I was updating the LINKS page on my website, when I realized how many new ones I had tried since the beginning of 2023. Starting in January with Post.news, up to August with BlueSky I count 5 new social media platforms. Needless to say it has become overwhelming to post on all daily even if you just copy and paste. I have found that posting on 3 is not too bad.
But then someone mentioned that the key to saneness with social media was asking yourself: why you felt you needed to be on social media and to stop worrying about the numbers and focus on the quality of your engagement.
SO what was I really looking for on all these new sites?
1: My KidLitArt community and the ability to connect with industry professionals. Twitter used to be IT But now that its X the community is rapidly fragmenting. I was also told to be on Instagram as that's where art directors look for talent. While that may be true, most of the "calls for illustrators" happened on original Twitter.
2: A small bit of comraderie with my fellow creatives. Being an illustrator/writer is a very solitary endeavor. It's nice to be able to rant about deadlines etc. And have someone cheer you on or commiserate. Definitely looking for engagement.
SO... from all these new sites is there a clear winner? To be honest, whenever I tried a new site my first reaction was this is great it just needs more functional (fill in the blank). However after the initial honeymoon a few of these were clearly not it. The following is my personal opinion:
POST.news - friendly enough community, left leaning, very NEWS oriented. The first month I was there, there were a few illustrators posting for #KidLitArtPostcard. But at his point it's only a handful of illustrators. Unfortunately the kidlit community never embraced it.
THREADS - owned by Meta, the people that brought you Instagram and FaceBook. Very friendly. Quite a few editors, agents and art directors on it, at least in the beginning. Lots of kidlit people. But with no hashtags or pinning functions, it is hard to find each other or even engage properly with each other. SO there might be an art call there but I probably didn't see it. Also while I really liked it in the beggining - I'm finding that my time there is not as satisfying as before. But I will prob still pop on it as I can't delete it without deleting my IG account!
Linked-In - supposedly you can connect with industry professionals. I was on it years ago and stopped going there - tried again - but don't quite get it.
BlueSky - This is the one. I think. At the moment there is no Pin or true Hashag functions. However, there are Hashtag work arounds and custom feeds set up by kidlit people. Now we just need the PIN function. There's an active growing kidlit community. Yay! At the moment, Bluesky is still in beta so you need an invitation to join or you may add your name to their waitlist.
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