Let’s Talk about Instagram

I was going to talk about something completely different, but so many people this week have written posts talking about their reach and engagement on Instagram dropping significantly and is it their photos, their art? They are generally feeling bad about themselves and what they are doing because they see likes or engagement dropping on their posts.
Then they spend long hours analyzing what they think might be wrong with their art/photos and trying to work out the algorithm. They try to work out what will be popular. They post something, it doesn’t do as well as they hoped, they feel worse about themselves and the vicious cycle continues it’s downward spiral.
It is hard when you see a post you love do badly.
The piece below is one of my personal favorite pieces.
It got half the likes the in progress shot of it got. One of my least favorite pieces is one of my most ‘popular’. It gets shared a lot and l hate the piece - all l can see is what is wrong with it! There is no working out which photos will do well and which won’t!
What l want to say is, stop feeling bad! And here is why.

1. You have absolutely no control over how much Instagram share a piece.
Trying to beat the algorithm is a fool’s game and will only make you miserable. My reach varies wildly and there is no rhyme or reason to it that l can tell. (And yes, just recently my reach seems to be down too). As there is nothing l can do about it, why worry?
2. Even Instagram does not have complete control over the reach of your photo.
No one knows how many people are actually on Instagram at any given time or on any particular day. If people are not online and looking at Instagram they can put your photo into thousands of feeds but if no one is looking at their feed your photo won’t be seen. That is not your fault. So it may not be that Instagram are not sharing, they could just be having a bad day too!
3. Likes/follows/engagement do not mean that your art is good or bad. They tell you nothing about your art, they tell you only how many likes or follows you got. Engagement tells you how much engagement you got. Just ten minutes browsing art on Instagram should show you that there are amazing artists getting only a handful of likes and poor ones whose accounts are growing like crazy. I cannot emphasize this enough - your art is not good or bad according to how many likes it got. Your art is good or bad because it IS good or bad.
4. You are setting yourself up for stress and misery.
Worrying about whether or not your post will do well on Instagram will take away all the joy of creating. Instead of drawing the things that you love and that will make you happy your focus will be on what you ‘think’ will be popular. You will start becoming more concerned about getting a piece finished quickly so you ‘have something to post’ instead of finishing a piece well so that you can be proud of what you have accomplished. And then if that piece does not do well, you will be miserable and put yourself under more pressure. Art should be fun. There IS life outside of Instagram. (I am having a few days off at the moment, the sun is shining, the garden is calling and l simply want a break, so the growth on my account will slow down. Does that matter? No! Health, family, life - these things matter.).
So if you are finding that posting is making you stressed or miserable or putting you under pressure, take a break. Draw only what you love, draw to the best of your ability, finish it well. Then when you post (whether it does well or not you can feel proud of what you have accomplished. But most of all you will enjoy your art again, which is what it is meant to be about.

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