How to grow on Instagram as an Artist in 6 steps

In this blog, I will show you how to grow your Instagram account as an Artist. It’s basically like riding on a bike, and I will explain why.

1. Quality

The quality of your content is just like your bike. Without a bike, you need to walk and it will take way longer than your competition so the chances of growth are close to 0. You need to take care of the quality, it has to be interesting and eye-catching.

Here is how to get high-quality content:

• Draw famous people

• Join challenges like DTIYS

• Draw characters from a book or a movie (even more effective if it is trending right now)

• Draw some sexy women in sexy poses. It always works.

2. Quantity

Quantity is like the gears of your bike. How more you post, how higher gear you ride and speed up your growth. The best quantity of posts per week would be 3-7.

3. Engagement

Engagement is like the balance you need to have when you ride on a bike. Because if you have no balance, you fall. And falling while riding on a bike can not only stop you from going forward but also slow you down for some time because you break your ankle or something. Well if you don’t have enough engagement, you can also fall and the Instagram Algorithm will give you some hard time to get back on track with your reach. That’s because if Instagram sees that your post doesn’t get enough engagement, therefore it’s must not be interesting, it will not show your posts to as many people as before. To get Instagram trust back, you will need to work extra hard so make sure that you keep your balance and don’t fall from your bike in the first place.

Things you can do to get more engagement:

Comments

Work on your description. First, tell something interesting, like an engaging story or an opinion about something in your description so people spend more time on your post reading it. Second, ask a question in your post description. Literally anything that you think your followers would like to answer and talk about. This way you will get more comments on your post and people will spend more time on it, which is always good for your algorithm.

Answer the comments under your post. People who actually write comments on your post are the best thing you can wish for, so take your time and answer them just like they took their time to write their comments.

Comment on other artists’ posts. Like this, you have bigger chances for them to comment on your post.

On my Instagram account @alicjanai you can see that I apply these methods on every post.

Likes

Like other artist posts. I don’t know about you but I sometimes just forget that like feature exists, and don’t like anything when I’m scrolling. So don’t forget that because like this you can get those people to check out your content.

Videos (Important!)

Make videos of you drawing something. It is 5 times more engaging to watch a video than to just see a picture of a drawing. This is how my Instagram exploded from 17k followers to 100k in just a few months.

“Looking Time”

Instead of posting one picture, you can create a carousel and post an addiction all shot of your drawing, like a close-up or a sketch. Because of this people will spend a little more time viewing your post which is again good for your algorithm.

4. Hashtags

Hashtags help your bike ride of the hill a little bit. When you use the proper hashtags, it just helps your overall Instagram performance just like biking slightly down the hill makes your ride easier.

To make it work you need to use around 20-29 hashtags. I realized that using at least 10 the same hashtags every time you post and 10 or more different ones works the best. That way other artists can find your posts easier and you will grow your artist Instagram faster!

5. Instagram Stories

Instagram stories are like a wind pushing you forward. Recently Instagram is pushing stories forward making them more important for your account algorithm. I realized that how more active I am on my stories and how more interesting they are, how faster I grow my Instagram account.

The best things to post on your Instagram stories are videos of your drawing and some tips and tricks. Also using polls, questions or quizzes is very effective!

6. Aesthetics

Aesthetics of your profile are also incredibly important. Just like when you are riding a bike, you need to have a planned route to get to your final destination, you need a plan for your Instagram profile to reach your goal. If you want people to follow you, they need to be impressed by your Instagram gallery, and they need to be able to see clearly what they can expect from your page in the future.

To get this right, I recommend you download the preview app and see how your picture will look with the rest of your profile. For example, if close up will look better, which shot or which thumbnail of your video.

You should also have a scheme, for example, my Instagram has always a black and white picture, then colored, then black and white, then colored and so on. I really love how it looks and if you like this idea you can totally steal it for me I don’t mind haha!

I hope this tutorial was helpful, and you will grow your artist Instagram easier and faster! Check out my other art tutorials here!