Growing your social media as an Artist

Understanding the game and how to win it!

There are many reasons for posting to social media. It can be to:

1. Share your art, talent, product

2. Build your portfolio

3. Reach a larger audience

Whatever your reason may be, your end goal to some extent may be to grow your social media following. Below are a few sure fire ways to steadily and consistently grow your social media.

Before getting into tips and tricks here are a few key points to note that are tangibles and intangibles.

• Slow growth is the best kind. It shows that your audience/following is loyal and genuinely interested in your content.

• Viral is not the goal as it is fleeting and temporary.

• Don't buy followers & likes. They are a waste of money especially when bot clean ups happen and you lose followers. Also if you buy followers it is very easy to spot based on the number of likes and comments you get on your posts.Real engagement is your best friend because they are real people.

• Be authentic, real, motivated, determined and driven, but ALWAYS remain humble, down to earth, and not competitive or overly ambitious.

• This article will mostly discuss growing your social media as an artist but the info is transferrable to influencers & small businesses.

How to Grow your Social Media:

1. Engage with your followers and people that leave comments on your posts.

   1. This helps foster a good relationship with your fans/followers/audience. If they feel seen and acknowledged they will be likely to follow you if not already and continue to engage with your content.

   2. The instagram algorithm likes engagement. the more comments and likes (even likes on comments) you get the better your post will perform in discover.

   3. Promote a positive conversation. Don't get into social media wars by engaging with negative comments, but if you want, you can "kill 'em with kindness" by sending a friendly smiley emoji to up your comment count for the algorithm.

2. Engage with other artists, influencers, and small business' content

   1. Treat other artists, influencers, and small businesses the way you want to be treated. By commenting and engaging with other users you are putting yourself out there as easy going, approachable and not competitive or over ambitious, which will encourage other artists like you to return the kindness. You are fostering a relationship/dynamic with this artist, influencer, and/or small business that you may work with, collaborate with or may share your content with other people.

   2. The followers of the account you are engaging with will sometimes click on your handle and check out your content and if they like it will often follow you.

   3. Don't be afraid to share other people's content on your story. Just be tasteful and on brand. If it's not on brand you can always share it as a show of support for a good friend or good cause (local business, social cause, etc).

   4. Reminder to be genuine and not only do this with the expectation of tit for tat. Just do it because it's the right thing to do.

3. Post at the right time

   1. Your social media analytics will show you the times that your followers are online most commonly. You want to post in this window so that your rate of engagement in relation to the time you post is relatively short which will be in your favour for algorithms to push your content to people that don't follow you.

4. Collaborate with other artists outside your circle.

   1. This will mutually benefit you and your collaborator to expand your audience reach as you will be seen by their followers and them by yours which opens you up to new potential followers and collaborators.

   2. This will also potentially challenge you to explore and grow your talent, or help someone else to do the same.

   3. Don't be too picky about who you collaborate with. Look at it as networking and building your foundation for solid and loyal support. Remember, you were once struggling and trying to collaborate with other people more experienced than you. Remember to return the kindness that may or may not have been shown to you.

   4. Make sure both you and your collaborator are aware of the day & time your content is being posted so that whoever posts it, the other can accept the invite to collaborate right away. If they are late the instagram algorithm will sabotage you! By not accepting right away your post won't just bypass your collaborators users but also your mutuals, and if you have a lot of mutuals that can be catastrophic for engagement which will make it that much more difficult to land in discover feeds.

5. Support up-and-coming artists!!!!

   1. This one is super important. Most times people try to get the attention of "rising stars" before they turn into what Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Ellie Goulding is now, but they catch them when they are already on the rise and heavily managed by their team making it hard to engage with them.

   2. If you come across an "up-and-comer" that hasn't fully broken out yet, but you see has promise and talent try to foster a good relationship through online engagement with their content and art. Because who knows, when they break out and become popular they may just value your OG support and give you a sneak peak or early access to an up and coming releases before they go viral or start trending

   3. Be genuine in your support and try not to have expectations of them returning favours, just do it cause you believe in the artist, and support them the way you would want to be supported by someone else.

6. Stay ahead or up to date on trends (hashtags, sounds, reels, etc)

   1. Using hashtags and sounds can help you reach a wider audience that doesn't follow you yet because you will show up in the hashtag/sound feed while other users are browsing it.

   2. A common mistake people make is looking at hashtags and sounds that have lots of posts on it. However, the key is to look at how recent majority of those posts are o make sure you didn't miss the hype of the trend.

   3. Ideally you want to look for new hashtags and sounds that have around 500 posts but no more than 2K posts to be ahead of the trend before the feed becomes too saturated, especially by established social media influencers with over 100K followers they will likely dominate the top of the hashtag/sound feed.

7. Post regularly and consistently

   1. If there are no new trends or songs out do a classic throwback, you may just start the latest trend.

   2. Some people like to keep their social media pages with a narrow niche of content; dance only, music only, painting only, workouts only. I like to keep my content consistent but to particular categories like: dance, photoshoots, fitness and lifestyle. Sometimes it works cause it shows your followers that you are multifaceted and interesting. It makes you more human, normal, approachable and likeable. These days people want to see someone relatable more than aspirational. To see people doing normal stuff that interests them and that they could also do too.

8. Don't get hung up on the followers to following ratio.

   1. Don't be afraid to follow another use back when they follow you. You don't want to get a bad reputation as arrogant or snooty. Again, social media is about being social and building and fostering relationships; if you're doing this for professional reasons. If not, and your social media is really just to follow your friends, favourite celebrities and find content that interests you then do you.