How to grow Instagram as an artist | Reels ideas for artists | How to grow your Instagram in 2023

Instagram doesn't work anymore okay wait a second let's just chill [Music] hello everyone welcome to art business fitness I'm Ness and I'm a professional illustrator today I'm really excited because we're diving deep and we're going to talk about Instagram strategies or artists that actually work today and most importantly we're going to talk about how to do it without spending 24 hours a day on it we're going to talk about smart strategies that are efficient and leave you with some free time at the end of the day but before we get started if you're new here and you would like to see more videos like this then make sure you subscribe to this Channel and hit the little bell the Bell sends you notifications every single time I upload a new video this way you're sure that you won't miss any of the advice alright so let's get in what strategies actually work today because I'm sure that you try the strategy of just keep posting and it will work and guess what it doesn't work it doesn't a lot of people tell you well if it doesn't work just post more be more consistent give them more every day twice a day and then it will work but unfortunately like we're going to want to work smarter here not harder static images on Instagram are not it anymore it used to be when Instagram was less saturated that you could just post an illustration with a couple hashtags and it would get magically found in search but no longer there are so many people on Instagram millions and millions of users and static images are not pushed as they used to be however there are other types of content that Instagram is actively pushing and so if you use these types of content you have a much better chance of getting found with much less effort the algorithm changes all the time so if we want to grow a successful Instagram account we have to adapt with it and not work against it fortunately it may be a lot easier than you might think to incorporate these new strategies as artists there are a lot of things that we can do that other people can't on Instagram these types of posts can be very easy for you to create so let's talk about what the algorithm is pushing now reels carousels and stories let's take it one at a time first of all let's start with reels reels are short videos that you can make and edit on Instagram and they're typically between 15 seconds and one minute two minutes is kind of pushing it they're basically Instagram response to tick tocks now reels get a really bad rep with artists for some reason I hear a lot of like oh hell no there's no way I'm making rails I'm not going to be doing some silly dances or videos of me pointing at stuff I don't want to show my face I don't want to look silly doing some lip syncing and whatever else not for me and I really feel that look I don't want to dance either but don't just get an automatic hate on for Wheels reels are just a media they are what you make of them and you're an artist I know that you're more creative than that you have two minutes of video there's so many possibilities for what you can do you don't have to do what everyone else is doing if that doesn't work for you those lip sync videos I think they look silly I don't want to do them but there's so many other things that we can do I'm certain that there are some type of reel that you could do that you would feel comfortable doing and that you would even enjoy doing here are a few examples of easy real ideas for artists flip through a few pages is of your Sketchbook show a before and after of your illustration film your hand for a minute while you're drawing do a tour of your art supplies do an unboxing of prints equipment or art supplies talk about some learning moments or art tips make a mini tutorial Etc and those are just a few examples if you're comfortable showing your face a camera like I am you can just talk to the camera for a minute those are the easiest types of reels to make and if you're not comfortable showing your face then show your art there are so many possibilities I know some of them will suit you and the thing with wheels is Instagram is really pushing them hard right now so they are your biggest and best opportunity to bring in some new viewers and new followers right now and I have a great example of that because I just did a little experiment I actually started a brand new Instagram account just for the art businesswitness Channel I've been wanting to start one for a very long time and this is going to be just a collection of reels with me doing quick tips so I decided that since I'm starting this brand new account before I tell anyone I might as well run a little experiment to see how much reach I can get just with reels in a short amount of time with zero followers so what I did was I recorded six simple reels just me talking to the camera for a minute nothing fancy and I uploaded one every morning for six days and here were the results alright so here is the very first reel that I ever posted and this really got me 12 followers already right off the bat which was really quite shocking to me because it was just a one minute video of me on my back porch talking to the camera about what I was about took no time at all to create and already it got the ball rolling for this brand new account so I posted this in the morning and now it's 1 26 when I took this screenshot and we can see the insides inside the insta Instagram app that this reel got by 126 164 five views four Hearts one comment the interesting thing is the reach you can see that it reached 160 non-followers so brand new people who don't know anything about me got recommended this and played it so this is the power of reels it shows your content to brand new people in a way that static images are not shown to new people anymore so this is second reel that I made on the next day and this one kind of took off this one got almost 2 000 plays it got 27 Hearts one comment five shares and 11 saves to their collection 10 of my followers that I gained from yesterday saw this which is a good number but also 1872 people non-followers saw this real so when I saw these numbers I was like okay wow this is impressive I really cannot think of any other social media method that you can get this much reach right now this is the third one that I posted and I decided to do a little series on Fiverr so