Instagram becomes the professional artist’s highest-profile or landing page. Nowadays is even more important than the personal website.

It is the first destination for the visitors after finding your artwork online or offline, and as we know, the first impression is also the last.

So how do you prepare yourself as a professional artist for unexpected visitors?

You might need to review some points and reconsider adjusting your Instagram account if you need it.

Choosing The Correct Username On Instagram

When you sign up with Instagram, the correct username to consider as an artist is always your full name. However, In some cases, it could be hard to find it available without using dots or underscores between the first name and the last name, then you might consider adding extra words that will demonstrate your art type or the content you provide.

For example, @johnsmith, @johnsmithart, @artbyjohnsmith, @johnsmithabstract, etc.

Luckily, Instagram gives you the option to change it whenever you want. But also necessary to unify all your online presences, such as Facebook business page, Twitter, website, etc., under the same name.

The reason is apparent; it will improve your ranking on the Instagram search and other search engines such as google, bing, etc.

Moreover, it will help the visitors to memorize your Instagram account and your branded hashtag. So they can also follow!

As an artist, your name is your brand.

Writing An Attractive Bio On Instagram

Think about it this way. The bio on Instagram can help the visitors understand the profile central point. For example, the summary on the CV should give a short and direct brief of outstanding skills.

As an artist, your Instagram profile should always be in a public mood to allow new visitors and art fans to find and interact with your profile. Moreover, to enable the shop option.

First, you need to switch your Instagram account from a personal to a creative account if you are an artist and choosing an artist category or a business account if you are an art gallery, for example, and select an art or art gallery category.

Both options will enable you to create a Facebook business page and link it to your Instagram profile to share your posts with your business Facebook page. And it is very recommended for the advanced marketing strategies.

Adding a call to action will help you convert more sales or receive qualified traffic, which you will need and use for additional advanced marketing strategies. Such as Facebook and google remarketing and retargeting campaigns.

For example, a clear invitation to visit your website and read about your exhibitions, or if you have a service, you can ask the visitors to check it out. The idea is to provide the users with a clear map to follow, don’t expect people to try to guess the next step; you might lose some opportunities.

We also recommend artists always using the English language in their bio. As an artist, your audiences and art collectors could be from everywhere. ,English is lingua franca, and it should also apply to your website. But trying to target only locals with a local language could be a restriction for your art selling potentials.

Don’t!

1. Adding the email to the bio text is pointless because it is unclickable. Instagram provides the option to add your email to the contact feature, much easier for the user, efficient and professional.

2. Instagram offers to add one link in your bio. In many cases, artists have different profiles across other art selling platforms, such as personal websites, Saatchi art, etc.

Then linktr.ee or an alternative service can solve this issue by adding multiple URLs in a single link to use on Instagram bio.

3. Using any third-party app to generate a different font than the original Instagram font will hurt your account visibility on the google search engine.

The reason that Google cannot index the value of the third-party apps and related to the Instagram platform, which it will not appear as a text. Instead, it will be replaced with question marks in the final results.

Choosing A Profile Picture On Instagram

Unless you are not representing a company or an art gallery, using artwork or logo instead of your self-picture as an individual artist could reduce your opportunities on Instagram, especially for the emerging artists, less known, or even the new joiners.

Instagram is a social media platform. Meaning, people on Instagram expect to discover and interact with other people before buying art or any product.

The professional self-picture for the artist is very important, and it can reflect good impressions, such as credibility, transparency, and pleasing personality, which are essential to selling and success in online business, including art.

In general, people buy from someone they know, trust, and like.

The Quality Of Artwork Pictures

By 2021 almost 1.074 billion users on the Instagram platform. On top of that, 70% of consumers base their buying decisions on what they see on Instagram posts.

Whether you are an artist or a brand, the quality of your pictures will determine the viewer’s following action. Either visit your profile or ignore it in less than two seconds.

Art solely depends on the view, such as the colors, subject, texture, size, etc.

Displaying lousy quality pictures, color edited, blurry, or reflected will destroy all your opportunities to sell or to gain the trust of your buyers.

Therefore. It will be helpful for your art career to understand that you need to adjust a marketing budget for your Instagram. The point is If you are trying to promote and sell art or any other product on Instagram or elsewhere, you’re already in a business model, and it is tough for any business to achieve success without a marketing budget and efforts, including time and money.

Part of that budget will go towards Instagram marketing. Some funding needs to consider creating professional images and marketing materials for your artwork to attract more visitors and art collectors.

However, in many cases, hiring a professional photographer is way out of budget for some artists. Try to invest your time learning how to make the best pictures on your phone if you have no DSLR camera.

Finding The Best Art Hashtags

The primary goal is to reach the correct audience interested in your artwork and guide them to your art profile. However, using only popular and famous art hashtags is not an advantage! And a common mistake among many artists on Instagram.

Learn more on how to find and choose the correct art hashtags based on your engagement level.

Best Time To Post On Instagram

Posting at the best time is required on Instagram, based on the algorithm and the feed functions.

On Instagram, the engagement rate (likes, comments, clicks, etc.) your post receives after publishing is essential to consider for your Instagram marketing success.

Firstly it will show to your existing active art followers. Then it will calculate the interactions they generate to determine the post visibility path, starting from the feed of your current followers, then to the used art hashtags, and finally to the Instagram explorer page, which can accelerate the engagement and the reach.

Sproutsocial study shows that every day could be a good opportunity between 10 am to 4 pm.

We can see that posting at different times on different days will drive you the highest engagement. But if you try to post daily at the best time and every day, things can get irritating, and you might also start to avoid it.

The best solution is to use a scheduling tool that can help you set times in advance for every day. You can quickly schedule your posts for one week or a month in advance and save your time. One of the best Instagram scheduling tools is PLANOLY. It is worth it to check it out.

In the beginning, you can schedule the posts for the best times, as it shows from the Sproutsocial study.

Based on the collecting data you gathered manually, or by using an advanced tool such as Flick that gives you an accurate analysis for the best time and hashtags,

Then it will be much effective to schedule the posting campaigns based on the precise information and avoiding unexpected results.

In Conclusion

Increasing your odds as an artist on Instagram will rapidly increase your opportunities to reach the art collectors and sell more.

Marketing, in general, is an experiment lab, starts from the fundamental rules, then keeps adding on and testing to reach success.

Keep creating and sharing art ????