Social Media Marketing: Leveraging Instagram For Illustrators

1. Overview: Hey, there. I'm Jess, the Face behind Jess Miller draws, and I'm excited to welcome you to Social Media Marketing, Leveraging Instagram for Illustrators. I think that we can all agree that we're in never any battle with Instagram. Stuck in a follower count Rd, low engagement, no reach. You're not alone. In this course, I'm going to share strategies on how you could move away from vanity metrics and use Instagram as a marketing tool to grow your creative business. This course is geared towards illustrators and commercial artists. In the following lessons, I will dive into the practical stuff, such as curating your content, sharing your process, and building connection. But first, let's talk about what Instagram should be your go to for your creative business. Instagram isn't just another social media platform. It's a marketing Powerhouse. It's a visual platform that exposes you to potential collaborators, art directors, and brands. In fact, 90% of my client inquiries come straight from Instagram. But it's not just about finding client work. It's about building and fostering a community and establishing yourself as a respected artist in your niche. So if you're ready to level up your social media marketing, let's make your profile a magnet for opportunities and a hub for community growth. Let's get started. 2. Curating Your Content: All right, let's get started with our first lesson, curating your content. The first things first, let's do a self audit. Switch to a creator account and regularly track your insights. By switching to a creator account, you can get in depth insights on engagement reach, follow account, likes, et cetera per post. Share your name and a photo in your bio to increase your brand awareness. This is super important, because I think as artists, we tend to hide our face behind our art. But you really want to connect a name with a face. And for mine, I picked a photo of myself and my studio, and for my user name, it's Jess Miller, my name and exactly what I do, I draw. Write a bio that features keywords. What are keywords. They are ideas and topics that define exactly who you are and what you do. So focus on figuring out who you are, what value that you have to offer, and what's your specialty. My profile, for example, have my full name, my pronouns. I have an artist account, and I have my geographical location? I'm an LA based illustrator specializing in hand lettering, surface pattern design and character portraits. I also include my e mail. Even though there's an e mail button, a lot of times brands don't see that. So I like to include my full e mail in my bio. I include a little free guy as an incentive to sign up for my e mail newsletter. Then you want to do a self audit P two and ask yourself these questions. On a whole, does your Gridlo cohesive Do you have a style. What is your specialty or your niche. Archive work that doesn't fit or reflect your best work. You don't have to delete it, but just archived for now. This one is super important. Keep your business life separate from your personal life. Treat your Instagram account like your portfolio. If you were going on a job interview, you wouldn't want to randomly show pictures of your lunch or some family time with grandma. It would just be random to the client, right? So, treat this just like your work portfolio. And I know what you're thinking, and you're like, but I want to show those photos of my personal life, and you can. Consider showing them in your stories where they'll expire after 24 hours, or you can create a separate account. I have two accounts. This is my business account, Just Miller draws, where I keep it all business related, all art related. And then I have a personal account just for photos of my family and friends. And focus on the posts that perform well. How can you reinterpret and reshare that piece? Also consider what kind of content to make. There are six different types of content, and the first is conversational. Ask your audience a question that sparks conversation. This can also be controversial. So if you're not afraid of controversy, think about sparking a debate with your community. One of my personal favorites is educational. Teach your audience a new skill. People go on social media for tips and tricks all the time. And I like to show some of my favorite Adobe illustrator tips or procreate tips through a tutorial style reel. And obviously, people go to social media as an escape. So make sure that your art is entertaining to some degree. And you don't have to dance or perform or sing by any means. But think about making entertaining content that would grab your audience's attention. And obviously, you want to create beautiful content. Instagram is a visual platform, so you want to create content that is top notch and aesthetically pleasing. Motivational. Think about ways that you can motivate your audience to take action. And another one of my favorites is inspirational. Inspire your audience through positive, feel good content. I do that with a lot of hand lettered messages or just some personal storytelling. Post consistently and frequently. Consider using pre made templates. Batch your content in advance. Have a dedicated planning day to schedule your content. I do this typically on Mondays so that I can plan and schedule my content for the rest of the week. Spend less time scrolling and more time creating. Of course, you want to look to the Explore page for inspiration, but you also want to spend more time brainstorming and creating original content. My personal favorite, repurpose and reinterpret your best performing content. And I'm gonna go more in depth in the next few slides. Consider combining pieces together. So these two pieces I made on separate occasions. The first was a character portrait inspired by Frida Cow. And the second is a Be Kind TR Mind. It was for a go fund me kindness campaign. I really loved both of these pieces, but they were kind of unrelated. So I thought of a way to merge them both together. So I took elements from both. I took the handler quote in a different style, as well as the foliage that was in her hair, and I combined them for this mental health Awareness Month, Bekin Ter Mind Post. It really resonated with my followers. It got over 17,000 likes and people really loved it. I didn't have to reinvent the wheel by any means. I had already created these two pieces in advance and I just thought of a different way of reinterpreting them. Here's another way to repurpose your best performing content. This was a piece of to mushroom art that I created for Halloween and people really seemed to like it. I redrew the elements in different colors and I made it into a repeating surface pattern. I made it kind of