[PART 2] HOW TO GROW YOUR INSTAGRAM 📱🎨 | MORE Tips for Artists + Q&A

hey guys this is Erica the goober and if you are new to my channel I am a freelance digital illustrator and character designer in this video I'm going to be sharing a few more tips on how you can grow your art Instagram account plus I'll be answering your questions from patreon and Instagram you guys so much for the overwhelming amount of support that you showed on part one of this video if you haven't already please go check out part one because it has a lot of helpful tips to get started just like in part one I am going to be doing a handful of shout outs in my story of Instagram art accounts from people in the comments so far over 700 art accounts have commented their username in part one in the comments of this video I encourage you to go check out some other artists you guys could follow each other and maybe like leave a comment on one of their artworks letting them know that you found them through the comments of this video it's really a great way to branch out and meet new artists one more thing I'd like to mention before we get started I have a video guide up on patreon for this video it includes my show notes with extra details as well as answers to more questions that didn't make it into the video let's still get access to all my other posts on patreon and your name in the credits on my youtube videos be sure to check out the patreon link below if you'd like to support the channel and make sure you stick around to the end of the video because I will have a very special guest we talked a little bit about having a posting schedule into part 1 but since then I've gotten several comments with people saying I don't think I can post that much or I can't do that with my schedule posting three to five times a week was just a suggestion that was generally the guideline that I gave for myself and I know everyone has different schedules you have to find out what works for you that maybe one post a week or I mean even one post a month but remember the most important thing is that you are challenging yourself try posting more at first and see if that works for you if it doesn't and you find yourself struggling you can always take it down a notch one very important thing that do not cover in part one is profile do's and don'ts professional-looking Instagram profile is very important to show people that you are serious about art and it's great for developing a certain aesthetic that goes with your art so we're gonna start with your username choosing a username can be really tough I actually got my username from my first name obviously and a nickname my boyfriend now husband and high school used to call me so Eric have the cooler if you are struggling to come up with a username remember that you want it to be recognizable unique and related to you in some way you could include your first and or last name or a nickname and maybe something to do with art like art or draws or sketches or illustration something along those lines you don't want to pick a name like like just another artist because that's too generic and it doesn't help you stand out as an individual generally I would say avoid having too many numbers and special characters in your username as well you can always go to Instagram and look at other artists you follow to see their usernames as kind of an example next is your name and bio a little tip for your name which I don't know is actual like science or whatever is to put emojis next to it personally one way that I like to find new artists is to go to other artists that I follow and look at who they are following when scrolling through their following lists emojis always catch my eye in your bio that you want to make sure that you stay professional so start out by saying what you do for example you could write illustration or character design you can also include a little bit more about yourself your commission status and maybe the tools you use I like to use little emojis for my bullet points here because it makes my page a little bit more colorful too or your bio link you can link your website your other social media a shop or your a link tree where it has a bunch of different links don't leave your bio blank or say things like I just draw sometimes or like trash art follow me for bad art stuff like that it's like really negative and it's not professional and it will not make people want to follow you one of the most important things on your profile is your profile picture because not only will you see it they are on your profile but it will appear in other places as well your profile picture needs to be a good representation of your art I use the same icon for everything like you don't really have to do that if you don't want to I just like to keep things consistent generally profile pictures with faces or characters with bright colors will draw attention since people see it in the comments it's almost like a little ad or a preview of your work before people click on your profile if I see a good-looking profile pic I am a lot more likely to go and visit that artists profile don't use other artists work on your profile picture this drives me nuts because it's basically like false advertisement using somebody else's artwork that they worked really hard on as your profile picture is not gonna get people to come follow you because it's not a representation of your work that's why I don't let people use my work and it's their profile pictures unless it was commissioned last thing I want you to touch on before we move on to questions is momentum momentum is a huge part of growing your art account your account growth will be the slowest ever in the beginning sometimes it takes years to get to your first 1,000 followers it definitely did for me but it's kind of like the snowball effect you'll start out small and slow but once you get rolling you'll start growing faster the tips in part 1 of this