Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for clicking on this video. I'm Brooke Cormier, and today I want to talk to you about my experience with Instagram as a fine artiste. I have what you would call a love-hate relationship with Instagram. On the one hand, it has tremendously helped me in my art career, and I probably wouldn't be where I am today without it. And on the other hand, I hate it stinking guts. Let me explain. Last year, in 2022, I made it a goal for myself to reach 250,000 followers on Instagram. And to put things into perspective, I was sitting around 215,000 at the time. I invested so much of my time into achieving this goal. I was researching the best ways of how to grow your audience and following crazy suggestions like posting four times a day and making as many reels as humanly possible. I followed all the rules, making some of my own along the way, and on December 17th, 2022, I texted my family with this screenshot. I did it. And guess what? My life didn't change in any way. I'm not making any more money than I was before, my art didn't magically improve, I'm not somehow the best version of myself. In fact, worrying so much about this number has really taken a toll on my self-esteem. Especially since recently, I've been losing a bunch of followers for whatever reason and now I'm below that 250,000 goal once again. That is the ebbs and flows of the social media hustle, my friends. I have to constantly remind myself of the number one rule that I've learned from being a self-employed artist on Instagram, and that is quality over quantity. However cliche that may sound, this age-old saying applies to two different aspects of your social media presence. One, your content, and two, your audience. It is extremely difficult as an artist to be constantly pushing out content, because most of the time the content that you're posting is the artwork that you're creating, and you can only create so much work before the last drop in your creative well shrivels up and you start looking like this. It's bonkers to think that it was okay for me to be posting four times a day. That's a full-time job. And it was. I was dedicating hours a day to my online presence. I would sit on the couch and edit reels. I would search through my archives for old paintings that I could repost. I'd be scrolling through social media looking for relatable content I could post on my stories and googling ways to beat the algorithm. It was exhausting. And to be honest, even though I reached my goal last year, I feel disappointed that I put so much emphasis on quantity rather than quality. If I had dedicated those hours of work into actually painting rather than focusing on growing my audience, not only would I have more money in the bank, but most importantly, be farther along in the development of my artistic practice. Okay, now let's talk about your audience. Newsflash. Popularity doesn't pay the bills. In other words, the kind of people that follow you are much more important than the amount of people that follow you. During my time of creating reel after reel after reel after reel, I had a few go viral. From this, I would get thousands of followers at a time, which was really crazy. But the problem here was, is that some of these reels didn't even showcase my art. They were just funny videos of artist life or relatable content for the struggling artist. And the followers that I derived from these posts weren't even necessarily interested in my artwork itself, but just followed me because they wanted a laugh, or in worst case, followed me because they thought I was objectively attractive. I'm about to go on a little bit of rant here. The people who comment, you are so much more beautiful than your art, on my pictures, in what world is that a compliment to me? Listen, I had nothing to do with this face. And other than slapping a little bit of makeup on every once in a while for a YouTube video, I put very little effort into this. My art, on the other hand, I put a lot of effort into. In fact, I have dedicated years of my life into furthering my artistic talent. And for somebody to tell me that my beauty is more impressive than my artwork, frankly, it's a slap in the face. Just a little food for thought. So are these the type of people who I really want in my audience? That's a rhetorical question, but the answer is no. The type of people who I want in my audience are the people who actually support the work that I'm doing, whether that's through actually purchasing artwork and funding my dreams, or simply writing a nice comment with encouraging words to keep motivating me to keep on going. To summarize, quality over quantity. It's so important you guys. Dedicate your time and energy into growing as an artist rather than growing on social media. When you prioritize the quality of your work, success will follow and so will the right people. In my opinion, Instagram has changed. When I first started my art Instagram account, which was in 2015, 2016, man, those were the glory days. I'm talking juicy, organic growth, just from posting like a couple times a week. Now, it seems like you have to post 20 times a week and just pray to the Instagram gods that they'll take mercy on your soul. From my experience, and I'm sure a lot of people out there can relate, it's getting harder and harder to grow on this platform. And it seems like the people who even do follow me are barely even seeing my posts to begin with. Don't get me wrong. I think that Instagram is a great platform for artists to get their work out there, and it has certainly helped me in the past. But the only way that I'm using it to make money right now is to direct people to my website from my Instagram page and then hope that they will buy some of my artwork so that I can keep making the artwork. And if people are barely seeing my posts and I'm not getting paid for the amount of likes and views and followers that I have, then I just don't see how the effort is really worth the reward anymore. Which is why I have directed my efforts into, you guessed it, YouTube. With YouTube, I actually have the opportunity to be paid for the content that I post. And I also think that it fosters a more genuine connection with my audience. Because, you know, like who's gonna watch a 30-minute video of me making jewelry if they don't care about my work or me? And guess what? Ya girl just got monetized on YouTube. Okay. And so far I've made a whopping $3.38 from my videos. And you know what? It feels great. And to be clear, I'm not quitting Instagram. I'm still gonna keep posting and I am very grateful for the support that I get from my Instagram followers. And I'm also not saying that you should quit Instagram and move to YouTube if that's not what you want to do. What I am saying is that I have just rearranged my priorities and that's for the sake of my artwork, my livelihood, and my mental health. I try to live my life with no regrets, so I'm not gonna dwell on the past and think about all the time that I could have spent on my artwork rather than obsessing over my following on Instagram. But I hope that if you are an aspiring or a full-time artist, perhaps you can learn from my mistake and focus on what truly matters, and that is your art. Don't let the numbers get you down. And I need to listen to my own wisdom every once in a while. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you liked it. I hope you found it insightful, educating, entertaining, the whole shebang. And if you're feeling crappy about social media, then guess what? You're not alone. Please subscribe, please like the video, maybe comment. How many followers have you lost on Instagram in the past six months? I'm kidding, you don't need to tell me that. I hope that you're gaining followers, but the right kind. I wish you all the success in the world, all the happiness in the world. I hope you're having a great day, and I'm sending good vibes your way. I'm Brooke Cormier, and I'll see you next time. Bye.