The eternal modern question, should you quit social media?
I have a tenuous relationship with social media. Therefore, I have a tenuous relationship with my art.
I draw therefore I am (an artist). I post that drawing to crickets and therefore I am not (an artist).
This is of course not true. I am defiantly an artist. If you make art, so are you.
However I suspect I’m not the only one sometimes feeling this way, so lets explore it a bit. What’s going on here and if it’s so awful why don’t we just quit and enjoy making stuff?
Sometimes when I try to post on social media, it feels like taking my very dear shy and soft spoken friend to a karaoke bar and forcing them to do a freestyle wrap. She’s reluctant, uncomfortable, and definitely not at her best, and as someone heavily emotionally invested in her wellbeing, I am in turn very uncomfortable and quickly feel guilty for taking her there at all.
Editorial illustration reflecting on my relationship between art, illustration, social media and my phone.
The quid pro quo hole…
For the last two years, I’ve been working hard to repeatedly fall into and climb out of the trap that I need a ‘substantial’ social media following to ‘make it’ as an illustrator.
I KNOW I should focus my emotional energy on my art above anything else. I truly BELIEVE my skills will speak louder than numbers if I pour my time into my practice. I’m definitely SURE that spending my time worrying about algorithms isn’t going to get me to where I want to be as an artist.
So why, for the love of God or whoever is up there, do I keep doing this to myself over and over again?
Because I wanna be famous obviously!
Well, not exactly, but what my dear susceptible squishy little brain can’t help but think, as she succumbs to ‘influencer culture’, is that perhaps life would be a tad easier if I was.
Am I not in on the joke?
That’s a serious question I’m genuinely asking myself while I write this.
I had a different blog post lined up to write today, and after putting it off and spiralling away to my friend at the climbing gym about how I ‘don’t know if I can do this’, it occurred to me that the main thing making me feel that way is the little thing called instagram.
I was dwelling, not for the first time, on throwing my entire illustration career off a cliff into the abyss because I was worried the number above that little grid of boxes meant that I ‘wasn’t cut out for this’, and I’m pretty sure I’m in a very crowded boat.
When the only thing to do is make a list…
Like any sane person dwelling on something, I decided the only thing to be done was to make a pros and cons list for and against feeding any of my time into instagram as an illustrator:
Pros (yawn we’ve heard these before, but we can’t just focus on the negative can we?)
A well curated feed can show off your work and act as a second illustration portfolio.
It gives you a place to share your ‘behind the scenes’ work. Sometimes I draw something I really love in my sketchbook, but it doesn’t belong in my illustration portfolio.
A certain number of followers can back up the appeal of your illustration ‘style’ to art directors by offering a little thing called ‘social proof’. (It’s just a mystery to many how one might get to that number)
If you put in the time there is opportunity to build and join genuine communities through instagram. I personally adore being part of Emma Carlisle’s sketchbook club on Patreon, and the London Writers Salon morning writing sessions, and I wouldn’t know about either of these without instagram.
Some people, not me, find it fun and enjoy making content. If you’re this kind of crazy cat, maybe it could act as another income stream for your business.
Cons (a bit more personal to my bad marriage with the gram)
It IS performative, and that’s not me. I am loud, I am chatty, but I’ve never been one for performing. I liked reading aloud in class, I was always the narrator in the school play, but when it came to a scene setting, full body, express character and emotion kind of performance, I would shrivel up into myself and resist it with all my might (I am, here, reflecting on how I hated drama class in high school).
I am not ‘aesthetic’. I am not a girly girl. I can not wing my eyeliner and I don’t know what colour foundation blends with my skin. I have never once successfully curled my hair. I do not know how to follow a trend or appeal to the popular crowd, and the way hair and makeup made me feel in high school is how taking aesthetic pictures for my instagram feed makes me feel now. People say it is a skill you can learn but I don’t believe them because it makes me want to cry.
I could get better at these things, but am I willing to give my time to that?
If you DO give your time to this, you are choosing it over making more art, or whatever skill or product your business is built on. So the big personal question is are those pros valuable enough to deserve some time in the priority lane?
It seems like the easiest kind of content to grow with is the kind that educates others in your industry. I’m not at a stage where I have the experience to be a teacher but I’m also not sure that’s a route I WANT to go down.
60 second studies - dogs from my sketchbook
Something’s got to change because I am loosing my mind.
