Social media for artists: 13 ways Facebook can work for you

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Why are you on Facebook? It’s so easy to spend hours and hours on social media and never really achieve anything. So how do you avoid wasting time? Have a clear mission – it might be to introduce your art to a wider audience, to drive traffic through to an online shop, or to help potential buyers understand your art. Whatever it is, your mission can translate to a clear strategy that will get results on Facebook.

TextileArtist.org is proof. We set up our Facebook page when we first launched the site back in December 2012, but never really did anything with it. Sure, we had a few ‘likes’ here and there when we shared our latest blog post, but what good was it doing us?

At the end of April 2014, we made a decision to actually utilise the platform to build relationships, introduce new people to the site and remind past visitors that we existed.

The results? Not only did our Facebook page likes increase dramatically (we were at around 4,000 at the end of April – now we’re nearing 7,000), the amount of people our posts actually reach has rocketed (Facebook doesn’t show your posts to everyone who likes your page – only those it thinks will find the post relevant) and more people are sharing and commenting on our material than ever before. But the big gain has been traffic to the actual site; our daily visitors have almost doubled (and Google Analytics shows us that often over half of them are discovering us via Facebook).

Let’s take a look at a few simple techniques for getting the most out of your Facebook page.

Before your start, you might be interested in finding out why you should have a dedicated Facebook page for your art and not just a personal profile and how to increase the number of people who like your page. 

1, Know what you’re trying to achieve

What do you want people to know about your work? The hard-sell doesn’t work well with art, so not everything you post will feel like it’s contributing to your business success, but if you keep your mission in mind and your posts are working towards a unified objective, you won’t waste too much time with distractions (like a quick game of Farmville or a quiz to determine which character from Friends you are most like).

2, Build relationships and always serve your fans

As with any online activity where the ultimate aim is a transaction, you have to spend a significant amount of time building a relationship with your community first. Don’t use Facebook as a platform to show off; people get bored and frustrated with hearing how successful, beautiful, rich, lucky and in love you are.

Of course, you need to promote your work, but try to do so in a way that is sensitive, interesting, funny, engaging, educational or informative. This way your audience feels you are providing some value for them, they aren’t being hit with a constant barrage of self-promotion, and they’re far more likely to become dedicated fans, engage with you and your art, and share your content.

As a general rule, give far more than you take; if you can find some benefit to your audience in 95% of what you post, they will be far more likely to respond positively to the 5% of the time when you ask something of them (like when you’re selling a piece or promoting a solo-show).

3, Update regularly

Consistency and constancy are key to a successful Facebook strategy. Develop a plan and stick to it. It might look something like this:

• Monday – share new blog post
• Tuesday – Show work in progress
• Wednesday – Share content from other artists I admire
• Thursday – Image of a completed piece
• Friday – Share a piece of inspiration
• Saturday – Studio/sketchbook shot
• Sunday – Promote event/exhibition

You can schedule posts in bulk once a week to save time (click on the little clock underneath your status update).

This is a great way to experiment with different times for posting – use Facebook Insights to see what time most of your fans are on Facebook (Click on Insights at the top of the page and then Posts).

Here we can see that the majority of the people who like our Facebook page are online between 3-9pm.

4, Tell stories

Invite your fans into your world, share the challenges and the triumphs of your life and work (but keep it positive), and don’t be afraid to show a little vulnerability. Stories show you are human and encourage a deeper connection with the fans of your page.

5, Make your fans feel valued

If someone leaves a comment on your post, at the very least ‘like’ it, but ideally respond with a comment of your own. Try to add something new to the conversation, as this will help include more and more people. We’ve found that people have some incredible insights to share and we are constantly learning from people leaving comments on our Facebook page.

It’s also important to pop over to your fans’ Facebook pages once in a while and see what they’re up to. We’ve discovered some wonderful artists this way and if you leave comments and ‘like’ their content, it can be a great way of nurturing a two-way relationship.

6, Share content from other pages

If you find something relevant that speaks to you somewhere else on the internet and have something to say about it, share it with your audience. This way you are creating positive relationships with other artists/organisations (whose content you are sharing) and giving value to your audience. Always keep in mind how the content can help your audience; don’t just post random, unrelated  information.

7, Use status updates to ask for advice

This shows that you value the opinion of the people who ‘like’ your page and that you are open and humble. You can learn a lot; since we’ve been asking questions we’ve had some amazing responses (check out this question we asked recently). Questions that require a simple Yes/No answer often get a lot of engagement as they don’t require your fans to jump through hoops.

8, Post images

The most shared content on Facebook always comes in the form of images. Engaging your audience visually, particularly as an artist, is the best way to get plenty of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’, helping your content reach a wider audience. Always caption the work; giving a name, a date, dimensions and perhaps some basic information about inspiration or how the piece was created help your audience feel they can understand you and your process.

Obviously you’ll want to share images of your latest piece of work, but you can also use pictures to help your audience get to know you better. This helps build rapport and trust, which in turns means people are more likely to eventually buy from you.

Ideas for images: 

• Work in progress
• Your inspiration
• Sketches
• Your materials and tools
• Your studio
• You at work
• You teaching a workshop
• You and your friends at an exhibition opening
• Pieces by other artists you admire
• A poster for your latest show
• An unsuccessful piece of work
• Work from the past (even as far back as student work or a painting you did as a child)
• You shopping for art supplies
• You and your family at one of your shows

9, Calls to action

If you want your audience to perform a specific action, ask them to do it; try to make it casual and fun as opposed to formal and bossy. For example you might post an image of the view from your studio window accompanied by ‘Getting motivated to create is so much easier when the sun is shining. Click ‘like’ if you agree’. Or you might share a link to your latest blog post outlining how you manage your time with the comment ‘I’ve been teaching myself how to deal with procrastination and thought you might find my techniques useful. Now get off Facebook and get to work! Oh…but don’t forget to share first!’

10, Contests

Another way of making it fun for your fans is to post contests to your Facebook page. You can’t ask people to share a post to enter a contest, as this is against Facebook’s official terms and conditions. You can ask them to comment or ‘like’ a post though. You might post an image of your latest piece accompanied by ‘Describe my latest piece in 3 words for a chance to win a signed print of it’.

11, Tag posts

Say you get a question from a fan or you want to publicly thank someone for a sale, use the @ feature to tag people or other pages in your posts; this will make them feel appreciated and promote loyalty to you as an artist.

12, Promote your posts

Even if you only have a tiny budget, investing in the promotion of posts that you think are particularly important (like if you’ve posted a blog post you think is very strong) can prove an effective way to get your post in front of more eyes, which will attract more comments, more ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ and ultimately more fans for your page.

Using information from Insights and Grid search you can also target the promotion, so that your post is put in front of those Facebook users most likely to be interested in your content.

13, Leverage Events and Milestones

You can create a Facebook event directly from where you post you status updates and it’s the perfect way to invite your fans to an exhibition opening or workshop. You can add details and target it to fans who live in a particular country or city.

Now I know I’ve warned you about bragging too much, but if something momentous happens (like you receive a coveted award or a gallery offers you representation) it’s only natural you’ll want to tell your community of fans about it and they’ll want to hear it too; the best way to give the news a fanfare is to create a milestone.

So now you have some strategies for getting the most out of Facebook, make it your aim to be more efficient in the way you use social media to promote your art.