Social media is a weird beast that makes a lot of us at least somewhat uncomfortable, but most of us also acknowledge it's a bit of a necessary evil for the modern creative. This great video talks about being realistic about what social media is, your relationship with it, and what you can expect from it.
Coming to you from Sean Tucker, this thoughtful video essay explores the role social media plays in our lives. The truth is that increasingly high proportions of potential customers turn to various forms of social media to find photography and videography services, and its place as a central hub of communication and information in modern society has been firmly cemented. As Tucker said, children even see it as a idealistic sort of career. It's easy to get sucked into it as a means of income or of validation, but the truth is that one of those is rare and the other is almost nonexistent. Nonetheless, having a balanced, realistic relationship with it can enable it to be a very useful tool for marketing and presenting one's work. Tucker goes into some great detail about just that.
Be sure to also check out Tucker's new photography book on his website.
I agree with many things that have been said on this video. Personally my vision of the social media is that you need to create your own space, your niche with a faithful number of peers. Take it with a grain of salt of course, since the taste, patience, among other "human" characteristics can change with time. Though at least you know some percentage really focus on your work. That helps us to stay motivated and create better content.
I had my ups and downs. For instance I have many images with plus 100K up to 500k views on 500px and other with less then 5k. Is that because my work is worst? Of course not, but the rules/algorithm changed on that platform and they started giving more attention to different people.
At first this was a disaster to me. They also stopped publishing my articles on ISO500px. For a while I felt really bad. Though this opened me a widow of opportunity in many other social media. Now I´m steady and slowly getting my old space but always having in mind that all can be different, for best or worst.
Finally a good advice that I also follow. Why feeling bad if someone with a nick has a highly destructive criticism over your work? Last week I felt really bad because a peer of us that´s starting said that his self estime was at zero due to bad comments on social. Focus on the positive ones from people that have experience and also embrace when someone gets his personal time to help you. I´ve done it several times and its quite rewarding helping someone to grow.
"Personally my vision of the social media is that you need to create your own space, your niche with a faithful number of peers."
I could not agree more and in fact I believe this is a very fundamental truth for anyone posting on social media whenever it is for profit or for amusement. After all as humans we have this imprinted desire to be heard and recogbized by society. That's why we also comment on photo forums lol.
To me photography is fulfilling my constant need to communicate with other people. It is nice if those people communicate back, comment on my work, acknowledge, criticize or just feel something about it. However I try not to have expectations in this regard.
Well I see that we both share a very similar approach of what social media are or, at least can be. Having low expectations is also a good way to deal with this situations.
Despite what some can say, yes, we wall need to see some kind of recognition from our peers or viewers.
I'm not singling out this video, it is however yet another post (and not only here) about social media being a 'necessary evil'. Isn't it telling that all people who choose to write articles about social media think of it as an unfortunate/tedious/time-consuming/insert-your-negatively-loaded-word-here necessity? I don't recall a single article written by or for an artist that would be genuinely enthusiastic about those platforms. Why is that?
Because enthusiasts are dumb and blind. We live in a world of trade-offs where good things come at a price and advantages come with drawbacks.
For many artists, it is because using social media, like undertaking any marketing, costs time and sometimes costs money.
The primary goal for an artist is to create art. Additional expenses, such as marketing expenses, are not usually the creative outlet for the artist. They are therefore a "necessary evil" : necessary to help put food on the table, but evil because it is time (and sometimes money) taken away from the act of creating art.
Insightful overview on the state of social media-when Sean Tucker speaks, a person would do well to listen.