HOW DO YOU GET COLLECTOR TO SEE YOUR ARTWORKS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

    When it comes to showing your artwork online, you can’t expect most of your audience to be interested in buying art. For every thousand or so views you get, only a few will be from serious collectors, and even they may not be in the market for new work at that moment. When using social media to find collectors, the first step is to brace yourself for this cold truth: on the internet, views rarely equal sales.

However, it isn’t all bleak. The upside of internet promotion is that when you get more traffic, more engagement, and more followers, you increase the chances that your work will receive press coverage and will reach collectors. This requires patience and an active online presence, but the rewards are great and art collectors will come!

A 2015 article in Artsy reported that over half of surveyed collectors on Instagram had recently bought artwork from artists they originally discovered on that platform. So, you just have to be active online, build a strong presence, and get your artwork seen by these collectors!

So – how do you get collectors to see your artwork on social media?

1. Simple Promotion.  Just by getting your artwork “out there,” you’re increasing your chances of coming across your next art collector. Even if you don’t find collectors, but are just expanding your audience, the word of mouth factor can always lead to new connections, so just by doing a little self-promotion on these sites can be invaluable in finding the next collector.

Essential: Keep your pages updated with regular posts. Sharing artwork images, event news, or other updates brings in new fans (or “followers”) and keeps your current audience engaged. Even if you haven’t created new artwork recently, you can post about upcoming exhibitions, fairs, and shows, “brag” about awards you’ve received, or share updates about artwork sales.

2. Smart hashtagging.  On Facebook, hashtags aren’t very popular, but they can be very helpful on Instagram. A hashtag is a unique term with no spaces immediately following the # symbol (like #art or #AgoraGallery). By using relevant and popular hashtags on Instagram, you can make sure your work is reaching people who are interested in that specific term. Use a few per post and you’ll notice the change immediately.

For more on hashtags for artists, check out: How To Use Hashtags To Promote Your Art.

3. Join Communities.  While Instagram doesn’t have communities, Facebook has many great groups that you can join to share your work, see the work of others, and make new connections. A little research goes a long way; spend a few minutes researching art collectors and art lovers on Facebook and you will find several public and private groups that you can join.

4. Paid Ads.  Facebook has many advertising options for businesses (and when you’re selling your artwork, you are a business) and the possibilities are limitless. You can use Facebook’s ad platform to experiment with different audiences to find the perfect one for you. You can target people by location, sex, age, and even more importantly, by their interests. Your ads won’t always result in sales, especially when you’re first starting out, but luckily most Facebook ad campaigns can be purchased for just a few dollars and the more you learn the better you get. One thing is for sure – your audience will grow, and fast.

5. Build Relationships with Influencers.  You can look at the followers of similar artists to yourself on both Instagram and Facebook. Look at who is commenting on their posts. A good way of connecting with these collectors and fans is to ask the artist if they’d share one of your pieces on their page (crediting you and linking back to your page, of course). Offer to post their work on your page, too, to make it a fair exchange. This method is not new; many artists with large audiences have gained hundreds and thousands of fans by having a relationship with influential people on social media.