video should definitely help you get going to get some momentum the three things that helped me the most in the beginning where active and consistent doing draw this in your style challenges and having my work shared by other artists with a larger following when I hosted my first draw this on your style challenge at 5k I quickly grew to 10k because a lot of people were I guess participating in the challenge and then more people would see it so more people who sit in my profile after that my follower count went up exponentially and it just continued to grow until like the past few months where I stopped posting as much so consistency is very important make sure you celebrate milestones and keep track of your growth to see trends to do this I keep a page in my bullet journal where I write down different milestones and I keep track of the date that I achieve those milestones now I'm going to answer some questions from you guys from patreon and Instagram what are the best hashtags so you want to make sure you use hashtags that are relevant to your specific post I do have general hashtags that I use but they're all art related these include art artist my art artist on Instagram drawing painting procreate or Photoshop depending on which one I'm using digital art illustration character design and character art how many hashtags should you use I've always heard like around 13-inch but I don't know if that's like true or not I definitely used more than 13 most of the time I would say a general rule is do not be too spammy like you don't want to do more than 30 hashtags do you think having an art style is a big part of growing an art account I think it definitely helps because if you see a post with an art style you like you'll probably go follow that person to see more art in their signature art style but by all means do not worry about this in the beginning at all don't even think about it your art style will develop over time as you draw and is there such a thing as too much variety in your work like realism to cartoon I really think it depends on what you're aiming for like for me I'm not gonna post like a realistic portrait of somebody that I drew on my Instagram just because I think like I'm known for a more cartoony style and that's what I enjoy doing the most that's just me like you could post a variety of stuff or you can you know do a variety of art but only post a certain kind of work on your Instagram remember that you don't have to post everything you create some things can just speak for you I want to post more often I find it hard to post at least once a month I post rarely but I want to change that what can help for an art account to be able to post more you have to create more I kind of like touched on this and part one but like I started my Instagram account so I would get myself to draw more so I like that was my posting schedule thing I was like I'm gonna post every day so I would get myself to draw every day you have to have the art to post so you have to make taking the time to sketch every day will help you build up more things to post so you I mean you can sit down for like an hour so and sketch out a bunch of things on a page and then only post like one little thing at the time so you have like multiple days worth of posts you can even go back and color your sketches for additional posts so you could do this traditionally or additionally I have another video about how to photograph and color your sketches digitally which I will link in the description if you feel like you don't have enough time you gotta make the time if you really really want to do this like you got to make some time could cut down on time like [Music] that's my problem you could wake up ten minutes earlier and just do a little quick sketch or I mean get a napkin at work on your lunch break and just doodle with a pin I mean it's something in 2017 when I was posting like every day I would rush home from work and like I had 30 minutes to do a post to post that day at 5 o'clock so I would get home and I would sketch something or I would color a sketch and have it ready to post in 30 minutes or less and I would do this every single day so I would have like more time to sketch and to have something you post what do you post if you're too busy to post full art pieces regularly if you want to do more full illustrations but you still want to have more things to post I would consider posting like works in progress or different steps in your process so for one illustration I could post the sketch I could post like a work in progress I could post the final piece I could do detail shots and I could also post a speed painting or like a little clip of a speed painting so that's five posts out of one illustration that you worked on what do you think about the dilemma quality over quantity how much does quality effect to your growth I definitely think it's good to balance the two because they are both very important when starting out don't worry too much about creating the perfect piece to post this will make you more hesitant to post things because you're striving for perfection and not for growth Plus producing more work will help you learn faster quality is also very important for your growth but you have to remember that it takes a lot of time and effort to achieve quality it requires you to really focus on improving your work think about it from another perspective say that you see an artwork on Instagram you're like oh my gosh like who did this like this is amazing this is like so high-quality and you go to their profile and you follow him because of that artwork so really the artwork spoke for itself you didn't need any like special tricks to convince somebody to come over it's like the artwork itself the quality of the artwork got you to come over and follow some but quality and quantity go hand in hand because in order to produce a high quality artwork you have to put in the hours and practice