Instagram for Artists: A Mindful Approach to Growth and Engagement

1. IG for Artists Intro: If you're an artist, you know that Instagram is an important tool for connecting you with potential clients and customers. You also know that Instagram makes you feel crappy sometimes. [LAUGHTER] It makes you feel deeply frustrated and overwhelmed too. I promise you it really doesn't have to feel like that. I'm Stephanie Fizer Coleman, a nature artist and children's book illustrator. My slow but steady approach to Instagram has helped me build a community around my art, enrolled thousands of students in my classes, acquired multiple picture book projects and other illustration projects, grow my email list to over 11,000 and meet other artists who become a close support circle for me. Now, while I don't recommend focusing your marketing efforts entirely on Instagram, I think it's a key component in any visual artists marketing. My 77,000 plus following on Instagram, has been built slowly over the past few years. I believe that's showing up consistently is one of the most important things that I've done for growing my Instagram following and I think it's one of the most important things that you will do to grow your following as well. It's really not about doing reels every day or whatever other new thing Instagram is pushing, it is about showing up in a way that feels easy and sustainable for you. Let's figure out what that means for you. Head over to the next video and let's get started. 2. Why IG is Important?: Friends. In this mini-course, we are going to be talking about developing a mindful approach to your Instagram account. Because you know that it's something that you need to grow your art business and get your art in front of the people who are going to hire you for freelance projects or buy your products or whatever. But we want to do it in a way that isn't going to feel stressful and complicated and just overwhelming in all the ways that Instagram can feel overwhelming. The first thing that I want to talk about today is, I want to talk about why Instagram is still important for artists. Because there are a ton of ways that you can get your art out into the world, there are tons of ways that you can share your art on the Internet, and Instagram is just one of them. But I personally still feel like it is really important as long as we're doing it in a mindful way and we're not letting it get us lost and comparison and jealousy and all that stuff. What you're going to be learning in this mini-course is you're going to learn how to use Instagram in a way that feels easy and not stressful. I want this to be something that you can not just get in the habit of doing easily, but something that you'll eventually start to look forward to because it's a healthier habit, then maybe you have right now. Now this is not a three quick steps to 10,000 followers type of thing. There's a ton of that floating around the Internet, and some of it comes from a genuine place, and some of it doesn't necessarily come from a genuine place. But as you will learn in this mini-course, I don't necessarily think that the number of followers that you have is as important as the quality of followers that you have, so I don't think that heading a 10 K milestone or a 100 K milestone is all that important in the long run. What this course is, is a way to steadily build your Instagram community over time by just showing up consistently and really starting to have conversations with your community. We're just going to help you build connections, and those connections are going to be the things that are going to lead art directors to hire you, or people to buy your art prints or your books, your products, whatever it is that you're sharing. You're going to learn how to do this in a sustainable way. You're going to build habits that you can stick with over a long period of time that aren't going to leave you feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. Now here's one thing that I want to get out in this very first lesson, and that is that you do not have to do Reels every day to create an engaged community of followers on Instagram. Obviously, you will build a following faster if you jump on whatever Instagram's new thing is, the algorithm is always going to give weight to whatever the new thing that Instagram has launched as. Like, that was stories a few years ago, and then it was Instagram or IGTV for a while and now it's Instagram Reels. You will always build a following faster, but are you going to be building a following that is actually going to be connected with your art and supportive of what you're doing? Or are you just going to build a following of people who are just going to scroll through your stuff, maybe like it, maybe not, and not actually interact with you in any meaningful way. I know for me personally, the kind of things that do really well on Instagram Reels aren't really things that I connect with as an artist, and I don't think that those things are going to help me build an engaged community around my art. I did a few Reels when it first became a thing, but I found them to be really time-consuming and not something that I really enjoyed doing. For me, doing Reels isn't something that feels aligned with the way that I want to run my creative business, so I really don't do them very often. Instead, I stick with what I like to do and what I know I can do on a consistent basis, which is sharing photos in my Instagram feed and showing up for Instagram stories on a daily basis. What I'm telling you here is that you can adopt a slow and steady growth approach and you can just embrace your preferred way of sharing on a consistent basis because that consistency is what is going to help you grow your Instagram following in the long run. Now let's get to it. Why is Instagram still important for artists? I think the number one thing that we all know right off the bat is that Instagram can bring customers and clients to you. It's a really great way to get your art out into the world and to share it with people who maybe weren't going to see your art in another way. For those of us who live in small towns, for those of us who've lived through this billion-year pandemic that we've all been through, it's really important to have an avenue online where you can get your art out, where the people who need to see it are going to see it. That's one of the important things that Instagram does for artists. Now another really important thing that Instagram does for artists is it helps you build a community around your art, and that's so important. When I say community, it doesn't necessarily have to be a community like this community that I host or it's got its own website and everything. It can just be like, I think of my Instagram community as just the people who comment on my art a lot, the people who share my art a lot, the people who direct message me and we have conversations on my Instagram posts or in our DMs, and we talk about our practice and our business and all that fun stuff. The reason that the community around your artist's so important is that it's really helping people forge connections with your art, and what you're putting out into the world. As people are forging those connections, as they're building trust in you and really connecting with what you're putting out into the world, that means that they're going to be more likely to hire you for freelance projects by your art prints, by your picture books when they come out in the world. It's all about building those connections, and that's not something that you can do overnight. That's not something you can do with a few easy, quick tips and tricks. It's going to be about being consistent over a long term and understanding how you can show up for your community on Instagram in a way that feels energetically good for you and not draining at all. Then another key thing that we get from Instagram is it helps us meet other artists. Like I said, for a lot of us, we are working in our studios alone all the time, and that's really lonely, it can be really isolating. It's really important to have a community of your own, of artists who are doing a similar thing or artist that you respect and admire that are doing something that's in your vicinity, and Instagram is a really great way to meet those other artists. I've made so many friendships over the years from just knowing people on Instagram. We started out commenting on each other's posts, and then eventually we started DMing back-and-forth, and then that turns into emails, and then that turns into zooming, and then like a real long-lasting friendships. Again, this isn't something that's going to happen overnight, you're not going to hop on Instagram and meet your art best friends tomorrow, but it's something that slowly and steadily will happen as you show up consistently on Instagram over time. 3. Mindset Check: All right friend. Before we go any further, I want to do a quick mindset check with you just to make sure that you are going to be approaching