But, what happens if you fail to get the people to engage? In that case, you need to improve your social media strategy. Here are 6 tips to help you as an artist engage your social media audience.

Let’s take a closer look.

1. Share The Process of Creation

People who follow you on social media already admire your work. If you want to give them something special to truly enjoy, show them how you work. “Behind the scenes” of creating a piece of art will make people feel:

• special
• included
• invited into your world

In addition, they’ll feel like they’re getting to know you and your art better. Share videos or images of how you create a piece of art from beginning to end. Try a time-lapse video for extra excitement and fun.

2. Story Behind the Work

Storytelling is another strong tool artists can use to engage their social media audience. It implies sharing the story behind the piece of art and telling people about:

• the inspiration to create it
• its true meaning
• the secrets it holds
• the reason you made it

Once again, you’ll be letting people step into your world and give them a reason to connect to you and your work. This will inspire them to comment, share, like, and communicate with you more freely.

3. Live Videos

Everyone would love to have a face-to-face meeting with their favorite artist. Luckily, social media gives you the chance to connect to your followers using live videos. Live videos can be perfect for increasing engagement. All you have to do is:

• announce it in advance
• set a goal or purpose of the session
• invite people to join you

You can discuss your upcoming events, talk about your latest work, and answer questions from followers. This will bring you even closer to them and help you create a stronger bond with them. Therefore, use live videos whenever you have a good reason to do so.

4. Master Classes

Your audience isn’t only made up of people who love and appreciate art as viewers. There are those who are artists as well, and look up to you or see you as a role model. To increase engagement with that part of your audience, you might think about offering educational content such as masterclasses. Make an IGTV, Facebook, or YouTube video and teach them about:

• improving their painting
• being more confident with their art
• different techniques
• quality art equipment and tools
• anything they’d enjoy

These online workshops and training can be extremely valuable to your followers. They’ll be able to learn from you and advance as artists themselves. And in the process, you’ve made them even more loyal to you.

5. Promote Your Work

Your work is what makes you the artist you are. Social media serves as a space where you get to promote your work and show it to the world online. Presenting your work is what will get your followers engaged. All you need to do is:

• post images and videos of your latest work
• ask for feedback
• read the comments and answer them

Make sure that you truly embrace what your followers are telling you and pay attention to their perception of your work.

6. Be Social

Finally, there’s one last tip we want to share with you and it’s a big one. In order to get your followers to engage with you more, you need to reciprocate. They need to see how social, interested, and open for communication you are. And any time you are communicating, make sure that everything you write or post is proofread and accurate. That means that you should:

• answer their messages
• respond to their comments
• thank them for their support
• respond to every action they make

This way, you’re showing them that you welcome their engagement and, in turn, you inspire them to keep up the same way.

Final Thoughts

As an artist, it’s up to you to motivate your followers to increase their engagement towards you via social media. Use the tips we’ve listed above to start improving your relationship with your followers and we’re sure you’ll see the improvement sooner than you expect.

Author’s bio. Daniela McVicker is a passionate digital marketer. Daniela is interested in everything related to SEO and blogging. She contributes to Essayguard and other websites where she shares her experience and helps marketers make their names in the online world.

The post 6 Tips for Artists to Engage Their Social Media Audience appeared first on Art Business News.

Decide on a Purpose

In order to sell your art on social networks, you don’t have to focus on sales in each post. In fact, you shouldn’t do this. At the same time, art is about the spiritual, emotional component, and only then about money. Too much marketing, obsession, or constant attempts to sell will not please your target audience.

Therefore, you need to keep a balance and follow the logic of the sales funnel — and let your relationship with subscribers develop gradually. It also makes sense to create personal posts, show your personality, create welcome posts for every thousand new subscribers, share ideas and even sneak peeks of an artist’s highly anticipated unfinished work. Then your social profile will be a place for fans to watch the range and development of the art, artists, and your point of view, not just about sales.

Provide a Background

Do you still remember learning in high school the key elements for writing an essay? Well, writing a post for a social network also has certain key elements and recommended methods. Starting your post, it makes sense to familiarize readers with the theme of the artwork you are showing, provide them with brief background information. In other words, you need to make a first impression — and at that moment your subscribers will decide whether to continue reading your post and learning about this artwork.