funky. I added a lot of dots and stripes and made them kind of fantastical looking. And then I applied it to my caste of fi collection, and it became a best seller. So I already kind of knew what my audience, what kind of art they liked. I thought about making it into a repeating pattern, and then I actually applied it to real products, and it was a really cool way to see them on tech accessories. Also think about creating many collections. So, again, we're on this mushroom theme, but I created this art for Halloween, and I handlet the phrase, Your Pure magic. And I surrounded it by little mushroom icons, and it was a great handletter piece that I could put on a mug or a tilt bag. But I thought, How can I take this and make it into a pattern? So I took those icons and those gords and pumpkins and mushrooms, and I made it into a repeating pattern. And then for another post, I shared how it was applied on a digital mock up. So it's a notebook, and so I showed kind of a real case scenario of how the pattern could be applied. So consider ways of how you can share your art process. And I like to show my process through videos or reels. And I'll show you quickly some examples. This repeat pattern, for example. I quickly showed just little clips about how I made all the different icons and how I drew them in procreate. And then I showed what it looked like as a pattern swatch and how I stitched that together as a repeating pattern. Here's another process video that I just set to music, and I showed how I illustrated this dragon in Adobe Illustrator, all the different shapes, patterns and elements that made up my dragon. And here's a fun one, a holiday card that I made for American Greetings. And it was just a quick reveal, and then I showed it in store. Mockups are another great way to show off your artwork. They're a perfect tool for manifesting the kind of projects that you want to get hired for. And it's much more compelling to see your art on a physical mockup. It gives your art context. So instead of just posting your art as a little square on Instagram, show it on a digital mock up. It makes it much more appealing to art directors. And here are just a few examples of how I have used digital mock ups, anywhere from gift cards to clothing, fabric, makeup, coffee packaging, tow bags, you name it. And it shows all the different applications that you can apply your artwork to. Now I just want to show you some of the sites that I like to find mock ups from. And the first is CreateC. They're my favorite site to find mockups from. They're really high quality, as well as affordable. And they just have such a rich variety to choose from. I'm going to type in the subject matter of fabric. And then if you scroll down, you can see all the different fabric mock ups that they have on their site. And they're pretty affordable. They range anywhere $15-35, and they're pretty easy to use. It's a photoshop file. And you just double click on that mesh and then put your artwork on it, save it, and it automatically wraps to the shape. Of that mockup. If money is really a factor for you, you can definitely check out their freebies tab. They offer a variety of really high quality free mock ups. There's tow bags, cards, shoes, fabric, mugs, you name it. And also Create C donated three mockups just for this class. So if you go to the class resource section, make sure to download your three free mockups for this class. And if you really don't have any money, you can check out free picks. Free picks is totally free. They allow up to two downloads a day, two or three downloads a day, so I'm just going to type in fabric. Granted, they are free mock ups, but they're not photoshop files. They're typically just flat JPEGs or PNG files that you kind of have to photoshop yourself. So you get what you pay for, but it is free. And then I want to show you how easy it is to make mock ups from Adobe Express. Adobe Express is totally free. The free version has some limited features. But if you already have a creative Cloud account, you have access to the premium features, and I utilize this for a lot of mock ups. And I'm just going to show you how easy it is to mock up a top bag using Adobe Express. So I'm going to search their media for top bag. Scroll through some of the photos, and I like this lifestyle image. But I don't really like the tile background, and I want to remove it. An easy way to remove that is to use their quick feature called remove background, and it removes the background with just one click. That's really, really easy and quick way to remove a background from an image. You can also change the color of the background. So maybe I want to make it more brand color. And it's that easy. And then I can go and apply my artwork directly on that tow bag. Also consider photographing your artwork. So anytime I get a product, I photograph it with my iPhone, and I utilize colorful backdrops. So these are just some cricket vinyls that I pick up at Michael's for a pop of color, and I add some simple props in the background for visual interest. You don't have to be fancy. You don't have to buy a fancy camera or fancy equipment. I just use my iPhone, and that's how I shoot all of my photos. But I really love to style it, if I can and show actual photographs on my website, as well as my Instagram. Because at the end of the day, nothing is better than seeing the real thing, right? So it's a recap. Instagram rewards users that use the entire platform and post frequently. By resharing art, you are able to create more content in a shorter amount of time. It also built your portfolio, built brand awareness, and establishes your specialty. It attracts clients and partnerships. It's super helpful for them to see mock ups in real world examples of your art. 3. Categorizing & Scheduling: This section is all about categorizing and scheduling your content. Let's start off with talking a little bit about hashtags. They're not so relevant anymore, but still are used to categorize your content. So let's cover some does and don'ts. Use five to ten Niche specific hashtags so your followers can easily search for your content. This is also going to feed the algorithm. So you want to use Anything that is specific to your specialty or your niche. Look in the search bar to see what hashtags are popular and trending. You could also go to alternative social media platforms like Pinterest or TikTok and see what's trending over there and see if you can bring it back into Instagram. Search high performing content to see what hashtags are popular and trending. Also create custom hash tags to categorize your posts. And I'll show you examples of this in the next slide. Some don'ts to consider. Don't use hash tags that have nothing to do with your content, because this is only going to feed