Instagram in a really mindful, stress-free way and not feeling overwhelmed by it all. If you are seeking validation through Instagram engagement, you're never going to feel satisfied with your work. You are always going to be chasing more likes and more followers and more shares, and you are never going to be personally connected to your work. You are always going to be creating work with Instagram, engagement, and mind. You're always going to be creating something that you think is going to get a lot of likes and comments on Instagram instead of creating something that really comes from your heart and something that you really believe in as an artist. It's really important to remember that the Instagram algorithm is not an art director or an editor, or an art buyer or a customer. The algorithm exists to basically do two things. It is trying to guess what people want to see based on their prior activity, which we all know, and the other thing is trying to do is to get you to spend money on ads. The Instagram algorithm doesn't want to show everything you post to everyone who follows you, because the algorithm wants you to spend money on ads to get your work in front of more people, that's the purpose of it. Not everyone who follows you on Instagram is seeing everything that you're sharing on Instagram and you don't care about the opinions of every single person who follows you on Instagram. Like your cousin's best friend liking your Instagram post isn't an indicator of how good your artwork is or how much success you're going to have as an artist, so it's really just this vanity metric that we've all let ourselves get hung up on and in the long run, it's not as important as we think it is, and it's certainly not as important as making art that you feel connected with and excited about because that's the work that you're going to be doing long term and that's the work that's going to bring the best projects to you in the end. The algorithm is not an indicator of whether your art is good or not, and it's also not an indicator of whether you're a successful artist or not. I will tell you right now, I know there are artists out there who have 150,000 Instagram followers, and they are struggling financially, and there are people on Instagram who have like 2,000 Instagram followers who are earning six figure incomes from their art. It is a spectrum, and you can't judge someone's success as an artist just by looking at their Instagram account, you can't make those assumptions. I know you want to, I know we all want to. It's human nature to categorize things, it's our nature to look at someone with 100,000 Instagram followers and be like, this person is so successful, and I only have 2,000 followers, so I'm not successful. But you have to just be mindful when you're doing that and learn to break that habit and remind yourself that Instagram numbers are not an indicator of success and Instagram numbers are not an indicator of whether your art is good or not. One thing that I want to share before we move on to the next lesson is my personal experience with Instagram likes get me down [LAUGHTER], but there's a flip side of the story. This is an illustration that I posted to Instagram in late 2018. I worked really hard on this. This was one of the first times I had really paid attention to like environment and lighting and mood in my illustration. I spent a lot of time working on this, and I loved how it turned out. Like I still love it. I love this. I think it's so cute, but when I post it to Instagram, it got about 25 percent as many likes as the posts before and after it. I think at that time, the posts on either side of it had about 1,000-1,500 likes and then this post got 300 like, super disappointing. Honestly, I was just really disheartened because nobody liked it, because I had really thrown my heart into it, and it didn't get the response that I thought that it was going to get. But the rest of that story is that because of this piece of art I ended up earning over $50,000. That's my freelance earnings because of this one piece of art so this piece of art didn't get a ton of Instagram engagement, but I loved making it. It was one of my favorite art pieces and I really think that art directors saw that, they felt the joy that I poured into this and even though it wasn't popular on Instagram, this post directly led to three different picture book projects and that was a total of about $50,000 worth of income for me from this one piece of art that wasn't really big on Instagram [LAUGHTER]. That I could have looked at the Instagram likes on this and I could have said like, I'm not going to leave this on my account because it's ruining my feed because no one likes it and it's obviously not good enough because no one likes it, but I didn't do that because I love this art. I loved making it. I thought it was good. I still think it's good. I'm glad that I stuck with it because it really helped to boost my illustration career. You don't need the biggest following. You don't need the most Instagram likes on a piece of art that you post on Instagram to become a successful artist. Let's head over to the next lesson and let's start talking about what you do need to harness the power of Instagram in a way that is going to help you build a successful business, but not feel overwhelmed. 4. Slow Growth: Alright right. In this lesson we're going to be talking about slow growth. Which is basically my approach to Instagram specifically but also creative business in general. Flow and steady has always been my vibe. If you are feeling that too, this I think is really going to speak to you. The important thing to remember is that slow growth is still growth. It is a marathon. It is not a sprint and honestly I don't even love that metaphor because it's not a race at all. You are not competing with anyone else. You are trying to show up in a way that feels really good for you and that feels like something that you can sustain over a long period of time as you grow your art business. This isn't about racing to hit 10 thousand followers or getting more followers than someone else has or getting the same amount of followers that someone else has. This is all about what you can do over the long term and feel really good about. I am always going to favor quality over quantity. You'll hear me talk about this over and over again. You've heard me talk about it already in this mini-course. It is more important to have a 1000 Instagram followers who are truly engaged in what you're doing, who are interested in hiring you and buying your art than it is to have a 100,000 Instagram followers who are just little butterflies floating by. You're never going to react to your work. You're never going to hire you, you're never going to buy your art prints. It's definitely a quality over quantity situation. Honestly, a lot of people who have a 100 thousand followers on Instagram and up, a lot of those are bought accounts, they're spam accounts. It's not like they have a 100 thousand hardcore fans. Just something to keep in mind when you're comparing yourself to someone else's. It's just really important that you focus on what you have which is quality followers who are super interested in what you're doing. You should focus on building a community around your art. You should use the interests of those couple of thousand people and really focus on connecting with them, which we're going to talk about a little bit more as we get into this mini-course. Focus on forging those connections because that's the thing that's going to help you build a long lasting art business. Not just something that's going to blow up for a week and then disappear. Overall, let go of the idea that you need a certain number of followers to be happy or to be successful or whatever you think about certain number of followers is going to bring to you. Unless you are intending to be an influencer, follow number really isn't that big of a deal. If you are intending on been an art influencer and having a lot of brand partnerships, this class probably isn't for you because we're focusing on slow and steady growth and then be yes, you will approach building your following in a different way if that's something that you want to focus on. But if you're focused on being a freelance illustrator, selling products that you're making, selling books, classes, connecting with people on a deeper level then your follower number doesn't really matter that much. I want you to think about some of your favorite artists. I want you to go look up their Instagram. Do they all have massive followings? Honestly, I bet they don't. I bet some of them do and I bet if you do a little bit of research, those people who have massive followings may or may not have a massive career outside of Instagram. Just because they have 300 thousand followers doesn't mean that they have a lot of success. That they've worked with a lot of clients, that they sell a lot of product, that they're running a really successful art business because again, Instagram follower number is really just a vanity metric and it doesn't actually mean anything really incredibly important. It's okay to embrace the slow but steady growth approach. 