I stopped posting process shots and engagement didn't move at all
For about two years I dutifully filmed my brush mixing Cerulean with a touch of Quinacridone Rose, the classic "watch the paint bloom" content. Everyone says that's what sells in this space. Last month I had a heavy commission load and simply stopped filming anything. Just posted the finished pieces with a line or two about the specimen.
Average engagement per post is statistically identical to the process-video months. The follower count crept up slightly if anything. So I've spent two years on production I didn't need, for an audience that apparently never asked for it.
I'm not drawing grand conclusions from one month. But it does make me wonder how much of what we're told is essential is actually just what everyone else is doing, and we're all performing for each other. I'll probably still show a detail shot now and then. But I'm done treating the brush-dipping footage as a requirement.
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Interesting. I've had the opposite suspicion for a while, that process content mostly performs for other artists, not for the people who might actually buy or collect. It's a small circle of practitioners nodding at each other's technique. The audience that follows you for the finished thing is there for the object, not the labor.
But I'd push back slightly on the conclusion. Two years of process videos probably trained your audience to expect that feed, and then when it stopped, the people who stayed were the ones who were actually there for the work. So the identical numbers might partly be a lag effect. The real test is what happens in another six months when even that residue washes out.
Not that I'm saying you should go back to filming. God knows the paint-bloom genre is exhausted. I just wonder if what you're measuring is the content or the trust that content built in the first place.
I think you've put your finger on something I hadn't quite articulated. The process videos were always for the practitioners. The collectors who bought pieces during those two years never once mentioned the footage, but they did ask about the specimen, the paper, the provenance of the plant. I should have read that earlier.
And you're right about the self-selection. It's possible I lost the process-watchers and gained a few object-watchers and the numbers netted out. That would make the identical engagement a coincidence rather than proof. I'd need to look at who's actually liking and following now versus then to know which it is, and I haven't done that yet.
Either way, I'm not going back to filming. The finished work is the point, and I'd rather spend that time on the drawing itself. If the audience was trained, they can be retrained.