Do you see a decline in your organic reach on Facebook? If you do, you are not alone. There are some tactics you will want to become familiar with to help your posts reach more of your audience. In this article, discover 10 effective Facebook Marketing tips for artists you can start implementing immediately.
10 Effective Facebook Marketing Tips For Artists
It all began on February 4, 2004. Two college roommates started a social media phenomenon.
Do you think Mark Zuckerberg and his roommate ever imagined Facebook would reach over one billion active users in just a little over ten years?
If you want to grow your audience, you will want to take advantage of Facebook’s billion active users.
I can still remember when Facebook started while I was operating my first online art business. I didn’t get it, and I didn’t want to waste time learning about it. Here I am today, using Facebook as part of my marketing strategy.
Online marketing was so different ten years ago. Today businesses have to implement a social media marketing strategy as well as a content marketing strategy if they wish to stay in the game.
As with any marketing strategy, many variables will affect the outcome. Businesses are like fingerprints. No two businesses are exactly alike. However, there are some useful Facebook marketing tips you will want to be familiar with while you are learning what will work best for you and your business.
How Has Facebook Changed For Marketers?
In the early days of Facebook, people would sign up for Facebook and create a Personal Profile. This page allowed people to connect and share content with friends and family who also had Facebook accounts.
It didn’t take long for businesses to figure out the advantages of Facebook. A company could reach a large crowd of people with little or no costs.
In 2007, Facebook developed Pages or Business Pages where businesses, artists, musicians, and celebrities could create a separate page dedicated to their products or services. This allowed Facebook to separate Personal Profile Pages and Business Pages.
It didn’t take long for news feeds to be swamped with advertisements from Business Pages people were following. Businesses started to see a decline in organic reach because of the new algorithm Facebook developed. Facebook knew they had to make a change and quickly. If they allowed businesses to bombard news feeds with advertisements, people would stop using Facebook. After all, people are going to Facebook to socialize not shop.
The vision for Facebook was to have a platform where people could connect with friends and family, not for businesses to have a free place to market their product and services. Today, businesses are lucky to reach 3% of their followers with their posts.
Facebook recently rolled out a new program for businesses to be able to boost specific posts. Businesses will now have to pay to reach a larger percentage of their followers.
Facebook has also made their advertisement program attractive for businesses. Any Business Page owner can purchase an advertisement for very little money. I predict that as more and more people take advantage of this opportunity; the price of the ads will increase.
Facebook Marketing Tips For Artists
Whether you decide to incorporate a marketing budget on Facebook or not there are some Facebook marketing tips you will want to become familiar with.
- Write for Your Audience
- Provide Links to Your Site
- Giveaways
- Visual
- CTA
- Trends
- Ask
- Hashtags
- Curate Content
- Build Relations
Write For Your Audience
Artists who do well on Facebook understand the importance of writing content for their audience and not just writing about things that they are interested in.
Your primary objective for providing content on Facebook or any social media platform is to have people engage with the posts. This is done by providing valuable content they are interested in.
Learning what content your audience is interested in will take time and some effort. You can start by tracking the results of the posts you publish.
You can view all the analytics in your Facebook Insights on your Business Page dashboard.
For more information on Facebook Insights visit, How to Use Facebook Insights to Reach Your Audience.
It will take some time to see a pattern from the data you gather, but the benefits will outweigh the time invested.
You can quickly input the data into Excel.
The information you will want to collect is the title of the post, date posted, type of post, reach, and engagement.
Every week highlight the best performing posts.
The next week, post a similar post to the ones that are performing the best. You will start to see a pattern and every post you publish will be productive. Stop throwing things at the wall hoping for them to stick. Do some research and provide value to your audience.
Provide Links To Your Site
What is the objective of your Facebook Business Page?
If you are a selling artist, it is probably to sell more art.
Yes, you will want to build your brand recognition and build relations with your audience. But when it is all said and done, you want to sell more art.
There are two ways you can sell art on Facebook.
One way is to use an app that allows you to sell products right on Facebook without your audience having to leave Facebook.
For more information on Facebook apps visit, 12 Facebook Page Apps for Your Art Business.
I recommend sending your audience to your gallery or your blog by providing links to the posts.
By driving your audience to your art gallery and/or art blog, you will increase the chance of them following through with your call-to-action. You might want to have your audience join your newsletter or have them view other artwork you have available. Whatever the reason is, your best option is to have them regularly visit a platform you own.
The objective should be to have your audience become regular visitors to your gallery and blog. For this to happen, you will want to provide a link to your art gallery or blog with every post. To build the trust of your Facebook followers, the links provided must be relevant to the post you published.
Giveaways
Everyone loves free stuff. Facebook now allows Business Pages to offer competitions and giveaways.
Because Facebook is changing rules every time you blink, it is a good idea to become familiar with their guidelines before providing a giveaway or starting a competition.
You can view Facebook’s guidelines at Facebook Page Terms.