there's a three different parts and then there's like a summary part so I recorded those all one after another took me like five minutes and then I posted them one after another on different days so this was the first one and it got 161 plays three hearts and one share so again I'm pretty much saying in my in my range it seems like I get about 150 plays per reel which is really good considering I'm a brand new account that Instagram really doesn't have any reason to show to all that many people this is the second one second part of that series 152 plays and the third one took off so it seems that every once in a while I have a reel that will just have a lot more views than my usual which seems to be a around 150. so this third part got over a thousand plays 12 Hearts one common four shares and five saves again most of the people who saw this are non-followers which is really really good and this was my last part the summary part also took off 1800 plays 19 Hearts three comments and two saves so this is my account after six days six reels posted I gained in total 25 followers just from these six reels which for a brand new account is pretty good and this is a little bit deeper into my insides after that first week over 10 000 accounts reached that is crazy can you imagine being able to achieve that any other way with a brand new Instagram account that hasn't gotten any followers or any sort of following so far this is really it shocked me like that's so much and 103 accounts in engage so people who commented liked or followed total followers 24 it's actually 25 I took this screenshot a little bit before then I got another one a straggler so really really good results I feel and since then I've continued posting reels not every day but three per week and so this is a screenshot from today I'm not at 11 posts all reels and I'm almost at a hundred followers already in just just a little over a week which I'm really really happy with those results and I think it shows the power of reels how easily you can grow an account with reels which usually growing a new account on Instagram is like pulling teeth but real seems to be the easy way to do it so pretty good results and I kept it really really simple with my reels too all in all it only took me about an hour to think of ideas write the reels record them and edit them to upload them one hour just one hour and I was able to reach thousands and thousands of people now I don't know for you but when I post a static image like an illustration to my main Instagram article I only get like 10 likes for it and I have over a thousand subscribers it really feels like no one is seeing my content so even though you know a few thousand views it might not seem like much but this kind of reach is kind of unseen on Instagram right now only with reels you can reach this many people it's an incredible opportunity similar to how it was on Instagram when it first started when the platform wasn't as saturated as it is today with Instagram pushing reels so much right now this is the opportunity to get found and I want you to grasp that as fast as possible before it too becomes saturated because it will this window of opportunity will not be open forever so grasp it while you can and then you know we'll adapt to whatever next thing works then but for right now it's real the second thing that works not quite as well but still pretty good is carousels Carousel is simply a post that includes multiple static images that you can flip through that's it for us artists it's incredibly easy to do just have a collection of different images and while carousels I don't have a spiffy experiment to show you actual numbers I know that they are also being pushed quite a bit by Instagram if you look at your discover feed you will see mostly reels and then some carousels and just maybe a couple static images every once in a while so it's really in that order that they're pushing them first real second Carousel and then some static images kind of to round out everything as I said camera cells are really really easy for us artists to do and they can also give us quite a good discovery on Instagram here are some easy examples of carousels that you could do a collection of three to five of your best illustrations three to five images showing different stages of your process a few photos from your Sketchbook different and photos of your art desk 35 photos of you working photos of your artwork hanging on the wall photos of different products that you offer in your art shop written tips and tricks on different slides with hand rounds little decorations Etc the next thing that also works really well on Instagram is stories stories are also great but for different reasons than reels and carousels stories do not show up on the Discover feed so they won't help you bring in new people but they will help you to engage with your existing followers and to help more of them find your content basically you can use stories to remind people who follow you that you exist and remind them to go see your post notify them when you post something else and this way you can boost your numbers with your existing fan base because finding a new follower is all great and all but it's so much easier to engage someone who's already there who already loves your work than it is to go out and find a brand a new person stories are either photos or short videos or sometimes even slide with text and they disappear within 24 hours they are Instagram's response to Snapchat most people use stories to share a little bit about themselves it doesn't always have to be about the art also you can share a bit about your life what you're eating where you're going and a very great way to use stories is to notify people when you post something new after you posted a new real Carousel or aesthetic image you can simply use the share button and to share it instantly to your story everyone consumes content differently on Instagram and there's a sizable portion of your audience that doesn't like scrolling down their feed at all and instead they just like to watch the stories before they disappear so by giving them a notification that you posted something new they might not even have noticed their new post and now they have but again stories can be whatever you want them to be here are fewer examples of things that you could do for your story photos of what you're working on at the moment photos