false information to the algorithm. Don't use overly generic hash tags. These will make it harder for people to discover your content due to the volume of people using them. So don't use any kind of hash tag like Pash tag explore hashtag summer vibes, because those have over 1 million uses. And if you use that, it's just going to be oversaturated, and you're just going to be one post in 1 million. And don't copy and paste the same hash tags for every post. Try to switch them up when possible. And I see this all the time with creators using the same hash tags over and over again out of convenience. And that can actually be flagged as bought behavior, and you can get shadow band. So really think about using different hash tags for every single post. And here are some examples. So I bucket them according to my specialties. So I have three different buckets, hand lettering, character portraits, and surface pattern design. For hand lettering, it's all lettering and type focused, whether it is challenges or different groups that use their specific cash tags. I call them out. As well as character portraits. Again, like, draw the senior style challenge or fun with faces. Any kind of challenge that I want to relate back to my character portrait. It all has to do with illustration, female graders, anything to do with character portraits. And then surface pattern design has everything to do with surface pattern design, the community patterns, even trade shows, they are surface pattern design related. I include those. What to pin to your Instagram grid. Think about pinning high performing posts to grow your following. So anytime I have a real or a post go viral, I'll want to share it again with my audience. Because it resonated with them, I will pin it to my profile grid. Pin a post, introducing yourself or your business. Walk us through your creative journey. People love to see the artist behind the art. And when you can introduce yourself and pin that, it's really easy for art directors and brands to find that right away when it's at the top of your grid. An educational post to position yourself as an expert. This is one of my favorites. I love to teach through tutorial style reels, and a lot of times, phys go viral. And I had one about a grain brush that I created an illustrator, and so I pinned that to the top of my profile so that my users can easily find it. And consider pinning a freebie. If you have a newsletter. This is a great way to convert your Instagram followers to newsletter subscribers is when you pin some type of freebie incentive for them to sign up. And what to highlight is very similar about me introduction reviews and testimonials, particularly if you offer a specific service or product. Behind the scenes content, people, again, they love to see what's going on behind the scenes and your process. Frequently ask questions. I get the same questions asked over and over again. What program did you draw that in or what brushes did you use to create that art? I like them to refer back to the frequently asked questions. Any kind of freebies. Again, people love freebies, free brushes, free templates. You can highlight that on your grid. And lastly, polls and fun and games, any kind of fun trivia or get to know me, you can highlight that on your page. You can also consider using custom icons. For your highlight covers. For me, I just use different colors, but if you want to get really granular, you can design different icons and really add some customization to your highlights. And consider scheduling your content in advance, especially if you get overwhelmed with how do I post so frequently? And how do I post all the time, especially multiple times a week? One way is to schedule all your content in advance and use a content calendar. Utilize programs like Later Planly and Adobe Express to schedule your posts in advance. Schedule a content creation day where you film all your content at once. I typically like to rest on the weekends, and then I will start a content creation day on Monday. And then that way, I plan all the content that I'm going to create for the week. I film all my clips, and then I edit them on that filming day, so it's all ready to go for the rest of the week. And here is an example of my content calendar, just a month at a glance. And you'll see that on Sundays and Saturdays, it's a rest day. And then throughout the week, I'll have all my content planned. And I don't always post every day. Sometimes I will post a story sticker, like, ask me anything or I'll post a carousel or just simply reply to comments and send out five DMs. It's just a call to action for me to interact more with the Instagram app. But I'm not necessarily posting every day. I also included this calendar in the resource section so that you can plan out your content for the month. I also included in Instagram scheduler, so you can plan out any kind of ideas, published date, the type of content that you want to create, whether it's a static fee post, carousel, reel, et cetera. And then a whole bucket for you to brainstorm this content. And I included to do less and a little spot for you to include hash tags and links. And if you really want to get into it, you can start scheduling your week at a glance. So this way you can get more in depth and have more space to write out what kind of content you want to create day to day for the week. I also want to share how you can use programs like Adobe Express to schedule your content in advance. So I created this little animation of one of my illustrations using Adobe Express. Super easy and fun. It's a little real that I created, and now I want to schedule this post. So what I do is I go to share. Schedule post. And then I'm going to select the channels that I want to share it to. So Instagram and TikTok. I'm going to share it as a real. And then I'm going to type in a caption. And then I just typed in summer state of mind, easy animation using Adobe Express. And you can type in different hash tags to include, et cetera, et cetera. You can even include emojis that you want to create. Maybe a sun for summer. You also have some options for Instagram, like being the first to comment, or you can disable comments. Then now you can select scheduling. I can either select published now or I can schedule it in advance. So I just want to open up my calendar and pick a date that works for me. And then you can scroll up to the top and select a real cover. So I think I'm going to probably select this one. That looks pretty good. I think that'll look good on my feed. You can preview it in advance. Just to make sure everything will look great on your feed. Alright, everything looks good to me, so I think I'm ready to schedule. And then you just click schedule. 