u/lonelyguitarist26

There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently: what’s the future of being an artist looking to build a community? For anyone that posts on Instagram regularly, you may have seen new changes were rolled out that are lowering new view and follower accounts. As someone who has actively been working to grow their account for months, this is so discouraging.

I’m a digital artist working in animation. For the duration of my career, your presence online determined the connections you had to other artists and studios. Instagram has been the place for finding and connecting with new artists for a long time. After Twitter became X, I don’t seen artists gathering online in other spaces other than private communities like Discord.

So here’s my dilemma, if IG is dying off and making it harder for artists to connect and stay in touch with each other, what happens next? I saw last year some artists pivoting to newsletters, but that feels like more of an outlet to project to an existing audience rather than seek new connections. I want to meet new artists! I want them to see my art, I want to see theirs!

I understand theirs always an opportunity to meet local artist and creatives, but it feels like it’s hard to meet people in my industry. I know there are still a few cities like Los Angeles where many creatives are, but I still get the sense people stick to who they know from their own workplaces.

I saw a recent post from someone else looking for advice as an IG artist. I wanted to share some information about my account to see if anyone has advice.

Who I Am: I’m a professional artist with a few big credits to my name. I’m currently working at a large animation studio. My art is professional-level quality, it shouldn’t pose an issue to finding an audience.

Here’s the basic info about my account:

• Posting a minimum of 2x per week for the past 14-weeks (plus Story posts 4-5 days a week)
• Reels are showing painting process or giving advice to artists while showing me working on painting - these are tightly edited videos with quicker edits, music, captions on screen, etc.
• Photo/Carousel posts are usually painting process step-by-step
• Trial reels are all related to painting/advice for creatives
• In 14-weeks, I’ve gone from ~1,000 followers to ~1,100 (+100)

I’m trying to figure out how the new changes affect my account. Honestly, the growth has felt slow for the amount of time I’m putting in and I want to make sure I’m doing what's best.

Here are a few questions:

1. Does follower growth happen gradually at the same pace or does it exponentially grow? If I am getting +5 new followers a week, should I anticipate that rate will keep steady or is there a point at which it starts jumping higher week-over-week?
2. I’ve tested doing a daily Trial Reel where I show how I breakdown a painting by another artist. They are doing better than my usual trials, but they all are getting around 400-1,000 views. There is one that broke 3,000 views which is coincidentally the first one I posted. Is there any downside to posting one Trial daily? I might be reading too much into the first one doing so well.
3. Given the changes that just rolled out, is there anything new I should be doing as an art account? It seems like focusing more on process is a good plan instead of art reveals (oversaturated). I feel like If I had been posting this much 3 years ago my account would have already grown, but since you can’t change the past I’m looking to the future.

Thanks all for your advice!