Rethinking social media
Connection, not content creation
Creatives (including me) are constantly pressured by the big companies and marketing gurus into believing that there is only one way to run and promote a creative business.
All you have to do is join one of their platforms and focus on attracting more subscribers, better audience reach, effective marketing funnels, etc., etc. And sure you have to create a lot of content and not any content, but exactly the type of content the algorithm wants to see and promote. We’re almost expected to become content creators instead of artists. Otherwise (so we’re told) it is impossible to succeed in a creative profession.
Many people praise Instagram as their businesses wouldn’t exist without it and they are ready to play the rules. However, there are valid concerns about the development of social media platforms as they have become machines that you constantly need to feed with tons of new content in order to achieve any growth and try to reach a fraction of your audience. It is quite a dehumanising and frustrating experience for both the artists and their audience. And I am not even starting a discussion on AI.
Somehow everything is turning into a transaction instead of an act of connection.
The truth is that people who claim that social media presence, especially on Instagram, is unavoidable if you want to reach an audience, are those people who started promoting their work on IG relatively early. It was easier to grow organically and you could count on reaching the people who decided to follow your profile. And even now with all the changes on the platform people with large accounts can still see enough advantages and, thus, they stay. They can reach enough people, because they already have thousands and thousands of subscribers. Even if only 10% of the people see the shared content, 10% of 100,000+ is a considerable amount.
Continuing to create content for the platform may be logical for those people (not always), but it doesn’t make sense to extrapolate their experience on everyone.
Claims like “this is the way to do things”, “it’s still the best platform” and “you can’t ignore it” are simply misleading and incomplete.
If something works for one person (or group), it doesn’t mean it will work for everyone else, especially for those who don’t have first mover advantages.
The interesting thing is that even having a large audience on Instagram doesn’t necessarily make the platform the main business driver. Laura Horn has a very successful online art school and I love listening to her when it comes to all things business. Recently she was explaining her Pinterest strategy on her podcast. What surprised me is that her website statistics shows that while 40% of her incoming traffic does come from social media, 60% are direct sources.
Moreover, the 40% are not from Instagram exclusively. Pinterest is actually her best performing platform, closely followed by Instagram (other sources of traffic include YouTube and Facebook). The important thing here is Pinterest takes WAY less time to promote your work. There is software that allows you to automatically pin your content as often as you need without the need to put hours and hours into creating new content all the time. Pinterest itself is more of a search engine than social media and it allows you to both post content and interact with it in a much less soul sucking way. Moreover, Pinterest allows links and takes users directly to your website. Remember, Instagram wants you and your audience to stay on the platform.
A staggering 60% of her traffic comes from direct sources, which is mostly from her mailing list, blog, podcast and well-managed SEO. Thus, approximately 70% of her traffic (newsletter, website, podcast, Pinterest) comes NOT from Instagram or other “traditional” social media platforms.
Moreover, in a more recent episode Laura admits that Instagram is very time-consuming, demanding and, well, exhausting. The platform pushes for more short video content, while she prefers photo content (so do I). She still puts effort into Instagram, I suppose it’s because she has a large fan base there and the platform probably still supports her sales enough to stay.
For those who don’t have such benefits, I don’t see what’s the point. Frankly, I don’t think it’s worth the effort. I am myself not someone who enjoys scrolling the feed and I am not into watching short videos, so I won’t be able to generate “engaging” content. I understand that it means that I will have to reach audiences in other ways.
I believe it’s better to focus on other channels that you actually own - building a mailing list, curating a website, blog, portfolio, and creating personal connections with people. There are a lot of ways to put your work out there and you can combine them with social media here and there depending on what you enjoy doing and your overall strategy. If Instagram works for you, it’s great, but if it doesn’t - there are alternatives.
All of the artists from whom I learn I found outside of social media - through Pinterest, podcasts, YouTube and various interviews. I love to have a closer look and a deeper understanding of a person and their artwork. I love getting in touch with people whose message resonates with me. Networking and collaborating with each other creates all the little ripples and helps artists and art lovers to learn about each other.
Build a system that works best for your business and is more in line with your values and personality - without the necessity to obsess all the time over numbers and conversion rates. Connect with people proactively, invest into personal relationships and support other creatives, collaborate offline and join communities, be consistent and, most importantly, do it your own way. If your message is authentic there will be enough people willing to support your work.
Newsletters about alternative marketing strategies:
- by
- by
- by
If you found something useful and inspiring, feel free to leave a comment or share this post!
Thank you for being here!
Until next time!
Lisa
I agree. I personally cannot when it comes to social media. It puts this pressure and I just feel like I become part of the problem when I consistently post and become part of the “noise”. I haven’t quite figured out how to put my art out there yet. Been debating on whether to actually start blogging on substack or not. Thank you for writing about this, it is very validating.
I love Laura Horn! Found her through word of mouth, not social. It's fascinating to see the breakdown of traffic sources.