What I've learned about marketing my Art and you can do it too!
I use social media a lot. It is the primary way I reach my studio audience and how I can bring students into my studio. Last year I brought in over 500 students to my studio and my website had over 34,000 Unique visitors. I average around 2500 visitors per month and it keeps growing. I have also used Social media to advertise organizations I belong to and my Art Galleries, and it has been a very successful way to market artists and exhibitions. Now we have Instagram, I’m still learning how to use Instagram and how to cross post between different accounts. It is not always easy, and you must know your target market and where to find them. The most important thing is to get your message out to the people who are looking for you. You must Build your list and you cannot do it merely by making posts. You need to get to know your audience using the Facebook Business page insights and your website analytics to see who is viewing and interacting with your content. Experiment with your content schedule until you find what works best for you and your audience. Ultimately, trial and error are the best ways to find out how often to post on Facebook. Create consistent and valuable content. This is no small feat. You need to create posts that attract long comments and/or encourage sharing or discussion. So, creating engagement is central to successful Facebook marketing. So, step back a minute and ask yourself: "What do I want to achieve on social media for my studio?" Could it be you want to:
Let people know who you are?
Drive traffic to your website?
Sell your artwork or workshops?
Bring people to your exhibit?
For instance, if your objective is to drive traffic to your website, but instead you get thousands of likes and no clicks on your post, then it was unsuccessful.
If you are making posts that only go to other artists and not to new customers, you are not successful.
If you are posting to a page that has no following and not creating engaging posts that will grow your page, you are unsuccessful.
So, you have a workshop or an exhibit coming and you make a post- how do you start to reach “new” people who are interested in buying your work or attending your class?
Maybe share to groups that your target audience might frequent. Every genre is different, and each has its own selected groups. You need to join these groups and then share your content to them.
Start by creating an official artist’s page on Facebook. You probably already have a personal profile that you use to keep in touch with friends and family but to promote your art you’ll need a professional page, not a profile.
Post consistently: Since there are so many options when it comes to posting, try varying your types of posts. Instead of always posting a status update, post a video of you creating art or a photo album of your latest exhibition of work.
Keep your content relevant to your fans and don’t post overly personal or unrelated information. (save this for your personal profile)
Engage: Remember, social media is about engaging with one another. You want to connect with and receive responses from your Facebook community. Ask questions, post helpful hints and links to articles that your audience will ‘Like’ and share. Sharing and Engaging are the key words!
If you are going to use a social media manager, be very careful who you trust with this important task. Make sure your media manager knows YOU and your target market and that they will take the necessary time to market you effectively. A young 20-year-old, while they have fresh creativity is not going to know how to reach more mature followers. A single Instagram post with flashing lights and groovy graphics might not show your $3000 wall hanging off to the right target market customers. One post every other week will also not bring in the customers; your posts need to be consistent and engaging.
Here are a few ideas for engaging posts;
Take a picture of your workspace: Giving people a look behind the scenes allows them to get to know your business and build the trust you need to turn them into a customer.
Share your story: Every artist and organization have a story — some longer than others. Look for opportunities to share pieces of that story and let people know why you do what you do and why you do it.
The popularity of social media platforms has opened a whole new world of opportunities for artists. It has become so easy to gain an audience online and to market yourself as an artist. There are art lovers on every social media platform, and you should be taking advantage of that. Promoting yourself on social media has become an art in itself and keeping up with it can turn out to be very fruitful for emerging and professional artists. In order to do this effectively you need to learn more about using hashtags
The hashtag is a metadata tag used across social media platforms to make search and targeting easier. In simpler terms, it is a word, or a phrase preceded by the hash character or the pound sign (#) that helps people look for a specific kind of content. For example, searching #shibori on Instagram will give you countless images uploaded by Instagram users of shibori fabrics. Hashtags are a vital tool for marketing your art online. You can use hashtags to brand yourself, categorize your images and make them more searchable. Just a few appropriate hashtags can help you gain more followers, become popular amongst the art lovers on that specific social media platform and even make a few sales.
Hashtags are fairly simple to create. It’s basically a single word or a simple phrase with a # symbol in front of it. However, there are a few general rules.
A hashtag can be a single word or a short phrase. In both cases, there should be no spaces within the entire tag. Putting a space between the # symbol and your word will only create a hashtag of the first word.
· If you want to differentiate between words, you may use letters in the upper case to do so. This will not create a new hashtag. For example, #indigo and #Indigo will have the same search results.
· Do not confuse a hashtag and a tag. A hashtag uses the # symbol while a simple tag uses @. The @ symbol is used to directly reach a person or a company in a comment.
· Anyone can create a hashtag using any word. However, to get the most out of these, you must keep in touch with the latest hashtag trends and use popular hashtags to attract more traffic towards your content.
