The Algorithm Doesn't Care About Your Art. Here's How to Make It.
Your Instagram isn't broken. Your programming is.
Most artists treat their feed like a gallery wall — art, art, art, art, art. The problem? Nobody walks through a gallery on their phone at 11PM on the couch. Nobody wants to visit a gallery when they're pushing a stroller to the park at 10:30 in the morning. Social media isn't a gallery. It's a TV channel. And TV channels need programming between the commercials.
Your art posts? Those are the commercials. What's the show?
Here's what Instagram's own head, Adam Mosseri, confirmed: DM shares are weighted 3-5x more than likes for reaching new audiences. That means 10 shares beat 100 likes. The funniest post beats the most beautiful post. And your last 9-12 posts train the algorithm — if all 12 are art with low engagement, Instagram literally categorizes your account as skippable.
The fix is what I'm calling the Engagement Battery. Entertaining posts charge the battery — they drive shares, watch time, comments. Art and sales posts spend that energy. If you're only posting art, the battery is always dead. You're shouting into the void.
And I'm not teaching this from a textbook. Art Storefronts has 200-300K followers on Instagram and Facebook with crazy engagement — and our content is business software for artists. That's like trying to get small children to take their cough medicine. If we can make that entertaining, you can absolutely make your art journey entertaining.
The proof points are everywhere. Alison Lukes — a 77 year old gallery curator — got 9 million views from one video using Gen Z slang. Most viral post in the National Gallery's history. Devin Rodriguez went from zero sales to 35 million TikTok followers by drawing subway portraits and filming reactions. His quote: "I was painting just as good as this five years ago. It just wasn't getting anywhere." BarkBox has $500M+ in revenue with an Instagram feed that's almost entirely dog memes — not a single product photo.
The tools to do this are embarrassingly easy. IMGflip — pick a template, type your words, download in 30 seconds. Supermeme.ai — type what you want, AI makes it. Know Your Meme for research on what's trending. Zero design skill required. The only thing required is creativity. And you guys are artists — you already have that.
You don't need to become a meme page. You just need to stop being an only-art page. Even 2-3 entertaining posts per week mixed with your art changes the game. 66% of consumers find entertainment the most engaging brand content. 60% are more likely to buy from brands using memes.
Your challenge this week: make one meme. Post it. Watch what happens when you start charging the battery.
IT WORKED!!
I listened to this podcast last night around midnight, it makes so much sense... after all it's how I use social media as a consumer! I want to be entertained, I want to be informed and when i see something that resonates I share it!! and so decided to try it out ASAP. last night at 1am I posted a series of slides with meme-like captions about "artist struggles" I wrote some ideas down and asked AI to. turn them into witty quips basically .. in the first 12 hours (literally its 1pm right now) this post has already performed waaaay better than anything I posted all week! and the comments are real conversations. success!!!