Social media is just a tiny part of it. The way to get work noticed isn't necessarily to keep pushing it on the internet. The internet is full, brimming over with everything imaginable. Every day there's a billion and a half new pictures uploaded - much more than anyone could keep up with. Everything from art to real estate to sports to pets to popstars. If you could just block one, say sports, it'd still be overwhelming. Taylor Swift alone has thirty thousand photos taken of herself every minute. She's set up cameras all around the world for this single purpose.
When the overwhelming reaches a critical point, people turn off. And they turn off their computers. And they take to the streets, the high streets, and they go shopping in the real world, some will buy cameras, some will go to the cinema, and some will go to an art gallery, and some may even buy something.
Also competitions help, and winning them becomes amazing advertising. I don't know how many who are actually interested in buying art get their feed from social media sources, but I'm guessing it's in the tens per million
