As someone who recently figured out that their ‘dream’ was to make a living out of illustration, I’m of course struggling with self-promotion (not with writing a blog on my own website though). Nowadays self-promotion is essential for most career ventures, ESPECIALLY if they belong to the creative realm. Which is what I find contradicting and is the cause of a fair amount of anxiety, since I can say I fall into the self-doubting, introverted, homebody 'creative' stereotype. So I find self-promotion exhausting and plain difficult, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
A little scroll on any form of image based social media however, will show you thousands and thousands of people self-promotion to the highest standards. In the creative fields illustrators, painters, photographers, designers, etc, accumulate the same amount of followers as C listed celebrities or 'Instagram models' as they are now known. So how in the world does everyone get so good at it? How does someone who almost resents this behaviour get good at it?
Turns out as well as your day job of creating (whatever this may entail) you gotta sorta become a business wo/m/an. Which I guess (lol) is what I’m trying to do. Nothing impressive of course, just typing into Google searches like ‘How to get more followers’, ‘What are the best times to post on social media’, ‘Hashtags to become and instant world sensation’, etc.
It’s not really working yet, since Instagram changed its ‘blah blah, Agree’ text, it seems I’ve been lingering around 163 followers, which goes up by a couple digits every time I post and back down again every time I'm not 'active' on the app for longer than 30 minutes.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking about today.
P.s $5 instagram promotion definitely doesn’t work.