4. Building a Community: In this section, I'm talking all about building a community. And the first step is to connect with your audience. The key to the connection is then like trust factor. When you've built a relationship with your followers where they feel like they know you and genuinely like you, then that means that they can trust you. When your audience trusts you, they become more supportive, willing, and engaged. And that comes down to sharing what you love to do in a natural and organic way. Build a community on a personal level through stories, DMs, and captions and share your process. Don't be a gatekeeper. Our natural instinct is to have a scarcity mindset. Once we share our secrets, everyone will copy us, and we won't be original anymore, which is simply not true. Generosity builds trust. I have found from being open and honest with my followers that have built genuine trust. Be generous with all the information that you have and teach your followers all that you know. And consider adding value to your posts so that you're not just posting to post. Become the expert in all that you know. Be the G to person, and share through a tutorial style real or creative Now, I know that Instagram is a visual platform, and so they're pushing video content and visuals, but don't forget about the importance of captions and storytelling and captions. I think people often forget that keywords are also found in captions. So keywords are in your user name and your bio, and they're also in captions. Start with a good headline, lead with something thought provoking or exciting. What's going to capture their attention right away? Instagram only shows the first one to two lines of your caption in your feed, so make sure that it counts. Make it personal. Share a story to give context to that post because this adds value. This is a perfect example of this. I hand lettered the phrase, what you water grows, and then I included a testimonial about working with my creative business coach. And I was vulnerable. I told about my struggle early on and how after working with him, I was able to turn things around and diversify my income streams and really thrive in my creative business. I think that it really resonated with my audience. I feel like it was relatable. A lot of artists struggle, and so to make that relatable content and share that vulnerable story, it really resonated with them. And this post, it was just a single post, and it got over 7,000 likes. So for a single post, that's pretty good. And end with a call to action that triggers further engagement from your followers. Whether that's a mani chat trigger or just simply saying, click Lincoln Bio for more info. You want to trigger more interaction with in and around Instagram. Remember to communicate with your audience. So if someone asks a question or they leave a compliment, just simply reply back to them because that boosts your engagement when you reply back and reply back quickly. Consider participating in collaborative posts. So make a list of ten people within your industry with similar niche to you. Start following and building a genuine relationship with them. Reach out and ask if they'd like to collaborate on a post with you. I love to do collaborative posts, especially for licensed artwork that I create for a company. This example on the right is a real that I created for the company Wild S Heck. They create a hats with artwork inside the brims of the hats. So I created a process real showing my process of how I created the art specifically for their hats. And I posted it as a collaborative reel so that their audience, the people buying the hats, can see the artists behind the art and can see all of the different hats that I created within that line. And it was great exposure. We got exposure to both of each other's audiences. And I also want to show this collaborative reel I did with the happy planner. And in it, I showed how my art started on the iPad as digital, and then I illustrated 12 different dividers, one for each month, and I wanted to show the complimentary sticker books, as well as how I use them within the planner. It was just a really fun collaborative way to show off the product that I designed for them. Instagram stories is content that gets pushed just to your followers. So, of course, it's a powerful feature for building and fostering relationships with your audience. So get personal with stories. Ask a question, post a quiz, create a poll or add an external link to drive more engagement. Utilize these stickers within the stories beater. There is no secret formula to stories, but you definitely get penalized if you post too much to your stories or post stories that are just back to back without any kind of rest. So I suggest just posting six stories a day, two in the morning, two in the afternoon, and two at night. And if you're seeing low engagement on your stories, let them fully expire, and then post fresh content once they expire. And here's some examples of how I use story stickers in my posts. One of my favorites is posting a pole sticker, asking my audience which colorway they prefer. And in that way, the audience gets to interact with the story, and they get to cast their vote. Another great way to interact with your audience is ask some questions. I host and ask me anything And then I try to answer it within a real. And this is a really great way to get direct feedback from your audience on the type of content that they want to see you create. And then, of course, I love to utilize link stickers. When I'm promoting the Happy planner design that I created, I posted a link to the Happy Planner website where you could swipe up and check out the planner on their website. That is perfect for any kind of product that you want to showcase, or maybe it is a link to a course that you created. It is a great way for them to check out that website further. And if you thought stories or personal, direct messages are even more personal. DMs are the most overlooked feature on Instagram. So if you want to rank higher in someone else's stories, get into their DMs. The more you DM someone, the higher they will rank in your stories and in your feet. But how do you do that without being creepy? Simply just reply back to their stories. So if you see something really intriguing, like it's a piece of art that they created, they're sharing their process, just simply reply back saying how much you love it. DMs are also a great outreach tool, whether for growing personal or business relationships. Great one to build personal relationships is if you have a new follower. Let's say someone just started following you. DM them and say, Hey, thanks for the follow, compliment them. I really love that watercolor painting you did of a Sunflower. And then encourage them to interact with your profile. So let's say you have