Right now, I have approximately 780 followers on my art instagram, so social proof isn’t a benefit I’m reaping in abundance, my feed does not feel super cohesive, so I don’t feel it’s acting as a second portfolio, and I’m definitely not interested in content creation enough to factor it in as an income stream in my business plan.
On the other hand, I enjoy sharing my sketchbook work and behind the scenes work on there, and I have joined some great creative communities through the platform that genuinely keep me going some days when working home alone at my solitary desk feels too creatively secular.
I’ve tossed and turned with the idea of just letting it go, deleting my account and claiming back the time and headspace to give to other worthy pursuits (like actually making art), but i’m not quite ready to give up on it yet.
I think I might be missing the very obvious point, that when so few people are seeing my posts, I actually have a huge opportunity to experiment with content creation without worrying about it flopping, looking silly or downright novice.
If I treated content creation the way I treat my sketchbook experiments, rather than my finished pieces, imagine how much I could learn, how much progress I could make, how much I could grow in all the skills of this illusive craft.
Could it be that I’m just worrying too much, not playing enough, and holding back because I don’t yet have the skills to make incredible content but I’m also not willing to post anything I don’t feel is ‘good enough’?
Concept sketch for an easter window painting for Dippd - a bakery with monthly postal cookie boxes
I feel like there’s something I’m just not quite getting, something that, if I could get it to click in the ole noggin would shift my relationship with this platform completely.
So what can I change to lessen some of the downsides I feel?
Well, the most obvious thing is that I could care less. I don’t mean that to imply that it’s not something worthy of my time or effort, but more that in the current landscape of social media, I’m not sure quality trumps quantity and consistency entirely.
If I can bring myself to care a little less, and create content a little more for it, perhaps I can finally crack the code to posting consistently enough to overcome that first hurdle. I do think making content is a muscle that needs to be flexed like any other, and that you need to put in so many reps a week/month to be able to sit super comfortably while trying to grow a social media following.
Secondly, I have NO process or system whatsoever. That means that when I’m tired, or can’t be bothered, I have nothing to fall back on to just ‘get it done’. So what could that look like for me? Maybe an organised folder of images for my feed, b-roll for reels and saved ideas for posts. All very obvious things and yet something I’ve never invested the time to do.
So for the rest of July I’ll be trying to shift my relationship with social media by doing these things, and I’ll be revisiting the situation in a few weeks to see if I can change how I feel about it.
Actionable Takeaways:
Create an organisation system to have easily accessible b-roll and images (I have always wished my iphotos were more organised anyway)
Post more, care less - you need to post a certain amount to see what works, and fretting too much over individual posts will stop me from doing this, have a ‘done is better than perfect’ attitude or the ball will never continue rolling
Post consistently for 14 days and review what’s working and whats not, aiming to treat it like a new art material not something I expect to be perfect every time
A note on how it’s all the algorithms fault…
“The algorithm HATES illustrators!” I hear people cry. “The algorithm is terrible for small businesses!” they wail. Well, I’m not sure if the truth is better or worse but…
I don’t believe this is true, I think that the algorithm is built to keep people on the platform, and that peoples attention is very hard to capture these days. I often feel frustrated that I live in a world where our minds and attention are mined for profit by insatiable predators, but there are things we can do to fight back against this, and we are all, as social media users and modern consumers, contributing towards this situation by taking part in it.
This same situation is the reason you have to create a reel where you are painting while cooking an egg while doing a backflip, or why being an amazing painter isn’t enough if you’re not also a great videographer with fantastic typography and sound bite editing skills.
Concept sketches reflecting on social media and illustration
The people who’s attention you are trying to capture are, sadly for us all, just normal consumers in 2025, and the renaissance era where a stunning painting was entertainment in itself is long gone.
Competition for attention is high and things that do manage to capture it only ever do so fleetingly. This is the reason it is now ‘so hard to grow’. It’s not some great evil algorithm working against us, it’s just our fellow humans collectively falling into the many traps of modern day life.
It’s a bit of a bummer, but if we can see it for what it is instead of blaming some great evil force from above, we stand a much better chance at adapting to it. After all, humans have been adapting to new circumstances for millennia, but few have tried to challenge an all knowing malicious god.
So treat your social media challenges like a windy wintery landscape you’ve moved to from a temperate climate, it’s a brutal environment you CAN adapt to, if you choose to do so. (I’ve not figured it out just yet but I do believe anyone can, more knowledge buffering, bare with me).
