Artists on Instagram: Don't Make This Mistake

[Music] hey thanks for clicking on this video I'm Brooke Cormier and today I want to talk to you about my experience with Instagram as a fine artiste [Music] I have what you would call a love hate relationship with Instagram on the one hand it has tremendously helped me in my art career and I probably wouldn't be where I am today without it and on the other hand I hate it stinking guts let me explain last year in 2022 I made it a goal for myself to reach 250 000 followers on Instagram and to put things

into perspective I was sitting around 215 000 at the time I invested so much of my time into achieving this goal I was researching the best ways of how to grow your audience and following crazy suggestions like posting four times a day and making as many reels as humanly possible I followed all the rules making some of my own along the way and on December 17th 2022 I texted my family with this screenshot foreign I did it and guess what my life didn't change in any way I'm not making any more money than I was

before my art didn't magically improve I'm not somehow the best version of myself in fact worrying so much about this number has really taken a toll on my self-esteem especially since recently I've been losing a bunch of followers for whatever reason and now I'm below that 250 000 goal once again that is the Ebbs and flows of the social media hustle my friends I have to constantly remind myself of the number one rule that I've learned from being a self-employed artist on Instagram and that is quality over quantity however cliche that may sound it's freaking

true this age-old saying applies to two different aspects of your social media presence one your content into your audience it is extremely difficult as an artist to be constantly pushing out content because most of the time the content that you're posting is the artwork that you're creating and you can only create so much work before the last drop in your creative well shrivels up and you start looking like this it's Bonkers to think that it was okay for me to be posting four times a day that's a full-time job and it was I was dedicating

hours a day to my online presence I would sit on the couch and edit reels I would search through my archives for old paintings that I could repost I'd be scrolling through social media looking for relatable content I could post on my stories and Googling ways to beat the algorithm it was exhausting and to be honest even though I reached my goal last year I feel disappointed that I put so much emphasis on quantity rather than quality if I had dedicated those hours of work into actually painting rather than focusing on growing my audience Not

only would I have more money in the bank but most importantly be farther along in the development of my artistic practice okay now let's talk about your your audience news flash popularity doesn't pay the bills in other words the kind of people that follow you are much more important than the amount of people that follow you during my time of creating real after real after a real after real I had a few go viral from this I would get thousands of followers at a time which was really crazy but the problem here was is that

some of these reels didn't even showcase my art they were just funny videos of artist life or relatable content for the struggling artist and the followers that I derived from these posts weren't even necessarily interested in my artwork itself but just followed me because they wanted to laugh or in worst case followed me because they thought I was objectively attractive I'm about to go on a little bit of rant here the people who comment you are so much more on my pictures in what world is that a compliment listen I had nothing to do with

this faith and other than slapping a little bit of makeup on every once in a while for a YouTube video I put very little effort into this my art on the other hand I put a lot of effort into in fact I have dedicated years of my life into furthering my artistic talent and for somebody to tell me that my beauty is more impressive than my artwork frankly the slap in the face just a little food for thought so are these the type of people who I really want in my audience that's a rhetorical question

but the answer is no the type of people who I want in my audience are the people who actually support the work that I'm doing whether that's through actually purchasing artwork and funding my dreams or simply writing a nice comment with encouraging words to keep motivating me to keep on going to summarize quality over quantity it's so important you guys dedicate your time and energy into growing as an artist rather than growing on social media when you prioritize the quality of your work successful follow and so will the right people in my opinion Instagram has

changed when I first started my art Instagram account which was in 2015-2016. man those were the Glory Days I'm talking juicy organic growth just from posting like a couple times a week now it seems like you have to post 20 times a week and just pray to the Instagram gods that they'll take mercy on your soul from my experience and I'm sure a lot of people out there can relate it's getting harder and harder to grow on this platform and it seems like the people who even do follow me are barely even seeing my posts

to begin with don't get me wrong I think that Instagram is a great platform for artists to get their work out there and it is so certainly helped me in the past but the only way that I'm using it to make money right now is to direct people to my website from my Instagram page and then hope that they will buy some of my artwork so that I can keep making the artwork and if people are barely seeing my posts and I'm not getting paid for the amount of likes and Views and followers that I

have then I just don't see how the effort is really worth the reward anymore which is why I have directed my efforts Into You Guessed It YouTube with YouTube I actually have the opportunity to be paid for the content that I post and I also think that it Fosters a more genuine connection with my audience because you know like who's gonna watch a 30 minute video of me making jewelry if they don't care about my work or me and guess what your girl just got monetized on YouTube okay and so far I've made a whopping

3.38 cents from my videos and you know what it feels great and to be clear I'm not quitting Instagram I'm still gonna keep posting and I am very grateful for the support that I get from my Instagram followers and I'm also not saying that you should quit an Instagram and move to YouTube if that's not what you want to do what I am saying is that I have just rearranged my priorities and that's for the sake of my artwork my livelihood and my mental health I try to live my life with no regrets so I'm

not gonna dwell on the past and think about all the time that I could have spent on my artwork rather than obsessing over my following on Instagram but I hope that if you are an aspiring or a full-time artist perhaps you can learn from my mistake and focus on what truly matters and that is your art don't let the numbers get you down and I need to listen to my own wisdom every once in a while thank you so much for watching this video I hope you liked it I hope you found it insightful educating

entertaining the whole shebang and if you're feeling crappy about social media then guess what you're not alone please subscribe please like the video maybe comment how many followers have you lost on Instagram in the past six months I'm kidding you don't need to tell me that I hope that you're gaining followers but the right kind I wish you all the success in the world of happiness in the world I hope you're having a great day and I'm sending good vibes your way I'm Brooke Cormier and I'll see you next time [Music]