When it comes to what social media sites I use, I’m mostly on Twitter (no, I will not refer to it as “X”) so this post is mostly about sharing art on that specific social media platform. And how Twitter – and social media in general – make you think: “nobody likes my art!”.
I see a lot of people complaining that their art must suck because it gets no likes. I wanted to dedicate a little blog post about why that’s a false thought to have. And hopefully inspire you to continue making and sharing art. So if that thought has crossed your mind before, you’re wrong and let me explain to you why.
Let’s First Understand How Social Media Work
If you didn’t know already, social media sites typically reward users who do well. Long story short, this means YOU have to put out the work to get views, interaction (likes/retweets) and get followers, and then the platform you’re using will push you further. Basically it’s like “oh this person has interaction on their post, it must be good so we’re gonna show it to more people”.
So. This means if you have a low follower count or low interaction in general, the almighty algorithm will deem your posts unworthy to be passed onto others.
Think of it like how you found out about that one band, that series, that awesome restaurant. Probably at some point, someone told you something like “Man, XYZ is really amazing, you should try it some time!” and then you tried it out and loved it! That band, TV series, or restaurant – perhaps it was around all along and you saw it before but never tried it. Someone had to tell you it was awesome for you to be convinced. That’s kind of how social media work, but on a much larger scale.
So… you’re gonna need a strategy to bump up those numbers. I wrote a detailed post on How to Grow on Social Media as an Artist to help you out with that!
Personal Example
I can give you countless of examples from my own Twitter account where I always post my artwork. They rarely get more than 2 likes. Maybe 10 likes if it’s fanart.
Or not.
I don’t have a lot of followers, and certainly not a lot of followers that interact with me. I’ve been on Twitter since 2009(!) and since the internet made its shift from personal blogs to social media, I’ve found it extremely difficult to find people to talk to and exchange support with. Or even a decent conversation. I regularly attempt to chat with people, ”apply” to become ”moots” and dish out likes, but to not much avail.
Check Your Likes vs View Count
Back to the false idea of ”nobody likes my art”. Here’s why you’re wrong: there are 5.5 billion internet users in the world and 55% of websites are in English. Perhaps these two statistics are not be directly related, but I think we can count on it that at least half of these users can understand English to a certain extent. Or let’s just take 25% of these internet users. That’s a lot of users! All these people have varying tastes and interests. There will be – without a doubt – at least a thousand people in this world that like what you like.
Are they seeing your posts, though?
Yeah, I thought so.
Look at this image above. 520 people viewed this art of my Caelestis fox by Imazartz and 11 people liked it. Including myself. That means approximately 2.11% of the views resulted in a like.
So to get a thousand likes, you would need approximately 47.393 views (with this formula).
That’s a lot of views!
Final Thoughts
So, unless your art is being seen by hundreds or even thousands of people and not getting over 10 likes, you can not blame yourself for producing bad art, because this is simply not something you can measure with so little interaction. So don’t let it get you down. Keep making awesome art, keep sharing your art. Take some time to plan out a social media strategy. Yes, it’s going to take some work – unless you’re lucky and get boosted by an account with a big following – but you can do it!
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