of what you're doing at the moment like going to an event a concert going to the restaurant an update of your evening or your weekend work in progress news and updates Etc and not everyone loves to share about their life I know I don't so I completely understand that I'm not big on stories at all I'm especially overwhelmed by the fact that it has to be every day it kind of stresses me out so usually I don't share much to my story at all but I still use it at least to notify people of my new posts and I swear every single time there's at least a few people that wouldn't have known about my post otherwise so it's worth it it only takes a second so now it's time to take all of that information that I just gave you and put it together into a plan that's going to be coherent and realistic for you because I know that maybe right now it's a little bit overwhelming you're like oh my God I need to do this and this and this it can feel like a Allah but you don't have to do everything and you certainly don't have to do everything at once we're going to create a plan together and you're going to see how actually it is quite easy but before we jump into that I want to know real quick are you on Instagram and if so what has your experience been like how long have you been there and how many followers have you gotten what has your experience been like do you feel like it's very frustrating or has it been fun for you whatever it is I would love to know what's been your experience with Instagram so far go in the comments right now and let me know alright so let's get into the plan the first thing that you're going to want to do is decide how much or how little you want to post it's super important to be consistent I'm sure you've heard this a million times consistency is key and that's absolutely true but being consistent is not the same as posting three times a day which is mental so the side Pace that works for you and that you're going to be able to maintain for example let's say I decided to post three times on Monday Wednesday and Friday that's it that can seem like a lot but it doesn't mean that you need a new illustration every single time you post let's be creative and efficient about this so whatever your own process of making art is we can work with that let's say that I create only two illustrations per month that's okay we can work with that we can make three posts a week even if we're only making two illustrations per month we can let me show you how all right so here I have an Instagram grid planner that I made and I'm gonna be using this to show you how easy it can be to plan your content so first of all I'm just going to be writing directly on this I've decided that I'm going to post three times per week which means each one of these rows is a week there's five so there's actually a bit more space more than one month I'm just going to do one month here all right let's like five weeks alright so let's start here and let's say I do two reels per week all right so real and I'm just going to duplicate this all right so two reels per week I'm going to duplicate those and populate them in in the different weeks let's say that maybe I want to stagger them all right so for a whole month I actually just need six reels and that's not that's not so bad all right so next the remaining ones can be a mix of carousels and static images so we've said that maybe I do two illustrations per month okay so here can be one of those illustrations and two weeks later all right let's put some carousels in here so let's say I do one carousels every couple weeks because maybe those are a little bit more effort so a carousel here and I'm gonna put a carousel here and the rest can be static images we can decide later what those are all right and as we said this week we're not using that row so now we can start planning exactly what we're going to do for each type so let's say the first couple now we have a finished illustration here so that's done we have a finished illustration but this image maybe can be a sketch of that illustration the next one that's coming up right and this one could be maybe a finished illustration that's kind of done as a lifestyle shot so maybe the illustration on on my desk or on my wall framed up so this can be a lifestyle lifestyle shot of illustration all right so those are decided for the carousels let's say this one can be five favorite illustrations okay so all these but goodies uh some of my favorites that I know that everyone goes crazy for I can make a little collection and this one could be a process right so different uh work in progress images a couple sketches and then like half colored and finished illustration okay so it's five images five images during the whole uh showing the whole process of how I created an illustration maybe you know this one and this one could be a lifestyle shot of this illustration maybe but you know as I'm making this illustration I can take these images so I don't have to create from scratch I can take from what I'm already doing that's the whole idea here to create content while you're creating your illustrations not just create everything twice all right so now let's do the reels now those can be the hardest to imagine what we're gonna do because they're video content however with a little bit of planning which is what we're doing now it's actually quite easy to work that in your regular flow so this let's say this first reel it could be a couple clips of you sketching right maybe your this illustration is already finished because you're posting it the next day maybe sketching that illustration right sketching clips you can do maybe like five clips of 10 seconds each just you know quickly capturing it while you're sketching and then jumping to the next clip to show like different stages of of the sketching that's actually quite interesting I love seeing those reels myself so I would think that it would do quite well for the next thing here uh let's say what we can do with this one you could do some sort of like presentation like with a maybe an audio a trending audio so maybe you have found an audio that says like this is me and this is my art or and this is what I do or something like that and so the first clip would be just like feel five second clips of you smiling waving to the camera and then the other one would be a clip of you like panning over some of your artwork so this could be you know a