Social Media Marketing for Artists: Showcasing Your Work in 2024

Remember the days before social media existed? It's hard to remember because we are so connected to our Instagram/Tiktok/Facebook accounts these days. But they DID EXIST!!

In fact, when I started The Recoverie, Instagram wasn't quite around yet. Seems crazy, but artists were still able to make their art and sell it without it shockingly enough.

However, now that we've opened Pandora's box and art marketing has changed forever, it's time to hop on or get out. I speak with artists about their marketing on a regular basis and I know not every creative is thrilled about having to be active on these platforms...and I bet you didn't get into the art world to learn how to do marketing and sales!

Don't get me wrong, using Instagram or other platforms are not the only way to get your art out to a global audience, but you can't ignore the huge advantage (as annoying as the algorithms and constant changing rules are) that social media marketing for artists has opened up for modern day crafters.

But imagine…getting a message from a gallery owner in another country that wants to display your work. Or getting your dream collab after a creative director from a brand you admire happened to come across your profile. The opportunities are truly endless.

Whether you're selling digital art, fine art, or handmade crafts, social media can give you a huge boost in audience reach, community building, and sales if you're willing to go all in and play by their rules. Let's explore how this can help you showcase your art and work to your benefit.

Why Social Media is Essential for Artists Today

So what's so great about social media? If you're not already hooked and have been avoiding it, you're probably worried about your privacy, having to be on social every single day, or worse, having to dance or suddenly turn into an entertainer (lol).

Those are legit concerns, but let me assure you, you can certainly create a setup that you can be comfortable with. But first, let's talk about why social media platforms can actually transform your business if you take advantage of it and do it right.

Whether you're a professional artist in the art world, or you're a cutie crafter selling your art for some side cash, being on social platforms can skyrocket the amount of eyeballs on your work, while also allowing you to build a passionate group of followers.

Some of these followers will go on to become your die hard customers. Customers that will turn into repeat buyers and tell all their friends about your brand and market your work FOR you! This is one great way to build up a brand.

To keep your followers interested and keep your brand top of mind, you'll have to learn to create engaging content, share exciting photos and videos of your products, and connect with your audience in an authentic way...by being yourself! Before long, you'll start to attract your ideal customers, start building interest around your profile, and sales will start coming in.

Top Social Media Platforms for Artists

Now that hopefully I've gotten your attention and explained how valuable this type of marketing can be, what are the best social media platforms?

Instagram for artists is obviously popular, but what about YouTube, TikTok, or even Linkedin? Is it worth it? How do you know which is best for your craft business?? No worries, let's take a look at the strengths of each platform to see what makes the most sense for you :)

Instagram:

If you're wondering if you should sell your art on Instagram, let me ask you this: are you looking to display your products, emphasize visual storytelling, and show off your brand in the blink of an eye? If so, then IG is for you.

In general, it is perfectly set up for artists. Think of your 'grid' as a visual brand board for scouts, customers, and collaborators to peruse before they slide in with that sweet sweet DM asking for a custom order, brand collab, or dream magazine feature. It is ALL possible here!

Another great reason to use IG is because of it's high engagement rates with visual content. They make it so easy to like, comment, and even answer questions about your products directly. This all counts as engagement that helps the algorithm bring even more visitors to your profile.

Facebook:

Before you dismiss Facebook as washed up old news, think again. The most important question you can ask yourself when it comes to marketing online and through social media is "where do my customers hang out?" Guess what? You'll still find a LOT of people hanging around Facebook, especially in the older demographic. Don't forget they like to shop too! ;)

One great benefit to building your social home on Facebook is its broad reach and features like groups and events that can help artists connect with their community. This is where those super engaged, die hard fans are born.

How to take advantage of this? Get creative! Host a monthly live virtual shopping event, then engage with your Facebook group sharing sneak peaks up until the event. Come the day of the event, you’ll have a super charged, excited group of customers ready to throw money at your products as soon as you hit 'GO LIVE'.

TikTok:

If your audience skews towards the younger side, you can bet that TikTok will be a good place to build your profile. Promote your products and brand via short form video content that's quick, straight to the point, and almost instant gratification for your customer.

Pinterest:

You wouldn't think it, but Pinterest is actually a search engine, not a social media platform, although there is a social aspect to it. It's the perfect platform for visual brands and artists, but it's also primed to be a huge driver of traffic if you can learn to harness its power. You can direct Pinterest traffic to your website or directly to your products individually.

LinkedIn:

Similarly to Pinterest, LinkedIn is not primarily a social network but it has added in social features more recently. You can take advantage of this traffic source by networking with other creatives and professionals, doing outreach, collaborating, and building relationships with important people like shop owners and more.

Behance:

This site works great for creatives and designers. It's a visual based platform where you can showcase your work portfolio style and even get hired for projects. This platform is less popular with handmade artists but check it out and see if it's for you.