5. Focus on Engagement: Friends. This is the crux of my mindful Instagram approach, and that is to focus on engagement. No matter what new features Instagram introduces, the algorithm will always reward engagement. That's the bottom line. It doesn't matter if you're not doing reels or if you are doing reels, or if you're doing stories or just feed posts or whatever you're doing, the algorithm is always going to reward engagement. How the algorithm rates what's important as far as engagement goes, varies all the time, but I think right right, it is in favor of shares, saves, likes, and comments. That order will be juggled around all the time, so don't really get too focused on those metrics. What you really want is just for people to be interacting with what you're posting on Instagram. If people are interacting with your content, the algorithm is more likely to show it to other people because they see, oh, this post is getting engagement, so these people want to see this and then they'll show your art to other people who have similar interests or other people who are your followers on Instagram. Now, you've got three keys to engagement, and that's what we're going to be talking about in the next few lessons. Those keys are going to be, being consistent, being smart about hashtags and writing engaging captions. Head on over to the next lesson and we're going to tackle the first one of these, which is being consistent. 6. Be Consistent: All right friends. Let's talk about the magic of being consistent. This is actually something that you can take beyond Instagram and apply to any social media that you're doing or any marketing that you're doing for your all business. Being consistent is always key. When I'm talking about being consistent, I'm talking about building a habit that you will stick with over a long term. I feel like so often artists are like, oh, I'm going to post to Instagram every single day and that lasts for about a week, maybe two, and then you get tired and you don't have any art to post, or you get frustrated and you stop posting for two months. [LAUGHTER] Then you come back again with renewed energy and you're ready to start posting every day again. Instead of doing that, I'm asking you to really honestly think about what is doable for you over the long term, like what are you going to be able to do continually over the next like year, two, five years? It'll change, you don't have to stick with a posting schedule forever but I think that it helps to just be really honest about what you have available to give to Instagram and then really just build your marketing plan around that. Building this habit is going to make it easier to consistently post to Instagram, it's not going to feel like work, it's a habit so it's something that you can do without thinking. If you're in the habit of posting to Instagram on like Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, then eventually after you've done this for a couple of months or so, it's just going to be second nature to you, you're not going to need a calendar reminder anymore, you're not going to have to prep for it, you're just going to know, oh, it's Monday morning at 10 o'clock, I'm going to sit down and post Instagram real quick. We'll talk a little bit later in this many course about how you can set yourself up for success by doing some advanced work. But for right now we're just talking about figuring out how often you can comfortably post to Instagram without feeling overwhelmed and stressed out and without feeling like you have to be a content making machine because you're not, you're an artist and you have to really honor your creativity instead of trying to be the person who just cranks out art every single day for Instagram. One of the cool things about being consistent is that it means your followers know what to expect. They'll look forward to seeing your posts and then they will get in the habit of interacting with them. We know that engagement is something that the Instagram algorithm loves. As you have your followers being more consistent and interacting with your work, your work will be shown to more people because the algorithm loves engagement. Now you do not have to post to Instagram every day. I know that a lot of classes are going to tell you to do that, and I will be honest with you and tell you that if you do post to Instagram every day, you will probably see more growth than if you post to Instagram a couple of times a week or whatever you settle on for your schedule. But there is no point in committing to daily posting on Instagram if you know deep in your heart, that you're going to find it stressful and that it is going to eventually just suck the joy [LAUGHTER] of creativity for you which I think we've all been there, I've definitely been there too. It's mostly about just doing what is a good fit for you instead of doing what you think Instagram wants you to do because Instagram is not your boss. What I really want you to do right now is, take the time to figure out a posting schedule that works for you, what can you do consistently over time? How often can you post? How do you want to post? Do you just want to be posting photos to your Instagram feed? Are you going to be doing Reels? Are you going to do stories, and how often can you truly honestly do each one of those things? 7. Be Smart About Hashtags: In this lesson, we're going to be talking about hashtags, the ever elusive and always confusing hashtags. How do you use them? How many of them do you use? What do you even do with them? Let's talk about that. I'm going to give you some pointers on choosing hashtags. One of the most important things that you want to do when you are looking for hashtags to use on your Instagram posts, is that you don't want to use hashtags that have more than 300,000 posts on them already. The reason for that is when you are using hashtags that 300,000 or 500,000 or a million posts on them, it's almost impossible for you to trend at the top of that hashtag. It's basically a waste of effort. You're going to use that hashtag. If you use hashtag art, there's probably a billion posts under that and no one is ever going to tap on that hashtag and see your art. It might happen, but it's highly unlikely. You're going to do a lot better choosing hashtags that have less than 300,000 posts on them, there's more chance that if someone taps on that hashtag, they will see your art in the top few pages of their scroll, instead of having it be lost in the abyss [LAUGHTER] at the bottom. A great way to find hashtags is to do research on what other artists and designers and illustrators are using. Look at what other people in a similar space are using. I'm a children's book illustrator. That means that I'm going to look at what other children's book illustrators are using when they post to Instagram. I'm going to check those hashtags out. I'm going to tap through those hashtags and see how many posts there are and whether or not my art is going to be a good fit for that. I know that a lot of you don't want to do this research and it feels like a lot of work, but you're running a creative business, and part of running a creative business is doing the research, getting in there and figuring out what feels like it's going to be a good fit for the art that you're creating and for your end goal. If you are a children's book illustrator like me, you're going to be be looking for hashtags that are relevant to that. If you are selling nursery art prints, then you're going to be be looking for hashtags that are relevant to that. Dig down and look at what other people are using and try to figure out what hashtags are going to be a good fit for you. You can also do hashtag searches to discover relevant hashtags. That means that if I am going to look up like hashtag, children's book illustration, then I can see other related hashtags that are also in that vicinity, and that's going to allow me to add to my list of possible hashtags. Again, just a little bit of research and you don't have to do this all the time. Do this this week, set a date on your calendar to do some hashtag research on Instagram, and then circle back around in a few months and double-check your existing hashtags and see if there are any new hashtags that anyone you follow has been using that might be relevant to your art. This one is hotly contested, but this is a fact. Don't use the same hashtags for every post. I used to keep a hashtag list in my notes app on my phone. Whenever I would post to Instagram, I would just copy and paste that baby into my post and it was so easy. But it turns out that when you use the same hashtags for every single post, the algorithm believes you are being spammy and it will affect your reach and your engagement. Don't use the same hashtags for every post. Try to mix it up. You could have a couple of different lists