an art challenge. Say, Hey, I have an art challenge coming up. Would you like to participate? Here are the rules and the timeline for when you can post. And if you'd like to reach out to a company. This is a great strategy if you want to work with a client or license your artwork. I try to send them a DM first, tell a little bit about myself and what I do, share examples of my work, and then ask if they have an e mail that I can follow up with with more information. Join communities. Connect and engage with other artists in the community. When you follow someone new, Instagram will suggest other similar accounts to follow. So if I follow one of these accounts, it'll probably show me a few more that are very similar that I should follow. And you want to join communities and organizations and groups within your niche. So that all makes sense. This feeds the algorithm. So if you follow one art group, it'll show you another one, it'll show you more art content. If you start following different groups that have nothing to do with the content that you create, it kind of confuses the algorithm, and they'll start showing you very random people and organizations to follow. Organizations typically have contests, resources, challenges, and meet ups to grow and foster the online community. So they are a great way to interact and engage. Like, when I first started out, I followed as many of these communities, and I joined in as many of their challenges as I could, not only so I could build my portfolio, but also meet new artists as well and consider participating in art challenges. This is an example of one of the many art challenges that I've hosted It is the Spring floral pattern challenge. And it was really simple. I just encouraged my followers to create a pattern that focused around spring florals. I even included a createC mockup that they could use to show off their pattern. And all they had to do was share it on Instagram with the SFP Challenge 2023 hashtag. Here's an example of what I shared, I shared my pattern in two different colorways, as well as on digital mockups from Cretz. And then here is this a snapshot of some of the many, many entries that I got. But it was really a great way I shared them in my stories and I fostered the community, and it was a great way for me to meet other artists, and it was a great way for them to build their portfolio. Challenges are a great way to meet new artists, form connections, hone your skills, and build your portfolio. And the best part about this, it was a full circle moment. So because I shared my art, I put it on practical mock ups in real world scenario. It was picked up by an art director for TJ Max. They really like this pattern, and they put it on all their party supplies. So paper plates, paper cups, and napkins. It was a full circle moment because I shared it in a art challenge. It got picked up on an art licensing product. Here are some of the many art challenges that I've hosted in the past. Some of the common ones are draw this in your style. So I feature a character and I encourage my audience to draw in their style. I also focus a lot on holidays. So I did a art challenge called My Punny Valentine. That was a lettering challenge. I encouraged my audience to handler and illustrate Funny Valentine theme to puns. I also did a summer themed art challenge, as well as a Halloween one and Christmas. Consider hosting a live session. Go live with a friend, discuss a topic, or demonstrate a process, tutorial Just chat about your favorite topics. So these are some examples of some of the live sessions that I've hosted in the past. One was with my creative business coach. We talked all about pricing and negotiation. I also hosted a draw with us. It was like a draw along with my friend Jess, and we each shared our drawing process, and we created a piece during an our live session. And then I talked all about art licensing with my friend Heather, and we had a live Q&A. So it was a great interaction to go And in the class resource section, I also included a worksheet where you can plan your live sessions. So you can schedule date, time, topic, duration, your main points of discussion, as well as your target audience, call to action, any kind of props or notes that you want to include. So what thing to keep in mind? If content is king engagement is queen. Spend time com, saving, and sharing other artists work. This is all engagement. Take time to respond and interact with peers, as well as new followers. Share a story in your caption or ask a question to spark conversation. Utilize those story stickers. And don't expect others to comment on your posts if you're not actively doing it yourself. 5. Reaching New Audiences : In this section, I'm going to cover all about reaching new audiences. First off, you want to adapt to the platform. So when Instagram rolls out a brand new feature, that means that they are likely putting a lot of money behind it and want their users to start using that new feature. They might even incentivize it. So this happened when Instagram first dropped reels and they offered a bonus payout if you started using that new feature. And they even started to do a bonus incentive for threads. You definitely want to follow accounts such as creators, Adam Moser, and Instagram for business for all of Instagram's new and updated features. These accounts drop all sorts of tips and tricks on how to grow your Instagram account, and they have all the updated features. So anytime they drop a new feature or make an announcement, they'll do it through these accounts. Definitely consider joining Threads. It's a great alternative to posting on Instagram. It's so much more conversational and community based. It is like in old school Twitter. So it's very text driven, and there's lots of discussions and debates going on. And it doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing, like Instagram. You can just ask questions. It's like talking to your community to your friends and getting advice. And it's a great alternative way to grow your Instagram account. So you can cross promote any kind of thread content that you have by sharing it on your stories or your posts on Instagram. And don't forget about carousels. So you can still reach new audiences with still images, but make them carousels. And I think carousels are a great way to tell a story through multiple still images. Later media reported that carousel posts have a 19% higher engagement rate versus single image posts. And I hear this from a lot of people that their still images don't really perform well and their real content doesn't perform well, but for some reason, carousels seem to work. So definitely experiment and see what kind of posts work best for you. As carousel posts allow you to post up to ten images and