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Art account stuck in a circle
Posted by on April 26, 2026 at 8:32 amI own an Instagram account where I post my artwork. I want to push it to a non-artist audience in order to launch my Etsy shop and sell prints.
I don't simply post pictures. I try to make catchy descriptions, I make reels (less than 30 seconds) on the painting process, I include my cat in my reels and posts (knowing it is catchy and boosts the time users spend on your posts), junk journaling ASMR reels.
I first started with a non-artist audience, but it was mostly close friends interacting with my content. Then I built an artist audience, ending up with 675 followers.
Problem still persists:
– Artists mostly lurk. They don't interact with content unless they are completely impressed by what you've done.
– Posting in the time most of my followers are active doesn't do anything.
– Profile has 3k views/ month. Like rate is 5%. Out of 600+ follower accounts, a story usually gets no more than 40 views. My last recent post got the wonderful 7 likes.
– My most famous posts (over 80 likes) got famous over time, when new artists saw my profile and liked some of my posts. So they never got pushed to non-followers audience.
So I ended up in this circle. Non-artists that saw my posts didn't interact with my content. Artists follow me but just lurk, without interaction. My reels and posts never get pushed to potential buyers or people that just enjoy watching art.
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1 Reply
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I have a similar issue with instagram. Have yoh tried tiktok?
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I’d look at whether you’re posting only finished art. process content or behind the scenes often pulls more engagement and brings people into the work
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the issue is the IG algorithm has profiled your account as an artist account based on who keeps engaging with it, and once that’s locked in it just keeps serving you to other artists who lurk. process reels and painting time-lapses are “for artists” signals even when you mean them to be approachable. tough to break out without aggressive content-pivot signaling. I had the same issue, but in a different space
separate but bigger thing, most prints buyers don’t actually find art on instagram, they find it on pinterest. that’s literally what pinterest is for, discovering art people want to print and buy. might be worth testing pinterest with your existing work before spending more months trying to fix the wrong channel
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