Artists Ask Me Anything! (Social Media Struggles, My Story, Best Platform To Sell Art, AND MORE!)

Summary

In this engaging Q&A session, Stop the Starving Artist discusses the intricacies of social media platforms for artists, emphasizing the importance of focusing efforts on a single audience or platform at a time. It reveals how embracing heart-based methods, grounded in personal stories and authenticity, can drive meaningful engagement and success. The podcast further explains the distinct advantages of utilizing Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for art promotion and how automation and simplifying your approach can aid content creation.

Highlights

• Sherry struggles with IG content creation compared to YouTube and seeks tips on automation 🤔
• Community focus: The Heartbased Sales Accelerator group has achieved significant sales this year 🚀
• Advice to Sherry: Focus on one audience and perfect a single platform 🐇
• Automation tips: Simplify content through questions and avoid complexity 👌
• Douglas asks about heart-based motivation; reveals creator's past in music 🎸
• Heart-based sales method: Focusing on personal stories and authenticity 💖
• Will inquires about the best platforms for selling art and marketing strategies 📈
• Benefits of platforms: Instagram for connection, Facebook as an extension, YouTube for evergreen content 💡
• Marketing strategy: Get attention, share personal stories, showcase art, make offers 🎨

Key Takeaways

• Embrace the struggle with content creation by focusing on one platform and audience at a time for better results.
• Automate content creation by reducing its complexity and starting with what excites you.
• Understand your audience better, and don't chase trends blindly across platforms.
• Artistic expression aligns with personal missions through heart-based methods for genuine engagement.
• Choose the right platform by recognizing each platform's strengths for your art marketing strategy.

Overview

In the latest episode of Stop the Starving Artist, the host digs into the world of social media struggles artists face with a focus on choosing the right platform to prioritize. Sherry, an artist who is comfortable with YouTube but overwhelmed by Instagram, gets valuable advice on focusing efforts on one platform that aligns with the primary audience's needs.

The episode explores the benefits of heart-based marketing, using authentic stories and personal branding to cultivate a loyal following. Our host shares their journey through music and effectively connecting with audiences by embracing genuine storytelling over metrics-centric approaches.

Lastly, there's a breakdown of major social media platforms—Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube—to highlight their unique benefits and how artists can harness these strengths. No matter where you choose to showcase your art, the emphasis remains on storytelling, connection, and maintaining your artistic integrity while building an audience.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to the Q&A Episode The episode 'Introduction to the Q&A Episode' of 'Stop the Starving Artist Podcast' begins with an enthusiastic welcome and an explanation of the special Q&A format. The host invites listeners to join in as they address questions submitted by the community through voice notes. Excited to hear and respond to them for the first time, the episode promises an engaging interaction as it opens with the first question from a listener named Sherry.
• 00:30 - 05:30: Sherry's Question on IG vs. YouTube Content The chapter discusses the challenges of creating content for Instagram (IG) as compared to YouTube. The speaker is familiar with creating YouTube content but struggles with the mindset needed for IG content. They find it difficult to automate and keep up with producing IG content and express a desire for tips on managing it better. The speaker acknowledges that this topic has been discussed before, indicating an ongoing struggle.
• 05:30 - 10:00: Advice on Focusing on One Audience In this chapter titled 'Advice on Focusing on One Audience', the discussion revolves around the challenges and strategies of targeting a specific audience effectively. Sherry, a participant in the Heartbased Sales Accelerator program as well as a one-on-one client, highlights her difficulties in maintaining focus on a single audience amidst the vast possibilities online. The host acknowledges these challenges and shares exciting news about the community's sales achievements, totalling $195,95 this year. The conversation suggests leveraging knowledge from platforms like YouTube to enhance audience targeting and improve sales outcomes.
• 10:00 - 15:00: Douglas' Question on Heart-Based Perspective In this chapter, the discussion revolves around Douglas' question regarding adopting a heart-based perspective for creating short-form content like Instagram posts. The focus is on a mindset shift that enables automation and consistency in content creation. It is highlighted that Sherry, the subject of the discussion, has two distinct audiences: artists, whom she educates about art and creativity, and buyers. The chapter explores the potential overlap between these two audiences and how they can be addressed through content.
• 15:00 - 23:00: My Journey and Heart-Based Sales Method The chapter introduces the heart-based sales method, emphasizing the importance of focusing on a specific audience for effective sales. The author reflects on a problem presented by 'Sherry', suggesting an underlying question about choosing the right direction. The approach advocates for understanding and connecting with one targeted audience deeply rather than trying to appeal to multiple audiences simultaneously.
• 23:00 - 40:00: Will's Question on Social Media Platforms This chapter discusses the challenges faced when dealing with two distinct audiences on social media platforms - one being artists who have a clear understanding of the YouTube content presented, and the other being a general audience of potential buyers. The speaker suggests a strategy to focus on one audience over the other and implies that the best action might be to let go of the audience that is more challenging to engage effectively.
• 40:00 - 25:00: Conclusion and Invitation for Questions The chapter, titled 'Conclusion and Invitation for Questions,' discusses the importance of focusing on a single audience when trying to sell work. It advises Sherry to concentrate her efforts on one specific audience instead of spreading her resources too thin across multiple platforms or potential audiences. This strategic focus may require adjustments in how she presents and brands her work.

