Let's Social This Mediascape

[HarryM]

I'll preface that I've never been good at social media. Particularly the "social" part, but even so, this is getting ridiculous. All the major platforms are like this, anymore. Like genuinely, what is even THE POINT?!

(Keep in mind, that post got 6 views in TWO DAYS. It never used to be this bad; I'm literally just posting into the void.)

I usually go out of my way to not rant online, but... bleh! Bleh, I say!

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Am I crazy? Is your experience different? What say you?

[VibrantFox]

one thing regarding twitter specifically in this case is it's metrics and how posts are boosted or suppressed is changing constantly and rather aggressively especially as the ding dong in charge is doing everything in his power to get people to pay $8-11 a month for a fancy check and tools that should probably just be there by default

There's also the fact that there's an exhaustive list of "no no" words that should they appear in your tweet it's likely to get cast into the void. Back when I had the energy I used to try to keep up with said list which was more "a collection of words tested by various popular twitter users and then shared to the general public" but now that I'm more than a few years in I lack the energy and certainly the time. This even grew to extend to hashtags where just having them at all can negatively impact visibility but I'm really not sure if anyone knows whats up

I'll note right now that the post itself is fine and normal so if anything it could very well just be twitter doing it usual 'terrible awful no good very bad thing' of randomly tossing tweets into vast nothingness but in any other circumstance this should've performed well. Continuing the feedback tho the bird app may have latched onto the hashtag or the mention of Ko-fi as those have gotten even some of my posts trapped in the shadow realm.

But answering the question this has become very normal for twitter as much as it sucks, one of the reasons why between art shares, tag events, or promo opportunities there or here on the forums are the best way to get at least a few more eyes than normal on your page. There's also been tips on twitter itself on how to format posts to prevent getting things like 'shadow bans' or 'search bans' but it also feels like the rules/metrics are changing everyday so it can be pretty tiring to try to keep up with

If anything the only advice i can think of is just continue to interact with and share posts from others and hope that eventually life pays it forward. My own post frequency varies drastically but i've switched (again actually) to trying to share mutuals and other folks posts not only for the sake of showing some level of activity on my page but also just to get more eyes on friends posts. Plus twitter as it is now means that art communities have got to start treating twitter like tumblr where not only liking but sharing/retweeting/rebloging each others work is what pushes it thorough the algorithm otherwise yeah it's gonna look like posting to the void constantly.

Overall though it's hard to say what can improve engagement on twitter since the platform (as a consequence of leadership) is going through a hell of a lot of very weird and sudden changes making use a complicated action but I'm hopping thing improve on your side of the bird site

[DokiDokiTsuna]

If it makes you feel better, Twitter's (or X's...) slow death seems to be having an effect on all artists. Whenever I stop by to retweet/save art, I see more and more posts with mere hundreds of likes, instead of the usual hundred thousands. And I usually browse FAN ART. o__O

Am I crazy? Is your experience different? What say you?

Personally, I feel like I've been experiencing steady growth in other places, like Tumblr and Youtube...but it's definitely still slow and steady. Besides, I'm always down to rant a bit about the curse that is being an artist on social media. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I think this one comment I got recently says it all:

"I hate how underrated your art is its to good"

I appreciated that. In the grand scheme of things, it's one of the better kinds of comments to get. But it made me realize that I'm sick and tired of being "underrated".
I've been "underrated" for YEARS. When do I get to be "rated"?? When do all these little bits of attention actually start to amount to something substantial??

Based on most people's advice, once your skills are developed enough to create quality art, all you need to do is employ some simple tactic to build a stable audience. Post more regularly. Post MORE in general. Advertise. Interact with your fans. Cater to your fans.
None of it has ever really worked for me so far...especially outside of fan art.

Historically, once people actually give my work a chance they tend to like it (for instance: I've gotten more positive comments on excerpts of my novels posted to this forum than on the actual novels themselves), but it seems I can never get people to want to consistently. At this point, I really don't know what else to do but wait. =/

[Caro]

I like to think I’m good at social media even though I don’t love using it.

I have almost 25k on Twitter and almost 80k on IG and I owe a lot of that to deciding a few years ago to stop posting ONLY work that needed context like panels from an ongoing comic never did well for me if it couldn’t stand on its own. I try to make everything I post something thats very shareable. The fact is that there are people who will just like and comment on your posts to be supportive but that “support” doesn’t go much further than ego stroking (which is very much needed and I’m not knocking the need for that type of support in art spaces online). But the stuff that sticks and goes viral has to say something about the person who shares it— for me its usually “i relate to this” or “this is MY sense of humor” or “here is a cool niche thing I’m into because I’m a cool person”. The “this is my friend and I’m trying to help them get subs” type of shares almost never goes very far.

But another thing I do is I made the shift a few years ago from trying to present very professionally on socials to just being myself and treating it like I’m just talking to my friends. People generally don’t tend to like feeling like they’re being advertised to.

Twitter is extremely volatile right now too and I wouldn’t put TOO much stock into twitter numbers at the moment. Just gotta keep grinding it out until it inevitably dies.

I've been "underrated" for YEARS. When do I get to be "rated"??

THIS is a constant. Heck, I was just featured in the New Yorker, New York Times, Huffington Post and other big publications and I STILL get called “underrated” at least once a week. I just take it to mean that people think you deserve more and more and its sweet.

[HarryM]

Appreciate the thoughtful responses, all!! It's a very welcome change from the twits and such.

I've tried to make the internal switch to "posting is about THEM", like entertainment is about ENTERTAINING, not the entertainer. I've never been great about consistency, but thinking this over I really haven't been great about making the marketing, I guess, personable? Or like, how do you get the word out about your work without it coming off like an ad? That's something I gotta think about.

Got some food for thoughts to chew through! Thx again.