <3

[oshirockingham]

7 years in Twitter with 500 followers?
Ha.
Look what I got:

All I have is 100 followers and most of them are dead accounts.
Cheer up, there are people with worse luck than you.

[domisotto]

I only use social media to follow my hobbies. I no longer promote.

What I figured is this simple thing: I wanted to be a popular on-line writer so that I could just write and not have to promote. But promoting just took my time and didn't return much for the efforts. So, I might as well remain unpopular anyway, and don't promote.

It's kindda weird how simple it is. I love my stories. I love writing. Hence, I write. Eventually, my writing will be so powerful, it will attract people. Or not. But I want iit to be my wrriting that draws people, not my social media presence.

[maseba]

social media is a business like any other. Instagram makes money from professionals and artists paying to advertise.
If you want my advice: there are three ways to get followers (and clients) if you are an artist: pay Instagram, make drawings of youtubers etc that they recommend or put you in their stories (or the challenges of other artists such as "draw this with your style "), or go to manga / comic conventions and have visitors see your contact cards.
But do not follow fashions or trends, the tips above are for more people to see your art and the ones they like are hooked.
PS: my instagram is the only social media that i have so is not like a big problem to me, because i use it to contact my friends apart of upload my drawings.

[PapaDom]

Maybe the real social media was the friends we made along the way.

[ratscout]

I really feel this thread. XD I don't really do much promoting on social media anyway. Like, I have a twitter account, and I post excerpts from my story on their from time-to-time, and sometimes I get retweets from my writer buddies, but I don't think any sort of famous person is gonna get on there and retweet an excerpt from my weird little story, LOL, and that's what you would really need if you intend to use twitter to advertise your stuff. Not only that, but I consistently log onto to Twitter, see something really stupid is trending that makes me want to vomit, and then I log off before I make myself too sick, hehehe. People who post their awful political takes on that site when they should just be advertising for their art are silly--like, that's a good way to alienate potential audiences.

Honestly, probably the most effective way to advertise is to make a website for your story, hire someone to do marketing for the story, and hope that the marketer is really, really good and can direct people to your website. This is actually something that I plan on saving up for in the future, along with a really good editor. You'd be shocked what a really good marketer can do: My sister hired one for her business and her business has been booming ever since.

I think the best way to stay passionate about what you're doing is to find good people--like, REALLY good people--who are willing to consistently read your stories in return for reading theirs. Don't waste your time on people who clearly don't intend on reciprocating; you need to save that energy for the lovely people who DO reciprocate, and of course, save it for writing your story.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Oh man...I was just thinking about this last night and managed to get myself out of it; now I'm gonna get depressed all over again...
It's too late now, though, so I might as well dig in...

like i have a little over 500 followers which i'm very happy about; hell i didn't think or know if i'd even get that many but to stay in that range for this long is more than a little maddening.

I think it should be said that Twitter is actually a terrible place to try and grow an art following. Many of the artists I follow have said as much, even the bigger ones...one artist in particular was so frustrated about it that I had to unfollow them: all the constant negativity, while understandable, was really painful to watch.
Anyway, I think the main reason is because nothing 'translates'. You can go viral for one week and go back to getting 20 likes the next. You can have thousands of followers and still make posts that just a handful of people bother to like, let alone retweet...I don't know WHY it's like this, but it's not uncommon, and it really hampers any linear notions of 'growth'.

i know people say "dont look at the numbers, it's not everything just work on your stuff and keep at it and you'll grow" and yet i'm doing that and ???? like i literally have come to just avoid those little advice threads and motivational posts because a lot of it at this point just feels empty

Yeah, I know that feeling...it's not realistic, but I've taken to thinking that people who say stuff like that don't actually know how it feels to be in that position. For them, a lack of growth is just a temporary bump in the road, not something you've been watching happen to you for years, largely due to factors outside of your control.

