Instagram is considered a very convenient platform for artists to grow their audience and find new opportunities. If you’re trying to start your career as an artist, it’s very important to set up an Instagram profile specifically for your art.
To really be successful on Instagram as an artist, it’s not enough just to post your work. A good marketing strategy is essential if you want to reach your target audience and get more likes. Here are some tips to succeed on Instagram as an artist.
Post on a Regular Schedule
In order to keep your followers coming back, you’ll need to post on a regular basis. If you don’t post often enough, you might find that some people start to unfollow you. It’s also difficult to attract new followers if you don’t post regularly. The Instagram algorithm tends to reward people who post several times a week.
Many people recommend posting on Instagram about once per day, but you can experiment with your schedule a bit to see what works best with your audience. To make this easier, try planning ahead and creating content for several different posts at once, and then using an app to schedule them. Apps like Later and Planoly can help you plan your content ahead of time and even post for you automatically.
Curate Your Feed
Instagram is a visual medium, and aesthetics are very important. For many people, your Instagram profile will be the first place they see your art, so a good impression should be created right away. This goes beyond just making good art – you’ll also need to ensure that your content is cohesive and that the posts flow nicely together.
Consider the color scheme and general style you want to use for your feed. A definitive color scheme instantly makes your feed look more professional. If you include any graphics on your feed, you’ll want to ensure you’re using similar fonts and colors to create a strong brand.
Use Marketing Services to Generate Traffic
There are plenty of excellent services you can use to get your Instagram brand off the ground. One great option for artists is smalllikes.com, which allows you to purchase small Instagram likes for your posts to help get them off the ground.
Use Stories to Show the Followers Your Background
To really build a strong following, you’ll need to go beyond just posting your art – you’ll also need to give your followers a sense of your personality and your creative process. Showing your audience the background of your work will help them become more interested in your art.
The stories feature on Instagram is an easy way to show your followers behind the scenes content. Stories are available for only 24 hours, so you can get creative and really have fun with what you post. You can post more often on stories than you would on your feed. Many successful artists post on their stories several times a day to give followers an authentic look into their life.
Your stories also serve as a great mean to inform your followers about events you’ll be involved in or new pieces for sale. These regular updates will help you keep your followers engaged.
Know Who Your Audience Is
One of the most important things for any artist to understand is their target audience. Your work isn’t going to connect with everybody, which is why it’s so important to make sure that the people who do like it can find it. Talk to people who have purchased or engaged with your art in the past to get an idea of your target demographics. Get an idea of their age, gender, job, and other interests. You can then use that information to market your content to other people with the same demographics.
As your following grows, you’ll also want to continue to monitor your engagement to see the activity of your target audience and whether it is changing. You can do this by registering as a business account, which gives you access to detailed statistics about your profile.
Interact With Other Artists
Your Instagram profile can serve as a digital portfolio, but it’s also a great networking platform. One of the best ways to find more likes is to collaborate with other artists that you like online. Start by finding other artists you like and following their profiles. Regularly like and comment on their posts, and you might find that they follow you back. Once you have an established profile, you might even be able to collaborate with other artists to grow your following. There is a huge benefit to collaborating with other artists online, because you get exposure to their follower base. Developing genuine relationships with other artists can also help you find new opportunities offline.
Use Hashtags and Location Tags
To increase the number of people who see your posts, you’ll need to take advantage of Instagram’s tagging system. You’ll need to add relevant hashtags in the caption of each post to help potential followers find you. Instead of opting for the hashtags that have the highest number of posts, add hashtags that are most relevant to your art and your community. Using niche hashtags can actually help your posts get more likes and comments, because you won’t be competing with as many other posts for attention.
It’s also important to add location tags to each post. This is particularly important if you sell your work locally and are engaged with your local community. Location tags are very easy to add to both your posts as well as your stories and are important for making sure your content gets seen.
If you’re an artist and you haven’t set up an Instagram account yet, now is the time to do so. Being a popular social media, Instagram is only getting more saturated. Not only is Instagram a convenient place to show off your work online, but it helps you appear more professional and even help you find new job opportunities.
