Loyalty over likes!
We all know that social media has both its advantages and disadvantages and often, it's the negatives of social media that take over our headspace, especially when it comes to comparison and 'likes'.
It's something I've worried about myself previously and I know I'm having an anxious patch if I start to worry about likes! I feel like I'm a lot better at dealing with this now, mainly because I'm aware of how much it doesn't matter! So I thought I'd share some tips on how I deal with what can be such a consistent worry, and on how loyalty is so much more important than likes.
Change your perspective.
If social media is something that you worry about, it can be really helpful to rethink why you use it in the first place. Everyone uses their social media for different things; some use it purely as their portfolio, some use it as a way to share more of themselves with the world and some use social media purely to connect with others. If you can refocus your attention into why you use it, you can begin to use it with a purpose, which can then feed into your goal setting rather than becoming concerned about how others view your social media feed and whether they want to give it a like or not! It can also help to put the focus back into your efforts rather than other people’s reactions; something you can’t control.
For example, if you want to use social media for more of a way to showcase your portfolio than anything else then you can focus on curating your feed, creating meaningful projects rather than one off pieces and creating a visually interesting feed. If you want to have more of a personal brand, it can be useful to showcase bits of your life within your feed too, sharing your hobbies and adventures and showing your followers a bit of who you are as a person, not just as an artist. No matter what you want to share on your social media, it’s great to dive into how to make it fun and motivating for yourself rather than thinking about what other people would prefer to see or ‘like’.
At the end of the day, you’d much rather have people who are interested in the authentic you, rather than those who’re interested in who you’re pretending to be, which leads me onto my next point…
Focus on quality not quantity.
I'm sure everyone has heard this saying in regard to their work before and it's something I stand by too, but I say this more in terms of your actual audience. This is just my personal opinion, but I think it's so much more valuable to have a small community of loyal followers (who tend to usually become friends!), who follow your work because they are genuinely invested in what you do rather than having a big social media following. Having a large following is great and has potential to open opportunities, but the reality is that it becomes much more difficult to maintain a more personable connection to a bigger audience.
Having an authentic connection to your audience is personally what’s important to me, so this may differ for everyone, but being able to relate to your audience and vice versa is essential. Being able to do this isn’t easy, and for me I think the majority of it lies with just being genuine and creating artwork you love. If you’re creating work you’re passionate about, people will see that in your posts and become invested in what you do, following your journey and evolution as you grow.
If this is something you’re struggling to develop, it’s likely that you need to re-evaluate and have a little one to one with yourself. If your end goal is to generate a large audience or make a lot of money, you’re doing it wrong. These things will come because of the value you provide to your audience and it’s up to you to figure out what that is. However, it’s also crucial to not get too tied into this and fixate on developing something that offers value, a lot of the time you just doing what you love and having authenticity is what people are invested in!
Realise who your audience is.
Quite often people worry about likes and followers because they become concerned that the less likes and followers they get, the less likely they are to get contacted about work, which does have some truth, but that's also not really how it works. Depending on who your clients are, it's unlikely they will be looking through social media for people to work with and instead they will focus more on relevant professional, portfolio and art websites. It can be useful to realise that the majority of your followers will be the general public, friends, family and fellow artists, these people follow you because of not only your work, but also who you are, it’s unlikely clients will rely solely on social media to look for artists to hire.
As soon as you can start to practice or become aware of these things it becomes much easier to take the pressure off and have fun with your social media, which in turn will naturally attract people interested in what you do. It’s okay to experiment, to evolve and change, but don’t let social media become a limitation on yourself as an artist and more importantly, your mindset.