Are you taking advantage of Instagram? In this post, you can learn useful strategies that will help you to sell artwork on Instagram.
This article is written by guest Author Jacob Smith
Jacob is an illustrator living in Chicago, Illinois.
After 10 years of working for a marketing agency as a re-toucher and
design guru, he started ProductViz to help artists show the world how
beautiful their work is. ProductViz shows artwork in beautiful
interiors.
You can email Jacob directly at jake@productviz.com or visit Productviz.com
Sell Artwork on Instagram: Strategies for Using Instagram to Find Customers for Your Work Online
All artists should use social media to find customers. In today’s world — with so much direct access to art buyers — savvy artists know that connecting directly with their audience is the most straightforward way to build an audience. While there are a handful of platforms worth considering, Instagram is the best. It’s extremely popular and based solely on visuals.
Before you leverage it, though, make sure you do the following…
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Learn How to Take a Great Photograph
This advice isn’t just for you photographers out there. As you can guess, displaying your artwork on Instagram begins with taking a picture and posting it. No matter how beautiful your work is, if it doesn’t look that way on Instagram, you’re not going to find customers, plain and simple.
Your ability to succeed on Instagram with selling your art depends on great photography. As such, learn to photograph your work well. Buy a nice camera and effective lighting. There are tons of free and paid resources to shore up your photography skills. Online course sites like Coursera have excellent instruction for free! There are also paid classes, ranging from a few dollars to a few thousand to check out.
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Learn to Edit
Part and parcel of photography in 2017 is photo editing and composition. Again, the internet is an awesome resource for digital composition tutorials, so a few Google searches should get you moving in the right direction. Even better, Instagram itself has really cool tools for touching up your photos, so you never have to leave the app if your original photo is pretty good.
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Post Consistently
This can be tough for a lot of artists. If you’re an oil painter, for example, each portrait can easily take a month or longer to make. One little trick to get around this is to ask all your customers to send a photo of your work in their home, office, or space. Most people will be happy to show off how your work enhances their space. All the while you are building social proof by showing you real customers and how they live with and enjoy your work.
Another idea is to post your progress. Your audience will like seeing how your art comes alive, so documenting daily or weekly progress gives you interesting images and subject matter.
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Follow Other Artists in Your Market
Follow artists in your market, so you can learn the ropes and stay informed. Keeping engaged with other artists will keep you sharp and expose you to new concepts, ideas, and successes of other people in your niche.
For example, certain hashtags, terms or phrases may get used a lot in your market. If you’re new to Instagram, though, you may not know of them right away. By using them yourself, you’ll stand a better chance of attracting potential customers.
You may also discover what tactics are working for your fellow artists. For example, most artists will post the work they’ve just sold and publicly thank the person who bought it.
They may make a limited number of prints and give them away to people who comment on their posts (which help to boost their popularity). These are things you could find out on your own, but it’s much easier to simply borrow what is already effective for others.
Now that you understand what it takes to succeed with selling art on Instagram, start applying these tactics right away. Success through social media takes time, but it’s essential to building a robust audience and business as an artist in 2017
Jacob Smith
More posts by Jacob Smith:
The Importance of Photographing and Displaying Images of Art
You might also be interested in:
- Sell Art Online Startup Plan
- Digital Content Marketing – What Artists Need to Know
- How to Sell on Pinterest Tips for Artists
- 11 Ways to Build Trust on Social Media for Artists
- How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan – Sell Art Online
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