Should you quit Instagram if you're an illustrator?

This week, we’re answering a question from listener Eilidh:

"How do you navigate social media? Do you have a strategy or just post willy-nilly?"

Gah. It’s complicated. In this episode of the podcast we chat about:

• Do illustrators really need Instagram anymore? 
• Should you have a strategy, or is it fine to post when you feel like it?
• Why social media isn’t our main way of getting work (and what is).
• The ONE thing every illustrator should have on their Instagram right now.

Aaand, we discuss why we haven’t abandoned Instagram (even though everyone keeps saying it’s dead), how publishers actually find illustrators, and, y'know, a very important discussion about videos of the King’s Guards horses biting tourists 🐴  chomp.

Timestamps:

00:25 Question: “How do you navigate social media?”
 01:00 The old days of Instagram strategies (do they still work?)
 02:20 Why everyone is fed up with Instagram… and also fed up with people being fed up with Instagram.
04:10 King’s Guards, AI Jesus & cabin crew chaos.
06:00 Should illustrators jump ship to other platforms like BlueSky, Mastodon, or Threads?
07:45 Does Instagram actually bring in clients?
09:15 What should illustrators post?
10:30 The biggest mistake we keep seeing on illustrators' IG profiles
11:50 What’s more important than social media?
12:40 How publishers find illustrators (and why Instagram still plays a small role).
13:30 A practical idea: Tidying up your Instagram highlights so people can easily find the important stuff
14:20 Final thoughts: Social media is what it is… but please don’t rely on it for all your work!

See you next week! And if you need us, we’ll just be over here watching horse videos 😂

x Byeeee

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Transcript

How do we navigate social media
===

[00:00:00] We've got a good question from Ailey, who says, How do the good ship captains, that's us, navigate social media, namely Instagram? Do you have a strategy in scheduled time or days that you use the app for marketing, or do you consume and post willy nilly? I used to have strategies back in the days when strategies worked or were useful in any way.

Not anymore, willy nilly now, that's my philosophy, willy nilly. Also, everybody's sad, fed up of Instagram, aren't they? But I'm also fed up of everybody being fed up of Instagram. Yeah, it's like, we know Zuck [00:01:00] Daddy, whatever you're calling him, is bad. Don't, I don't even want to consume content about how bad he is.

I just want videos of silly things. I did find that, I did find a good TikTok that taught me. This week, how to turn off all the advertising in Facebook, which is probably a bit naughty because we advertise on Facebook, 98 percent of Facebook income is derived from ads. So there's a bunch of settings you can go into.

And I think if you look it up on whichever platform you use, there'll be some smart young woman telling you how to do it. And I turned them all off and I was so proud of myself. It's like no money for you Zuckerberg, but I still can't get myself on Facebook. I've got three, no, I've actually got about eight Facebook accounts.

Have you really? Why? Well, because I run, starting from the smaller ones, I run the Greener Berwick account. I run the Berwick, Berwick Creative Guild account. It's all coming out now. I may still be on the Lantau Buffalo account, because over the years I've set up [00:02:00] Facebook accounts for other people and I'm the only admin.

And then I've got my Tanya Willis Illustrator account. Then I've got my personal political ranty account. Um, and, and then there's a Facebook, the Good Ship one as well. I don't follow all these versions of Tanya. I didn't know that they all existed. I'm all sliced up into different sections. I think there's more than that.

I just, those are the ones I can remember at the moment. But of course being on Good Ship, we can't get rid of a Facebook. my own Facebook account because I'm admin. I did try a few of these things this week in a, in a Zuckerberg rant, but then as many people say, actually now is probably a good time to be on it.

Well, well, politically to, to, if you dis, if everyone disappeared, there'd be no discussion of what's going on in certain countries. But yeah, I'm Willy Nilly and. mostly Facebook. Our money on Facebook. Well, I left in a big flounce of, I hate Facebook, years ago, but then when we started Good Ship and we decided to put the private members, members groups on there.

Private members groups, that [00:03:00] sounds. Private members. Adults only. They're not like that. It's a picture book question illustration discussion. Let's make it clear that the nice safe space for our illustrators. I joined again just so that I can be there. So the only interaction I have. Actually, I have another interaction on Facebook.