trending audio that uses just a couple easy Clips but once you've decided what you want to do you can film all of the clips that you need in one afternoon you know and the ones that have to do with your illustrations then you can fill them while you're sketching for instance or while you're drawing this reel here let's see what could we do for this could be a Sketchbook flip Sketchbook flip maybe you know maybe you don't have your full Sketchbook filled up but maybe you have five pages and you spend 10 seconds per page while talking over it you have enough for real now we only have three left like this goes pretty fast so another reel that we could do it could be a procreate time lapse procreate actually record those like automatically as you draw so it's very easy to just take the footage and you can speed it up or you can use the the slider with your finger to just show like from beginning to end the time lapse and that's pretty cool I love to see those on Instagram it's really quite fascinating so that can be that now we have two more maybe this one could be another one with the trending audio for artists it's quite fun for us to be able to put clips of our art in in it so let's say this could be a clip of your art how it was before you know a few years ago when it was ugly and now which is all glow up so it could be before after this is also quite easy like you've keep your art presumably so you have some art that you've done five years ago and you have some that you've done now so you can just like do a little before after thing with a fun audio and there you go one last reel what could this be now you don't have to be super original either like literally the Sketchbook flip you could do another Sketchbook flick you know while you record it you could record 10 pages and then you split it in half you do five pages on this one and another five pages on the other one so you don't have to be super original but just for the sake of this video I'm gonna try thinking of something that we could do for this last one this is a bit more interesting so let's say for this one you can share an art tip okay so it could be if you're not shy to appear on camera you could just literally be talking to camera talking about this tip or if if you're shy then you could do something else you know you can show your hand on procreate just showing what to do versus not what to do that sort of thing so we have our plan here all done and now that you know what you're doing if you wanted you could print this and you can put it on your wall to remember what to record when when you're illustrating and all of these other reels and carousels using past art that you've done or clips that you can film like an art tip you can all record those or prepare those in a single day and then you can schedule them in advance all done super easy all right so now we have our plan when we see it like that it's not so scary is it it's pretty doable the most important part of your Instagram plan is that it has to integrate well with your life it has to integrate with your schedule with your process of making work and all of this make sure to choose types of reels carousels and static images that really work with your process not against it and we can make the process even easier and less stressful by preparing as much as we can in advance and batching the process of creating posts here's a pro tip post your things on Instagram a few weeks after you've created the content not immediately this way you have a little bit of a build up you have a stash of photos clips and footage that you can use to prepare your wheels and your posts in advance this means that you can schedule a day to do it all at once one day per month is all that you need to prepare your Instagram content for the whole month choose a day to put together all the different footage that you've taken from when you're trying record any reels like flipping through your sketchbooks or talking to the camera edit everything together create your carousels this should only take you about a day to create 12 to 20 posts for the whole month and then you can keep it in your phone until it's ready to post or you can even use scheduling app such as later or buffer to schedule your posts so that they will post automatically without you having to do anything that's my favorite method because it's set and forget it so I can just take it off my plate and not worry about it with a little bit of planning it doesn't have to take so much effort or be so overwhelming to consistently post on Instagram it can be be really easy and today I have a little surprise for you a brand new freebie I am giving away my Instagram template for planning your grid the very same one that I use in this video you can either print it to fill out by hand or you can fill it up digitally on Photoshop or even on your iPad and procreate Etc either way it's a really nice planning tool and completely free I will leave the link to that in the description below and if you're watching this whole video thinking oh do I have to do all of that I hate Instagram I don't want to be on it then don't worry you actually don't have to be on Instagram if you don't want to you can be successful as an illustrator even if you're not on Instagram that's actually what we talked about in our last video so I'm going to link that in the screen and in the description if you want to go see that we're talking about why you don't have to use Instagram and what you can do instead if you don't want to use Instagram but that's it for me today thank you so much for watching I hope that you enjoyed this video and if you did then don't forget to like comment and subscribe to help our small Channel grow thank you for being here I appreciate you and I will see you in the next video bye bye [Music]

Channel: Art Business with Ness

Views: 82,524

Keywords: How to become a professional illustrator, how to get started as a freelance illustrator, find illustration work, Instagram advice for artists, Instagram art account tips, Art instagram mistakes, instagram reels ideas for artists, Instagram tips for artists, reels ideas for artists, instagram reels for artists, Art instagram, How to grow your art instagram account, Instagram marketing 2023, How to grow instagram as an artist, how to grow instagram in 2023

Id: vYgjA1ZA9Nc

Length: 27min 33sec (1653 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 20 2022