in your notes app on your phone, or in a Word doc on your computer, and you can just use a different list every time you post, or I'm at the point now where I've been posting to Instagram so long, I have a pretty good handle on the hashtags that I like to use most often. I just type them out as I go, but that may not be for you. Do whatever is going to make it easier for you in the long run. Whatever is going to keep you from roadblocking yourself and not posting to Instagram at all. In each post, you want to use about 3-10 hashtags. Instagram does allow you to use up to 30 hashtags, but apparently the algorithm doesn't like that either. The algorithm is so picky. You just [LAUGHTER] want to use 3-10 hashtags per post, but your overall list of possible hashtags should probably be longer than that. I usually try to keep mine around like 30-50 hashtags to choose from so I can rotate through them with regularity. My last tip on hashtags is don't forget to use hashtags in your Instagram stories and on your reels. I forget to do this all the time, but it's important because your stories and reels will still show up under hashtag searches for specific hashtags. If you're not using hashtags on your stories and your reels, you're missing out on another way for prospective clients and customers to find your art. Head on over to the next lesson and let's talk about writing engaging caption. 8. Write Engaging Captions: In this lesson, we're going to be talking about writing engaging captions, which is another one of the things that you can do to really help boost engagement of your Instagram posts. Again, we're talking about slow and steady growth. On Instagram that slow and steady growth is all about conversation and community. It's all about just building these connections with people who are interested in your art and who are drawn into what you've got to say. You are opening the conversation to those who follow your work, and you're organically building a community around your art by doing things like asking questions to your community in your post and responding to comments and responding to your DMs and really getting to know the people who are in the vicinity of your artwork. A community that you're building on Instagram is going to be deeply interested in what you're making. Your community will sign up for your email list, they will buy your art prints, they will buy your books, they will sign up for your classes, and they're going to enthusiastically embrace and share whatever it is that you're offering. Your community isn't just made up of people who are going to buy your stuff and higher you, people in your community are going to be instrumental in helping you grow your Instagram following as well, because your community is going to be so excited about your art that they're going to share your art on their Instagram stories. They're going to talk about it with their friends. You never know where your next followers are going to come from. That's all part of the community aspect of being on Instagram. It is all about community and not necessarily about likes. Repeat that to yourself whenever you're feeling crappy about Instagram. It's about community, it's not about likes. Now, one of the things that I love to do in my captions is I like to be chatty. Talk about why you made a piece of art. Talk about the materials that you use to make a piece of art or talk about how your technique has changed. Talk about your process of making art. You can even talk about how you're feeling. Talk about something that had an impact on you or talk about how you felt when you made this piece of art. When you start to think of your Instagram following as a community, they start to feel something beyond followers. The Instagram experience feels a little bit more intimate. You feel like you're among friends and acquaintances. Because of that, you might feel more comfortable sharing more in your captions. What you share is completely up to you. If you want to share more of your life, you can absolutely do that. If you want to keep it to just your art, you can absolutely do that. But the most important thing when you're writing captions, no matter what you're writing about, is that you include a call to action. That could be a question that invites responses in the comments. That could be an invite to click your profile link to read an article, sign up for your email list, or buy a product. It could be a call to share the post or to save the post for later. You can ask your community, your audience, to do any of those things. Now, the reason that a call to action is really important is because it encourages engagement, which is what we're trying to do here. For me, I always like to ask a question in my post. I don't do it all the time, but I find that it's a really powerful way to get people involved in what you're posting and to start a conversation, we're just going to build engagement, which the algorithm will like, which will mean that you will eventually start seeing that slow but steady growth. Just to be as open as you can in your captions, talk about the art that you're making, talk about supplies that you're using, talk about your process, talk about something that you've learned recently. Just really be open about sharing your art experience and then don't forget to include a call to action in every one of your captions. Stick with that and see what happens. 9. Bonus Engagement Builder: Here's a bonus engagement builder and that is responding to comments. Again, this is like all about building community here, so this goes a 100 percent back to that. When you post to Instagram, you should be available to respond to comments you receive within about the first hour of your posting. Now this is why I don't like scheduling apps, I think Later is one that people use all the time and Tailwind is another one and I don't love having a scheduling app post to Instagram for me because I need to be [LAUGHTER] reminded that I need to be around to respond to comments within that first hour. For me personally, it's easier to have that top of mind when I'm the person who's posting to Instagram and honestly posting to Instagram takes like five minutes out of my day so it's not a big deal for me to do it myself instead of using a scheduling app. Yes, when you post to Instagram, be available to respond to your comments that you get in the first hour. That's going to be the most important time for engagements according to the algorithm at least. When I respond to comments on my post I use a combination of either just hearting the comments or sometimes I'll say something really simple like thank you. Then sometimes I'll provide a more in-depth reply if whatever they said, not warrants, but if whatever they said naturally leads into a deeper conversation, then I'll do a more in-depth reply. I just follow whatever feels good. Sometimes I don't have time to do really in-depth replies to everything so sometimes it's a lot of saying thank you or whatever. Then another thing that I like to do is when I see someone who's been commenting on my post very often, I like to visit their Instagram account and give them some likes and some comments and some shares as well because I want to be able to spread that love throughout the community. You can also make it a habit to thoughtfully comment on posts from other people. That's how, like people who thoughtfully comment on my posts, I'm more likely to go to their accounts and like and share and interact in some way. If you can get in the habit of thoughtfully commenting on posts from other people, then folks will see you doing that and then they will hopefully tap through and look at your account, maybe give you a follow, maybe give you some engagement. It's all about just learning how to like thoughtfully interact on this crazy platform that we call Instagram and responding to comments is another really good way to do that. 10. Making Content Work for You: Making content work for you. I want to start this lesson by saying that I don't love the word content, because I don't believe that you or I want to just be content creators. We are artists, we're creative people, we don't want to just be cranking out content constantly. But for the purpose of this lesson, let's just say content, and just be fine with it. [LAUGHTER] Making content work for you. The first thing I want you to do is define your why? Why are you even on Instagram? What is your end goal? Figure out what the purpose is. The purpose isn't just to accumulate followers on Instagram. The purpose is something else. The purpose is to get your art in front of art directors, or maybe the purpose is to have people sign up to your email list, or the purpose is to get people to go buy buy art prints. Whatever it is, figure it out, figure out what your end goal is, and then you are going to build your content. Your content is going to be like your Instagram posts, your stories, all that fun stuff. You're going to build your content around whatever your end goal is. The other thing