Promoting via Instagram
The abundantartist.com describes Instagram as specifically designed for visual media. Perfectly square photos and bite-sized text, which is why I use it. However, I rarely use Hashtags, as it is copying #charactersinlengthanditsreallydifficulttofathom. See what I did there!
An Instagram business account costs nothing unless you decide to run ads. However, according to www.business.com, it can have a less than personal feel which I feel defeats the object in my case. Social media is about engagement and making connections, and a business profile may make followers less inclined to engage with you.
If you have 10k+ followers on your Instagram page, you can add a direct link to your story, allowing viewers to swipe up directly to your website. If you have less than 10k followers, the only place you can add a clickable link is in your profile.
You cannot copy/paste from an Instagram post using your smartphone, so I would need to take screenshots of the information, making the task more complicated.
Tagging a post, e.g. @kayparker639, is another way to create a link to a person or business.
Hashtagging (#glass) (#windart) is more useful on Instagram as it puts you into the feed of more viewers interested in that subject.
How do artists consider which platform is the most suitable for their art? You can obtain stats on the largest social media platforms direct from company statements and earning announcements. The image below shows the top four social media platforms, three of which are owned by Meta. Facebook is the most used but to market my work, I need to consider the differing trends of usage for the varied demographics.
This information shows us there are many ways of promoting work, and reaching out to others for artistic interaction but competition is high.
The Proceedings of the Twelfth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2018) considered the difficulties this causes for those with dyslexia; “However, our research suggests that people with dyslexia find writing on SNSs more challenging than reading. Writing challenges span from the difficulty of the task itself to the emotional consequences it may induce, including the time and energy required to write adequately, concerns about misrepresenting oneself in writing due to quality issues, and worries about negative feedback about writing errors. As a result, our participants sometimes struggle to express themselves as much and as freely as they want to, ending with self-censorship. When they cannot effectively communicate and present themselves on SNSs, they miss benefits such as gaining social capital.
Unfortunately this is absolutely correct and something I have to take into account when I am choosing my own platform for promoting my artistic voice.
