We were lucky to catch up with Ruby Michelle recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ruby Michelle, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you manage your own social media?

Since becoming a freelance illustrator, i’ve learned a lot about the benefits of managing my own social media accounts as a business and an artist. I think it has allowed me to become more creative in other ways and also pushed me to make better choices about the quality of my content as an artist and business owner. I can decide how and when to market myself and also better understand my clients and customers, because i’m marketing on a personal level.

Ruby Michelle, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Ruby and I am an illustrator, designer and digital content creator from California. I make illustrations inspired by Asian culture, street fashion, nature, daily life, comic art and Pop Surrealism. I have exhibited my illustrations in California and Japan and I create art for apparel, books, murals and more.

In 2020, I created my illustration brand Blank Story, featuring art and my designs on merchandise and fashion apparel as well as studio classes for young aspiring artists.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

In 2020, I decided to make strides for myself. To say the least, the world was going through a lot of changes and businesses were struggling to stay a float, but I knew no matter how separated I felt from the outside world, I wanted to find a way to continue to reach others through my art and I found social media was my answer.

I consider my art to be an extension of myself. It’s my visual voice, and I soon found through promoting my shop and my work that using social media would become a way for me to speak to others in ways I hadn’t done before.

I was quite familiar with Instagram and actually had one for quite a while. I was there in the early days when Instagram was more about posting something from your day, adding a quick caption and leaving it at that and less about outreach, finding the right keywords, hashtags, or posting at crucial times. But, I think seeing that change in social media overall and seeing how much opportunity there was to promote as a small business in ways we were never able to decades before only motivated me to want to take my business to another level.

So, I resolved to raise the quality of everything that I was posting. I worked hard at making better graphics, better promotions, filming, editing and posting pictures and videos that I would be proud of just as much as my own artwork. I made a schedule for myself, posted often to my feed and stories, and replied to anyone taking the time to interact with my page. And little by little I began to see more growth.

From there, I found other ways to extend my reach on social media. I created a TikTok, Youtube and Facebook page for my work and found other avenues for promoting myself and my business on platforms like Patreon and Kofi who’s main missions are to help creatives build avenues for receiving regular income in exchange for sharing artistic content.

And over time, with consistency, I have found that these opportunities have helped me to build more outreach.

Granted, I have had my share of ups and downs with social media. Posting and receiving little to no feedback can be discouraging. Wondering what and when to post or what words to use to best convey the pictures you feel should speak for themselves can also be stressful, but I have found over time, that being on social media is like being on a rollercoaster that I have to learn to control in a way that works for me and my goals.

I think for anyone starting out, it is important to remember what your goals are and most importantly – who you are. Do you want to share something for the purpose of sharing it and nothing else? Or do you want to say something that holds a greater meaning with your post? What is your story and how to do you want to tell it? These are things that I ask myself as a digital creator. I think, from my experience, telling your story in a genuine way is being true to your audience as well as to yourself.

At times, I overthink a lot about the things that I’m posting, but I always try to remind myself that the reason I got on social media to begin with was to share my art – because it’s what makes me happiest.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

In fact, social media has been a huge factor in building up my clientele. Whether it be for my shop, or as a designer and illustrator, working as a freelancer means that people have to be able to see me and my work in order to commission me. If they enjoy the work that they do, my hope is that we can continue to build a professional relationship and over time I am able to do more and more projects with that client. But, it all starts with being able to find me and my art to begin with and displaying my work on social media, on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and my website has allowed me to find more clients and likewise have clients find me.

On the other hand, often at times I have had customers purchase something, post it to their social media, tag me, and repost to their stories and in doing so, their friends and family see the items I have made and visit my shop as a result. This type of promotion is possible through social media and I think in addition to influencer marketing and ambassadorships, just having a customer give their genuine feedback about how much they like the things they have bought from my shop is a wonderful thing and so nice to see. It makes me happy to be able to see people enjoy the things I create not only for themselves but also by their friends and family.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rubymichelle.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rubywenttospace/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rubymichelleart/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiaAOiUwPsegY9gyRpi0M1w
• Other: https://www.patreon.com/rubymichelle