20k followers thanks to SVS

carlianne

Hey everyone! So when I started taking SVS courses two years ago I couldn't crack over 150 followers and was unhappy with my art and my career with myself etc. And honestly can't describe how much this community and the courses have helped me and countinue to do so.

But one of the super cool things was following the advice from the How to get your first 10k followers class and it totally worked for me! I wanted to share with you all a video I made sharing some of my biggest take aways from the experience here:

How to Grow Your Instagram: Tips for Artists

(I'm almost at 1000 subscribers on YouTube now as well!)

But mostly I wanted to share that I thought I wasn't growing on social media because my art wasn't good enough and I found that it's less about technical skill and more about how you can connect with others with your art and looking for ways to help others on their journey as well.

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Jeremy Ross

Congratulations @carlianne!!! That’s a huge accomplishment, well deserved!

I think it’s great that you’re always willing to help others, which i appreciate so much! I’m definitely one of your YouTube subscribers, but haven’t created an Instagram account…yet.

Thank you for sharing all that you’ve learned and being so helpful with the community.

Again, congratulations!

notfitkid

@carlianne That is a testament to your hard work, creativity, experience, and wonderful personality. Congratulations on hitting such remarkable milestones!

carlianne

@Jeremy-Ross thank you!! Honestly no need to rush into it . I came to a point in my life where I felt I needed to have a social media presence to get more freedom in my art career. I feel like I'm on the right path, but the next stage is monetization which is a whole new scary thing

@notfitkid hey thanks so much!! I really appreciate that!

Judy Elizabeth Wilson

Hey @carlianne
Brilliant video. It was so interesting to hear to you talking about helping others no matter where you are in your career and art journey and that we all have our value that we can share to help others. It was so inspiring to watch and I loved your enthusiasm! I am going to take action with a lot of these tips to grow my account.

carlianne

@Judy-Elizabeth-Wilson AW yay that makes me so happy!! I was hoping that at very least the video would be inspiring I'm excited to see what you do!

Nyrryl Cadiz

wooohooo!!! Congratulations @carlianne !!!! You should have apatreon account if you haven't already i'm sure a lot of people will support u!

tomparsonsart

@carlianne Congratulations! Great video, very informative. Thanks for taking the time to make it.

Melissa_Bailey

Congratulations, Carlianne! Great accomplishment! Really helpful tips on your video -- I'm at 1,800-ish followers on IG and know I need to get back into a more regular posting schedule (like you, I started out posting every day and that just doesn't work for me). Nice to know the more productive days to post. Thanks for sharing what worked for you. Your generosity is SO appreciated!

Alzamon

Thanks for sharing these tips Carlianne. I used to publish hundreds of posts on IG, take note of the best days/hours to post, crack the hashtag game, use FB Creator Studio (it's free) to schedule my posts at the best possible times... and even with all of that, I wasn't getting traction beyond a few hundred followers and well, that sucked. Then a series of personal events, the pandemic, my day job and many other things got in the way and haven't posted anything in months... however now I'm in a better situation than I was a few months ago and would like to resume posting again — and not obsess over the follower or likes count. It's a trap I think

However word has it IG now favors Stories and Reels over standard posts for engagement; sadly, you can't deal with these using FB Creator Studio which would be ideal for me. I'm not much of a video guy and I'm not sure how recording my talking mug would exactly add value or engagement... anyway, I see you have a nice mix of illustrations and quick tutorials — people like to be taught new things and I think that clicks a lot with your audience. Again, thanks for sharing.

carlianne

@Alzamon yes I’ve heard the same about reels being pushed the most by the Instagram algorithm! If you wanted to go that route I’ve seen people recording bits of their process new successful there.

I’m trying to figure them out right now still so I don’t have a ton of advice lol but I would try to record so you could see my hand drawing and pick a few short key moments of the painting and then patch it all together. Those are the ones I’ve seen do the best

carlianne

@Nyrryl-Cadiz oh man I know I need to!

I’m just worried I won’t have enough to post on there to make it worth it for people yet and I’m not ready to take on the monthly management of it. But I’m sure I’ll do it at some point in the future!

In general my next step is to figure out how to monetize my social media because I bring in zero income from it right now.

Nyrryl Cadiz

@carlianne you can start with a $1 Tier where you just post behind the scenes of your pieces. Maybe you can pair that up with a downloadable coloring piece. Once you get the ball rolling, you can open a higher tier where you send maybe postcards to your patreons.

tomparsonsart

@carlianne
I’ve read that people set up an email capture page to build a mailing list of their followers. You could give away something in return; a link to a video or written tutorial.

Then you have a more direct promotional avenue when you have a product to sell. The response rate on email is likely much better than an Instagram post. No email = no business. If you set up a Patreon account, I’m sure part of that would include email capture.

Of course, this is just me spouting off what I’ve read, I don’t have a lot of followers or experience with it so take that into consideration, lol.

carlianne

You're totally right! I've read the same thing about email collection.

Email capture has been on my list for a long time haha. I'm setting up a cheap texture download next week so that I can capture emails that way. Though, I didn't know you could do that with Patreon! That's amazing.

My husband helps with the technical support stuff, and there was some bug we had to sort out for free downloads, but I would like to do that as well.

I'm going to be doing a kickstarter next year as my first big monetary adventure, but I want to make sure I have emails set up before I launch that so I gotta hustle on it!

tomparsonsart

@carlianne

That’s great, good luck with it! You may know this as well but just want to mention to you or anyone reading, that Gumroad also collects emails. I set up a free Photoshop brush download there and got a few downloads/emails when I paid for an Instagram ad.

Matthew Oberdier

Congratulations! That is some serious growth. Have you gotten any illustration work from Instagram?

Nathalie Kranich

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences! I found the "allow reposting" idea very interesting, I'd never considered it in that light before. Great to hear some new ideas for social media. Hope your page continues to grow!

carlianne

@tomparsonsart I didn't know that about gumroad! Thanks!! For now I put a texture pack for sale for a dollar on my site, we will see what happens lol

@Matthew-Oberdier I have gotten some work, but I haven't really promoted commissions or anything like that on their either.

I have had people reach out for consultations/lessons and I've done a number of those.

I also am writing a how to draw adorable book, and a large part of the reason why I have a publisher for that is my instagram account.

Annaaronson

@carlianne This video was awesome. Thanks for sharing. I have loved seeing all of your posts on here and instagram, but hadn't watched any of your YouTube videos before... I LOVED seeing your fun personality in front of the screen. I definitely subscribed! Congratulations!!