Short Answer: It’s a problem to be taken backward. Not where can I post, but rather, where is my audience. Yeah. What’s the point in spending 10 months publishing every day on TikTok if all your customers are on Facebook? Ask where your audience is and then go there.

Long answer: Instagram, Twitter, and most social media today have many.Many cons. The algorithm drives every post. Reels are pushed on Insta, TikTok, and even Facebook! yet, it feels like because everyone uses it, we must be present on such a platform. Whether we like it or not. Whether the platform is aligned with our values or not. Whether it drives us to burn out and kills every inch of love for the craft.

The usual advice is to post everywhere, all the time to attract as many eyeballs as possible to our work. We end up accepting shitty work from every possible person.

I’d argue that trying to market to everyone is marketing to no one, it's ok to have a small audience if they are dedicated. I’ll also argue that marketing our work should not be about burning out posting everywhere like a stupid, overworked machine. It should be about taking care of ourselves and taking care of others.

Let’s first define what I mean when I mention “audience”.

I'm talking about your market segment. They are the people who might be interested in your work (they can be your followers but not necessarily).

If you do, let's say, 2D framed printing of epic battles from LOTR, your audience could be DnD players and fantasy fans that just got a new home and want to put in their living room a freaking huge 2D print of the Silmarillion.

Those peeps could be using Facebook, Reddit, and possibly Discord (fictive example, I have no idea).You can discover this by asking around your past clients where they hang out, why they wanted your drawings in the first place, what it helped them achieve etc.

Maybe they would say something along the lines of "oh yeah, I was looking for a character that looked like my DnD OC, so I went browsing on google and found a picture I liked, I clicked on it and found your Tumblr" or something like "I was looking for someone to make my OC and my friend recommended you, it happened on a discord server of the name of blablabla"

Now you know what to do:

• Post on TumblR,
• Be active in that Discord server
• Rank up your SEO on google (SEO = Search engine optimization, or using used words of your audience to better rank on Google)

In the end, it all boils down to this:

1/ Market research

2/ Strategy

3/ Execute (and everything that goes into making a website, posting online, publishing stuff on Twitter, etc, goes here, at the end of the end of the marketing process)

See what I mean?

Basically, your art is your art, it's not your product. But clients don't care about art, they want a product. if you know your clients, you can design a product from your art. So They get what they want, you help them and you get to do what you love. That's the idea =)

While if you start posting online without that market research, it's like shooting in the dark and hoping to hit the mark. You can, but it's relying on luck to have a market that aligns with your product.

Best of luck out there!

I’m no marketer! Don’t take my words for it! Cross sources!

Key Concepts of Marketing used here:

• Market research (Rob Fitz…, Katebour, JTBD framework)
• Positioning fundamentals (Everyone hates marketers essays)

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