7Days of Social Media = -1 Follower

Classic Fun!

TLDR: +2 Follows - 3 Unfollows = -1

9 bits of content on Instagram over the course of 7ish days (Oct 28th to morning of the Nov 4th). 1 Story , 2 Reels and 6 regular image posts. Crossposting to Tiktok, Reddit, Bluesky & Twitter.

The goal was to increase my reach specifically in an attempt to gain new followers. I know, very unique! My test was using a mixture of content and hashtags → doing a variety such as Inktober, fanart, sketches and a DTIYS (Draw This In Your Style competition).

My long-term goal is to garner a bit of a following based on my artstyle, humor, and themes - as I’m building a game that reflects just that. These followers would be potential customers for said game 👍. While of course attempting to improve my craft, much like any artist I can’t help but assume my artwork is not up to snuff when seeing the numbers below. Using it as fuel to to practice drawing hands!

You’ll see +3 here, but one of those was from someone on Reddit who messaged me asking where to follow my work. So ignore that!

Here’s the overall insights from my instagram for that week. While the insights don’t tell you exactly how many unique non-followers you reached, as it is combined, I estimate judging the content’s stats individually it’s roughly 5% non-followers at this point. But it did improve later on, after one of my posts picked up the day after the 7 day test.

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Contrary to what I read, my reels did not have any better reach than my posts or carousels (mulitple image posts). At this point in time my “adultswim” hashtag seemed to have done the best. Each post I tended to rotate out a couple to see what did better.

It took me awhile to have the time to write this, and since then my DTIYS reel was noticed and shared twice by the organizer - which did boost my whole account to be honest. A nice gesture and quite the eye opener to what I think I have to do in order to grow atm. It seems like getting larger accounts than yourself, to like/share your work greatly boosts your reach - sorta makes sense? The algo can trust someone who’s “higher” up on the charts than you. (I’ve had accounts similar to mine share my work before, but it never moved the meter.)

And by “larger” - I don’t mean huge! She has 1200 followers, about double of what I have - nothing crazy but still helped my account’s reach. Found the DTIYS by just scrolling through that hashtag.

Gained +4 followers and reach across the board went up, noticed likes and some engagement on multiple other recent posts.

On Tiktok I posted some of the reels as well as the base auto-generated timelapse from CSP with no edits…they surprisingly get decent views but only attracted 1 new follower. Timelapse of art creation seem to do well - unlike on Instagram where it only works if you’re already a top-tier artist. Leaning into this could be an easy win if you draw something trendy.

Reddit has always seemed to like my work more, as I’ve posted various art styles there in the past. Granted it’s so much easier to reach the target audience with a specific subreddit and this test was no different. To date it is now my #4 best art post on Reddit!

The “Caption This” hook was great for engagement, and was all around fun - had a few good laughs!

Posted in r/mario which did very well, reaching #1 post in that subreddit for the day. Reddit doing the best by far, even gaining +1 follower on Instagram from it - as someone asked. My socials are in my profile, but most don’t check / care on reddit which makes conversions harder. With 21,000 views…you can’t really compare that to any of the other social media posts for this 7day test.

Figuring out how to convert will be key with reddit imo, likely with game screenshots directly with the game name / steam icon on the pic. As many subreddit don’t allow self-promotion or links.

Gaining outside social media followers on Reddit is likely a lost cause directly. Possible mailing list for prizes or some google form, etc. Getting people to click off of reddit or joining a specific subreddit.

Shower Thoughts

When compared to older posts, my pixel art always seems to reach / do better across the board. But I’m worried my pixel art style, and this retro cartoon style might clash a bit too much to keep on the same account so I avoided posting any pixel art for these 7 days. Both styles are for two different game projects I’m working on so I do need to gain a following for both. While I think one can like multiple styles, people tend to like consistent IG profiles. Which means this is all 2x the work ahead of me...

Moving forward with my next attempts to grow - I’ll continue to try and get the attention of specific larger accounts, that have similar interests. By engaging their content with likes + comments, DTIYS, fanart, etc. Likely until I reach around 1k followers, then I’ll start filtering in my game stuff - as It’ll likely be ready by then. As well as crossposting onto Reddit with new hooks to get followers / subscribers.

Phew - thanks for reading, hopefully something was insight or you gained some new ideas! If you have any insights feel free to comment them below - I could use the help!

PS. I almost forgot - Bluesky & Twitter both did terrible! No new followers, low reach, and maybe 2 likes?