Artists Ask Me Anything! (Social Media Struggles, My Story, Best Platform To Sell Art, AND MORE!) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Welcome to the Stop the Starving Artist podcast. I'm so excited to have you here with me today, which is a very special episode. This is a Q&A episode. So, I've put a call out to people inside my community to leave voice notes and we are going to answer those voice notes live. I'm listening to these for the first time and I'm really excited to do that. So, let's not waste any time. Let's just jump right into it. So, our first question here comes from Sherry. I'm struggling to figure out how to make
• 00:30 - 01:00 IG content versus YouTube content. I am very familiar with the YouTube content, but I struggle with that IG content and the mind shift that it takes to create that. And I'm just having a struggle with IG in general, like how to automate it so it's easier to create IG content. I don't know. I'm just I'm just struggling with keeping up with the IG content versus the YouTube and would really like some tips. I know we've talked about this before. I've heard I
• 01:00 - 01:30 heard you're speaking about it, but I'm still in the struggle bus with that. Okay. Sherry is a part of my Heartbased Sales Accelerator. She's also a one-on-one client. And uh by the way, our uh Heartbased Sales Accelerator community has sold $195,95 so far this year. Super super exciting. So the question is, how do we take a familiarity with YouTube and use that
• 01:30 - 02:00 familiarity to create Instagram or more short form content? Specifically, a mindset shift, being able to automate uh that content and then being able to keep up with it. Okay, so there's something you need to know here, which is Sherry has two audiences. one audience being artists because she teaches um and talks about art and creativity and the other one being buyers. Can these be the same
• 02:00 - 02:30 audience? Sure, they could be. But the way that I teach things in the heartbased sales accelerator is that it's smart to focus on having one specific audience that you're trying to reach. And so when I hear Sherry's problem, I hear an underlying question that she's not really asking me, which is what do I choose here right now?
• 02:30 - 03:00 Okay. So let's look at this from a a big picture perspective. If you have two audiences, one is artists, one is not artists, and one is working, meaning she understands it. That's her YouTube channel. These are the artists. And the other one is the more buyers, not necessarily just artist people. and she's having a hard time with that, then what do you think is the best thing to do? Well, my thing here in this, you know, the the context of this question is let this one go. I would actually
• 03:00 - 03:30 encourage Sherry to focus on one audience if it's still taking too much effort to try to pick up both and just go all in on the one and go ahead and try to sell the work to the one audience and not worry so much about another platform, another potential audience, all those kinds of things. which means that you might have to make some shifts and you might have to adjust the way you present and show your brand over here to
• 03:30 - 04:00 other artists. But that's totally fine, right? That's going to be a lot easier than trying to pick up, you know, and hold these two bags, right? Cuz the way my coach said it to me is like if you try to catch two rabbits, you end up catching none. And I think that that is really, really true. So, here's what I want people to think about, cuz um I know this isn't the exact answer that maybe everybody was looking for, but I think this is a much more important thing. Number one, consider that if you're in a position where you're good
• 04:00 - 04:30 at one type of content, but you're not so good at another, let the thing you're not very good at go. Don't think about it for a while. Go all in on one thing and get really freaking good at it, right? And that is going to allow you to have the mindset that I don't have to do all the things at once or be all the places at once. I can just do this one thing that matters the most. And then how do we think about automating it? Well, what I do is I just make it as
• 04:30 - 05:00 simple as possible. I have four or five different things that I prompt myself with every week. Those could be questions, you know, like what do I think my person needs to hear this week? or what's on my mind that I'm really excited about that I want to talk about or what's a project that I'm working on that I need to be discussing so my audience is aware of it. Those three questions can help get you on the right track. Um, and I have another video that you can watch uh that I'll try to remember to link up at the end of this video or at the end of this podcast
• 05:00 - 05:30 where uh I go over a specific plan that you can use every week on social media. But for me, you know, I like just having things in my brain, a few prompts, and then going for it. Other people like to batch produce things, right? But the main thing you have to ask yourself in order to get things automated is, how do I make this simple? Because you a can't automate something that is complex.
• 05:30 - 06:00 The more complex you try to make your content, the more tied up you get into making it perfect, the less likely you're going to be able to not only automate it, but also keep up with it, which is what Sherry's talking about, right? Sherry is asking, "How do I keep up with these things?" I actually think for Sherry, she should only pick one thing and try to keep up with that. And that would be my suggestion for all of you watching. Pick one platform, one audience, sell one thing, and do that