· In case of a campaign, you may want to use a unique hashtag. In order to find out if the hashtag you have chosen is already in use, just do an online search. Using a unique hashtag for a campaign will make you stand out and encourage people to actively join in. You must also keep in mind that a campaign only works if you have a large following that would be willing to share and promote your campaign.
Most major social media platforms support the use of hashtags. However, each platform has a different set of guidelines or specific instructions. I will try to explain the hashtag usage for each of these platforms.
Twitter: Twitter was the first social media platform to start the hashtag trend. You can use hashtags on Twitter for several reasons including promoting your art, informing your audience about your upcoming shows, discussing the latest trends, and more. You can even create your own campaign using a unique hashtag and ask all your fans and followers to tweet about it.
How Many? The hashtags that you insert in your post are also counted in the character limit on Twitter. Therefore, it is important to use hashtags wisely and sparsely. Ideally, 1-2 hashtags work well for a tweet.
Where? On twitter, you can use hashtags as per your requirement. They could be at the end of the post or even as part of it.
Instagram: Instagram is one of the best platforms for artists. We hear success stories of artists getting discovered or selling their works for thousands of dollars every other day! Instagram is also very big on hashtags.
How Many? Instagram allows you to have up to 30 hashtags for one post. However, studies have shown that the posts that get most coverage have hashtags ranging between 5-12. Too many and irrelevant hashtags can make your post look spammy. So, can many of the Instagram photo gadgets. You don’t appear professional when your artwork is jumping all over the page.
Where? You can use the hashtags within the caption, before or after it. One way to keep your posts tidy is to post all the hashtags in a comment instead of all in the caption.
Here is a list of some common hashtags that you can use to promote your art across social media platforms.
#art #artist #artistoninstagram #artlovers #artnews #artoftheday #artreception #artwork #artshow #artfair #artgallery #artstudio #abstractphoto #abstractphotography #abstracts #acrylic #beautiful #botanicalprinting #blue #blueart #color #contemporaryart #contemporaryfiber #creative #drawing #design #ecoprinting #fiberart #fiberartist #fiberlovers #indigo #indigoartist #silk #linen #weaving #textiles #dyersofinstagram #fineart #fiberartnow #inspiration #instaartoftheday #oilpaintings #originalartwork #modernart #mixedmediaart #paint #painting #paintings #photographer #photography #photooftheday #artsanity #artFido #photos #pleinair #portrait #portraits #portraiture #sketch #sketchbook #artsy #streetart #surfacedesign #naturaldyes #watercolor #abstractpainting #artcompetition #artoftheday #artshow #artfair #art exhibit #floridaartexhibit #artgallery #artstudio #instaartwork #instaartist #instaartoftheday #oilpaintings #originalartwork #modernart #artistsofinstagram #studiotour
Each of these will take your post to a different group of people with shared interests.
Pinterest : Social media giants like Instagram and Facebook have primarily taken the lead, but most artists haven’t fully explored other platforms, like Pinterest, to help them distribute and promote their work. Many artists use Pinterest to illustrate their creative process while promoting their own work for sale, and it can be an effective tool for building a following on a platform that isn’t as heavily trafficked as Instagram. My Squarespace website has a Pinterest share button. I used it faithfully for several years, then stopped because I wasn’t sure if anyone was seeing the posts. But a closer look at my Squarespace analytics lately showed that Pinterest was the 3rd highest referrer of new followers on my site.
Blogging: And while social shares, mentions, likes and comments tell an important story, often the main metric a client is looking for is website traffic. One of the best ways, Blogging! A blog is your platform to get people to know you. It will drive your SEO faster than any other social media. Social media is another excellent vehicle to drive traffic to your site. You can share anything from company news to special promotional coupons to keep your followers engaged and in-the-know. But sharing too much product news can make your social media presence feel spammy and aggressive, which could ultimately deter potential customers from engaging with you there, never mind clicking to your site. So how can you make the most out of your social channels without coming off too strong? You guessed it – by posting content from your blog. Maintaining a consistent blog schedule ensures you always have fresh material to share and offers your followers valuable information related to their interests. By creating engaging content relevant to your industry (but not necessarily directly related to your product), you will earn your followers trust, keep them engaged and ultimately establish yourself as an industry leader. Not to mention the increased web traffic you’ll see with every blog post you feature on social media.
There is no magic frequency when deciding how often to post on social media and you don't have to post at a particular time. The key is to post relevant, quality content on a consistent basis, and keep an eye on the times your audience engages with your content the most often. JUST DO IT and check your progress frequently, you will figure it out. It takes alot of trial and error
Knowing what to post on social media and how often to do it are both key to running a successful studio practice.
