There's been a lot of art chatter on Twitter and peoples' perspectives and responses to the various discussion topics will depend on an individual's context and their priorities.

Here's my thoughts on the followers thing. A thread.

There's many factors that influence gaining a following on Twitter (or any large social media platform). We can influence some of those factors (art skill, regular/consistent content production, type of art produced, not being an asshole, etc.) and

there are other factors that we have zero ability to affect (lucking into a post goes viral, racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia, changes to platform algorithms, systemic poverity limiting access to resources, fandom size/visibility, etc.)

There's also lots of advice on using Twitter as a platform: post consistently/regularly, do art challenges, follow art trends, pin a portfolio to your profile, posting at different times of day, don't clutter up your media tab with non-art, be nice, don't shit on your work, etc.

Yes, people with large followings can have an influence on your visibility in an explosive way. You can gain more with a single person's reply/retweet than you could have from months of work

But... you have no control over that. Are you going to wait for the lightning to strike?

What you CAN do is prepare your Twitter so that when new people do visit you, they see content they (potentially) like. If you suddenly have an influx of because something went viral but don't have anything of interest visible to people visiting you, why would they stick around?

Here's my anecdote.

I started from scratch on Twitter 2 years ago. I was fresh and new to the platform and didn't know much about how it worked. I didn't have an established fanbase to bring over.

What I quickly learned was that my work on Twitter was not being seen.

My art was sharing the same space as peoples' FFXIV liveblogs, thirst posts, gpose screenshots, memes, and Hot Takes. Twitter's algorithm means that with so much content being churned through the FFXIV tags/search results, an unknown account like mine got no air time.

Often when an online community gets too big, it usually means that newcomers will struggle to get their work seen in a way that the pioneers often did not have to go through.

So, how did I get my work seen on a platform that actively hides my work?

I sought out the smaller communities. Where else do FFXIV fans hang out besides Twitter? The FFXIV Reddit.

Most of my work is content that appeals to a large number of the FFXIV community that hangs out in Reddit. I specifically post the comics that invite discussion and commentary, because Reddit is first and foremost a DISCUSSION board. It really helps to know your audience

Twitter Analytics tells me posting my work to Reddit was a good idea

Is there more I can do? Certainly. But I work full time. I update every week. I have limited time. Getting a large following is not my priority; I want to spend more time with the fans who are already here

If you want to use social media as a platform, it's useful to spend time thinking about the questions in this thread https://twitter.com/Hannah_illo/status/1282499700084498432

If you're looking to do business with your art, then it's useful to talk to people who run small businesses (not necessarily art ones). Pandemic aside, successful small businesses don't have the large customer base that corporations do, yet somehow they're able to stay afloat

Knowing my answers to those linked questions helped guide me in the decisions I made and where I focused my efforts.

How important followers are to you depends a lot on your own personal goals. And it's ok for those goals to change over time.