• 06:00 - 06:30 for one year and see what kind of progress you make. Guarantee you it's going to be pretty powerful stuff. All right, let's move on to question number two. This one comes from Douglas. When did you first realize that you wanted to help artists from a heart-based perspective? Was it a one-off event or was it lots of little
• 06:30 - 07:00 things that added up to something bigger? Beautiful. Okay. So, when did I first realize that I wanted to help artists from a heart-based perspective? This is a really interesting question because it wasn't a one-off event. This was actually um a number of things that happened over the course of my life. So I was a professional touring musician for 10 years. Uh was very fortunate to tour all over the world. Got to do
• 07:00 - 07:30 festivals like La Palooa, Sundance Film Festival, um Austin City Limits. Got to be on television. Um got to do, you know, just a lot of really cool stuff. Um, and when I left that life and started doing more production work where I was helping bands regionally sort of make their records, what I noticed is that we would sit down and talk about the business side of being an artist sometimes as much as we did about their songs. And I had so much fun talking
• 07:30 - 08:00 about those things. And so I thought, well, there's a itch here that I think I could scratch for musicians and for myself. And so at the same time, I realized, well, maybe I should put out YouTube videos and sort of automate this process. See what I did there? We just talked about automation meaning I could reach more people, make a bigger impact and you know kind of send videos even to
• 08:00 - 08:30 clients as they were coming through. So, I took a class on um YouTube specifically from a guy named Tim Schmoover. And Tim helped YouTube write the curriculum on how they taught their platform in the beginning. And so, he's very connected with them. And I took that course and at the end of the course, he put out a call for potential strategists on his team. And I told my wife, I was like, I think this could be
• 08:30 - 09:00 really valuable for me. Um, I see some potential here. do you think I should apply? And she said, "Sure, go for it." So, I applied. I end up getting the job uh with my friend Delena. Uh Delena and I both I didn't know Delena then, but uh we both became his first salaried employees. And so, the strategists on the team were Tim, Delena, and myself. And we were responsible over that time for billions of views for our clients, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Um, you know, it was a pretty
• 09:00 - 09:30 incredible situation to be in and it was a thing where I didn't realize I would have a knack for something like that, like brand strategy, storytelling, all that sort of stuff, coming from a background in music. So, I realized at the time that my wife wanted to be putting out her own art to help moms with po postpartum depression because we were going through that with our second kiddo. And um I
• 09:30 - 10:00 said, "Babe, well let let's like try to put together a brand message based on what I do with the YouTube clients and see if that helps like move your art more, maybe impacts more moms and let's just see what happens." So we did and that grew her Instagram account to about 20,000 followers. She got cold called by Netflix to do illustrations for them. Uh she got cold called called by two publishers about potentially doing a book. got written up in board panda,
• 10:00 - 10:30 huff post, all these things. And so I started thinking like, well, maybe this works for any kind of artist, not just music artists, right? And so I started presenting the work um or the work that I was doing to some visual friends are like, "Oh, this absolutely works for me, too. Like, I don't think you should do this just for musicians." And I had a lot of imposter syndrome around that because, you know, I'm not a visual artist first. But what
• 10:30 - 11:00 I saw is that it actually worked really, really well for visual artists because they had something that they were already selling that was of a higher value. You know, the unfortunate truth is that music itself has kind of become a commoditized thing, right? Um, and so I started testing it with some visual artists and seeing it work. And at the same time, I'm still working
• 11:00 - 11:30 over here at Video Creators. And one very pivotal thing happen there. What I would see really often is that our clients would come in and they'd say, "We want to learn how to get views." And to get a lot of views, you have to play a really specific game. And that's the game we taught and it worked. But the problem was that people would get views and they would at the same time be sacrificing who they were and what they
• 11:30 - 12:00 were trying to say just to get views on a YouTube channel. And so when it would all be said and done, they'd end up trapped feeling like they had to make a certain kind of thing in order to get views. and that's not really what they wanted to do. And so I thought, well, when I do this for artists, I'm going to start with a heart-based scenario, like a heart-based strategy that says, who am I
• 12:00 - 12:30 first? Not what do I want? Because it's not I know that artists want sales. I know artists want clients, but it's like we have to start with who am I and what do I want to say and what am I willing to say and what am I excited to say to get those clients and then we can turn that into a strategy. And so that became the heart-based sales method, which you know really at the kind of foundational
