| We recently interviewed artist and Instagram expert Dina Brodsky in our AMP Webinar series and she was kind enough to share some of the Instagram marketing techniques that she has utilized to grow her account to well over 400,000 followers. In the article below, I've extracted the main ideas from that webinar to share with you today.
I sincerely hope this article helps you take your Instagram marketing to the next level.
By the way, for my latest thoughts on art marketing, posted daily, follow me on Twitter. Let's connect there! I'd love to hear what you thought of this article.
Enjoy, Clint Watson |
| Instagram currently boasts 1 billion active users every month. As an artist looking to sell and market your art, it can be an incredibly profitable platform to increase your art sales.
Instagram has long ago surpassed Facebook as the social media platform of choice for art lovers, collectors and artists. If you only have time to be on one social media platform, it should be Instagram.
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| To work for you, Instagram should not duplicate but should complement your website.
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Think of your website as your online art gallery where you sell art. Think of Instagram as the online equivalent of a visit to your studio. People come to Instagram to get to know YOU and then you send them to your website to see more of your art and purchase.
Take look at Dina's Instagram profile below. She's been able to grow her following to 428,000 using 7 key marketing strategies.
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Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to enhance your existing Instagram profile, these are strategies that every successful marketer on Instagram follows.
The 7 Key Strategies include: |
| 1. Recency of Impressions 2. Initial Post Engagement 3. Dwell Time 4. Caption 5. Hashtags 6. Timing 7. Giveaways
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| Over the course of the next several weeks, I will detail each strategy and outline the many ways in which you can implement these directly into your art marketing strategy.
Remember, you don't have to do everything all at once. Start small and build your way up.
The first strategy on the list, which we want to look at today, is Recency of Impressions.
Instagram's algorithms reward users who have a high engagement with their following. Engagement can include a variety of factors including the number of likes, comments, saves and shares on your post, the amount of time someone spends viewing and reading your post, and the number of users your post reaches.
This information becomes vital to boost your profile.
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| Instagram keeps track of the number of impressions, meaning, how many people see your posts or have commented, liked, shared, or saved your posts over the course of the last 84 days.
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| If you've been consistently active over the last 84 days, the algorithm will look at all of your engagement as recent and will favor your profile (hence the term "Recency of Impressions").
That sounds complicated however, it really isn't. It means that, as with all things marketing, it's important to stay top-of-mind. So all you really have to do is make sure you post to Instagram on a regular basis so that you always have recent engagement.
We suggest you start by posting at least a couple of times per week. Make sure your posts are relevant to your art career and be sure that they are interesting to your followers (more on this in future articles).
You can then determine your engagement by tracking the number of likes, shares, comments, and saves that you've received on your posts.
The key here is to just continue to stay in front of your audience.
Following these basic steps to get started will keep your profile recent and help with further engagement for Instagram's algorithm.
Stay tuned for next week where I'll dive into the importance of first impressions to increase your initial post engagement.
Sincerely, |
| Clint Watson BoldBrush/FASO Founder & Art Fanatic
PS - Dina Brodsky has an incredible class available, Instagram for Artists,that will teach you, in more depth, everything we plan to cover in this series and many other things you need to know, as an artist, to maximize the marketing value you get from Instagram, including ideas about how to present and sell your art. Get her course by clicking this link.
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