Instagram profile for illustrators, cartoonists and graphic designers: useful tips
Instagram has long been a favorite platform for illustrators, cartoonists, graphic designers or artists to showcase their work, find new freelance work or simply to create and grow a community of fans around their art. After all, Facebook’s social media has more than 1 billion active people worldwide.
We have already seen the 5 basic steps to becoming an illustrator: these include one in particular that we will explore in this article, which is marketing, particularly on Instagram. Many artists underestimate this fundamental aspect and focus only on production. Instead, promoting one’s work on social has become vital in order to be relevant, increase contacts that can lead to concrete engagements, and generally position oneself as an artist.
Here are the key strategies for creating a strong presence on Instagram, even if you are starting from scratch.
Create an eye-catching profile
The first step is obviously to create a profile on Instagram. Everyone can do this, but the advice is to switch to a business profile, called a “professional account” or Instagram Business by the social. For those who already have an Instagram profile and plan to make this switch, it is all very simple: just go to the app’s settings and in the menu choose “Switch to a professional account.”
Having such a profile allows you to get statistical data on your followers and the performance of your account, but also the ability to sponsor posts. That done, here are the general tips for having an interesting profile:
- Profile photo: this is one of the most important elements, because it immediately identifies the character and identity of the brand or person behind any kind of work, whether it is an illustration or a graphic work. So simply choose a drawing or part of a work that represents your art. The size should be a minimum of 110×110 pixels, but an optimal profile image measures 180×180 pixels.
- Bio: This is the actual business card for the artist and probably the most important text part of the profile. Here the text should be perfectly curated and there is also the possibility to include a link, perhaps to one’s portfolio or website, as well as some hashtags representing one’s brand.
Putting content at the center
Once you have created your profile, you need to think about a precise content strategy, that is, what and when to post. It is certainly easier to publish “when you feel like it,” but you have to be organized for the long term and be consistent in your publications if you want to achieve a good presence on the platform and gain a good number of followers. Here are some tips for having a good content strategy:
- You have to use the profile only to show your work as an illustrator, cartoonist or graphic designer. If you want to post photos of a landscape or a city, better do it in another account.
- The Instagram profile can also be seen as a way to share the process by which you create an illustration. Many also show “behind the scenes,” or short videos or photos as the work takes shape.
- The caption accompanying the photo is most important for creating interaction with users on the platform. The limit is 2200 characters, but as Sprout Social suggests, a good caption length is under 150 characters for organic posts, which drops to 125 for sponsored posts. It is also often useful to ask questions in the captions that accompany posts, so as to create engagement immediately.
- In one’s images or illustrations, it is also good to include a watermark, perhaps in the lower right corner, with “follow @username.” This way it is immediately clear who the author of the image is, which becomes easier to find-a useful trick especially if the work is shared outside of Instagram.
Understanding and exploiting the potential of hashtags
Hashtags on Instagram are very important: you can use a maximum of 30 per post and they definitely allow you to make your content more visible. The platform is full of art directors on the hunt for artists or illustrators to hire, so especially those who still have few followers should use hashtags intelligently to expose their work to a wider audience. English-language hashtags are often used, again to target a wider audience. Here are some tips:
- You have to use the right hashtags for each post. Hashtags on Instagram can be divided into “general” and “specific.” For example, general ones include: #art, #artaccount, #art_4share, #artist, #artwork and #dailyart. By doing a search on the platform’s internal engine, you can also see the number of posts related to that particular hashtag, so basically how “crowded” a specific hashtag is.
- “Specific” hashtags, on the other hand, are about the type of drawing shown in the post: is it a sketch? a hand-drawn drawing? A digital illustration? Well, for each such work it is best to search for and use different hashtags. For example, for drawings it is useful to use #drawings, #draw, #drawingskill, #instadraw. For sketches there is obviously #sketch, but also many others such as #sketchartist, #sketchbook, #sketchbookpages, and #digitalsketching. For illustrations there is #illustrations, #illustrating, #illustration_best, #illustratorofinstagram, #illustrator and many others.
Therefore, it is important to understand your own work and select before posting a list of hashtags in the theme. It is very helpful for this work to use a hashtag search engine like this one, which also recommends similar hashtags and shows interesting data to create a more informed strategy.
Creating engagement to grow
In order to get your posts seen by as many people as possible, and perhaps decision makers with whom you can start a dialogue, you need to have the right strategy to engage your followers. The realization to start with is this: Instagram rewards those who produce a lot of content, in short, those who post frequently. Here are some tips:
- Follow and interact with other artists’ posts with likes and comments. The goal is to become part of a community of artists to connect with. In this way one’s profile is likely to be noticed, visited and followed. Of course, one should not go overboard with comments and likes, but carry out these actions especially with artists who meet one’s tastes.
- When gaining a follower, it is advisable to establish a brief conversation with him or her, even to simply say thank you. This behavior brings the artist much closer to people who appreciate his or her work and can always open up new opportunities.
Harnessing the power of Instagram Stories.
More and more designers and illustrators are using Instagram Stories to promote their work. They are ephemeral content that disappears from the platform after 24 hours, but they are also generally more viewed than classic posts. Here are some creative ways to use Stories:
- Stories do not have to be published in the same way as posts. Instead, these can be used to showcase your work in a more natural way. A behind-the-scenes video of an illustration, a photo of the artist intent on creating: if one’s feed is basically the portfolio, Stories can show the creative process instead.
- Sketches can also be shown by adding nice text annotations.
- Stickers for asking questions, polling or adding hashtags are not to be underestimated either, but especially the possibility of inserting links in Stories to sell.
In any case, the most important action to take is this: get started, opening an Instagram profile to showcase your work. Only by “doing” will you learn the tricks and best shortcuts of the platform, which can reserve great satisfaction for even the most timid artists.