A New Refrain From Artists: We ‘Almost Gave Up on Instagram’

Last year, Ms. Mueller, who lives in St. Louis, started focusing instead on Twitter, where she discovered a burgeoning community of artists. She was invited to illustrate zines, joined private Discord groups that shared professional opportunities and increased her following through hashtag events, in which artists tweeted and shared content with tags such as #PortfolioDay and #VisibleWomen.

Ms. Mueller now has nearly 5,000 followers on Twitter, compared with about 1,000 on Instagram.

Once she had experienced Twitter’s community and growth, she said, “I basically almost gave up on Instagram.”

Alice Hirsch, a photographer in Toronto who also uses they/them pronouns, said they cater their content to the whims of Instagram’s algorithm. They post their work on the site nearly daily, sometimes sharing multiple versions of one photo — for example, the raw version, the color-graded one and the final one. They also have learned how to make videos to avoid a “fall to the bottom of the barrel of the algorithm.”

“I would never do it if we weren’t in a time where social media is king,” Mx. Hirsch, 25, said, adding that they suspected the content wasn’t always what their followers wanted to see, either.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/02/technology/instagram-artists-video.html