Tell a Story

Storytelling is a marketing technique. Since our goal is to sell paintings, we can absolutely use a story to work in your favor. Tell the story of the artwork. Describe the artist’s inspiration, theme, difficulties encountered, and emotions experienced when creating it. In other words, everything that relates to the art and can be turned into an interesting story suitable for creating a selling post for social networks.

Evoke Emotions and Draw the Picture With Your Words

You are not selling a physical object — you are selling emotions. This is true for any product, but for art, it is almost a guarantee of successful sales. After all, art is actually about emotions, feelings, experiences, and the inner world. And when a potential buyer understands that the artwork portrays his emotions, he makes a decision about the purchase. Each of us subconsciously wants to surround ourselves with things that are close to our spirit and inner world. Show the inner world of the artwork with words — let everything unsaid in the picture become clear in your post. And it will resonate in the hearts of your subscribers.

Relate the Art to Something Actively Discussed and Essential

This is also a marketing ploy that successfully works on social networks. You need to provoke a discussion and thereby increase user engagement. Therefore, if it is possible, then you should find a way to combine the work of art and any hot, discussed and controversial topic. Since all ideas implemented in art come from modern realities (or utopian fantasies based on them), then most likely it will not be difficult to find the relationship between the artwork and something that can get users thinking and posting.

And what’s more, you need to invite subscribers to share their opinions with a call to action. Sometimes even a simple phrase like “What do you think about this? Share in the comments” may trigger a wave of discussions.

Create a Catchy Headline

You don’t necessarily need a headline for Instagram, but most likely you will need it for Facebook and Twitter to promote posts on your site. And by the way, Twitter with its 140 characters is the perfect place to practice creating attractive headlines. There is no universal advice — practice shows that something controversial and hot (yes, by analogy with the previous paragraph) is of the greatest concern. Plus, you need to use the correct and popular hashtags, but we’ll talk more about this later.

Pay Attention to the Photo Quality One More Time

It is always good to use a photograph of the artwork that is high-quality and attractive. Practice taking attractive photos and use a photo editor if the desired result cannot be achieved given the capabilities of the camera or smartphone.

In addition, you definitely need to present a single style for the artist in the social profile. This is especially important for Instagram because here the visual perception of the profile as a whole plays a very important role. In general, if the artist adheres to one style in the art, then posting that style on social networks will not be difficult.

Show How the Art Fits Different Interiors

Besides showing the art as a finished piece, it also makes sense to show how the work fits into different interiors. This takes a bit of planning, but worth the outcome. The first thing to do is to understand where the target audience will place the work. Will they hang it on the wall in the bedroom? Or is it more suitable for business spaces, night clubs, hotels, or restaurants? Find the answer to this basic question and show your followers images of how the artwork looks in multiple settings.

Use the Right Hashtags

Social media hashtags also work like keywords in search engine optimization. Therefore, in order for your posts to be visible, and to constantly receive an influx of new subscribers, you need to use the hashtags correctly. Here is a workable strategy.

You definitely need to use your brand hashtag to create the right associations and increase the recognition of your gallery, your artists, and their work. You need to use some common hashtags to increase your reach, such as #art, #modernart, #streetart, #artforsale.

Plus, add another three to five hashtags that are very specific. Do some research before choosing them. We recommend using hashtags that display the name of the artwork, its main theme, a social component, a controversial or hot topic to engage users, for example, #abortion, #womenrights, #ecology.

Add a Link

And of course, be sure to add links to your website, blog or online store. If you do everything right, your site will work as an auxiliary tool to your social networks. And don’t forget to promote and advertise your posts, engage users through contests and quizzes, and work with influencers.

Get started and see what you can accomplish using social media as a tool to drive your sales.

Nancy P. Howard has been working as a writing expert at Online Writers Rating for a year. She is also a professional writer in such topics as blogging, IT and marketing. She loves traveling, photography and always welcome to meet new people.

The post Everything About Writing Social Posts That Sell Art appeared first on Art Business News.