that you want to keep in mind when you're making content work for you, is you want to choose what you're going to post. I find it really helpful to have a list of ideas of things that I can post. For me that's just four things basically. I'm usually posting finished illustrations, and I'm talking about my process. I'm sharing pages from my sketchbook. Then sometimes I'm sharing motivational posts, and sometimes I'm sharing little time-lapse videos of my drawings. I've got four things that I can rely on to post. Having those four things that I know I'm going to post, or that I want to post, really helps me get over the fear of the blank screen when I'm posting on Instagram, because I already pretty much know the things that I want to post. Definitely, take some time and think about what things you want to post on Instagram, which you're interested in sharing, and what things will further your end goal on Instagram. If you want to use your Instagram to sell your art prints, and all that you're sharing is sketchbook videos or something like that, then people may not ever know that you have art prints, and you may be doing yourself a disservice by not really going for your end goal on them. The other thing that you need to do is you need to choose when to post. This for me, I have not found a whole whole of difference when I post being a huge deal. When I look at my Instagram numbers, usually from 8:00 AM- 5:00 PM, is when my following is most active on Instagram. I figure as long as I'm posting during business hours it's fine. But when it comes to building the habit around Instagram, it is really helpful to post at the same time every day, just because from a mental trigger standpoint, it's like a habit trigger, it's going to be easier for you to get in the habit if you are posting at the same time, every time when you post. Choose a time to post, and stick with that. Now, you want to always and forever focus on what's manageable for you, and not what someone else says you need to do. Set yourself up for success by making it consistent and making it easy. This is allowed to be fun. This doesn't have to be hard, it doesn't have to be miserable at all. You can make this work for you in a way that feels really good. Don't worry about what everyone else is saying you need to do, and just figure out what you can do consistently over the long term. Another thing that I love to do is repost old content. You don't have to be posting brand new art to Instagram every day or every single time you post, whatever your posting schedule is. I repost old content all the time. I hardly ever say that it's old art. Sometimes I do, but I usually don't. The important thing to remember here is that you're getting new followers all the time, and that only a small percentage of your followers ever actually see what you post. If I posted an illustration six months ago, only a small percentage of people saw that. If I post it again tomorrow, maybe a new percentage of people is going to see that illustration and connect with it. Maybe the people who saw it last time are going to see it again, and they're going to be reminded of how much they like it and how much they enjoy my work. No one's going to call you out for posting old art. No one's going to look down upon you for posting old art. It's just part of what you can do to make your content work for you, and to make things easy because you're not always going to have a bunch of new art that you can share on Instagram. Another thing that I love is getting multiple posts from one piece of art. That might mean that you share your sketches, you might share some processed photos, you might share some final arts. Then, if those are all photos, you can also have video content of that. Maybe you have a video of yourself working on part of the process, or a video of yourself framing the piece of art after it's finished. Brainstorm some ways that you can actually get more than one post, or story, or real from just one piece of art. How can you really capitalize on that one thing that you've made? That way you don't feel like you have to make new pieces of art three times a week to post on Instagram. You can make one piece of art and stretch it out over a week, or two weeks, or however long your magical brain can figure out to stretch it out for sure [LAUGHTER]. Again, you're just trying to make this easy on yourself. You're not trying to be a content machine, you're trying to make art that you love, and that you really want to put out into the world. Art that's really going to bring to you the projects and customers and clients that you really want to have. I personally used to say that people should do to build their Instagram following, wants to participate in drawing challenges. I'm of two minds on this now. I don't think that it's as easy to build your following withdrawing challenges as it used to be. The first time that I did the 100-day project in 2016 or 2017, I tripled my Instagram following. I had 5,000 followers when I started, and I had 18,000 when it was over. That was over the course of three months, it was 100 days, obviously. But I don't find that it's as easy to get that level of new followers that quickly withdrawing challenges now. When it comes down to participating in drawing challenges, I say that you should participate in a drawing challenge if you are excited by it. If it's something that you're looking forward to doing, if you are looking forward to exploring with your art, if you know that you can participate in a drawing challenge and not feel frustrated with yourself or guilty because you can't keep up with the challenge, or if you know that you don't want to post art every day, then you know that a daily drawing challenge probably isn't going to be a good fit for you. Or you're going to need to do some prep work at least to set that up so you can post every day. For me, you should participate in drawing challenges if it feels really exciting, and if it feels aligned with your creative business goals. But you shouldn't participate in a drawing challenge just because everyone else is doing it, or just because you think it's something that you should do to grow your Instagram following. What you should do is build an Instagram habit that is aligned with your creative goals, and that feels like something that you can do over the long term. You don't have to do all the things that everybody else is telling that you can do. 11. Make it Easy: If you take nothing else from this mini-course, I want you to take the message that you can make it easy. You can make your approach to Instagram really easy and really intuitive and you don't have to stress out as much about it as you've been stressing out about it. I've got a few things I'm going to share with you that I've been doing for years that have made my approach to Instagram super easy. The first thing that I like to do is I like to work in advance and I do this for a few reasons. First of all, I don't like to share my work on Instagram immediately after I create it, because I like to really sit with it, figure out how I feel about it, where I've put it I think it's good or not before I share it on Instagram and let other people's opinions get in there and cloud my judgment about how I'm feeling about my art. I tend to not share right away anyway, which means that I usually have a backlog of art that I share on Instagram. But if you're doing a drawing challenge or something like that, working in advance is also a big help, because if you know that you're going to undertake say, a 30 day drawing challenge and you normally don't post to Instagram every day, you can go ahead and work a month in advance. Go ahead and start working on the art and making as much of it as you can. When the drawing challenge begins, you're ready to share your art, but you're not necessarily having to create it on that exact day that you're sharing it. I would say that a lot of people on Instagram who are posting every day are actually doing some work in advance and are not necessarily posting as they create the art. Instagram gives the illusion that all of us are just being really prolific with our art and I think that the reality is that we're making a lot of art when we feel like making a lot of art and then we're keeping the art set aside so that we can post it to our social media in the future. At least that's the way that I prefer to work. If you can work in advance, it takes a lot of the pressure off you because you don't feel like you have to make something for Instagram today, because you've already got art. You've already got things that you're planning on sharing. Another thing that I like to do is make a hashtag list, which we talked about in the lesson on hashtags. I keep a running list of about 50 hashtags that I choose from whenever I'm posting to Instagram, I just have it setup. I use Asana to organize my business. I just have a board on Asana where I list all my Instagram hashtags and when I need to be refreshed on those, I can just take a quick look at them. Like