YouTube:

If you're long winded like me ;) and love making video content, then YouTube might be for you. It's especially great for sharing longer form content, for example tutorials or behind the scenes videos, which can help build a deeper connection with your audience.

Twitter/X:

Twitter might not be your first pick for promoting your art, but it can be effective for creating real time engagement and building relationships with followers and artists through conversations and retweets.

Crafting Your Social Media Strategy for Maximum Impact

Once you've chosen your main social media outlet, how can you optimize in order to get you as much traffic as possible? You'll want to cover your bases here and make sure you've thought about every detail so you catch every possible subscriber.

The first thing you'll need to optimize is your profile. You need to be extremely clear on who you are, what you offer, who it's for, and then direct them to take the next step! Usually that involves linking to your online shop or website. It also might mean asking them to subscribe to your newsletter to get 10% off, etc.

You'll want your profile picture to accurately represent your brand, and any images or copy to reflect your brand colors, style, and voice. Now is a good time to go back to the brand board you created while reading my post, Branding for Creative Entrepreneurs. It's super important to stay consistent!

Next, let's talk content. You'll want to use high quality visuals and INTERESTING content for your viewers that makes them want to stick around and read your copy/take the next step. Your content strategy can be simple, but since you're selling in a visual industry, take the time to craft excellent images. You can create these easily using free and/or paid design and video apps like Canva, Adobe Spark, iMovie, etc.

We all know that when it comes to social media, consistency is key (even though it can be so hard!). Consistent posting shows your followers that you're reliable and you're also actively creating. This establishes trust, as well as keeps your brand top of mind when they go to buy something.

Fortunately, you don't actually have to be on social media every single day to post consistently. You can use social media scheduling tools like Later, Planoly, or Hootsuite to plan out and schedule your content to post throughout the month easily. You can even outsource this to a virtual assistant.

One part of social media that I think a lot of people forget is the 'social' part. Social platforms were built for people to engage with each other, and they will treat you better if you do engage. So to play according to their rules you need to actively engage with your followers by commenting, sharing, and sending direct messages to connect and build relationships. Be social, make connections, and offer value and you'll see your profile grow!

Best Practices and Common Pitfalls in Social Media Marketing for Artists

Best Practices for Effective Social Media Use

When posting on a social platform, you'll have to play by their rules if you want to grow your following. So it's good to stay updated and know what will work to your benefit. Here are some areas to pay attention to so you can keep your audience interested and engaged.

Visual Consistency: Just as we covered in branding for creative entrepreneurs (link) sticking to your brand board is the best way to stay consistent. Keeping your visual style consistent across all platforms and posts will not only make your brand stand out more, it will help your customers remember you better. This includes photography style, fonts, colors, etc.

Authentic Engagement: If you're making a point to post consistently, then soon you should have some regulars that are engaging with your profile. Respond to your followers comments, don't be afraid to start a conversation, or even follow them back. Keep it real, genuine, and personal, and you'll start calling in your ideal customers naturally.

Strategic Posting Times: Ok, but is this really a thing? Does it really make a difference when you post? It might. In general, the most important thing is that you're actively posting interesting content on a regular basis. Once you've mastered that, it couldn't hurt to do a little research and find out when your specific audience is most active on that platform. Take a look at your analytics to get a good feel of when you should be posting and see if you see increased engagement.

Diverse Content Types: When it comes to content, you have a lot of options. You can post videos, stories, live streams, images, quotes/text...how do you know what to choose? The trick here is to select your content type based off your strengths.

Don't commit to posting daily videos if you hate editing or being on camera...even if other creatives in your niche are successful. I can promise it won't work the same for you! Choose something that makes you excited to create, your audience will feel your energy and attention behind it and your profile will grow.'

Regular Updates: Back to that 'being consistent' thing...;) Yes, it's difficult but as a small business it's important to keep your fans updated with your latest products, sharing your work in progress to build excitement, and reminding them of what you have for sale. Stay top of mind and you'll make more sales, that's just how it goes.

Leveraging Trends: I can't say this is my strong suit becaussseee, well because I don't care but I'm sure that's working against me! But staying on top of the latest trends and building content around that can help increase visibility and engagement. Putting your own unique spin on trending content is ideal and memorable for your followers.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Now let's talk about what NOT to do on social media ;). How many of these are you guilty of??

Spreading too thin across platforms: Before you embrace the 'more is more' attitude and create 7 different social profiles and post daily on each of them until you burn out and end up on the floor in a ball, let me advise - please don't.

Focusing on quantity vs quality: Having one highly effective platform that converts is 1000x better than having 4 or 5 that are sucking up your time and not making you sales. Think about where your ideal customer hangs out online. Do research if you need to. Then start there by building a strong engaged audience. If you feel like you still have bandwidth after that and your missing sales on another platform, then you can add it on.

This will make sure that you are growing sustainably and making the most out of each platform instead of wasting time and energy. Yay!

