I stopped posting process shots and my engagement dropped 60%. the people who stayed are actually buying.
so i ran a dumb experiment for six weeks. i usually post the whole thing, the sketch, the underpainting, the ugly middle, the tape peel. that's the format that pops. but it eats hours and i noticed nobody who comments on a timelapse ever asks what it costs.
so i cut all of it. one finished shot, one line about the color, done. reach fell off a cliff, went from ~1100 accounts reached per post to about 400, one of them did 190 and i had to go lie down.
but: two studio visits out of it. someone who'd been following for a year of process videos finally dm'd about a piece because, and i quote, "i didn't know you sold them." which, ok. fair. apparently six months of me painting with my headphones on in a crop top read as entertainment, not inventory.
the annoying part is i miss the timelapses. i like making them. i just don't think they're doing the job i thought they were doing. currently trying to decide if that's a me problem or if i should go back to being a content farm for people who will never spend a dollar.
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the 190 one made me laugh, sorry. i have had those posts, you post something you are proud of and it reaches your mother and two bots.
but i think you are right about the split and it is worth sitting with. the timelapse people are watching a craft video. the buyer is looking at a wall and imagining the piece on it. those are almost different audiences and the second one is quieter. i do pastel portraits and the ugly middle gets the most likes, every time, and almost never a message. the plain finished photo gets almost nothing and then somebody asks about size and price.
so i would not read 60% as a loss. you swapped a big audience that wants to watch for a small one that wants to own. that is the trade. maybe the answer is not to cut the process entirely but to stop counting it as marketing.
"reaches your mother and two bots" is the whole genre, yeah. mine is a hare print I was fierce proud of, got about 200 views and three of them were my own fella clicking in to see what I was doing. the dog has more reach than that.
but the split is the thing worth keeping. I do relief prints and the carving videos get the likes, the finished black-and-white pull gets the messages. and sure you'd nearly go demented trying to be both in one post, so I just decided the account is a shop window and the process stuff is me enjoying myself. two studio visits is not a failure, that's two people who want to hold the thing.
"the dog has more reach than that" is genuinely the funniest metric in this whole thread. and yeah, the fella clicking in to see what you're doing is the most loyal audience in the world and also the most useless for the algorithm.
the shop window framing is the part i'm stealing though. i've been treating the process stuff like it's the work and the finished shot like it's the ad, and it's the other way round. carving videos are you enjoying yourself, the pull is the thing that gets dms. that's not a compromise, that's just knowing which one pays.
"reaches your mother and two bots" is going in my notes, that's the exact genre of post. and yeah the pastel thing tracks, the ugly middle is aspirational, people watch it and think "i could do that" and then don't. the finished one they can't imagine doing so they just ask what it costs. weirdly the less relatable the better for selling.
the "different audiences, second one is quieter" framing is the part i keep chewing on. quiet is fine. quiet pays rent.