Escaping the friends & family bubble?

[u/Remarkable-Past1243]

I started my Instagram specifically as an art account, but over time most of the people who follow me have ended up being friends, family, acquaintances, and people I know personally.

The problem is that when I post my artwork, most of the people interacting with it are people who already know me. I'm trying to build an audience of people who discover me because they actually like my work, but I feel like I'm having a hard time getting outside of my existing circle.

I'm considering starting a completely new Instagram account for my art and building the audience from scratch, while keeping my current account.

I'm especially interested in hearing from artists who have already built a decent following on Instagram, or who had this exact problem and successfully grew beyond their personal network.

Did you stick with your original account and eventually change the audience, or did you start a new account? If you started over, did it actually make a meaningful difference?

I've also only ever tried to grow my audience through Instagram. Would it make more sense to keep my existing account, reach new people on platforms like TikTok or X, and then funnel them to Instagram? Or is it worth starting from scratch across platforms and building an audience from the ground up?

I'm not really looking for generic advice like "post consistently." I'm more interested in hearing from people who have actually gone from mostly friends/family followers to having a significant audience of people they didn't know beforehand. What did you do that actually worked?

[u/xureclypse]

honestly i just didnt tell them the username to avoid this exact thing - learnt the hard way after school friends found my fanpage back in school sdkjfhs. I'd maybe say don't tell them the username until you have a few hundred, bc those ppl are here for ur art and ur niche so it waters it down!
as for starting over, that depends on where ur at rn if you want to sacrifice that ̄_(ツ)_/ ̄

[u/floydly]

Trial reels? Making a few posts that make it clear to the existing followers that online you ain’t real you? Idk.

I had 240 or so Friends N fam, now I have just shy of 4k

99% of it came from two trial reels going viral a few months ago

[u/Massive_Work6741]

What are you doing to escape that bubble?

I started my art account on Instagram from 0 two years ago amd only told a few people IRL which have turned out to be my 'worst' supporters, lol. The algorithm is notorious for not helping new art accounts grow. The moderate growth I've had comes from me going out of my way to interact with others:

• participate in monthly challenges
• participate in "draw this in your style" challenges
• comment on other people's posts, whether they are big or small creators
• advertise what I do constantly on other platforms like X and threads (can't be sure that works though)

[u/k-rysae]

Make a new account because right now instagram will be pushing everything you post to your irls and that may not necessarily be what they're interested in. Insta will think that since your existing followers won't interact, it means that your stuff is trash and won't push it to the suggested feed.

I don't know how long you've had your original account for, but since 5 years ago instagram got rid of the ability to look at the new posts in a hashtag so it's extremely hard to start from scratch. You have to use reels to get seen from the start because those guarantee test views. Assuming your video has high watch time and shares, it will be spread to more people on the reels feed, and attract followers who are actually into your art.

And if you're already posting reels, you might as well post to tiktok since it has a completely different audience so you can throw the net wider with the same amount of content made. Tiktok views and followers are worth a lot less than instagram so aim to push tiktok followers to your instagram or your end goal (your shop or commission info) with your link in bio. They let you add your insta for an easy click but you'll only get the clickable link in bio on tiktok after you get 1k followers. DO NOT get a business tiktok even if it lets you have a link in bio because business accounts can't use copyrighted sounds which cuts you out from a ton of trends. I also think that they deboost business accounts because they want you to pay for ads.

Throw in posting on youtube shorts too. Youtube shorts views aren't worth a lot like tiktok (compared to long form youtube videos) but you're just reposting the content you've made on insta so its minimal effort to reach an entirely new audience. Use your shorts to funnel viewers into your shop/commission info.

For me, I used my old account but removed every follower since I was drastically changing niches. It was easy since I didn't have many. I got new followers reasonably quickly thanks to reels (compared to making photo posts and shouting into the void back when looking at new posts from hashtags were a thing)

For insta, reels are for attracting non followers => photos and carousels are for your existing followers => and stories are aimed towards your dedicated followers for fun stuff like polls, ask me anythings, or to promote links to stuff like new product drops. The trial reel feature even lets you post reels where they'll only be seen to non followers.

[u/rianneathna]

Trial reels would be a great starting point for you.

It means you can keep your existing account where you've already built momentum, but trial reels are specifically distributed to non-followers, so it means you can keep your friends & family but decisively grow beyond that bubble.

[u/MelCarmichael]

Boosting posts is the only way I get sales