>>4708726here is the copy pasta
I've shared this before, but I'll share a summarized version of it:
- find accounts that post art similar to yours
- go to their followers list and, one by one, like 2-4 of their posts, leaving a comment is a plus, following them is fine if you actually like their work, following them so they'll follow you back and so you can unfollow them after like the other anon suggested is A HUGE MISTAKE. Yes you'll gain followers, but they'll be inactive followers who will tank your engagement rate. Trust me (as someone with 28k+ followers), you're better off having 5k followers who are all way into what you do, than having 50k followers but only 5k of them actually care about what you do.
- rinse and repeat a few times a day for 5-10 min at a time
This will help you grow when you're still very small, you have to let people know you exist or nothing will happen, but it's not a sustainable growing strategy and eventually it just won't be worth it anymore.
What will always be worth it, is organic growth.
You have a max of 30 hashtags you can use, but using more than 15-20 can actually be detrimental, so stick with that number.
Find 3-5 super popular hashtags related to what you do (#oilpainting, #fantasyart, #furryart, whatever), then the rest need to be carefully selected hashtags that you can consistently show up in the top 9-12 posts for.
To do this, look up a hashtag related to what you do, look at how many posts it has, and look at how many likes the top posts receive. Do your posts get that many likes in that same time frame? If so, use that hashtag, if not, keep looking.
You also want to use hashtags that have at least 5k-10k+ posts.
In time, you'll be able to phase out some of those hashtags and start targeting larger and larger ones.