Oh, do you? I confess it, yeah. So, I look at the good ship stuff, but also, um, reels of, uh, the King's Guards and when the horses bite people. What? You read Canon, which is it, isn't it? Oh, I love them so much! The horses outside of, you know I guess it's outside Buckingham Palace or somewhere, I don't know. So there's all these soldiers on horseback, and, you know, soldier uniform, big sword, big hat.

Helen, what does this mean? I have no idea. When people stand too near, the horses get grumpy and they bite them. Oh my god. If that's not what social media's for, I am obsessed. It's so random. It's like [00:04:00] your TikTok fascination with, uh, the airlines and the strange. Oh, the, um, Scarlett Johansson, uh, cabin crew, um, AI Jesus.

Yes. Do that Google search. It's, it's brilliant. The number of images on that is so brilliant. You know what, I'm just thinking about Ailey who asked this question, hoping that we had a really in depth strategy of how. Let's get sensible again, Katie. So I. in your frustration at some of the, you know, Instagram, Facebook, have you joined any of the other?

Trigger her, trigger her. This gets me really annoyed, but not anybody specifically. It's not about you. Don't worry. But if, you know, people are like, Oh, I'm going to one of the other things like blue sky. I don't know what they're called. This is how angry I am. Me neither. Blue sky or Nina or whatever. Kara.

Kara. That's one. I knew it was a name. Flash is a new one. I'm just, I just feel like. Okay, bye then. Yeah. I don't need to, no, I don't need an announcement. She [00:05:00] doesn't say it like that. No, I said it. She goes, oh, god, silly. Get off then. Like, I just want videos of stupid stuff, like, what are you doing in my, no, I think I can understand why people are leaving.

And I remember in my 20s being so like, uh, I was, I was agonizing about my use of social media and trying to do a social media detox and I'm not going to use it. I'm leaving Instagram and I would tell everyone and then I'd be back a year later. I just spent so much energy on trying not to use it that now I'm, I think I'm just, I don't care anymore.

I'm like, I need to watch silly videos. Yeah, to keep sane. I don't post anything for a month and then I post three in one day in a day where I'm very excited. just, I just do what they do. I try, the only way I can learn in Instagram is see what Helen and Katie do and try and figure it out because I really hated the bit where they say the strategy is.

You must post the same time, on the same days every week. Absolutely. There used to. That used to be recommendation. I don't think it is now. No. And actually when we started the good ship. March, 2020, because we did a weekly [00:06:00] live, we did art club and we posted fairly regularly, that account did grow very well.

I think now we've got 30 something thousand people following there, which is brilliant, but we don't do any strategy on purpose anymore. We'll post a reel to announce that we're doing art club and then we'll go live to do art club and we'll maybe post a couple of, you know, static grids or carousel posts to say when the course is launched or something interesting is happening, but we don't really, we don't have a strategy.

And on my own account, I don't, I used to, I did used to back in the day when you could actually, um, follow some advice about how to find other illustrators and things like that. I used to do it a lot, but yeah, I can't, yeah, I'm tired of it. Because, because everybody was like announcing they're leaving.

whatever platforms. And I saw an interesting thing that I thought was quite interesting, need better words. They were saying like, you know, you need community more than ever in situations like this. And if you're abandoning your community, even if it is online, is that a good idea? I do really like [00:07:00] the chats I have with everybody, especially since we started the good ship people messages all the time on our own accounts and good ship.

And I've made proper friends in real life from those connections. I still love all that about it. I wouldn't leave. I really like stories as well. I really like how ephemeral it is. You can just take a picture, it's up and then it's gone. You have chats with all the people who saw your story. I love all that.

Yeah, me too. But yesterday I got told off by my teenager for posting a January roundup. Why? I posted one too, is it not cool? Mom, that is Who does that? Me. Well, my sister was laughing at me because I called it a photo dump. And then she sent me a poo emoji and said, dump her. But like, yeah, silly things like that is fun.

And annoyingly it is a way to socialize in the modern times. But for work, do you think your work, more of your work and clients for you, Katie, comes from YouTube or from Substack or Instagram or none of those? It's complicated. I [00:08:00] think the traffic that social media sends to my website tells Google and it's bots and spiders that are crawling.

It tells the internet that my website has got something on it that people want to look at. And I do think that social media helps clients, potential clients, cross reference. Yeah. My work and who I am, make sure I'm a real person, make sure I'm not just a random scammer. So it gives you a fluffy context, but the SEO is doing all the heavy lifting.