• 12:30 - 13:00 level of it allows you to take your heart like what's what your stories, your ideals, your values and all those things are um and use that to build your personal brand around as an artist and then find people that align with your values and your ideas and your mission and all these things. Um and it's worked really really well. And so, yeah, it kind of started with me helping musicians, moved into me helping my wife, moved into me helping more visual artists, and then seeing these people sacrifice themselves for views. Um, and
• 13:00 - 13:30 then being really frustrated even though they were making a living. And so, uh, I kind of swore that I would always get people to do the hard thing first, which is look inward before they got the result that they wanted outward. Um, and it's really been amazing to see happen. So, thanks for that question. I hope that answers it. Uh, I've really I don't talk about that too much. Probably should talk about it more because that's what I say you should be doing. All
• 13:30 - 14:00 right. This one is from Will. I post on Instagram and Facebook and I'm thinking about doing YouTube. Can you talk about the benefits of each of those channels and is there a certain way to market to the different channels? Okay, so Instagram, Facebook, YouTube,
• 14:00 - 14:30 what are the benefits uh of each of these platforms and what are the marketing strategies of each of these platforms? So, obviously I'm not going to be able to go into, you know, super detailed detail for each of these platforms, but I will talk about the benefits of each of these um and where I think artists can make use of each of them. So, let me
• 14:30 - 15:00 start by saying and reiterating the thing that I mentioned with Sherry's question, which is don't run yourself thin, right? To this to to to Will here, it's like if you're posting on Instagram and Facebook and it's not working yet, you don't have it down, but you like these platforms, don't switch to another platform. Stay on these platforms or pick one of those even and go all in on it. Right? And this is really, really important to
• 15:00 - 15:30 reiterate because when you spread yourself thin, that's when you burn out. And the thing I see more often than not is artists burning out cuz they're trying to do too many things or they try something like Instagram and they don't see it work right away. And rather than figuring out what is working and making it better, they switch to another platform. And then they don't see it work right away. and rather than figuring out what is working and making it better, they switch to another platform and they
• 15:30 - 16:00 don't see that work right away. And now they're burned out because they just keep moving from one thing thing to another and they're making no progress. They're just literally running in circles, right? So this is why I'm such a big proponent of one thing for one year, serving one person and selling one product, right? Um so anyway, have to preface with that. So what are the benefits of these platforms? First of all, let's talk about uh Instagram. The main benefit of Instagram to me is
• 16:00 - 16:30 relational value. What I love about Instagram is that you can build relationships with your people here um with short form. How do you do this? Well, with a mix of posting reels to get attention, right? Posting stories to build connection. Uh you can
• 16:30 - 17:00 also obviously post reels to get connection too. Um but I think stories work really well for uh connection and then going live to build connection and even generate sales if you want to. But these are great ways to do it. And then the power move of Instagram is the DMs. Like I love when my clients come back and they say, "Lennon, like I made a sale because I reached out to the people that were interested in a DM and I just sent
• 17:00 - 17:30 them a little voice note and just said, hey, you know, how can I serve you? What do you need?" Like DMs are such a powerful tool and like that's the thing I like about stuff like that is because you're doing things that you can't scale. Meaning like you're you're doing things that if you did them all the time, you run out of time. But that's the personal touch. That's the stuff where somebody goes, "Wow, they really care." So that's what I like about Instagram. Um Facebook. Now, I don't
• 17:30 - 18:00 like Facebook just as a platform too much, but Facebook has both long form and short form content. Um, you know, people are already there. They're definitely checking things out. Um, we are seeing that Facebook reels are getting more and more views. So you if you watch your Facebook feed now, it's operating pretty
• 18:00 - 18:30 similarly to Instagram except you'll have more long- form like text things or news articles or things like that on Facebook than that you wouldn't see on Instagram. So if you think of it like Instagram is like reals and carousels and things like that. Facebook is like some reals, some, you know, text posts that are longer and beefier, like people will go a little more in-depth. It's a good mix of like personal stuff. Um, so
• 18:30 - 19:00 I think Facebook works really well as kind of an extension of Instagram. If anything, I would say, you know, take your stuff, make it for Instagram because Instagram has really great discoverability um when you're using reels and then repost it to Facebook. this is something I want to start doing um in quarter 4 of this year. So, I like Facebook for that reason. Um it's not as easy to send DMs and things like that. So, uh I don't love it as much as Instagram for that reason. Let's talk
