Professional Practice Two

These past couple of months have been a real learning journey for me with social media.

I want to sum up what I have learnt, what I will take forward with me to help improve my social media presence and what I won’t.

I have decided only to use Instagram for my art practice, because of it being a great visual tool to reach likeminded people.

With it not being carbon neutral I have decided to limit my social media posts to no more than one a week. I hope it will follow in Facebook’s (who owns Instagram) footsteps to be carbon neutral soon.

I am not going to worry too much about algorithms and analytics, like Henry @ pot_punk says for his top tips, to just post what you enjoy, make it the best quality that you can and have fun!

I have over the past few weeks, reached new ground, creating a story, and posting a video.

I posted images from an art exhibition I went to see that I thought really linked with my work, Mahal De Mans exhibition at the Art Station in Saxmundham.
I got to speak to Mahal, her work is very inspiring and I have been in contact with her since the exhibition.

Mahal has a lovely website showcasing her work (mahaldeman.nl)
She also promotes her work through her Instagram account.

I will be keeping my work promoted through Instagram only at the moment. In the future I may build a website but its not something I am going to do as yet.

Making the best quality posts that I can, adding more hashtags, making my videos better visually and not worry about the quantity/ and that it has to be posted at a certain time. Since I have been looking at improving my Instagram account I have gained six new followers, and I feel more confident about the content I am creating.

Looking at artist/potter Henry Moore (pot_punk), he has built up a very strong following on Instagram with over 13k followers.

He appeared on a TV programme, The Great British Pottery Throwdown.

He creates posts, videos, stories, to keep his brand seen.

Henry agreed to an interview with me:

• Hi Henry, how long have you been on social media with your art practise

I have been on Instagram since January 2020

• How have you built up such a strong following?

Being on telly helped my presence on social media, also sharing social media posts from my business account to my personal account helped bring up subscriber numbers. Keeping my personal and business account separate and not merging them as one was important to have more of a professional image.

• Do you take much notice of algorithms and analytics?

It is useful to grow an account, looking at when the best time of day to post would be etc but I think it really only makes a significant difference if you have a huge following, say 1million.

Instagram are pushing reels at the moment so if you make 2/3 of these a week you will be doing well. But the most important thing in my opinion is to make sure they are quality reels. I may make one a week, it takes about an hour to

make a reel and I am conscious that its time I need to be making orders for my customers. So having a balance is key, and the quality of your posts/reels etc are priority, not the amount you make, if your content quality is not great because you are posting so many, you may lose followers and not gain them overall. 

• What are the positives and negatives of being on social media?

Positives – I have a really nice community of followers, they like to share their work with me and even friendships have been made through people meeting via commenting on my posts!

I am interested in what others in the community are making and looking to find a way that I can share this with others via my account, possibly a weekly art group and sharing peoples work on my account.

Negatives – I sometimes receive dms that are very negative and judgemental of my work, I don’t let it affect what I continue to make, I make what I enjoy, I like to have fun on my account but I am aware that others who are new to Instagram and may take comments like I sometimes get personally and find it traumatic.

• What would your top tips be to improve social media presence for a newcomer?

Focus on content, post what you want to post, not what you think Instagram wants you to post, keep it real and make sure what you post is the best you can make it. Because if it’s not getting the attention you want, you can rule out firstly that it wasn’t because you had a poor-quality photo etc so then you can look at other areas of what you can improve on.

Reply to Dm’s and comments that people make about your work.

I would suggest using about 20 hashtags for each post, I have mine saved as a file, so I can copy and paste, saves so much time!

Thank you, Henry!

Beautiful work by Henry

Monday 2nd May, I made two posts of my work. One post had a video in of my process, and the second post had finished works.

Two days on I can take a look at the insights of the posts to get a better idea of how many accounts they reached and other information.

Post one:

Post Two:

Comparing both posts which went live at a similar time. I can see that both have the same amount of likes. Interestingly post one reached 40 accounts, yet post two reached 27.
I wonder whether the algorithims came into play here, as with post one there is a video but not in post two, this may be the reason it reached a bigger audience than post two.

Also the hashtags from post one reached more of an audience compared to post two.

I wonder how many hash tags I should be putting? Five? Twenty five?

Looking into what Instagram Insights and algorithms  are.

Insights: You can use them to learn more about overall trends accross followers and the content performance with the audience.

Algorithms: The social network sifts through the consumer feed to prioritise what they see, this is worked out by working out what the consumer wants to see, based on past viewing.

I have now registered as a ‘creative’ so ‘insights’ should be available to view.

How to view ‘insights’

• Go to profile.
• Type the Insights action button.
• You can also go to the upper right corner, tap Insights.
• Tap metrics in the Overview or specific content you’v shared for a more detailed breakdown.

I cannot see ‘Insights’ when logged onto my computer, the only way I have found that you can view ‘Insights’ is through my mobile phone.

Above is my Insights overview on Instagram. It shows that I have reached three accounts in the last 7 days, one account that it has engaged with. And my followers are down -1.3%.

The only way I have promoted my art is through posts. I realise that I need to post more, maybe post videos of my practice/ create stories.

Posting regularly should promote my art further.
I also need to find out when are the best times to post. Unfortunately because fewer than 100 accounts saw my content during the time period the Audience demographics facility is not available to me.

I will need to get in touch with an creative person who is on instagram to see if they have any top tips for me.