we talked about before, you might want to have a couple of lists in your notes app so you're not copying and pasting all the same hashtags. But it's nice to have your hashtags in one central location. I also think it's important to update your hashtag list about twice a year. Just put a date on your calendar to check back in with your hashtag list. Look at the hashtags you're using. See if they've got 300,000 or more posts on them and if so, maybe stop using that hashtag and then also look to see if there are new hashtags that have popped up. Check the other artists and illustrators that you follow, see what hashtags they're using, and just do a little refresher as you go through. On the back of working in advance. Another thing you can do to make it easy is to create a content calendar. Now, what this looks like for you may not necessarily be what it looks like for me. I personally like to have a loose content calendar where I know the things that I want to post every day and I know that I'm going to post on specific days, but I don't have every single post for every single day plotted out. There are definitely a few different ways that you can do that. Below this lesson, I'm going to post another video that is something that you get for free as part of this community group. But it is an older video about how I use Trello as a content calendar. I actually do the same thing in Asana now. Even though I've switched apps, the basic concept is the same and it's really not like planning out every single post as much as it is just having a general idea of when I'm going to post and what I have available to post. If you want to be more specific about it, if that's helpful to you, then you should be more specific when you create your content calendar. I would aim for creating a content calendar for one month at a time, because you never know what's going to change in your life and what's going to change about what you're posting. I would say right now, if it feels like a good thing for you, go ahead and create a content calendar for next month so you've got all of your content planned out in a way that feels really intuitive for you. The other thing that I like to do is batch working. This isn't just for social media, this is just for business and life in general. When you're doing batch working, you're basically working on a group of similar tasks at the same time. Say that I'm going to do some sketchbook photos for Instagram. Instead of taking a photo, editing the photo, writing the caption for the photo, putting in my content calendar. Instead of doing that, I'm going to take photos of 10 sketchbook pages. I'm going to edit 10 sketchbook page photos, I'm going to write captions for 10 photos, and then I'm going to put those all into my content calendar. Instead of just doing it one at a time, I'm doing all the similar tasks together and then that's going to make the preparation just a whole lot easier for me. It's going to take less time overall, and it's going to feel less overwhelming when I'm working on it. Those are four things that you can do to make your life really easy with Instagram. Head on over to the next lesson and let's talk very gently about insights. 12. Using Insights: All right friends. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about using insights. If you have a business account or a creator account, you will have access to insights that are basically just like stats that I will show you, your engagement on your posts. How many followers you've got that month, all that fun stuff. Now I personally like to use insights with caution. I rarely use them because I don't want my art to be influenced by what gets the most likes. For me this isn't super important, I probably look at my insights twice a year. I don't recommend getting too wrapped up in insights. Again, if you're planning on being an influencer then your insights are going to be more important because you need to prove your engagement to companies, but if you're just trying to connect with art directors and connect with potential customers I personally just find that insights are more of a hindrance than not. But I want to show you a few things that can be useful if you're into using insights. You can use your insights to uncover what captions work best? Which captions get the best engagement? You can see if photos or videos get the most interaction and you can see what motivates people to visit your profile, or to click on a link, or something like that. There's a lot of good information that you can get from these, it's just really important that you approach it mindfully and that you can approach it from a space where you don't feel like your art is going to be really influenced by whatever your stats are showing. Overall, the message from me to you is just to use Instagram Insights sparingly at best. I'm going to show you some of my insights and just talk about what I'm looking for. Now this particular snapshot; this 30-day snapshot, is a little bit unusual because I had a post that went a little bit viral during this time period. You'll see that my accounts reached as up by 61 percent. My engagement is up by 62 percent, and my total followers is only up by 1.1 percent. This gives me an overview of what's been going on with my account in the last 30 days. I try not to get too wrapped up in this. In this case I've had a post that's gone viral, so the numbers are really up. Then some other months if there has been a big algorithm change I might see these numbers deep down and they might be in the negatives, so I try not to attach to this. But one thing that I like to do is I like to take a look at the Post area and that's going to give me some more information, but before I do that let's look at Total followers. If I tap on "Total followers" it's going to bring up this cute little window, and this is some really good information that you can use. This is going to tell you whether your followers are women or men. Mine are almost 90 percent women, which is not surprising at all. It's going to tell me when my followers are most active during the hours or you can also tap that over and look at what days they're most active. Pretty much on every day for me, my followers are most active from 8:00 A.M-5:00 P.M, is usually the best time. It looks like according to this bar or maybe around noon has a tiny little edge on the other times, and that's probably just people are on their lunch breaks at work scrolling through Instagram. That's something that I can keep in mind when I'm choosing what time I want to post on Instagram. That is an insight that is actually useful to me. Now if I tap into Post it's going to bring up just automatically a grid of all my posts from the last year, and it's automatically going to fall to Reach. I can see how many accounts I reached with each of these posts. I've been posting a lot of sketchbook work for the last year, so it absolutely makes sense to me that most of these posts are my sketchbook art. Then this post right here; this healthy social media habit, was actually a post that I had an ad running for. You see it's got this little arrow icon next to it, and that just means that it was promoted. I take those numbers with a grain of salt because that wasn't organic engagement, that was paid engagement. Now, I can actually drop down the boxes [inaudible] right now and I've got all these other metrics that I can choose from. If I want to look at Post Interactions, or Profile Visits, or Shares, or Whatever, I can do that. In this case I want to look at Saves, and that's just how many people have saved this piece. You'll notice that if you look at the left-hand graphic and then at the right-hand graphic, it's pretty similar. A lot of the same art is up there and I think that's to be expected because that's a lot of the art that had the most overall reach. It makes sense that, that art is also the most saved. You can click around there and see all the different metrics. Whatever is important to you based on why you're on Instagram and what you are hoping visitors will do when they visit your Instagram account. Maybe you just care about likes or maybe you care about follows, maybe you care about shares. Take a tap through there and see whatever metric seems like it is aligned for what you're doing on Instagram. That's literally all that I do on Insights in [LAUGHTER] Instagram. I don't get too deep into it. I'll do a nice overview every now and then just to get a sense of what's resonating with my audience, and if that aligns with the kind of work that I'm focusing on right now. Like I said I've been posting a lot of sketchbook work and that's really been a focus for me, so it makes sense to me that because I was putting that energy out that those things are top in my metrics for Instagram. It just helps me touch base and make sure that the things that I want to connect with are the things that are connecting with my audience. If they're not connecting with my audience, then I can start to think about why, and if I need to make any