Learn how to build an Instagram presence as an artist in 2024

Are you looking to build a new Instagram artist profile or art business profile from scratch? Do you want to revamp your current social media account to reach more people? First, you need to understand the basics of how to build an online presence in the current internet landscape.

Social media can be key to getting your art in front of the right audience, from potential collectors, to engaged followers who will echo your work, to people you can network with in the looks for opportunities like exhibitions, gallery representation, commissions, and more.
This guide will explain both the theory and the best practices to help you get your art noticed online through social media channels, Instagram in particular.

A view into @tinapalmergallery feed with Room Mockups.

The basics of art marketing and digital marketing

Before we get into what to post on social media or how to set up your profile as an artist, we need to define what social media marketing is to understand thoroughly what we are doing and what you can achieve through these practices as an artist or art business.

Social media marketing can be defined as a series of actions or pushes a brand or person does to promote their persona, services, and products to a target audience through certain online platforms that allow users to create and share content while engaging with other users’ content and accounts.

In 2024 we can say that social media marketing has three main pillars:

–Content: this can be defined as everything that you share, the different kinds of post formats the social media platform has available like pictures and short-form videos, but from a wider perspective this is your ideas, your stories, your process, and your own storytelling.

–SEO: also known as Search Engine Optimization is a practice and strategy that consists of enhancing the content with the presence of certain keywords to make it “findable” by search engines, and therefore, by users. There is a big shift in how people use social media, now they use it more and more like a search engine such as Google, to find particular content.

–Social media: these are platforms based on enabling users to interact with each other and connect through the content they share. Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are all social media channels. Today more than ever, social media channels are a medium of self-expression, it is the uniqueness and the personality you bring to the game that will make you stand out.

But what if we apply this concept to the art world? Can we bring social media marketing closer to the needs of artists, gallerists, and curators? The answer is: Yes! Let’s build a new concept that will guide us through this process. Let’s define what art marketing is:

Art Marketing is a series of actions or strategic pushes an artist or gallery can do to generate interactions with their audience. The main goals of art marketing are:

-Boosting art sales

-Networking

-Achieving precise creative and business goals. 

-Communicating the artist’s message 

-Gaining visibility

-Building a community of like-minded people.

-Having an open window to your studio or gallery

Thais Uchiyama Dieter’s feed with different posts made with ArtPlacer’s Room Mockups.

Building an Instagram presence as an artist: know your why

Say goodbye to the days of posting on social media for the sake of just posting. Having an aimless approach consisting of constantly sharing content online might lead to exhaustion and frustration when your goals are not being met. In 2024, the main goal for social media success is sharing valuable content with a purpose.

As a creator looking to expand your presence on Instagram, the first step you need to take is defining a “Why”. Your answer should be closely related to your main goal of building a successful art business: from reaching a bigger audience to converting followers into art buyers, promoting your latest exhibition, building a community, getting more commissions, or networking.

Achieving those big goals is the purpose that should define your social media strategy and should be clear in every action and post you make. 

Your social media strategy should answer to your bigger creative and art business goals.

Creating SMART social media goals as an artist

If now you have to post with purpose and your whole social media strategy should be aligned with both your creative and business goals, that means your social media objectives should be SMART. 

What does SMART mean? These are goals that are defined by five simple characteristics, they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-sensitive. This perspective can be applied to social media goals to ensure that you will not only achieve them but also see the results when it comes to your biggest art business goals.

This is how a social media goal like “expanding my reach” would look like through the SMART perspective:

–Specific: Reach 10K accounts.

–Measurable: track key metrics such as Instagram reach.

–Achievable: the account currently has a reach of 2K and it’s within its scope.

Relevant: gaining more reach will lead to wider exposure, more followers, and more organic traffic to the account which aligns with the main art business goals of the account.

–Time-sensitive: the deadline to achieve this goal is 3 months from now.

Get the exclusive downloadable “Instagram is your art gallery: social media trends for 2024” where you can find an exercise to create your own SMART social media goals on ArtPlacer Academy. Take the lesson by logging into your ArtPlacer account or starting your free trial.

A good SEO strategy can be key to make your content and your profile “findable” for the right audience.

SEO for your Instagram artist profile

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is both the technique and the practice of consciously writing text and content for blogs, websites, and social media, with a carefully curated selection of keywords that will make it easier to find by search tools.

And why is SEO such an important part of a social media strategy today? The way we use these platforms has changed. We use social media platforms as search engines and their algorithms are adapting to this. So, if you want to get your art noticed on Instagram, you need to consciously use keywords that will help people find what you create.

A good SEO strategy demands enriching how you write and talk about your art or art practice. You also need to do conscious research about how people find your work or your profile, what keywords people use to find similar artworks, or under which hashtags they share the art they like and feel represented by.

SEO strategies have two main elements, the first one is keywords or specific words and phrases that define a theme and are picked up by search engines to select which content is more relevant to a user’s search. The second is hashtags, which are words preceded by a “#” symbol that is used to categorize content and make it more “discoverable” by followers and non-followers inside a platform. 

And where can you add these keywords and hashtags to make your content easier to find on social media? Here is a short list:

-Post captions

-Video or Reel captions

-Subtitles

-Bio or profile descriptions

-Username

-Descriptive text in Stories

-Alternative text descriptions

And remember the golden rule: avoid keyword “stuffing” The goal is not to mention the most amount of keywords but the right and relevant keywords to your content and your account, and they should be added in a way that is friendly and readable.

Striking visuals like a Room Mockup with an engaging storytelling can help you create a consistent and strong social media presence. Instagram profile by abstract painter Vered Brett.

How to create valuable social media content as an artist

Now we have reached the critical part of how to build an Instagram presence, to do so you need to create valuable, relevant, and relatable content that represents your brand. It needs to have a purpose, it needs to be aligned with your art business or artpreneur goals. So, where can you start?

Just as you defined your “Why”, you need to define what your message is. Think about social media as a new medium you are experimenting with. Your profile is a white canvas waiting for that first stroke of color and meaning. 

Yes, you can use creative prompts and even prompts for AI tools like ChatGPT to help you come up with post ideas, but the core of them is your message, your authenticity, and the things that are unique to you.

How can you define your message? You can start by going back to your artist statement and highlighting the core themes and subjects you work with. Also, check the mediums you work with. Another starting point is how you approach your creative process and what you want to achieve.

These are some other ideas that will help you kickstart your content creation for social media as an artist or art business:

-Tell your story: who you are, where you come from, what you do.

-Engage in existing conversations: “yes, and…”

-Start your own conversations: what themes strike you?

-Learn about your audience’s interest

-Talk about your processes: what have you or have you not figured out?

Knowing your message can help you build consistency not only in the frequency of your posts but also in the type of posts you do, giving your audience a clear view of what they can expect from you.

Your message can be adapted to any format and still communicate precisely what you mean, you can test it with this top 5 of trendy Instagram content ideas that are generating a buzz on social media in 2024.

Are you going to create an amazing post using Room Mockups or a Virtual Exhibition? Make sure to use #ArtPlacer and tag @artplacer.app to get featured on Instagram!