by Madelaine Buttini December 07, 2017
Using social media platforms, like Instagram and Facebook, to share your art is a great way to promote your creations online. We now have the opportunity to share our artworks at to millions of people in real time!
You never know where a post will lead your career and what opportunities you may receive in return. I have had great benefits from using Instagram and really wanted to share with you my top ten secrets for promoting your art on this much loved platform.
Connect Your Instagram with Your Facebook Page
You get some awesome insight features when you connect your Instagram to your Facebook page. Once you have done the integration you will have a much better understanding of your Instagram page!
This can be helpful when you are trying to work out what time is best to post and on what days. You can also see other useful information such as the amount of impressions, reach, profile views, website clicks and email clicks your page has generated in the past seven days. If you wanted to dig a little deeper you can also see this for individual posts to get a grasp of what people are liking most — this can be done over a 2 year period.
I also love how it tells in depth information about your followers, such as the percentage of men to women, the top locations and age range. This can be particularly great when you are starting out with your online store or website. You know what your main demographic and audience is and where they may come from!
Read Instagram’s advice on integrating your pages together here.
Use Popular & Relevant Hashtags
I think this is a really important part of promotion no matter how large or small your brand is. Hashtags have become an integral way that we share our photos to other people we may not necessarily cross paths with online.
On my collage posts I use the terms #collageart #collage_art #contemporarycollage #australianartist, this way when people go to these hashtags they are more likely to come across my art.
Research other artists like yourself and find what terms they use, incorporate some of the hashtags they use into your posts and see what works best. This could have the potential to increase your reach and impressions for you Instagram page! But of course, like anything it is really trial and error, so switch it up.
Post High Quality Images of Your Art
Nobody likes to see low quality anything, it can be difficult to interpret and hard to vibe off. The same is for Instagram, no one wants to view low quality photographs or videos of your art. Always make sure to take photos at the highest resolution!
Pssst… if you are using an iPhone turn on HDR.
If you are making digital collages, always make sure the images you use are at the highest resolution and the size of your “canvas” is at it’s highest dimensions. I recommend using the dimensions: 1080 x 1080 px and at 200 dpi.
A little note for posting images: People seem to prefer square images over rectangular!
What will happen if you hound your followers to buy your art!
Don’t Always Try To Sell To Your Followers
I know that it’s awesome when you make a sale from a follower on Instagram, but that’s not what they are there for! Yeah, you have beautiful art to offer but you don’t always have to shove it in their faces. It can be really tempting to push for sales (everyday) but it will only hinder them from wanting to purchase and they may unfollow you.
If you are lacking in sales maybe they don’t know about your online store yet. So definitely do a post here and there about your products but not all the time! Limit it to once a week and make sure your website is easily visible in your about me section of your Instagram.
Give Your Followers Love
Your followers are those you should be nurturing, they are not only potential customers but they give your art the love it needs online.
I always recommend giving love to new followers, those who comment and like your posts. Simply give them a like on a few of their photos so that they will feel like the love is reciprocated!
Start Your Own Hashtag
I highly recommend this one! If you haven’t already started using your own hashtag, what a perfect time to start doing so. It’s an easy way for people to view your work and to start a “trend”.
I have my own hashtag, #madbutt which I put on every collage post and check daily. It’s great when you see people sharing your work and using that hashtag – it means you’re really getting your work out there!
Post Frequently Throughout The Week
This is really up to your own discretion and if you have the amount of work to share. I recommending post at least three times a week, minimum. I know of artists who post three things a day, seven days a week and for me I think that could be a little overbearing for some people who follow me. It’s definitely up to what you feel comfortable doing!
Posting is all about consistency too. For example you could post on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. You can always double check if that works well with the stats you collected from your Instagram Insights!
If you don’t have a lot of work to post, don’t worry — use this as motivation to get your body of work at a larger size and start posting!
Write Interesting & Captivating Captions
People will be drawn into your beautiful creations and would like to hear a little bit about what it means to you and how you relate back to it. Sometimes you don’t even have to write about anything!
It could always be a cool title of your work, what music you are digging that day or an inspirational quote. But either way, think of something just as creative as the work you made and don’t forget to use your hashtags!
Tag Your Favourite Art Relevant Pages
I think this a great way of getting Instagram art blogs and profiles to view your art and hopefully reposted (yay, free promotion)! Find some of your favourite pages on Instagram and go through who they are following to see what other pages you might like.
If you need inspiration I recommend pages like @taxcollection, @ratedmodernart and @love.watts.
Now you don’t want to tag them in your caption, you want to tag them in the image itself so it’s viewable on their profile under the tagged section. You can do this while you are posting the image (just hit edit and tag people).
Be Authentic & Don’t Hesitate
The best thing to do in the end is just be yourself, some people will love you and some people might not. You can’t control their feelings and it’s inevitable that people might disagree with what you say or what you create.
That is the beauty in being an artist — you get to express yourself! Don’t hesitate to express yourself and be who you are. As long as it’s positive there is nothing to worry about!
So, that’s my ten secrets for promoting your art on Instagram. I hope you find them useful and helpful for your own Instagram! Happy posting everyone.
x Madbutt
Originally published on
https://madbutt.com.au/blogs/madbutt/tips-on-promoting-your-art
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