by creating a high quantity of artwork what about fake likes that some people offer for your account are those valid okay so fake likes think about it 200 likes from a post of fake bought accounts that probably get deleted by Instagram soon or 50 likes from actual people who care about what you're making these bots will not engage with your account in any kind of meaningful way so if you're out there paying for likes on posts for your art account I think that you probably should re-evaluate some things and think about like why you're doing it and what's really important how do you deal with losing followers first off I'm gonna start off by saying you should focus on things that you can control you can't control if people unfollow you and there's no use stressing about it my account type it shows me exactly how many people unfollow me each day this fun little graph shows me that about 100 people unfollow me every single day and it's consistent ever since I could see it since that is the case it makes me think that these are not all real people and they could be bots or like inactive accounts that are getting deleted but if they are real people it really doesn't make a difference because I can't change the fact that they wanted to unfollow me so why would I worry about it what are some ways you can keep the followers you have I would say just keep making content and engage with the people who do follow you who comment and respond to their comments or their messages you can even follow them back and comment on their posts as well just remember to focus on what you can control last topic that I want to cover is negativity I got a surprising amount of responses from people being very negative talking negative about themselves or their artwork light is my art that bad or why does my art stuff so much I see this kind of like talk in people's BIOS and their post descriptions and it seems to mostly the younger artists who are still really developing their skills and learning but regardless like these guys don't do this don't talk about yourselves like this it doesn't help anything and actually like it hurts you it hurts your growth and your mental health it's just not good for anything a good skill to develop is to look at your work critically from a growth standpoint without being negative and one of the podcasts I listen to the perfection of some project with Sam Laura Brown she talks about having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset and a fixed mindset you are focused on the end goal or the outcome and a growth mindset you are focused on the journey and learning so anytime you fail that is just a way for you to learn and improve the people who are saying these negative things about themselves are currently in a fixed mindset they are looking at their art and saying like this is not where I want to be like I have a vision of what I want but I'm right here and I can't change it like it sucks I can't do anything about it I'm stuck but that's not the kind of like attitude or like thought process you should have people in a growth mindset will look at their art be able to see okay I need to work on drawing Anatomy more and they will take a just take one step to practice that to learn that and they will keep building on their knowledge to grow their art into something that they are proud of I have this quote like on my computer on a post-it note that I think I heard in a video I'm not really sure what which video it was but I liked it a lot so I wrote it down focus on the next smallest action you can control don't look too far ahead praise yourself the effort regardless of the outcome I think this perfectly encapsulates the mindset that I try to have like in regards to art especially when trying something new now I'm going to bring in our special little guest some of you guys might know from my Instagram stories that we have a new goober in the family meets Oakland Peabody Wiseman or Oakley fort Oakley is a sheep ooh so he is a shih tzu poodle mix and he seems to like the camera look at you you're being good right I think he sees himself in the reflection you feel good he has them so next time you yes you are thinking about talking negatively about yourselves remember this face look at this face Oakley loves you don't you Oakley yes Oakley loves you Oakley wants you to succeed he wants you to succeed remember his face do not post it do not think it do not be negative you positive you'll make opening sad don't make me sad but yeah this is something finally wanted some screen time - Thank You Boyd Fred don't you I'd like to say a huge thank you to my patreon supporters this month we do have a few new and upgrading supporters including branding nicole snaps LJ johnson art quirky cute art Magali s Carranza Ashima Casa de Kim Mooney light art by tmd Natasha doodle miss Meilin Lexi Harun Alejandra erika Santiam and pick three thank you guys so much for supporting my art and the youtube channel don't forget you can check out the patreon link below to see a list of all of the tiers and rewards liked this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you want to see more art videos like this one don't forget to comment your Instagram art account name below for a chance to get a shout-out in my Instagram story thank you guys so much for watching and I will talk to you in the next video I [Music] [Music]

Channel: erikathegoober

Views: 98,411

Keywords: art, instagram, followers, grow instagram, instagram account, artist, tips for artists, how to, art account, get followers, tips, tricks, how to get followers, improve, drawing, how to grow your instagram, community, fan base, grow, gain, algorithm, erikathegoober, erika, the, goober, digital art, organic, discovered, advice, q and a, questions, following, instagram artist, hacks, engagement, real, 2020, fast

Id: 5U0Yf_RkDrg

Length: 19min 45sec (1185 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 02 2020