• 19:00 - 19:30 about YouTube. Um YouTube is my favorite platform, period. It h it it's evergreen, meaning like when you post a video, it can be found at any given time forever. Like, it doesn't go away. Um, YouTube shorts is the same way. It's really fantastic. So, you'll see content pop up over and over and over again, whereas on Instagram and Facebook, it has a shorter shelf life. YouTube is also really great for building connection because long- form
• 19:30 - 20:00 content is really great for building connection. So, if I was going to advise an artist to do something on YouTube, I'd advise them to do something like what I'm doing here, which is just more of a long form podcast where you're maybe taking questions from your audience. you're letting them get to know who you are. Um, talking about your mission as an artist, talking about your values, giving your take on what's happening in the world, things like that. Not just talking about your art, but letting people in on who you are as
• 20:00 - 20:30 a human being. Um, so there's an artist by the name of Franer on um, YouTube, and this is what she does really well. She'll share a bit of her working, but she'll also like be talking about who she is as a human being. Um, and I think that's a really fantastic way to um, connect with people. Downside is you don't have DMs or things like that to connect with people on. Um, but the discoverability factor is great. It's also a much harder game because you need to understand
• 20:30 - 21:00 titles and thumbnails and things like that. Whereas on Instagram, you know, I think Instagram is a really great place to get started making content because you can make 60-second, 30 second, 15 second, 7-second videos and get attention and still build a little bit of connection. Um, you know, whereas on YouTube, you do need to get good at just being yourself and showing up as you and making good thumbnails and titles that
• 21:00 - 21:30 get people to want to click uh and watch. So that's the benefits of each of these platforms. If I were going to say like what's the marketing strategy for each of these, it really is the same thing. It is get attention from your people, right? Like your ideal buyer, which means you need to understand who your ideal buyer is. Let them know who you are as a human being first, right? Then at the same time be showing what you do as an artist. let them in a little bit on like
• 21:30 - 22:00 what you're making. Then as you get closer to a release, you start to go all in on the art and we sort of segue out of sharing who you are, which is how we build trust and get that connection piece going into like this is what I make. This is like really my bread and butter and then saying something to the effect of like hey if you you know like this I'm going to be selling it. So, let me know if you uh are interested and I'll put you on email list or you know find a way to just let them uh become a
• 22:00 - 22:30 part of your world so you can make them an offer of your work. So, that's how I I would market the same way for all three of these platforms. Now, if you're interested in my marketing strategy, I have a free um a free master class called Post to Profit that you can check out. Uh, I'll have the link for that in the description below and it walks through that entire marketing um strategy. And again, I would use the same one for each one of these. All right, so to recap, first of all, with this, if one platform isn't working, I
• 22:30 - 23:00 don't know that I would switch. I' I'd start with something that, you know, you can get a grip on based on what we've talked about here and just go all in on it. Um, you know, Instagram is great for rel relational value as well as discoverability because you can use reels and stories that go away fast as well as DMs to connect with people directly. And that's really, really, really powerful. You can't do that really anywhere else in the same way. Facebook is like Instagram, but I would
• 23:00 - 23:30 call it sort of Instagram light, but you know, uh, it's also more for closer relationships, friends, stuff like that. and you can't get into people's messages as easy unless you're friends with them and I don't really care for that. Um, Facebook groups are fine, but people are so distracted on Facebook because they have so many things to look at that it's really hard to keep attention there. Then you have YouTube. YouTube is my favorite platform because discoverability happens over a long amount of time. Posts don't go away
• 23:30 - 24:00 um in 48 hours like they do on Instagram or Facebook. And that's really really powerful. so people can discover you over and over again. So, I would recommend artists that can handle it. You know, doing a very simple podcast like what I'm doing here where you're just showing up, talking to your people, keeping it cut and dry, not a lot of edits, just, you know, a chance to connect. So, um I hope that that is helpful for you, Will. I appreciate you being a part of the uh community. And I
• 24:00 - 24:30 want to thank all of you here for listening and for being a part of this community as well. If you would like to leave me a question that I might answer in a few uh sorry, a future episode of the podcast, you can go to speakpipe.com/stopthest starvingart. Again, speakpipe.com/stopthe starving artist. And for those of you on YouTube, make sure you go check this video out here where I walk you through a weekly content plan that you can use for marketing your work now. So, check that
• 24:30 - 25:00 video out. So, that's all we got for today. Uh, thanks again and don't forget you don't make art, you are the