Thoughts on Social Media as a Tool For Art Promotion: Part 1

Why even bother with keeping a presence for your art on social media? While I don't think it's exactly super vital to be on a lot of sites to get work (A portfolio site for showing potential employers is though), I don't think it hurts. You never really know where you can get work or what interesting people you can come into contact with on social media. That said I think it's better to focus on updating a core few sites. In the beginning it's probably good to try a myriad of sites and see what works best for you. I'm still experimenting with social media but here are some of my thoughts on some sites I've been using so far.

• Tumblr - This is probably the first site where I put thought into how to display my art as an aspiring illustrator. I used to have sketchblogs but created arodude as a place to post pieces I was proud of. In recent months I've set up a queue to regularly post art updates. My follower count has slowly grown over time after I tried to post consistently. I'm not too sure what else I can do to gain more exposure. The things that seem to work to get people on my blog are:
• Fanart - People love reblogging fanart since it's of instantly recognizable characters and pertains to their interests. I'd recommend making fanart of series you genuinely enjoy. You might attract like minded people who might have other interests in common.
• Commenting and Liking - I think this does do a bit but not a lot.
• Inevitably if you do all of these consistently it might lead to more traffic. Might being the key word.  But for me my internet speeds are not too great for tumblr so I'm not very active.
• Twitter -  I've been on this site forever. I'm most active here. Despite that I don't have a very big following. Initially I used this site mostly for socializing and posting wips and doodles. I didn't think it had potential as an art promotion site. It's great for networking though. Recently I've been trying to put effort into posting art but the problem is I don't post consistently and likely don't post things that are very good. Things that help I've noticed:
• Having "influencers" retweet your art - This is something that also happens on tumblr but I can identify it better on twitter. People with a lot of followers will increase your work's visibility. Things like 60min drawing accounts of the past did wonders for visibility as well. Also, if you make fanart and mention an official account. This feels somewhat luck based though.
• Fanart - Unlike tumblr, attaching hashtags doesn't help as much with visibility. Still, fanart is powerful.
• Networking - That is the same as commenting, liking, retweeting and so on. Building relationships with artists can be powerful and it's fun too.
• Creating and Selling Merchandise - Or something that people want and can have in their hands. 
• Promoting a Webcomic - I have no idea how this works but I think people like to follow webcomic artists to see if their webcomic updated or to just get to know the artist better. Webcomics are a project that's updated regularly and that people can get invested in.
• Deviantart - I've started posting there again and weirdly enough I think it is pretty easy getting people to look at your work there. The main distinction between it and the above sites is that it's a social media site focused on art. That also means you're less likely to attract nonartists. It can be hard to navigate for a nonartist though they have put effort into streamlining the design. Some things that help:
• Submitting to multiple groups - If you make fanart than post to groups centered around that particular franchise. General art groups also have fanart sections.
• Posting in the Deviant Thumbshare forum - People there are looking to promote themselves and are looking to find artists.
• Commenting on artists's works - They'll likely get curious and check your page out.
• Instagram - Is pretty mystifying to me. I'm still not sure what to make of it. I don't use my phone a lot these days so I'm not super active there. You can get a lot of likes and some follows but I have this weird feeling a lot of them are bot likes. And the "followers" disappear after a time. I've heard it's easy to buy bot followers and likes but I don't know much about that. The high numbers of likes and follows of some accounts seem somewhat suspicious but *shrugs*.
• Tags, Tags, Tags - Tags are king here. If your starting out then attaching a lot of tags will likely help get you noticed. I believe there is a limit of 30 though. Doing monthly challenges like mermay or inktober and tagging those appropriately may help too. 
• Networking - I'm not too familiar with the usefulness of this but it's been a common theme on other sites so might as well try it out. 
• Features? - I believe there are some accounts that feature art from other accounts. They may be something to look into but I have no knowledge about it as of now.
• Sketches, WIPs, Traditional Art - Seem to be met with a lot of love. They've also introduced photosets so that may be something you can utilize as well.

Some of these things may work for others and some may not. There's not really a surefire way of getting noticed.