In April 2019, Instagram rolled out a notice that anything its algorithm determines is content of any kind of sexual nature would be suppressed. As is normal with any social media, no one outside the company actually knows what these changes mean, beyond yet another instance of audience engagement plummeting on posts by art models and art photographers. It’s a cycle we’ve witnessed perhaps a dozen times, where success on a particular social media platform is such a huge part of our creative business strategy that we feel genuinely angered or betrayed when the platform makes what seem like arbitrary changes. I don’t think any of these changes are arbitrary- platforms routinely allow free expression until they become legally liable for, say, people committing dangerous pranks, hateful tirades, teen suicide, and depression. But it’s also a good opportunity for us to explore some of the other platforms away from Instagram specifically and find out what they have to offer us as creatives.
Model: Alina; Photographer: Primordial Creative
YouTube
We will begin with some of the video social media platforms available. YouTube is the world’s third largest search engine and owned by the world’s first largest search engine. What that means is the YouTube content you create can disseminate further and longer into the internet ecosphere, and say what you will about some of the YouTube video content, it is a bit harder to create a cool video than it is a cool image post, so your competition is lower. On YouTube, the goal is to entertain or be of service to a viewer by answering some of the questions people actually ask – like “how to do manga makeup” or “how to play a particular song on bass” or reviewing consumer goods like photo gear and food. Although those samples sound cheesy they are quite entertaining and can engage with people in a way a simple image post and sentence never could. Many of the models I book, I do so because I see them on YouTube, and I myself gained most of my freelance work this year because of the videos I make of myself on YouTube.
In regards to the mechanics of YouTube – It takes 1000 followers and 400 watched hours to monetize your channel, and the payments from Google AdSense are by no means large, but if you can grow to that stage, it becomes an organism unto its own. Your old content can continue to trend and earn in a way that none of your old Instagram posts can. YouTube has additional add ons like overlays and end cards that can point users towards crowdfunding campaigns, your site or other videos you want viewers to engage with. Playlisting means you can organize content so you’re not limited to sharing a single post but rather a plethora of organized content, maybe years worth of content in one playlist. Mild adult content is allowed on videos notated as adult. It also has a number of lesser-known-but-useful features, like Superchat, a Twitch-like live streaming feature that allows for viewer tipping.
Model: Morrigan; Photographer: Primordial Creative
Vimeo
The other two major video sharing platforms are Vimeo and DailyMotion- in some ways, polar opposites of each other. Vimeo long had a reputation as a fancy, curated space where indie filmmakers and animators could get their work seen compared to YouTube’s wild west of everything. It’s recently been restructured as more of a video hosting and storage space because unsurprisingly curated content doesn’t generate enough income to sustain a business of Vimeo’s scale. What Vimeo has going for it is password protected content and communities of model-related videography. If you genuinely want to be direct in networking with other people involved in the model photography/videography space, Vimeo is an obvious place for it. The other major video platform, DailyMotion, is bigger outside of the United States and has a much laxer approach to monitoring the kind of content hosted on it.
Model: Paige; Photographer: Primordial Creative
In non-video forms of social media – Pinterest is a monster. Most have some passing familiarity with it, and I know many creatives who use it obsessively for mood boarding and concept collecting. It’s a great tool for getting your images associated with more popular works; think of your local indie band being playlist alongside the Beatles on a radio station, and that could be Pinterest for you.
Behance
Behance is Adobe’s social media platform with an enormous number of talented model photography industry people featured in curated feeds. Behance has the benefit of curation and a jobs section, at which point your various set uploads can act as an actual job portfolio. You can also be featured based on your use of Adobe’s tools, which is definitely a different way to be discovered if you’re really good with Lightroom or Photoshop but no one on Instagram seems to care. I find most people are really bringing their A-game to Behance in a way that, say, they wouldn’t on Instagram and certainly not on Facebook.
Model: Sky Mar; Photographer: Primordial Creative
WordPress
Lastly, I’m going to list the blogging site WordPress, not owned by Google but quite Google-friendly as I understand it. When my model friends on Patreon found their private Tumblrs gone up in smoke, WordPress was the main option for hosting a private blog.
Blogs, video sharing, technology related sites, mood boarding, live streaming with payments – though Instagram can do some of these things, many other sites excel at focusing on them, and if we choose a few favorites to help broaden our audience, it won’t be such a shock when one chooses to radically alter how our work is presented on them.