feature more visual content in a single post. I've also seen the same carousel repeat numerous times when I'm scrolling through my feed. They just switch out an image. I noticed that, like, Oh, I already commented on this. I already liked it, but they just show a different carousel image. So it's another way for you to appear in the feed more often. Carousels are great for product reveals, brand storytelling, customer reviews, behind the scenes content, asking questions and more. My favorite way to use carousels, I show a surface pattern design, and then I'll show it as a pattern and then in a different color way, and then I'll show it on digital mock ups. And it's just a great way for me to show the pattern as a pattern and then how it is applied as products. And definitely definitely create reels and video content. Heels are still the number one tactic for reaching new audiences. Reels don't have to be fancy or require any kind of expensive equipment. I film all my reels with my iPhone in my studio. I don't really have any fancy filming equipment. I just have a regular tripod. I bought on Amazon for $20. So I can link all this in the class resource section, but I just want to encourage you that you don't have to have fancy equipment to film reels. And you don't have to talk to the camera, dance, point to words, any of that. I keep it I keep my content very focused on what my audience wants to see. I share my art process, so I'll show some B roll footage of me drawing or you know, me at my computer, creating art or me drawing on my iPad. So just be be true and authentic to you. But let's cover some real dos and don'ts. Definitely make sure your content is entertaining, fun, educational, or inspiring. Shorter tends to perform better, but definitely experiment with length time. If it's a quick process reel, then you probably want to keep it under 15 seconds. Keep it short. You want to grab their attention right away. But if it is a tutorial style where it's step by step and it's education based, then you might want to make it a bit longer because you don't want to leave out any important information. Definitely treat it like a mini commercial with a bunch of short little clips. It'll keep the interest of your viewer. And definitely use a clever hook or transition to grab the viewer's attention and use a strong cover image. I always use a cover image, and I describe exactly what's going on in the reel. So when someone is swiping through my account, They can see, Oh, that's a tutorial on how to create a grain brush, and they can immediately check it out. Save reels that you find inspiring. So you definitely want to go the Explore page and check out, see what's trending, maybe see what your other artist friends are creating, definitely, do a little research. Experiment with trending audio and making your own audio. So In years past, Instagram was really pushing trends, and that was kind of a way to grow, was to repurpose like trending audio. But now Instagram recently released that they are encouraging you to create your own original audio and your own original content, which is great for us as artists and creators, so we can really lean into creating our own original content. Let's cover some don'ts. So this is probably obvious, but don't post anything blurry or anything that has low resolution. It can be as simple as like wiping your camera on your iPhone before you start filming. It's something that I forget about all the time, and then I film along real, and then I see that it's kind of like blurry and smudge. So definitely definitely make sure that your equipment is clean before you start filming. Don't film anything in like TikTok or even in cap cut without removing the watermark first, because Instagram will instantly see that watermark and it will get pushed down to the bottom of the algorithm. They want to encourage you to create your reels within the app, which you totally can. But if you prefer to create them in other apps like CPC and in shot, just make sure that they don't leave any kind of watermark. And make sure that you film in the ten by 80 19 by 20 aspect ratio, so that is in portrait. Instagram isn't favoring landscape videos right now or square videos. It looks kind of bad having those thick black borders around the videos. And so definitely that content gets pushed at the bottom typically. So you want to make sure that your video fits within that 1080 by 1920 ratio. And consider using close captions. You can use a little caption sticker, especially if you're film in editorial reel, where you have to show step by step in detail. Definitely include captions with your voiceover. But don't get crazy with texts. Don't cover the majority of your video with text. Instagram is a visual platform, so you don't want to be text heavy. Don't make it very lengthy or boring. Try to keep it short and sweet because you want to grab your audience's attention. They're scrolling through, they're seeing probably hundreds of reels a day, and you want to make your stand out. And so why not make it just short and sweet and easy to consume? Now, let's cover how to get discovered on reels. So consider using search engines to find commonly searched topics, even outside of Instagram. So think about using YouTube, Pints, TikTok. They have different search engines than Instagram. TikTok, typically, they have their content trends way before Instagram, then it kind of trickles down. So a lot of times, I will search different topics, see what's popular, see what's trending, see what's kind of going on on TikTok, and then kind of bring it over to Instagram. Create unique and original content instead of recycling trends. So in years past, it was a lot of push for using trending audio, what kind of audio was trending. But now it's actually, again, it's in our favor to create our own original content. They're encouraging voiceovers. They're encouraging us to be original. Ask your audience what they would like to hear from you. This is one of my favorite ways to brainstorm. What kind of content I should share as a real. I like to ask my audience. So I'll ask them through a sticker and stories, and I'll say, Hey, ask me any creative business question or technical tip, and I will do my best to answer in a real. And that's a great way to get direct feedback from your audience on exactly the kind of content that they want to see from you. And consider filling in the gaps. So create original content that no one else is creating. This is called pocket content. So anytime you search through YouTube or on TikTok, and you want to find an answer to something and you can't quite like nobody else is doing it. I think that's a sign that you should be the one that creating it. In this next video, I'm going to walk you step by step and how I create a process real from start to finish. 