Once, I returned to Twitter after... we'll go with "some time" away, and offered this:
"When one's most recent post was to wish everyone a Happy New Year... and it’s April... in a different decade... one might realize they probably haven’t made the most of their social media setup."
And then... I ghosted 1,200-some-odd people again like a social media champ.
Shameless self-promotion-- I used to be better at it.
But now more than ever, if you want to plug yourself into a network of people-- any network of people, in any industry, really, but most certainly one as global as visual storytelling-- you'll probably need to be... well, at the very least fairly indisputably alive on a few of the internet's popular people platforms.
Me telling you how to be all you can be on the Twitters, the Instagrams and the like is probably highly laughable at best.
But we're both here, yeah? So, let's see what I can maybe do for you:
The most interesting platform to me, currently, is LinkedIn, or Facebook For Folks Who Are Either Gainfully Employed Or Would Appreciate Gainful Employment Were It Offered To Them.
If you want fans, there are other places that'll serve you better, but if you're looking to connect with your people and maybe find a few gigs, LinkedIn is a good place to start.
It's easier to collect likes and comments and such on, say, Instagram, but I’ve found the quality of the attention better on LinkedIn. Which is to say the people seeing your stuff here are, more often than not, people who do what you do, and might have something more to say about your stuff than "Cool."
There also seems to be more of a willingness between fellow professionals-- and would-be professionals-- on LinkedIn to connect with each other. Joe Doodle God mightn’t give you the time of day on other platforms based more on audience-generation, but on LinkedIn, you're tight... like pre-pandemic pants.
Let's call Instagram one of those "other platforms based more on audience-generation." You'll post your stuff and you'll get likes, some comments, etc., and it'll feel good. You'll get follows, but many will be contingent on reciprocation, and even a lot of those disappear as soon as you give the follow-back, because here following-versus-follower numbers seem to matter to a lot of people.
But no doubt, with the right manipulation of hashtags and a steady-but-not-too-steady-careful-now-gotta-get-it-just-right schedule of quality posts, a lot of eyes’ll end up on your stuff and slowly but surely, more and more will stick around.
Interact with others on Instragram, too.
It's easy to fall into the habit of post, peace out, rinse, repeat-- I frequently do.
But if the goal here is audience generation, you can offer a little more than probably the dozen or so posts in either direction of your own by writing an engaging description (try popping a question in there somewhere, sometimes, too), replying to comments, and seeking out others' posts to comment on yourself.
I used to use Twitter. Like, a lot.
In my previous life as a journalist-- a crime reporter, specifically, for most of it-- it was more or less an occupational requirement.
Getting back into this platform as a contributor has been difficult for me, but what I can say worked for me before was letting people into my process.
When I was a crime reporter, Twitter was a kind of rolling live notepad where followers could "tag along" from assignment to assignment. It was me showing them that aspect of our world through my eyes, in real-time.
Folks dug that. Maybe there's something translatable to this new life to be found in that.
I've also found Twitter has a lot of quality industry conversation between creatives. Even strictly as a lurker, there's probably something to be gained by spending some time here.
And Facebook has pretty much become just the place I go when something bombs on all the other platforms I’ve mentioned, because when all else fails, I can always count on my mom to drop a like and a "Cool" for me.
Regardless of which social media platform(s) you choose to brave, basically, the best tip I can offer is to not let it overtake any more of the time you could spend drawing than is necessary. I'm as guilty as the next doodler of spending a great many hours trying to wrap my head around algorithms and such to pull just a few more eyeballs in the general direction of my stuff, but I'm not sure there even is a way to win that battle.
Just draw.
Cheers,
Damien