For example, Eclipse basically shattered my presence on DeviantArt...which was 7 years in the making and really the only one I had. It wasn't my fault, there's nothing I could have done to stop it, and now, a year later, it doesn't look like there's anything I can do to fix it. I'm just stuck waiting for things to change. =/

And even before that, I was already losing traction...I remember hearing once that stories and fleshed-out characters (my bread and butter) were good for OCs, and even for fanwork. 'Everyone loves a story...give them something to form an attachment to, and they'll keep coming back.'
Well, in reality (at least, my reality) they don't. Often they just inexplicably stop caring.
Everyone is excited when I announce a new project or AU but before I'm even halfway through telling the story I wanted to tell all fan engagement slows to a trickle. And it's like, 'I thought you wanted this? I thought you were interested and eager to learn more?? What did I do wrong; did I explain too much? Too little?? Am I boring you???'

Of course, I can't actually ask...and to this day I haven't found an answer.

Usually, when I start feeling like this, I go to work on my animations...my YouTube audience is really the only one where I feel like I'm making progress, and where the majority of my fans actually think about and enjoy my work, instead of just a select few.
And it's weird because, as I said once, 'I only average 2 videos a year'. ^^; I wish I could do more to reward them and thank them for their loyalty, but animation is such slow work...all I can do is try to keep them posted on what I'm working on, and corral them over to my Twitter where I usually hang out more. And I feel like it's actually working...whenever I post an animation WIP, there's usually a little club of 12-20 people who like/retweet it.
Sometimes they even comment...and if you're a small artist on Twitter, you know comments are basically gold-encrusted diamonds. For someone like me with just ~150 followers to get more than one on ANY post...that's very rare and special~.

So yeah...I'm hanging in there with what little I've got. Sometimes it also helps to remember that, even when it seems like everyone is doing their best to ignore me...I still like my work. I like to read and re-read those heartfelt character essays that no one else seems to care about; I like to go through my comics and look at all the little skillful, beautiful things I've done.
Remembering that helps me feel like, even if I'm not getting rewarded for my efforts, they haven't been a complete waste of time.

[cherrystark]

I made a series FB page for my series and have done some paid ads (roughly 20 USD) and that's about it. The page gives me a chance to show off the digital art I like to do and I guess, doubles as promotion.

Tbh, I'm not entirely convinced that there is no one, perfect platform to grow your audience, no matter your medium. Depending on the platform, I've muted people who post too much or are trying to push products. If the person is nice or their art is up my alley, I follow because I want to and not because of their advertising choices. I'm a big fan of letting your audience grow naturally. I've gotten some stellar reivews from people who happened to stumble onto it.

[AmazementComics]

You're right. It feels like it's damn near impossible to promote successfully on social platforms, and yet that's where a lot of people gain their audience. It's like a double edged sword isn't it?

There's two things I learned from posting online:

1. Posting frequently makes a world of difference.
   That's just the truth. I give mad respect to those who can create content and grow an audience without the use of social media. But the majority of people just aren't that fortunate. So starting a social media account and making sure it's constantly a relevant part of your content has to become second nature in terms of how frequently you stay on there and what you post.

2. Be prepared for that damn social media algorithm and having some of your posts overlooked, even by your own followers.

Obviously it's not ideal to have a really good post not get too much attention, but as creators, I feel that's inevitable. For some odd reason websites like Instagram and Twitter pay little attention to up and coming artists/writers thus making them work three times as hard to play catch up and get to a specific number of follows. I've also learned that even sometimes your own followers will overlook your post, or not even pay attention to it in favor of someone else's (for the record, I'm not making a huge deal out of that, but it's kind of disheartening if your very active only to have your own followers not like your stuff).

TL;DR social media is something a lot of us have a love/hate relationship with .

[VibrantFox]

Sometimes it also helps to remember that, even when it seems like everyone is doing their best to ignore me...I still like my work. I like to read and re-read those heartfelt character essays that no one else seems to care about; I like to go through my comics and look at all the little skillful, beautiful things I've done.Remembering that helps me feel like, even if I'm not getting rewarded for my efforts, they haven't been a complete waste of time.

this is the one thing i've been trying to remind myself to do which sometimes is much easier said than done but paying attention to your own personal growth does help a lot