changes or if I'm going to continue on the path that I'm already on because I'm very happy with it and I don't care what my Instagram metrics are. It's totally up to you how you approach this. 13. Instagram and Your Mental Health: Before we wrap up this mini-course, I want to touch on Instagram and your mental health because this is basically the entire focus of this course, or the underlying focus of this course. We're talking about slow and steady growth on Instagram. We're talking about building community around your art and underneath all of that, we're talking about using Instagram in a way that feels really healthy for you and that doesn't leave you feeling frustrated and feeling bad about your art or yourself. One of the number one things you can do to manage your mental health around Instagram is to turn off your likes. Just like we were talking about in the previous video, I don't use it incites a whole lot because I don't want it to influence my art. If you feel like the counter is influencing your art too much or you feel like it's just making you feel bad, turn it off. [LAUGHTER] When you post something on Instagram, you're going to see you have these three little dots above the post. If you tap on those three little dots, it's going to bring up this little window and from this little window, you have the option to hide your like count. When you do that, instead of it saying like, liked by 1,100 people, it'll say liked by Kayla Stark and others. It won't show the actual number. You can still look at the number if you go into your insights but it takes a little bit more effort to do that and it's not so like in your face. A lot of folks find it really helpful to turn off the like count on their art. I said this before when we were talking about working in advance, I always find it really helpful to sit with your art before you post it. You are almost never going to see me posting art to my Instagram feed the same day that I'm making it. Now, I do sometimes share parts of my process and my Instagram stories as I'm working on something, but for me that's a little different because there's not so much obvious interaction with it. There's no like count on that so it's easier for me to share that and it disappears in 24 hours too so it's a little more fleeting and that feels a little better. But in general, I really recommend that you sit with your art before you post it. So that means if I make a piece of art today, I'm going to go ahead and wait at least two or three days, if not a week or so, before I post it to Instagram. That's just going to give me time to think about how I feel about this art, figure out if I personally like it or not and really just figure out what my thoughts are on it. Then once I figured out how I'm connected to this piece of art, then I can share it on Instagram and it doesn't really bother me if a piece doesn't get a lot of likes or doesn't get a ton of engagement and that's actually why I don't turn off my lake count anymore because it just don't care about it. It doesn't mentally affect me the way that it used to, which is for me a way healthier approach to Instagram. Don't be making art and posting it on the exact same day that you made it. Sit with your feelings a little bit. Another thing that you can do is use a screen time app to limit your usage. When Apple first introduced to the screen time app, I discovered that I was spending three hours a day on Instagram. Like that was my average, was three hours a day, which is just so crazy to me and it wasn't like I was sitting down for three hours at a time. I was just picking up my phone here and there and just doing a few minutes to scrolling but in the end it was three hours every day and I can do a lot more things with those three hours than spend it on Instagram. I started using the screen time app and limiting myself. I limit myself to 45 minutes a day. When I started doing that, I noticed almost an immediate change in my level of creativity and just how I felt in relation to my work, and how I wasn't getting so wrapped up in comparison anymore and it was definitely a good thing for me as an artist and also for me as a human being. Now, how much time you want to give yourself on Instagram, it's completely up to you. I have learned that 45-minute is an excellent amount of time for me because 45 minutes, lets me post to Instagram, respond to comments and DMs and then it also gives me time to do a little bit of scrolling, a little bit of commenting on other stuff, a little bit of sharing and then that's about 45 minutes for me and that's enough time. If I go any longer than that on Instagram, I start to just feel like my art isn't good enough and it really intimidated by everyone else's art and it's definitely not as fun of an experience as it is when I'm more mindful of my approach. You use that screen time app. It's amazing. Another thing that I like to remind people to do is don't check Instagram at bedtime and don't check it first thing in the morning. It's really all about how you want to start and end your day. Like what feelings do you want to start and end your day with? Do I want to start my day feeling envious because I scroll through Instagram and saw like 25 amazing pieces of art and then I'm not going to feel motivated to create my own art anymore because I'm thinking, ''Oh, these people are amazing and I'm never going to be that good.'' Do I want to sit in bed at night and scroll through everybody's amazing art and then have dreams about how my art isn't good? [LAUGHTER] Which has definitely happened to me. Figure out what is giving you the bad feelings around Instagram and remove that from the equation. For me and for a ton of people that I've talked to, it's definitely been checking Instagram first thing in the morning, and then also checking it at bedtime. Those are things that give the bad vibes. My routine with Instagram is that I usually get up early, do my whole life thing, breakfast, walk the dogs, shower, get ready for the day, eat breakfast, just say that already. I just see one breakfast. I'm not a hobbit. [LAUGHTER] Then usually at about 8:30, I'm ready to look at Instagram. That's when I'm ready to respond to comments and DMs and get prepared to do my posting for the day and then I'm almost always done scrolling through Instagram by evening time so we don't have to worry about any random scrolling for the rest of the day and it makes me feel so much better about my approach to Instagram. Another thing that you can do is to make Instagram as easy and stress-free as possible and that's what we've been talking about through this entire mini-course and it's really just about following what feels good to you, following what feels aligned with your creative business goals, and following what you can stick with over the long term instead of feeling like you have to do what everyone says to do or what everyone else is doing. Just find ways to make it easy for yourself and when you catch it, feeling difficult, ask yourself, why. Does it need to feel this difficult? Can I make this easier? Does it have to be done in this way? Does it have to be done in this timeline? How can I make this work for me? Because that's what Instagram is. It's a way for you to market your artwork. Instagram should be working for you. You shouldn't be working for Instagram numbers. I want to do a little business check as we wrap up this lesson and one of the big mental health things that I want to leave you with is to stop depending entirely on Instagram for your art business marketing. When you depend entirely on Instagram for marketing your art, you are at Instagram's mercy. You are at the mercy of all the ups and downs and the ebbs and flows of Instagram and its algorithm and you are a second away from having all of your marketing efforts disappear. What if your Instagram account gets hacked? What if the algorithm changes and you're spending two months not getting any engagement at all. There are tons of reasons that you shouldn't just rely entirely on Instagram. You shouldn't rely entirely on one method of marketing your art business period. It's very stressful. [LAUGHTER] So use other platforms. Use Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, if that's a thing that you're into. You can also use portfolio sites like Be Hands and my children's illustrators.com or higher in illustrator. There are tons of different platforms where you can get your art out there. You just want to find things that you know you can stick with consistently and that don't feel like they're going to be really stressful for you over the long term. Then the other big, big thing that you can do to market your art is to start an email list. Basically, every person who's ever had a business says that they wished that they had started their email list earlier than they did. One of the reasons that I'm able to be cool about Instagram and not worry about numbers and all that fun stuff is because I have an email list that I use to build my community too. I have an email list where I'm sending emails to potential students every week and I have a separate email list that I send to art directors every quarter. So start an email list, find other ways to get your art out into the world and don't rely entirely on Instagram. It's going to make it a whole lot less stressful if you have some other things that you can find that work for you. When you're marketing is multifaceted when you're doing a few different things, Instagram doesn't feel like the only thing, and therefore it doesn't feel super stressful. Is it head on over to the last lesson and I'm going to talk about some common questions that I get around Instagram. 