As an artist, there is nothing more important to your craft than networking and building relationships with others in and outside of your industry. And with the rising popularity of social media platforms, it is now much more straightforward to establish a loyal audience base than it has ever been before.

Good social media practice involves focusing on engagement statistics rather than the number of followers that you have. After all, it’s quite simple to get followers, but the real challenge is keeping them engaged with the things you choose to post.

As a result, there is a lot of detailed work that goes into maintaining a strong digital presence across social media. However, the payoff and exposure you will get from the successful promotion will be more than worth it in the long run.

Here are three tips on how to grow your artwork’s social media presence.

1.  Adopt A Personal Approach

Listen To Your Audience

Social media grants you the chance to listen to your audience. Whether through the number of likes, tweets, or shares you get, social media can be used to figure out exactly what your followers are talking about.

If there’s a trend they just can’t get enough of, a style of art you prefer, or a piece of art making waves in your industry, make your opinion known!

Listening is not just restricted to social media, however. If there’s a recurring topic within either your digital or real life, there’s a chance your audience will also be familiar with it. This shows that staying up to date with google trends and trending hashtags in your industry could help to grow your artwork’s social media presence.

Making A Connection

If you want to grow your artwork’s social media presence, you must make a connection with your audience.

Aside from adopting a personal approach, you can also make a connection by relaying things that inspire you to your audience. Whether it's an everyday object or a piece of artwork that you have recently purchased for yourself, they will want to know!

If you’re a little stuck on where to buy artwork, websites like Artlisti.com guide you through the process and point you in the right direction.

On any social media platform, your audience will care equally about the “who” and the “what.” Yes, the purpose of posting online is to showcase your artwork. However, people will also want to know who you are and what you stand for.

Feel free to share details of your artistic journey, the origin story of a particular piece you have created, or the things that tend to inspire you in your daily life.

To take on a personal approach means writing compelling posts in the first person and using “I” to engage with your social media audience. But don’t be afraid to compose a post that gets a little personal. After all, people will want to get to know the things that you tend to find inspiration in.

2.  Focus On Your Content

Be Strategic With Your Posting

Adopting a strategy that justifies the amount of content you produce is essential for any social media campaign. You can start by figuring out objectives, defining goals, and customizing tactics to achieve said goals.

One of the other things you need to do is familiarize yourself with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Tailoring your written content to incorporate words that will attract a client base is a critical practice to grow your artwork’s social media presence.

Whether you’re writing an accompanying blog post or description for a particular piece of art, your content should also represent your signature style and your brand.

Remember, everything that you say, do, or share will reflect your brand and your business to your audience. Make sure to choose carefully.

Post Consistently

Many industry experts have their own set of standards about how often to post and what to include, but consistency is always key.

It might be a little obvious, but the more artwork interactions you have online, the more successful your artwork will be on social media. Social algorithms will clock onto a lack of consistency almost immediately.

Posting consistent photographs of your artwork, or images of you with your artwork, multiple times a day is a great way to gain traction online. However, if you suddenly decide to take a week-long vacation and your updating schedule changes significantly, it will be very obvious to your audience.

This could result in a decrease in likes, shares, and comments across a variety of platforms, which may decrease your overall social presence.

After you have defined your posting strategy you must make sure to stick to it. Whether you commit to posting five times a day or once a week, make sure this number is something that you can easily handle.

3.  Good Design Is Essential

Brand Recognition

If you’re familiar with the phrase “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it” then you probably know that delivery is everything. This is especially true of social media posts. Therefore, the way you go about packaging and delivering your content to an audience is crucial.

It’s all well and good having well-formed sentences and informative posts. But if the fonts, images, and templates that you use aren’t up to par or relevant to your audience, you will likely struggle with not being able to grow your online presence.

You also cannot skimp out on design elements or photography on your social media feed. Effective graphic design elements will support your brand while also providing a direct connection between your audience and your artwork.

You could also showcase images of yourself alongside your artwork to solidify your brand. If people get to know more about you, there is a chance these images will get more likes and shares, thus increasing your artwork’s digital presence.

Themed Content

In addition to aesthetically pleasing posts, you can also grow your artwork’s social media presence by uploading themed content. This is a marketing strategy best suited to platforms like Instagram.

If you take into consideration just how fast-paced the social media world is today, simply uploading an image by itself won’t get you the traction you want. You will also have to put in the effort to create relevant written content to achieve such significant success.

By sticking with a specific theme —whether it is a particular uploading style, adding a filter over your artwork, or adding particular graphics to a post — your audience can then associate this with your name. It will then be much easier to recognize your work from this point.

Or, if you want to experiment with new art techniques, you could even theme your posts each week to make a coherent uploading schedule. Keeping things organized and on track will all but guarantee more interest in your artwork.

If you need a bit of help, there are apps out there designed to help you make your social media posts stand out.

Summary

Growing your artwork’s social media presence isn’t an impossible thing to do, despite how difficult it may seem at times. It’s all about relating to your audience so that you can entice them into following you and supporting everything you post.

Provided you ensure all written content is personable and relatable, and you are consistent with your uploads, you should see growth in little to no time. When sharing your artwork, the devil is definitely in the details.