6. Process Reel Demonstration: So now I want to walk in through my process of how I film and create my reels. So I first start off with a flake clean desk. I prefer to use my branch standing desk so I can adjust the height accordingly. And I always film next to open windows. So I have open windows on both sides. I don't fill with any kind of artificial light. The past, I have tried it out, and I always get a horrible reflection on my iPad screen. I always like to set the scene and make it interesting in some way with some kind of props or backdrops, just to add visual interest to my reels, 'cause my art is so colorful and I feel like if I filled on a white desk like a white backdrop, it would be quite boring. So I discovered that I really like to add a punch of color with cricket vinyls. So I bought these from Michael's in the craft supply section, and they are just final backdrops. That I layer. And I kind of color coordinate according to which artwork that I'm working on. And as you can tell, they're quite narrow. So I always like to color block using two colors. As you can see, they're kind of narrow. So I can't really fit my iPad on one color, so I always like to layer two colors. And then I always use a tripod to film overhead, and I like to use my Canvas tripod for this. So it's technically a lamp, but I've never used the lamp part. I just use it as a tripod to hold my phone. And I really like it because it's really easy to adjust. I can adjust different angles and orientations. And I just slide my phone into this clamp. And I can easily film overhead shots of me drawing. So once I'm all set up, I will start shooting short video clips of me recreating a piece. When I start a reel, I always work backward, so I have a finished piece that I start with, and then I turn off certain layers, and I redraw them. So that I'm not here creating art, you know, for hours and hours. I'm just filming short little clips. They're usually 15 seconds or a minute or 2 minutes, and I just film short little clips of me recreating the art. So now that I'm all set up to start filming, I pick a piece. So this piece is already finished. It's a funny little friendship card that I created. No show average friendship. And I'm just going to start filming some short clips of me redrawing these elements. So I probably want to show some kind of video of me lettering something, and then probably using a texture brush on those ddos, and then probably some little sparkles. So I'll just I'll quickly film some of these elements over again, and I'll show you how I add them into my reel. So what I do is I just turn off the elements that I already drew, so I probably won't to turn those off. Probably just redraw some of these chips. Here you go. Let's go to turn off. So texture on those chips. And then I'll just turn on my sketch layer and just turn it down quite a bit. And then on a new layer, I'll just start redrawing these elements. And I also like to switch up my camera angle. So maybe for this one, I'll do, like, a zoomed in shot. I'm just adjusting my overhead tripod. And then I'll do some kind of close up for texturizing those nachos. And then now that we finished that, I'll probably show another overhead shot of me adding some of those sparkle elements. And I will quickly just go back and turn on my other layers that I had on previously. After I have shot all of my short little clips, I want to start adding them into an app called In Shot, where I can start editing my reel together. I have found that Instagram can get really glitchy, and I've worked it in the past, and I've spent a lot of time editing, and then all of a sudden, the app crashes and I lose everything. Super frustrating. So, I like to use the app insho It has a lot more features, and I can also download the raw file afterwards without any kind of watermark, which I really like in case I need to send the raw file to a brand partner or a client, I have that option. Whereas, if I filed it within Instagram, it would have that Instagram watermark on it. So I just click on the app. And what's nice about In Shot, it's available on your iPad, as well as your iPhone. So it makes it very accessible. I typically edit all my videos directly within my iPhone, but for the purpose of this video, it's a little larger screen. So I'm showing you on my iPad. So the free version has ads, and it does include a watermark. So I think that it's worth it to pay for the premium subscription. I pay about 17 or $18 a year for the premium. So it's pretty affordable. If you want to do it monthly, I think it's three or $4 a month. In my opinion, I think it's worth it. So you just select video. And then it shows you your photo album library within your device, and you can select all of the clips that you would like to feature. So I'm just going to go ahead and click on all the clips that I would like to feature in my video. And then you select the green checkmark. It's a reveal clip, and I actually want to move it to the end. So right now, you just kind of want to quickly go through and view all your clips and start rearranging and editing them. And it's really easy to do. You just long press, and you can move this clip all the way to the end. Because that's my reveal clip. So it's pretty easy, and you can use these sliders to trim down the video. Trim it down. And I want to make it about 3 seconds. Three to 5 seconds or even less than that is ideal. But treat it like a meti commercial, right? We want to film lots of different clips at different angles. And then you want to make them about three to 5 seconds just to capture their visual interest because there's a lot of people scrolling through the app, and they'll probably swipe through your, so you want to kind of capture their attention. And one way to do that is to make your real like a meeting commercial. So I'm going to just take some time and go through these clips and use the sliders to kind of trim them down and edit them. So for this one, it is a shading clip. Definitely want to keep that, but it's a little too long. I'm going to do the same thing. I will just trim it down. Probably around there. It's still too long. It's about 7 seconds. I'm going to hit the speed button and increase the speed. Now it's less than 3 seconds. You can play it back and take a look. Okay. That looks pretty good to me. Then I think I want to don't need this clip anymore, so I can hit delete. I like this little clip. I'm going to find a good spot to start it. As well as end it. It's about 1.3 seconds long. That's pretty good. And for this one, I'm adding texture to a chip. I think I'll trim it down, probably around there. A little more texture to this chip. If I want to split a clip, I can just find the spot where I want to start and I hit the button