Using Social Media Promotion

I create smaller images with a watermark and then hyperlink them to the actual images on my premium website.

I use this technique on my blog and also on pinterest.

I don't look for target groups, as such. I don't really use social media as it's so full of crap and ads that I find it annoying.

As usual JMHO and YMMV

First you need a large body of work with specific themes for specific people. 39 images, that are either random or common will be hard to find an audience for. First create that, then seek the audience you want. Like make chess stuff for chess fans. Certain cat breeds for those kinds of people. Home décor doesn't really have a specific group, I can't image people wanting to decorate to hang out in a place like that, and people that do that for a living, I can't imagine hang out there either, and if they do, they are probably inundated by countless people who all think that by being there they will get people.

Selling is about the art itself and aiming it for certain kinds of people. Keeping up with the same sort of style, themes, etc is the first step. Creating a database of work is the next step. Then look for the audience. Like if you photography cities, you wouldn't just aim for a group about the country, you would look for that specific city or town. And then have a lot of work from that town for people to look through.


----Mike Savad

Reach on SM depends on your topic. Kittens will always rule. Some great artists reach 40 friends endlessly and can not sell much art.

Paid ads depend on the markup in some ways. There is a cost involved. With paid ads, you can reach 1000 people per day and have 50 or so of them engage your art daily with a modest budget. Possibly $10 per day would do that. Before you do that there is a lot more to setting up ads.

The problem with paid ads the cheaper your ad cost possibly the more off-target you are for making a sale. It takes time to learn the ropes in paid ads.

Being honest with oneself about who the audience is and how to reach them is the individual artist's job.

Question: How to "...figure out the best way to leverage social media and grow an audience."

When and if you find out the answer, I hope you'll share it, Robert. I've been here since March 22nd, 2009, and have my own website and when I have Bing find Chuck Staley Art, it gives me Saatchi Art and my Google Home page. Then it lists Charles Stanley, who is a dead preacher.

It is though I never existed, even though I have posted over 100 YouTube videos this year.

I find topical groups to post images. For me, it’s landscape photography, national parks and stuff like that. People who like those things and places buy prints and stuff of their favorite places. It’s not possible to directly track anything from SM to sale but sometimes people do email about stuff they saw in groups and buy it.

Find the equivalent groups for your work and give it a shot. Some groups will let you post a link back to your site while others will not. Look for those groups that will let you post a link but don’t avoid those that don’t permit it.

One other reason you want more work is that if you find a good group that allows you to post, get many view etc, if you only have 4 things, that's only 4 posts (1 a day). And then I would have to wait a few months before trying again (I stagger it about 2 months apart). The other thing is, and the part I have to do, but i'm not social, is being social on social media and not just posting stuff for sale. But to be a part of the group so they get to know you as a human or rabbit or whatever. But this is really hard if your subjects are all over the place like mine. I know a bit about machining but not enough to be one of the guys. And I know enough to color an image about a town, but can't really talk about stuff because I have no idea where they are even located on a map.

Some people are social butterflies and butterflies are pretty so people are more interested to find out that you are an artist as well, and they get sales that way. So just posting and running doesn't always work... That said it does work over time. People have seen my stuff in groups and got a single item then went in for more later on. But you can't depend on just one group so you have to find many. And while looking for general photo/digital art/ai groups etc sounds good on paper, in reality there are so many posts being put up, that anyone's stuff never stands out. So I never go there.


----Mike Savad

I've been promoting my photos on social media for less than a year, so I'm still building an audience, but I've had pretty good engagement. I make a lower resolution version of my photographs and add my watermark and post that on social media with a link to my Pixels site. I also post images that I'm not trying to sell.

Every once in a while, I post something that looks like more of an ad (calling out specific products, advertising a limited time promotion, posting an image of the photo as a framed print, etc.), but most of the time I don't push sales. I see a lot of people posting images with tons of hashtags and pushy sales pitches, and they don't seem to get much engagement. People seem more likely to engage if you tell the story behind the image or something like that. I also comment and like other people's posts and engage in conversations with other people.

It is a numbers game.

If an ad is right in front of you and you ignore it okay. But if 400 out of 1000 people begin to engage it? I get that daily. I do not know what the results will be till they begin to see and engage it for several weeks. I need to be more consistent but there are so many moving parts I needed to get all my ducks in a row. Now I can just let the ads roll.