Over-Promotion: Think about it. If every time you look at someone's feed they're pushing their products and sales in your face...you're going to get annoyed! And that leads to people to unfollow. You can avoid this by following the 80/20 rule.

Try and post 80% engaging and interesting content while leaving the other 20% for directly promoting your products. Also something to keep in mind - showing your products being used is still selling, even if you're not directly promoting them. So you can always be 'selling' every day without technically asking for the sale!

Neglecting SEO: SEO sounds all technical, but I mean if I can do it successfully then you definitely can! SEO stands for search engine optimization, which basically helps you get found easily online when customers are searching for products online. You can start integrating this into your social media by adding relevant keywords in your profile, as well as hashtags to make your posts discoverable. It's not a necessary element, but if you skip it, you'll definitely be limiting your reach and sales opportunities.

Inconsistent Posting: Consistency is not the word I know you want to hear next but, real talk...it's a must. Posting content sparingly or infrequently throughout the week is not enough to keep your followers/potential customers engaged.

If you want your crafty brand to be top of mind you have to put yourself out there in a big way so your followers REMEMBER you! Even if you feel annoying posting and promoting and repeating yourself, that means you're on the right track. If this sounds like a nightmare to you (me too, girl), consider using a scheduling tool like Later.com to post for you or hiring a social media manager to help.

Ignoring Analytics: You can be posting all day long, but if you're not tracking what's actually working and optimizing, you're wasting a lot of time and potential sales! As your business grows you need to be carefully monitoring what is working so that you can work smarter, not harder. Knowing what actions are producing the best results is essential in making your creation process more streamlined and effective.

Poor Quality Images: You'd think as an artist I'd have figured this out by now, but WOW is product photography difficult!! Personally I've always been in awe of shops with beautiful product photos because I've struggled so much to get decent ones on my own.

Because having high quality images of your crafts can literally make or break a sale, if this is not your strong suit, it's probably best to outsource this part of your craft business. Having great photos not only makes people take you more seriously, it will get more people to buy your work.

Failing to Adapt: As a business owner, you'll find that what works one day, might not work the next. Particularly with social media. We all know about the dreaded algorithm that can change everything in the blink of an eye. It's something we all have to deal with, but if you're able to pivot and adapt quickly, you'll be more likely to succeed over the long term.

For example, selling your work only through Instagram is dangerous because if IG decides to update the algorithm, POOF! Suddenly half your followers are not seeing your posts about your latest product...nothing you can do about it.

If you don't have other marketing channels set up as back up...it's less likely that you'll be able to survive a change like that.

Measuring Success on Social Media

Once you've been posting regularly on social platforms for a while, how do you know if your efforts are 'successful'? Has all that hard work been worth it? You don't ever want to be posting blindly, without a plan, and not evaluating what's actually helping you grow.

The way to track the success of your social media performance is to first define what 'success' is to you...because we all have different goals. Yes, increased sales is the number we are all looking at at the end of the day, but there are other numbers that have to improve in order to increase that first.

Think about it this way. You want more sales, but your website/products are not really getting any traffic. Your goal with social media might be to drive traffic to your site so you get more eyes on your crafts.

Another artist might have plenty of traffic, but no sales and no email list. Their goal might be to grow their email list so that they can start sharing regular sales messages with their audience.

Depending on your goal, you will track your success in a different way. In the case that your goal is to get more website traffic, tracking your product page views is a KPI (key performance indicator) you will want to look at and track regularly to watch for improvement. The same with outbound website clicks from your Instagram page.

If your goal is to grow your email list, you'll want to track the number of subscribers you're getting monthly, as well as the number of views on your landing page and its conversion rate. Once you know those numbers, it's easy to see if all that work is moving you in the right direction.

Where do you find these numbers? Let's talk social media analytics. If you're not already signed up on Google Analytics, that's a good place to start. You'll be able to track all the pages of your website as well as any social platforms that are sending traffic to your site (Facebook, Pinterest, IG, etc).

Your website platform (Shopify, Squarespace, etc) will also have some basic analytics that might be helpful. But you can also invest in using companies like SEMrush, Leadpages, or an email service provider that will give you more accurate numbers.

Social media platforms can also give you insights and engagement metrics that will let you know which posts are performing by showing you the likes, comments, shares, and saves.

It can even tell you what time your followers are most active. To track important KPI's, think about what info you need/want to know, then do your research on how to get it and then track it regularly!

Elevating Your Social Media Strategy

Although social media marketing for artists is not everyone's favorite cup of tea, it can serve a purpose in growing your handmade business' reach and art sales.

Choosing relevant social channels, engaging consistently, and posting quality content will get you started in the right direction, but continuously adapting and refining your strategy while tracking your KPI's will make your creative journey to profit even more successful.

Social media has the power to transform your business and your art career if you are up for putting in the work!

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