split. I don't need this clips, I can delete it. And then I can hit where I want to end it. So I can delete this long clip. So I'm just going to play back what I have so far. Okay? That's looking pretty good. But I think I want to rearrange these clips, so just long press. And I think I want to add this towards the end. I think I want to add definitely some hand lettering video. I'm going to start it here. I'll split, and I can delete this very long clip. And I'll end it around here. I'll delete the rest of that. It's still too long. It's about 14 seconds long, so I'm going to speed it up. It's about 3.9 seconds long. I think that looks pretty good. And I think I'm going to move this clip all the way to the front. I don't think I need this clip. I'm just going to delete it. Go to delete this one as well. If you look in the lower right hand corner, it tells you how long the whole video is, and right now about we're a little s of 3 minutes. So you just want to definitely take some time to go through these videos, trim down anything that's unnecessary. Like, I don't need this video, I'm going to delete that. Actually, I like this reveal better. I think I might keep this one instead because I'm zooming in and then zooming out really quick. So I will trim it down to around there. Play that back. And then out to show the final. All right. So I actually talked through that. I don't think I want to include my audio. I'll show you how to remove it. So with this video selected, you want to hit the little music note button, and you can view all of the little clips, and there's a little percentage sign showing you the volume. So if I click on that, I could turn down the volume for each clip. I would think about maybe keeping the audio if you were talking through some kind of tutorial. But since this is just a process reel, I'm keeping it pretty simple. And I'm removing all of the original audio, and I am probably just going to pair it to some royalty free music. So once you turn down all the volume, I'm just going to hit the check mark. That looks pretty good. And I don't think I need this video. So I'm going to delete that. Et's see. This one. I don't need that. Right now we're about 19 seconds. Let's watch these video clips. I think I decided to keep this one instead of the other reveal. I'm going to move it to the end. I'm going to delete this version. I don't need it anymore. Okay. Now let's play it and see how it's looking so far. Almost, I think some of these are out of order. This one, I want to show a little bit more. And this one, I want to move. So it's all about kind of finding the right timing and rearranging the clips to your liking. That's looking pretty good. Although I think I want to speed this up. So let's check that out. Okay, I think that's okay, really good. It is at 12.8 seconds right now, so I think it's perfect. It's short and sweet. And now I'm just going to add some royalty free music. So again, I hit the music note. And then I could record a voice over. If I wanted to, I just hit that red button, but I don't think I want to record a voice over. So I hit the music. And shot comes with a lot of music options that you can use. I like to use royalty free music but I downloaded ahead of time. I just downloaded it from Pisa Bay. Just some generic music. So I'm going to use that instead. The advantage of using royalty free music, in case you are filming a partnership reel or any kind of branded content or in case you want to run ads on your reels, it has to use royalty free music. Otherwise, you'll get penalized. Of course, 'cause you don't have permission from the music artist. So that's an advantage to using your own royalty free music. So I'm just going to play it back right now. And I think it's looking pretty good. It's in a spot where it shows a bunch of short little clips. They transition really smoothly. I hit. The checkmark, if I wanted to add any extra transitions, I could just hit this little white square at the bottom. And then I have a variety of different transitions to choose from. And you get a little preview of what that transition looks like. It's kind of nice, especially for like a product reveal or you know, anything that you kind of want to highlight, you can add a cool transition. But for this video, I don't think I'm going to add any transitions, but I just wanted to show you that as an option. So once you are satisfied with your video, you can export it to your device. You just in the upper right hand corner, just click the square with the arrow, and you can save it, and it'll save to your photo album. And you can also select the resolution. I always click 1080 just because Instagram automatically compresses the video down to 1080. So it's not necessary to export it anything higher than that. So, I just click. Okay. And then I ask you me. Sure. It's great. All right. So now, you can check out your photo library, and you can watch the real. See how it looks. And if it looks good, then you can go ahead and upload it to Instagram. 7. Closing Thoughts: Congratulations. You've made it to the end of leveraging Instagram for illustrators. Throughout this course, you've learned the essentials of transforming your Instagram profile into a dynamic marketing tool that can elevate your creative business. We discovered how to perform a self audit to ensure your profile is cohesive and reflective of your unique style. By focusing on consistent, high quality posts, and using specific keywords, you can enhance your visibility and establish your niche in the our community. Hopefully by now, you understand the power of building genuine connections with your audience through engaging stories, personal DMs, and thoughtful captions. Remember a strong community is built on trust, generosity, and active participation. Whether it's joining our challenges, hosting live sessions or simply interacting with your followers. Utilizing the full spectrum of Instagram features, especially reels and carousels, can significantly broaden your reach. By saying adaptable the platform, you can keep your content fresh and engaging. While other platforms might tempt you. Stay focused on Instagram allows you to master its tools and maximize its potential for visual storytelling. It's an ideal platform for illustrators to showcase our artwork, attract clients, and build a brand. Now it's time to put your knowledge into action. Download the Instagram content creation guide in the class resource section. I included worksheets, calendar, and checklist with actionable tips. For your class project, upload the screenshots showing how you implemented the take action prompts. Don't forget to tag me on Instagram, so I can see your content. Use Hashtag Instagram for Illustrators. Thanks so much for tuning in. Can't wait to see what you create. A.