Reviewed as of 27 September 2026.
A social network can help you show your work, share your process, find people to talk to and announce what you are doing. It should not be your archive, your only point of contact or the measure of what your work is worth.
The useful question is not how many platforms to be on, but what each one does for you, how much work it takes and what happens to your presence if it changes its rules, restricts your account or shuts down.
Function first
Before opening an account, decide what you want it for:
- showing finished work;
- showing your process;
- publishing texts;
- talking to other professionals;
- announcing exhibitions;
- keeping in touch with collectors or clients;
- selling;
- sending visitors to your website.
No platform does all of these well. A network chosen out of habit can take up a lot of time without bringing you closer to the audience you are looking for.
Your centre, outside the platforms
Each part of your presence plays a different role.
Your domain is an identity you control for as long as you keep it registered. Your website is your introduction and your public archive. Email and, if you publish regularly, a newsletter give you a relationship that depends less on a network's recommendation systems. Social platforms are for circulating work and for conversation. For research, a repository preserves, dates and makes work citable. Your own archive, with its backups, keeps the originals and the documentation safe.
Networks should lead to a place you control, not replace it. If one disappears tomorrow, your website, domain, contacts and archive should still be standing.
Types of platform
No platform is better than the rest. The choice depends on the format of your work, your audience and the time you can give it. There are, however, types with different functions and limits.
General image and video networks
Instagram, TikTok and YouTube let you circulate images, process, videos and announcements to wide audiences. Presentation and visibility depend on each service's features and recommendation systems.
YouTube can also serve as a public video repository. It does not replace keeping the original files. With short-form video, adapting the work to the language of the platform can be productive, but it should not force you to make a spectacular or simplified version of every piece.
Conversation and text networks
Bluesky and LinkedIn work better for explaining projects, publishing texts and connecting with professional, academic or cultural communities than as visual archives.
On Bluesky you can use your own domain as your account handle. This ties your social presence to a domain you control, but it is not the same as receiving a verification badge. The guide Bluesky, mu and AT Protocol for artists explains the difference.
Creative communities and portfolios
Behance lets you present edited projects in design, illustration, photography and other disciplines. Flickr and other photography communities make it easier to organise and circulate images within a more specialised field.
This type of platform usually makes more sense for complete projects, with context and process, than for quick posts.
Sales or delivery platforms
Digital art marketplaces and client gallery services for professional photographers are business tools before they are social networks. Their terms should be read as part of the service you are signing up for.
For digital art, the guide How OBJKT works separates the work, the file, the metadata, the token, the contract and the platform.
An example
My own presence is organised like this: my website, on my own domain, is the centre and the archive; Bluesky and LinkedIn are for conversation and sharing; academic repositories and ORCID, for research.
I do not use Instagram or TikTok. That is a decision about where I want my work to circulate, not a general recommendation. The principle does carry over: few spaces, each with a clear function, all pointing to the one you control.
What to upload and what not to
Tell apart:
- the master file;
- the exhibition copy;
- the web version;
- the thumbnail;
- details or process images.
Do not upload the master file to a network. Use a version with suitable dimensions and compression, without working layers or private metadata. Reducing the size does not prevent unauthorised reuse, but it avoids handing over more quality and technical information than necessary.
Keep an exact copy of what you post outside the platform.
Each post of a work should be traceable to your archive:
- inventory number;
- title;
- text posted;
- file used;
- platform;
- date;
- URL;
- alternative text;
- permissions and credits.
The master artwork record can serve as a starting point. The posting history helps to reconstruct how a piece circulated, although it does not replace its provenance documentation.
Your rights when publishing
Posting on a network does not on its own transfer the intellectual property in the work. Terms of service usually require a licence to host, reproduce and display the content as part of how the service works. The scope must be checked in each platform's current terms.
That licence does not automatically allow other users to reuse your work. Giving credit does not replace permission either.
If you post material by others or shared material, check the rights and permissions that apply to:
- music;
- images and video;
- typefaces;
- trademarks;
- recognisable people;
- archival materials;
- content generated or transformed using AI tools.
The guides Selling a painting is not selling its rights and How to reserve your rights against data mining go into these questions.
Accessibility
Alt text describes what is visible rather than interpreting the work. Avoid repeating the caption.
Subtitle videos, add a transcript when the sound is essential and do not leave important information only inside an image or conveyed only by colour. Keep the alt text with the rest of the post's data: you will need it again.
Metrics and algorithms
Followers, reach, engagement, sales and professional recognition are not the same thing.
A widely shared post does not prove a work's artistic value. A small audience does not make it irrelevant either. Metrics describe behaviour within a platform and under its recommendation systems. They can show whether information reached its audience, but they should not decide what work deserves to exist.
The distance between what a platform makes visible and what a work contributes is one of the subjects of my research on recognition.
Recommendation systems change. Do not turn them into a permanent criterion for what you make. Post when you have something to show, choose formats that do not distort the work, link to your own space and review from time to time whether each platform still serves the purpose you chose it for.
Security
Protect the account and its associated email together:
- use a unique password;
- enable two-factor authentication;
- keep your recovery codes;
- review active sessions;
- control who has access;
- keep a list of accounts and usernames.
Be wary of private messages claiming to come from support. Check notices within the platform and use its official channels. Do not pay anyone who promises to remove a dubious report or recover an account through a route outside the service.
If your post is copied
Follow this order:
- save the URL;
- take full screenshots;
- note the date and the account;
- keep the original and its documentation;
- check that you control the rights you are going to invoke;
- distinguish between copying, quotation, transformation and coincidence;
- review the licences you have granted;
- use the official reporting channel;
- keep the complaint and the reply;
- consider other routes if the platform's removal is not enough.
A complaint to a platform and a legal claim are separate routes. A removal by the platform does not settle ownership or whether there has been an infringement.
Leaving a platform
Prepare your exit before you need it:
- download your data;
- keep texts and files;
- export contacts when possible;
- announce where you will continue publishing;
- review old links;
- revoke access for connected applications;
- delete private information;
- document the closure.
Sometimes it makes sense to keep a minimal account that continues to send visitors to your website.
Your own domain makes continuity easier. On services built on AT Protocol it may be possible to keep your identity and move certain data between providers, but migration does not guarantee that every preference and app-specific data will be transferred. The guide Moving your Bluesky account to Eurosky explains the procedure and its limits.
The minimum
For many practices, the following is enough:
- your own website and domain;
- a professional email address;
- a newsletter, if you publish regularly;
- one main social platform;
- a second platform, if it has a clear purpose;
- an independent archive;
- a backup system.
You do not need to be everywhere. You need to know what each space is for and to keep outside it whatever you cannot afford to lose.
On the open conversation
This guide sets out general criteria for using social networks without depending on them. Platforms, their terms and their recommendation systems change. Before building an important part of your work on one of them, check its current terms and prepare a way out.
If you use a platform specialised in your discipline and notice an omission or a relevant change, write to me.
Sources
- Bluesky: tutorial on using a domain as your account handle, 28 April 2023.
- Bluesky: A New Form of Verification on Bluesky, 21 April 2025.
- Each platform's terms of service, in their current version.