Tips for artists on social media

Find your community

A simple, yet powerful question, and the answer that lies to these four words is transformational. Finding where you belong online can reap incredible rewards for your art career. However, you'll face many challenges and frustrations along the way.Where you belong is in places you already frequent. We have this misconception that it's important to have a profile on every single social network that's out there. But as you collect networks, you start to spread yourself out so thinly that it becomes nearly impossible to juggle them all.

Photos rule the world

Take a moment to really think about it. We live in much lazier times. And if you're scrolling through Facebook or Twitter, the last thing you want to do is click a link that opens up a new window.Upload your art directly to social networks. This makes it more likely to be shared. You can always include links to higher resolution images in the post description. For all the social networks you use, get familiar with their allotted image sizes. Keep them in mind when posting new work, so that you can adjust them yourself instead of letting the site do it. You can avoid awkward and unnecessary clipping by cropping them ahead of time.

Tag everything

Hashtags are like that friend who introduces you to everyone at the party. Because images aren't made up of codes, it's imperative that you include some form of description. Hashtags serve this purpose.Whenever you post a new work online, tag your art with as many associating words as possible. This helps search engines cluster images together, and narrow down which ones are the perfect fit for your search results. So by tagging your work appropriately, you can greatly increase the chances of landing new followers.

Shorten your links

An alternative to shortening URLs is to post a link to the main website. A favoured technique amongst many, posting the main website not only helps to reinforce your brand, but also keeps visitors longer on your site as they search for a particular post.

Building consistency does matter

We can scoff and mock the people of popular pages, but in all reality, they show their faces, and art, and opinions to the world every single day. Be someone other people want to follow. Become that escape or inspiration for your audience. Post regularly. Pick one platform you can easily manage, and challenge yourself to a simplified schedule until you build the consistency to post even more.