An artist asked me to "optimize" my posting and I said I'd rather not
Got a message yesterday from someone doing a small course on artist marketing. Friendly, well-meaning. They'd looked at my page and told me I was "leaving money on the table" because I post maybe twice a month and never with a call to action.
They wanted me to batch content. Six weeks at a time, one afternoon, scheduled.
I said I'd think about it and then sat with how much I didn't want to. My work is slow on purpose. I tear paper for hours before anything gets glued. Batching the talking about it feels like batching the wrong thing.
Maybe I'm wrong. I sold three pieces last year and two of them came from someone who found me through a photo I nearly didn't take. But I keep thinking that if I had to produce a steady stream of it, the work would start to answer to the stream instead of the other way around. That's the part I'm not willing to trade.
Curious whether anyone has actually tried the batching and had it be fine, or had it eat something.
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Twice a month is not a problem, and the "call to action" advice is the part I'd throw out first. I paint, and the posts that ever brought me a buyer were the ones where I showed a hand, a rag, a passage of paint half-finished. Nothing was being sold in them. People buy from a person they've watched work, not from a caption telling them to click.
The batching is where I'd be more careful with you. I understand not wanting it, but there's a difference between manufacturing content and simply keeping a phone nearby while you tear paper. I'm bad at this myself, so I say it with no authority.
What I'd question is the framing that you're leaving money "on the table." For a slow studio practice, most of what's on that table is not money yet. It's the work itself, and the talking about it can stay small.
ok the "keeping a phone nearby while you tear paper" reframe is genuinely good and also the exact thing i keep failing at, haha. i'll set up a shot and then get self-conscious and delete it. the ones that actually do well for me are always the accidental ones, like a wet wash catching the light when i wasn't trying to make anything.
i do think there's a real distinction you're pointing at that the marketing person missed though, which is that the work is the content. like if you're already tearing paper for hours then the phone nearby is basically free. batching is only fake when you're inventing stuff to say between the making. but also, "only post when something's worth showing" is a fine rule and twice a month is plenty. i'd rather see four real things a year from someone than six weeks of scheduled nothing.
The self-conscious delete is the whole problem, isn't it. I do it too, and then the only thing left is the posed shot nobody wanted.
Your wet wash one is exactly it. The thing that catches light while you're not looking is not a content strategy, it's just being in the room with the work. Hard to schedule that.
And yes, the work is the content. Batching only turns fake the moment you start inventing the process instead of catching it.
The phone-nearby thing I can do. That's not content, it's just not putting the phone in the other room. I'd probably still only post when something's worth showing.
The rag and the half-finished passage, yes. That's the only part of the process that photographs honestly anyway. The tearing takes hours and looks like nothing on camera, which is maybe the real reason I don't post it.