Exactly. Yeah. I would say like, if you were starting out, it's definitely better to plough your energy into SEO or getting your website optimized. and making sure that's working. And it's nice if you've got a social media channel, but don't, I wouldn't put all your getting work egg baskets, eggs into that basket.

Yeah. As a picture bookmaker, I think it is good to be putting your work on Instagram. So if you've got an Instagram account, don't fill it all with your food and your dog and everything, sprinkle that about a little bit, but I would put up Nice illustrations, sketches, behind the scenes, pens, that kind of thing.

I don't think you have to have a big strategy about it, but publishers [00:09:00] do go looking for picture bookmakers on Instagram. So just make sure that your feed is publisher friendly. Like it has some nice drawings that might tempt them in, and then you've got a link to your website so they can follow up and see what your folio looks like.

That's such a good point. Cause the amount of times I've seen people not have a link on their Instagram. Like, go on. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. But you can explain to this. Go on your profile now or any social media. Yeah. And make sure, go edit profile, make sure you've got your link to your website on there, or a link to your portfolio, even if your portfolio is a file on cloud storage or whatever.

And your actual name. And your actual name. 'cause the number of people who have done our courses and now really love their work. But I only know them by a made up Instagram name and I don't know their name. And if they had a book out, I might not know it's them because I only know their Instagram name.

So I think it's. It's really, really useful to have your name on your Instagram account. Oh, yeah. And if your name isn't, what would you do though, if your name is quite ordinary and lots of people have got it and it's already taken, you've got [00:10:00] to add something to it, but I mean, you can invent a name, but as long as on the account, you can see the name underneath.

Yeah, I added pal on the end of mine cause there's quite well. There's the, there's the. naked life model, Helen Stevens. And there's a, who else is there? Oh, there's the sports person who comes number one on Google, Hitler pinched my bum. So there's quite a few Helen Stevens. So I've got, I'm, I'm, I'm Helen Stevens pal.

Have you not knocked that Olympian off the top spot? I have actually. Yeah. She's gone down the Google search now, but back in the day when I first put my website out, if you search for me, you got, you got her Hitler pinched my bum. There is a Kate Chappell who is a picture book illustrator. Yeah. Ah, so I quite often get on Instagram people tagging me in my incredible book about dinosaurs and their emotions.

And I'm like, do I tell you that it's not? I just ignore them. I don't repost them or anything, but it's yeah. Yeah. I wonder if people are still sticking rigidly to those rules, you know, post every Wednesday morning, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I think people are. Cause there was a, I don't know. I got excited about an Instagram [00:11:00] account called Instagram business secrets or something.

And they, they've got like content calendars and daily prompts and blah blah. And it's. Maybe if you were starting out on Instagram and you had loads of energy, you'd be well up for that, but I'm just over it. Maybe we've just been doing it for a long time and we're talking like we're tired. We're jaded.

Because I do think, um, if I was starting out now, I would really be making my Instagram account look lovely. I don't know that I would pick a day of the week and post regularly to that day, but I would make sure that quite quickly I had, a nice selection of images on my feed that a publisher could scroll through, even if I put them all up over one week, I would make sure it looked nice.

There's something I wanted to do for the Good Ship one, you know, the highlight stories. Yeah. I thought we could tidy them up and just have every single freebie. One, one highlight. So you just keep going. Nice idea. So I might do that. Make it really clear so people can find them. And like maybe one for each course as well.

So just go boop, boop, Yeah. I was just thinking, Katie, [00:12:00] Tanya asked you, how do most of your customers find you? We really go into that in the business course, don't we? About how all of us get our clients, how clients find us. Spoiler alert, it's not social media. I mean, social media is involved, but it's not the main way.

Yeah. It's a mix of quite a few things, isn't it? And it's just making all of those work together. Um, excuse me, at this point, I've got to put another log on the fire, and this is real, this is not an AI fire, so it's going to be a bit noisy and clunky while you get the next question line. ASMR log. Let's just see the podcast out, listening to Tanya stoking up the fire.

Tanya's even got a special log glove. That's the Bernie Handclap. Bernie Handclap. It's too hot. Okay everybody, see you next time! Bye! Bye![00:13:00] 

And then he clapped like Thank you!