This article is written based on the Tips for Artists to Grow their Social Media presence through Instagram Reels and TikTok by Tara Bach. 

Tara Bach is a fluid abstract artist from Saugerties, NY. She has been painting professionally since 2015 and has exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions in New York. Her work has also been featured by Obscured Art and New School Magazine, among other publications.

Tara finds beauty and joy in the freedom of her abstract painting process, which involves pouring acrylic with other mixed media to achieve her desired color palette and design in each composition. This particular method allows her to dabble in the unknown in that she is often playing with balancing elements of spontaneity and control. In her artworks, color and movement take over the canvas. She creates luminous, enchanting worlds that transport the viewer to a new place and invite them to appreciate her unique perspective of the natural world.

She finds her inspiration in nature and the universe. Whether it is the calm and peaceful essence of the ever-changing tide, the power of a vigorous storm, or the wonders of galaxies unknown, the changing elements resonate with her and remind her of life and its uncertainties. Much like the law of attraction, Tara shifts positive energy into her work, triggering a change in the surrounding environment and in this process, can attract improvements in health, wealth and personal relationships for those who view and surround themselves with her art.

What’s happening in the Social Media world? 

If you are on social media, you must have seen that Instagram has officially announced that they are pushing the reels content feature mainly because when the pandemic started, they lost so many users to the TikTok that was just blowing up at the time! To get their users back on Instagram and so they stay back on the platform, they came up with reels.

This feel extremely stressful to you because there are so many things that we artists, already have to keep up with. It’s creating the work, updating the website, responding to emails and so on so forth. And now, we are expected to learn video editing and become video makers!

When this all started rolling out, I was thinking about whether I was really comfortable getting on camera and starting to make these video? Or where am I going to find the time? But I promise jumping in is not as crazy and scary and hectic as it may seem.

A brief background to start with!

Over the time, I’ve learnt so many fun creative alternatives to this process that you might not necessarily think about and it really took me a little bit of just observation and brainstorming to really see the bigger opportunity in this new future. I feel like for me, the biggest reason I wanted to get started was because for years, I really struggled connecting all the different parts of me as a human and artists together in a caption underneath an image of me working.

I felt like the written word just wasn’t my thing. And it didn’t convey the messages that I wanted to share with my community and I really love connection. So sharing the struggles of being an artist, mother, or, you know, me forgetting to wash my brushes in the studio or things that I thought were funny was actually important to me. I wanted to engage with my community more. I also had so much work built up over the years of creating that. I just hated to see stacked up and not seen again. I couldn’t deal with a ‘Flashback Friday’ or ‘Throwback Thursday’ to wait to show it on my Instagram feed. And I hated the idea of being stuck in my head about that my grid needed to look a certain way.

I was just so over it, and I felt very stagnant on Instagram, felt stagnant growing my community and when I changed my perspective and took a look at how I could take the issues I was having and use the short form videos to incorporate and problem solve for that: I actually found a way to solve those problems for myself!

So if you find yourself kind of feeling in a similar position or have frustration and are struggling, maybe just take a moment to do a little brain dump about what those issues are for you, and maybe think about how you can use these short form videos to help!

Let’s get started!

TIP #1: All you need is your phone!

I suggest getting a video editing app. I personally use InShot and I also like to use the Captions App. This is really just my personal preference for aesthetic for when I do a video with me talking in it that I want to make sure that anybody who’s not using audio can hear what my message is because a quick side note is that many users actually don’t even listen to the audio when they’re watching these videos.

TIP #2: New Content Ideas

There are so many different ways to go about creating content. For me, I found the easiest way to start getting into it was just by, during my studio day, just taking really, really short clips. I’m talking like one to three seconds long, little snips of my process, whether it’s my paint going into the paint, my paint brush, going into my paint, or, you know, putting a squirt of paint on my palette, you know, just a few seconds in my studio and then I would clip them together and add an audio. And this was a great way for me to just begin and get familiar with the editing apps and how to create the video.

TIP #3: Go Step by Step!

Putting my face on camera was a little bit of a scary experience for me and It was something that didn’t feel natural. And you know, maybe your perspective after watching my content now is a little different, but I still have moments where I cringe before hitting the upload button. The way I kind of eased myself into this was I started making content on TikTok. First I did this because I had no following there and it just, it didn’t feel embarrassing to me and so I had more permission for myself to kind of just be silly. I knew it was a younger audience and I didn’t feel like I had anything to lose by just figuring out how to find my place on that platform. And funny enough, the quick support I ended up getting there gave me that boost of confidence. I needed to start taking my sillier content and then sharing it onto my Instagram, where I had, you know, my clients and I had my following and I had people who I thought expected a certain way from me.

TIP #4: Reuse & Recyle to the Rescue!

Do not forget to just screen record your TikTok Video before posting as these can be a great set of content to repurpose for later. Optimise every source you have! I want to make sure that I’m getting the most out of my time and my energy. So I always make sure I save or draft all of my videos. And most of the time I’ll even go through the whole process of downloading it to my phone because often if for whatever reason your app gets deleted, you’re done! And then all that work is gone. So please, don’t forget to save your content now just to, you know, reinforce what I mean by, um, making the most of the content I make. I would make a TikTok and because you can make it up to a minute long, I would do the whole thing and I would screen record my phone.

TIP #5: Use newer and different platforms!

You also can take the same video and upload it to Pinterest for their video content or now YouTube which came out with YouTube shorts. So that’s four different social media platforms that you can optimize all the content you make.

TIP #6: Planning takes you a long way!

I see the best content when I’m just aimlessly scrolling on my phone and then originally I would just kind of save the video or save the audio on the platforms. But I realized I would later on go back and look at them and have absolutely no idea why I had saved that audio or video! It made no sense to me. My idea or inspiration was gone by then. So then I realized I needed to create a place to kind of phone in on these ideas. I made a note section in my phone and it’s really detailed and it’s such a game changer. So in my phone, I have a reels and TikTok place where I have content ideas and stuff. It’s got main headings, such as trends, transitions, beginning to final stitches process, skits, all those are all my main headings along with little subheadings between them. This is a great tip to never forgetting an idea, even when you’re on the go!

TIP #7: It’s all about the Trends Trends Trends!

I observe videos that are currently trending and, you know, you’ll notice this, you’ll see the same audio or same dance kind of coming through your feed and then I’ll look and I’ll observe and see how I myself can recreate this trend in my own way! And that’s actually given me a lot of success and I’ve gone viral sometimes just by doing this, another thing that’s been really helpful for me. And this is really cool because this isn’t even creating, like it’s not even going through while I’m working or currently doing something I will go through and look at the most viral or popular content under a relative hashtag of mine that I use or look at currently.

So jump right onto these tips and create the best reels to get famous on Instagram! 

Edited by: Aradhita Maheshwari 

Connect with Tara on

Instagram: @bach.tara

Website: https://tarabachart.com

Keep In Touch With Us at Arts To Hearts Project! @artstoheartsproject