The art of social media
Guweiz reveals what he’s learnt about posting his illustrations online
The subject of the illustration is key when appealing to a general audience, as opposed to fellow artists. The more “mundane” the subject is, the more you can expect it to draw attention across the board. This is because a general audience isn’t likely to appreciate fantasy or sci-fi themes.
Genuine fan art that reflects one’s taste can be enjoyable to produce, especially if it does well on social media. I avoid creating fan art unless I care about the source material, mainly because I can’t find the motivation to draw something that isn’t close to my heart.
A minimum level of proficiency in technique and knowledge is required before any kind of drawing has a chance to gain traction on social media. Drawing what I thought was popular never paid off until I hit a certain skill level. This becomes especially important with the aforementioned “mundane” drawings. Because people see such artwork so often, the level of execution must be good enough for it to stand out.
I’d say that the post and content outweighs any benefit that posting at a certain time or tagging can give, to the point which I don’t really care about captioning or doing much tagging. I’ve tried varying the posting times before, but never noticed any substantial effect, so I settled for the most convenient time for myself. The thing about social media is that if your work is accomplished, it will be seen.