Do I have to be on Instagram?

Dear CP, Do I have to be on Instagram? It seems like so much is happening there that I have to use it, but it makes me really anxious and upset when I try to think about what to post. I hear about other artists making connections and selling art on Instagram, so I worry that if I don’t participate, then I’m not going to have the kind of visibility for my work that I really want. Help!

Do you have to be on Instagram? In a word, no. But also, maybe… yes. 

Based on the rest of your email, I think the specific question you’re asking is, “Do I need to market my work on Instagram to attain the visibility for my work that I really want?” This is different from simply being on the platform. There are probably people out there who will tell you that you’ll never gain any visibility for your work without marketing yourself on Instagram, but I am not one of them. In my opinion, to assert that there is no success without social media is absurd and irresponsible. But to counsel that social media isn’t a powerful tool would be naive and also irresponsible.

You don’t have to be on Instagram because you are a grown up person with agency and options for the ways you communicate with the people in your community who will collaborate with you and offer you opportunities. We seem to have collective amnesia about the fact that social media is still relatively new, and people successfully communicated everything from party invitations to radical philosophies via other means for millenia without it. But social media has been around long enough that we can see how its platforms come in and fall out of favor, just like all communications tools. 

In the art world, Facebook was mostly replaced by Instagram. Since Instagram’s format and features suit the art world so well, and since there is a critical mass of art world folks on the platform, its prevalence—and its air of necessity—persist, so if you want a public-facing art practice, it’s probably wise to have some presence on Instagram, but you can build the career you want without it. The rest of the world, it seems to me, has largely moved from Instagram to TikTok, off of social media entirely, or into deeper reaches of the internet and alternative platforms. There will be something that comes along to catch the art world’s attention (BTW, are art world people still on Clubhouse?), and Instagram will likely fade, too, just like Facebook has. My point is, you have options, and those options might be more effective at helping you achieve the visibility you desire and reduce the anxiety you are experiencing with Instagram. 

What I don’t know from your question is what kind of visibility you want, so I can’t advise on what the best strategy for marketing your art on Instagram might be, if you are going to continue to use it. But I can offer a few options: 

1. Make your account private (if it’s not already); only post what you feel called to post whenever the thought arises from your true self, and only follow accounts you genuinely want to keep up with. You also may want to consider limiting the time you spend on the platform by setting a timer so that there isn’t as much time for anxiety to set in. 

2. Experiment with different ways of sharing your work on the platform, if you want to share it at all. I mean, maybe you just want to share pictures of your dog (like I mostly do) or your garden or your volunteer work or something else that isn’t related to your work at all, and that’s fine. But if you do want to share your work on Instagram, here are a few scenarios to try, or adapt to suit you: 

a. Post work in progress, finished work, or exhibition images now and then, but only when you truly want to. If you regularly use your phone to take or make photographs and videos while making your art, you can use that material to invite your followers into your practice.   

b. Make a plan. Choose a number of studio posts per week that feels comfortable to you. Put recurring notes on your calendar or set recurring reminders on your phone so that you remember to post at those scheduled times. Make a list of categories of images you want to post: studio views, research, work in progress, finished work, exhibition images, etc. Each time you get a reminder to post, set a timer for 15 minutes, consult your list of categories, and make a post. If it takes more than 15 minutes, rethink your strategy. 

c. Make an account that’s only for your art practice. Post as little or as much there as feels comfortable, but be disciplined about what you share on this account: limit the content to what’s relevant to your practice.  (A version of this is to make a purpose-built account for your practice that you treat like a website. Use the bio for your “about”; populate the feed with your image archive and add recent images as they are available, in the same way you’d update your website.) 

d. Use a scheduling platform to lay out and auto-post a week’s or a month's worth of posts at once. 

e. Consider disabling likes and comments to help reduce anxiety over the reception of every post. 

What all Instagram users need to be aware of is that we’re not in control of who sees what we post and when. To be granted the most visibility on Instagram, users are required to fulfill the requirements of the algorithm that decides whose posts get shown to whom and at what time. In addition, the users whose posts get liked, shared, and commented on the most also win favor with the algorithm. I want to be clear that none of the options I listed above are likely to bring you the most visibility possible on Instagram, but they will help you manage the platform as one in a kit of tools that you use for outreach about your work and might also help you manage the anxiety you experience around it.  

You can take an extended break from Instagram, or leave the platform altogether. You may find that you get more creative about connecting with people both personally and professionally and have fewer but more fulfilling connections over time. And the anxiety about what to post will disappear. 

Regardless of what you decide to do (or not do) on Instagram, if you want visibility for your work, you are going to have to figure out what feels comfortable to you—or learn to cope with the passing discomfort—that outreach can bring. Marketing our work can be really hard for a lot of us in this field, but your work is worth it, and so are you. You don’t have to use Instagram, but I encourage you to let people know in some way about the amazing work you are doing and invite them into your world.

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