14. Common Concerns: In this final lesson, I just want to go over some common concerns. These are some questions that I get all the time from people who are trying to work out their Instagram strategy. One thing that I hear a lot is every time I post, I lose followers. Yes, that's a thing. It happens to everybody. It happens to me, it happens to every artist that you know, it's a little more noticeable when you're just building your Instagram account and say you have 200 followers. If you lose three followers, you really notice that and it hurts. It's okay. It's allowed to hurt. It's allowed to feel crappy when you lose followers. But here's what I always remind myself of. Those people who are going to unfollow me, those were not my people, they weren't interested in my art, they weren't going to buy my art, they weren't going to hire me for a project. That's absolutely fine. It's absolutely fine for people to understand that I am not for them, that my work is not for them. They can move on and find something that's a better fit for them. Then I can find people who are a better fit for my art. Just reframe your mindset on the idea of losing followers because there's not a finite pool of Instagram followers. There are always going to be more people who can follow your Instagram account if you continue with your slow and steady and consistent approach to Instagram, let it go, friend. What's the best time to post? Which we already talked about. It just depends on you and your community. You can look at your insights and get a sense of when that is. But according to my insights and the best time to post is on the weekdays and usually some point between 08:00 AM and 05:00 PM. But around lunchtime like around noon is where there's a little bit of a peak. You might want to just keep that in mind when you post. You also might just pay attention. Do a little experiment over a month, posted a bunch of different times, and pay attention to when you're getting the best engagement. Then stick with that time. You'll just have to be a little bit patient with that and do a little bit of research with it. Do I need to post every day? You do not. Your account will grow faster if you're posting on a daily basis. But I know from my own personal experience of posting on a daily basis for a couple of years on Instagram. It's really hard to keep up with. It's very hard to keep up with posting every single day. It's very easy to get wrapped up in feeling really guilty when you don't post. Then to just spiral into the story about yourself and how you can't do things consistently and all that fun stuff. I think that it's more important that you figure out a posting schedule that works for you, that feels easy. This is Instagram, you don't have to challenge yourself to do the hardest work of your life for Instagram, you should save that for your art and your creativity. Do I have to do reels? I don't think you have to do reels. My personal $0.02 on reels is that it's not necessarily for me going to bring in clients and people who are going to sign up for my classes. Reels are basically TikTok. There are just some really specific subcategories like dance that does really well, that doesn't really relate to what I do. I don't necessarily feel that reels are necessary. But if you'd like to do reels, do reels, if that feels like something that's aligned with your business and aligned with your goals, do the reels. If it feels like something that's stressful for you and overwhelming, don't worry about it. Do what you can focus on over the long term, instead of stressing out over what you think you should do, which is reels right now. What if no one likes my work? This is something that every artist deals with, especially when you're first putting your artwork out there when you're first building your social media platforms. It definitely feels like no one is listening like no one is looking at your work. It can be really easy to get down on yourself. But I think it's important to remember that everyone started from zero followers on Instagram. Every single person that you follow on Instagram that you admire that has a big following, they all started at zero. They all started with those moments when it felt like no one was looking. They kept going, they kept posting, and they got themselves in a nice habit and eventually, they slowly but steadily built up their following. Not everyone will like your work. That is a fact. But if you continue to share your work steadily and constantly, you will begin to connect with people who do connect with your work. There's someone out there who's interested in seeing your work. There's someone out there who needs to see your work. What if I can't create enough content? Now, this is totally up to you. You're the person who decides how much content you need to create. You're the person who decides how much time you're going to spend building your Instagram account. You're the person who's going to decide how you're going to use your artwork to posterior Instagram account. You're the person who's going to decide how often you are posting to Instagram. If you get yourself up against the wall and you feel like you can't create enough content to meet the schedule that you've set for yourself, then it's time to analyze that schedule, see if it's really going to work for you, and make some changes if you feel like you can't create enough artwork to post on that schedule. It's okay to post less as long as you're doing it on a consistent basis, as long as it's something that you can stick with. The last question that I see a lot is, does my feed need to be curated? This was something from a few years ago. Everybody had these gorgeous curated feeds with the same art and that are the same sketchbook layouts. I don't really think that's a thing anymore. There's been such a move over the last couple of years to just be really real and really show what's going on in the background. I think because of that, it's not as common to have an incredibly curated feed anymore. I think at this point, if you have a strong style if you have a strong voice as an artist, that automatically going to curate your feed and you don't really have to worry about it beyond that. That's it for this mini-course friends. If you have questions, make sure that you post them in the comments below the lessons. I do my best to respond to everyone within 24 hours. I'm looking forward to chatting with you about using Instagram in a mindful and stress-free way. 15. Next Steps: Finding Focus: Your final steps for this course are just to find your focus. Take a few minutes to create an Instagram plan, make it as detailed or as complex as you need it to be. Here are a few key areas to define. What's your purpose in using Instagram? Why are you sharing your art on the app? Get really specific here. What types of content are you posting to Instagram? Are you posting to your stories, to your reels? Are you posting to your feed? Are you posting sketches and process videos, final art? Make a list of all the different things that you can think of that you are confident that you can post to Instagram consistently. Then that takes us to your last key area, which is going to be defining how often you are posting to Instagram. Remember, it is more important to pick a posting schedule that you can stick with over a long term than to commit yourself to something that is just absolutely not going to work for you. If you can't post to Instagram every day, it's not the end of the world, so let it go, friend. Your next step is just going to be to take the answers to those questions and start making a content plan, one that you can stick with for more than a few days. Your content plan can just be something that you write down on a piece of paper. It can be a spreadsheet, it can be something in Trello or Asana, or whatever feels comfortable for you. Now, if you feel called to, I would love it if you would share a little snippet of your content plan in the Your Project section so we can all be inspired by one another to move forward and building our Instagram accounts. Then the last thought that I want to leave you with is that this is all about slow and steady growth, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Slow and steady growth is still growth. Still a great way for you to be making connections with potential clients and potential customers too.