Do you find yourself stressing about your social media presence? Well If you are, you are not alone, and here are some things that helped me to deal with it.
Most social media platforms like Instagram recommend posting at least once a day which can be incredibly stressful because of course you would like to post something great every time and not just fill your feed with filler posts and for us artists it is impossible to come up with great and original content every single day.
So here is what I do. I write and prepare ALL of my posts, on the computer on an app called google keep, beforehand so just in case I want to take a day off or don’t have anything to post for a particular day, I can use any of the prepared posts and that way I will still please the Instagram algorithm without any of the pressure to come up with something amazing every single day.
You can even color-code them and divide them into different categories like work in Progress pots, Exhibition Announcements, Introducing myself, behind the scenes, and way more. In the long run, this method will save you a lot of time and also a lot of stress.
As artists, we want to grow our audience of course, and promote our business and social media nowadays is one of the best ways to do it. I know that a lot of people think that going viral is the best thing that can happen to grow your following or that it all depends on the algorithm and get frustrated if it doesn’t work. I had a lot of people come up to me and ask how I grew my social media platform from 1000 to 3200 in just a year, currently ~20 a day which is not a massive amount of course but right now it is quite challenging to promote yourself as an artist and get a following so here are some little things that helped me.
1. INTERACT
Interact with artists daily if possible. Look for hashtags you use on your platform and look at other people's artwork, encourage them, interact and generally comment and like posts that you appreciate, that way these artists will interact with you as well and you can grow a small community from there. Of course, don’t go spam-like and comment on every random post because Instagram will restrict your account if you are doing too much of that.
2. HASHTAGS
Use the right hashtags. It is good to use close to 30 hashtags but don’t use them all. Stop at maybe ~26 and use all sorts of hashtags so for example small and specific ones like “#Melbournecreator”, bigger ones like “#Melbourne”, “#Abstractartist”, to massive and very broad ones like “#art” and your own # which can be your brand name, your name, a catchphrase, etc. This way you cover most areas and get more clicks through your Tags.
If you are still very confused and need help with the hashtag game you can also search on google and some pages will provide you with a variety of hashtags in your field, that you can use.
3. CONSISTENCY
Post at LEAST once a week if you have a busy schedule. If you don’t have time to do that you can also use the “story” feature on Instagram for example and post a couple of times per day on there. Your Audience wants to see what you are working on so even posting “Work in progress” posts or “Behind the Scene” Posts are a massive hit and will help you, in the long run, to stay consistent with posts as mentioned above.
4. CAPTIONS
Captions are a secret weapon on social media to get your audience to interact. Maybe ask a question at the start of your caption, even basic ones like “What do you think ?”. Explain what the post is about, why you made this artwork, what inspired you, what your day at work was like, funny stories that happened to you. Of course, most things should be related to your business and your artwork but sometimes it is also nice to see the person BEHIND the magic. Also, just a little trick is to use Grammarly, which has a new feature that can tell you what your post sounds like to others (Informative, Boring, etc.), so If you don’t use it yet, definitely give that a go and play around with it.
5. BE YOURSELF
Don’t be a robot. I know it is hard sometimes to bring your personality out in a post but you can slowly ease into it. It helped me to get closer to my audience and also grow my customer base. Now don’t go out of your way and write a whole novel but usually, an interactive little paragraph works wonders.
6. USE REELS (on Instagram)
One of the new big things on Instagram are “Reels” which is basically TikTok just on Instagram. They get amazing reach and can be a great tool when it comes to promoting and growing your business. They do take time but in the end, it is definitely worth it. You can turn all sorts of things into reels like time-lapses for example or little stop motion movies. Whatever you can come up with. Experimenting with these is quite a lot of fun and just another feature on Instagram to show your creativity.
7. ANALYTICS
Look at your analytics and see when most of your followers are active and schedule your posting time according to that. Look at the age group and try targeting your posts directly to these individuals. Of course, you would write a post different for someone that is 18 then you would write for someone that is 43. These little packs of information, hidden in your analytics can help you figure out what sort of customer follows you on this platform and how to interact with them.
8. CONNECT MULTIPLE SOCIALS
It can be quite overwhelming to have just one social media platform so having more than one just sounds very stressful. What you can do to keep all of your platforms up to date though, is connect them all. You can connect your Instagram to your Twitter, Facebook, etc. which makes it way easier for you to keep up with all these different platforms and have everything sort of in one place. That way, If you post something on Instagram, It will automatically post on the other platforms as well.
I know, this can be a lot to take in at once but just start with one little thing and just work towards the rest. That way you will steadily grow your social media audience and don’t have to stress. Experiment with the platforms and have fun. Social media and the algorithm behind it can be a mystery but It can also be quite a lot of fun to play around with it.
If you have any tips as well that might help, share them in the comments as well.
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