Use your strengths when developing a free giveaway or competition. You have the upper hand over most businesses. You are an artist with a creative mind. Have fun with this project and use your creative juices.
You will find some great apps in this article 12 Facebook Page Apps for Your Art Business that will allow you to host competitions on your Facebook Business Page.
Visual
Take a few moments to scroll down your Facebook newsfeed.
What do you see?
The majority of the content is images and video. Why, because people are visual learners and gather information faster with pictures.
Karla Gutierrez wrote a fantastic article about the power of visuals.
In her article, Studies Confirm the Power of Visuals in eLearning she went into detail about:
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Visuals Stick in Long-Term Memory
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They Transmit Messages Faster
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Improve Comprehension
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Visual Cues Trigger Emotions
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Visuals Motivate Learners
According to Kissmetrics, photos get 104% more comments, 53% more likes and 84% more click-through over the average posts. Average posts include both text and link posts.
According to MediaKix, Facebook hit 8 billion daily video views in November 2016.
This is great news for artists because this is how we communicate to the world.
The good news is you do not only have to post images of your artwork.
You might want to consider adding other types of images besides only your artwork. Publish images that inspire you and pictures with text on them that support your brand.
Including other types of pictures work well because your audience will not think you are only trying to sell to them.
CTA
Your CTA or call-to-action should be straightforward and clear. The most productive call-to-actions are the ones that encourage further engagement. This is done by offering something your audience wants, such as a free print of your most attractive artwork, a discount, coupons, or an eBook.
For your audience to take action, they will want to know what’s in it for them. That is why offering free stuff works so well. However, you will want to consider what the tradeoff will be by providing free goods and the action your audience will take. You will need to answer, “Will the tradeoff be profitable for your business?”
Make sure your call-to-action stands out visually. Use your creative skills to make something that will be attractive and stand out.
Provide call-to-actions on several locations of your Page.
Facebook now allows Business Pages to have a clickable cover photo.
For more information read Clickable Facebook Cover Photo Drives Traffic.
Trends
You can use what’s trending on Facebook to provide value to your followers and be noticed from a new audience.
You can find what’s trending on Facebook on the top right-hand side of your Personal Profile Page.
Facebook has the trends broken down into four categories, Politics, Science and Technology, Sports and Entertainment.
If you find anything that is trending and it relates to the brand, pass it along to your followers.
Ask
If you have done any research on businesses that use Facebook marketing, you have already noticed they ask their audience questions.
People like to share their thoughts and views. Asking questions or posting surveys is an excellent way to increase engagement on your posts.
Some apps make delivering surveys a breeze on Facebook.
You can find some of the most popular apps in this article 12 Facebook Page Apps for Your Art Business.
Hashtags
When most people think of hashtags, they think of Twitter. Now hashtags are being implemented on most social networks.
In 2013 Facebook announced the use of hashtags.
“Starting today, hashtags will be clickable on Facebook. Similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest, hashtags on Facebook allow you to add context to a post or indicate that it is part of a larger discussion. When you click on a hashtag in Facebook, you’ll see a feed of what other people and pages are saying about that event or topic.”
Whether you have been using hashtags on other platforms or not, you might want to consider implementing a hashtag strategy on Facebook.
To make a hashtag, use the number sign in front of a topic or phrase. The hashtag must be written as one word with no spaces.
For example:
#oilpainting
#portraits
Steve Rayson shared some statistics about engagement on Facebook with the use of hashtags in an article he published on February 7, 2016, How To Improve Facebook Engagement: Insights From 1bn Posts.
Image courtesy of Steve Rayson, Buzzsumo
According to Steve, posts received less engagement with hashtags than posts without hashtags.
Statistics are a valuable tool but are not a guarantee. Every business and audience are different. You might want to consider using hashtags on your Business Page to see if it works for your audience.
Curate Content
Curated content is defined by Wikipedia as:
“Content curation is the process of gathering information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest. Services or people who implement content curation are called curators. Curation services can be used by businesses as well as end users.”
Curating content is one of the many Facebook Marketing tips you will want to start implementing and is a great way for you to provide valuable content for your audience. Not only will you provide new value for your audience but curating content will also save you some time to produce content.
For more information about curating content visit, Social Media Marketing Tip, Curate Content.
Build Relations
There is no better way for businesses to build relations than with social media. Develop a strategic plan to start building relationships with your audience. When they begin to trust you, they will be your biggest advocates.
Do not make the same mistake most Businesses do on social media platforms. Do not try to sell on Facebook. Instead, build brand awareness and relationships with your audience. Provide links to your gallery or any place they can purchase a product if they choose to.
Conclusion:
Start implementing these 10 effective Facebook Marketing tips today. Social media can be a very powerful tool for your business if you use them correctly. Develop a strategic marketing plan, be patient, be consistent and work hard.
You might also be interested in:
- 12 Facebook Page Apps for your Art Business
- Facebook Page Basics How to Build Your Following
- Facebook Basics What Artists Need to Know
- How to Use Your Facebook Business Page to Engage with Other Pages
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