I Know Notes Are Important Especially On Art Posts, & Reblogs Are Even Better Than Likes, But I Can't

I know notes are important especially on art posts, & reblogs are even better than likes, but I can't help but frown when I see people complain that they get too many likes compared to reblogs. I get it, I'm an artist too but especially on posts that only get 5 notes for hours of work, I appreciate every like i get. I'm also kinda scared people will avoid liking posts so they don't feel guilt tripped into reblogging, and they'll just end up ignoring most art posts altogether (as I do, sometimes)

Yes!!! You’ll notice that I pretty much never reblog posts that are like ‘likes / kudos aren’t enough, it needs to be reblogs / comments’ etc. and there’s reasons for that.

I feel like a lot of these folks don’t understand audience metrics. Back at university, when studying how the audience engages with the media, we learned briefly of the 10/10/10 rule. The numbers may have slightly changed over time, etc. but essentially we learned about audience engagement, and the different tiers of engagement.

When applied to like, art and writing, there’s actually really simple statistical explanations for why people don’t get as many reblogs or comments in proportion to likes and kudos. And that’s simply because the bulk of an audience - I hate to say it - just doesn’t care as much as the uber fans do. They like it in a ‘cool I’ll like that’ and that’s about the sum of it.

So standard stats of engagement go like this:

Your audience engages with the thing (art/writing etc.) That’s your hits.10% of that group like the thing enough to kudos it. 10% of that group like the thing enough to then comment. 10% of that group like the thing enough to see if you have a Tumblr/find you elsewhere on the internet. 10% of that group might actually go buy prints etc.

Tadah! The numbers change, of course! But that’s like, tiers of human engagement. That’s fundamental stuff. People can’t care about everything equally, and so they really just don’t.

This is how someone with 200 followers may only get 20 likes and 2 comments/reblogs. (And it skews wildly - especially on Tumblr where people tend to not like every post they actually enjoy - because like-culture on Tumblr is sort of…more like bookmarking a thing, which falls into the commenting metrics.)

There’s also these stats, which are a bit disturbing:

Your audience engages with the thing. That’s your hits.

About 10% of that group are engaging with it oppositionally. That means, they are engaging with it because they don’t like or hate it. You rub them the wrong way and they just haven’t unfollowed yet. They actually enjoy hate-watching. They like to feel better about themselves and they can do that after reading / looking at your thing. etc. That’s fun right?

I mean those people are the ones who watch a McDonald’s ad and then go ‘I fucking hate McDonald’s, that’s trash.’ If you agree with them, you’re like haha yeah - congratulations, you are oppositional readers of McDonald’s! But here’s the thing, no one escapes that. No creator escapes that. You’re probably doing well if you have oppositional readers. Most people have no idea they have them, because most oppositional readers engage privately and are satisfying some weird thing inside of themselves. I.e. people who hate McDonald’s after an advertisement are like…not very likely to then call McDonald’s and tell them that.

And then the majority of the audience engages neutrally. Meaning they can either take or leave the thing. It’s just good to have in the background for them. They may turn into an oppositional fan, or a favourable fan. Usually it’s the latter! I often think there’s less of this online (neutral engagement), because people tend to curate their experiences more. But then I think of the amount of folks I follow who I realistically only followed because they drew or wrote my OTP that one time, and now I really am just a neutral follower.

That’s…the bulk of most people’s experiences, unless you unfollow people all the fucking time, lol.

So if you have enough of an audience to engage favourably - to press the red heart button, to even leave comments sometimes etc. that’s amazing, because as you can see - the stats are like…not ultra favourable towards it, and it’s probably not going to gain you anything but resentment if you start guilt-tripping your audience.

The neutrals will leave, the oppositionals will stay because they enjoy the drama (which is really not what you want), and the favourable folks are generally already trying pretty damned hard in a world of complete media oversaturation and may also leave to find someone who appreciates them more (pro-tip for the folks out there, if you already get comments or reblogs and frequently mention not getting comments or reblogs your commenters are often going to feel unworthy and unvalued and unappreciated). And, as you say, some might be scared away from ‘lighter’ engagement because they feel guilty for not doing more energy-intensive engagement on a blog that frequently posts guilt-trippy posts.

I mean hell, I even thank my lurkers, because they’re awesome. Somewhere out there, there are people who feel favourable about my work and I’ll never see a kudos about it, but I know statistically, they’re there. And they’re awesome. Like, some of those people will read this post. Hi folks. *waves*

But anyway, tl;dr, I completely agree with you. I don’t want to scare my audience away and I don’t believe in guilt-tripping. There are ways to encourage audience engagement for the people who are shy etc. and it’s mostly like ‘you can leave a kudos in the comments!’ or ‘I love my commenters thank you for inspiring me’ and maybe someone wants to get in on that love or ‘you folks who are leaving kudos on a regular basis / like my tumblr posts are the best’ etc.

And also tl;dr a lot of people do not understand audience engagement principles. It is literally impossible to change the stats so that 90% of your audience is super favourable and comments all the time. And why? Because that’s just not how humans work. We’re all engaging with a million different things in a million different ways, and that leads to creators having audience engagement metrics that resemble the above. There is already Too Much Stuff, and people have lives and cannot exist to just be sycophants over every type of media they engage in. It’s just…how that is.

Also like, reblogs and comments are important, word of mouth is really important to creators, but it’s like…it’s never apportioned fairly. It isn’t proportioned to hours put in, how good the final piece of art is, etc. That’s…the way it is. That’s not the audience’s fault and it’s not the creator’s fault. We’re all just doing the best we can in a world where someone’s 10 minute sketches will get 40,000 notes and someone’s 300 hour piece of artwork will get two likes and that’s it.