Introduction: As an artist, I struggle to engage social media in my business and marketing plan for Terra Kind Studio Co. Here I outline my social media experiences and choices and ultimately a strategy that works best for me, my business, and my capacity. I hope this post is both helpful and encouraging.
Photo credit: ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash
First, a Brief Social Media Background
My entry to social media was in 2009. It was Twitter, back when Twitter was good to be on. I was a freelance graphic designer and saw social media as a means of possibly connecting with potential clients.
I did land a client through Twitter. It started over a tweeted discussion on how a florist failed to deliver flowers for her uncle’s funeral. Things blossomed from there. She hired me to brand her new business, then a non-profit she founded, and several projects in between.
We became and are good friends. Her support of my work and transition from designer to full-time visual artist means the world to me.
A long-term relationship that all started from a series of tweets.
It’s been my one real-life and lasting positive experience with social media. Can I have more of these?
Social media overwhelms me, and I don’t “do” overwhelm. Even though I attended mini-courses and webinars about using social media effectively for connection and marketing, it took too much time out of my day.
I felt social media had to be part of my marketing toolbox because this is what everyone else was pushing. Yet, social media is primarily about connection and relationship building. As a socially awkward, sincere introvert, you would think mastering the art of social media would be easy. It is not.
So I stopped trying. I didn’t want to be the human hamster posting machine. I didn’t want to feel anxious about how well or poorly a post I worked on for hours performed.
I left Twitter in 2016 for obvious reasons.
My relationship with social media evolved from thinking I should be on all the platforms to realistically picking only two to engage consistently.
I could never embrace Facebook with its clunky, ugly aesthetic (in my opinion). Its blue branding is not a happy blue. If I’m on Facebook, it’s to check in with family and relatives living elsewhere or to reply to a message.
Before I took my trip to Japan in 2017, I joined Instagram. It was too late for the boom it had for the early adaptor artists. Yet, I found Instagram interesting. Unfortunately, I found I was getting wrapped up in the number of likes for a post and the number of people following me. I thought of Instagram as a marketing tool, and numbers were the key to success (and potential art sales — ha!)
Again, I was missing the point. Social media can be a marketing tool, but a foundation of connection and trust-building needs to happen first.
Fast forward to today, I have settled on how to engage social media that feels good.
How I Use Social Media in My Art Business
I’m a professional artist running a business with no outside help. I know my bandwidth. So, I decided to focus on two platforms: Pinterest and LinkedIn. Limiting it down to two has been a game-changer.
Why Pinterest? First, it’s not a social media platform but a search engine. I want a way to send people to my website and showcase my artwork. This is a long, slow, and patient tail. The good news is that pins last for years. Posts last a few hours on other social media platforms.
Instead of curating pins, I’m creating them. I have a lot of content (visuals) I can post. When I vary a pin, Pinterest sees this as a fresh pin. I can take one piece of artwork and design the pin in three different ways to pin to three different subject boards for greater reach.
The crazy thing is I love making pins. It blends my art with my eye and skills as a graphic designer. I can use my writing skills to craft pin captions (descriptions) and weave in keywords while sounding like a human.
For the non-graphic designer, there is Canva. I use Canva occasionally, but it’s easier to create pins when I know Illustrator and Photoshop like the back of my hand.
Pinterest is my “experiment” which explains the no-pressure fun I’m having with the platform. Over the past two months of consistently pinning two to three pins daily, I have gone from 2.3K monthly views to 17.4K. Views are just the beginning. My pins are beginning to be pinned by others.
Views are considered a vanity metric on Pinterest. Encouraging, yet the real measure is the traffic coming to my website via Pinterest. Those are the real numbers. So far, there has been a steady increase in traffic but no conversions (sales). This is a long-haul effort. Seeing the results of any measure makes me feel I am not wasting time. I’m laying the foundation for future sales.
Why LinkedIn? When I was a graphic designer (running Grand Ciel Design Co.) I didn’t leverage the platform effectively. I kept my profile up-to-date, posted off and on, and created a business page.
I now have a LinkedIn business page for my art business (Terra Kind Studio Co.). I make an effort to post once a week. One post a week gets a fair amount of engagement. There are many more things I could be doing to make my efforts on LinkedIn worthwhile. For example, I could reach out to people who could expand my brand, such as galleries, interior designers, editors, stylists, etc.
I could be doing more with LinkedIn and I’m not sweating it. I want to have fun here, too.
The big shift in how I engage social media is my attitude and approach. Yes, these are essential marketing tools. No, I don’t want to be a slave to them.
Now when it comes to posting anything on social media, it has to meet at least one of these criteria:
- Does it have value?
- Does it educate or inform?
- Does it spark curiosity?
- Does it bring me joy?
- Could it bring joy to others?
- Do I feel good putting this post out into the world?
Bottom line, I want to enjoy my time on social media. To be my nerdy, silly, authentic self. In turn, this gives others permission to be their gloriously nerdy, silly, authentic selves.
As for Instagram, I’m still semi-active there. I use it to stay in touch with fellow artists and see their current work and the exhibits they are participating in. I’m turning Instagram into an online journal, posting what I care about and working on, and curating images for reference and ideas.
When I post on Instagram these days, with no other reason but to have fun, I’m starting to attract followers and people I want to follow. I seriously thought my account had died, thanks to the almighty algorithm.
Threads, I see as an extension of Instagram (because technically it is). A friendlier and much kinder alternative to X, I’m approaching Threads as “let’s have fun here and be helpful when I can be.” Numbers and followers don’t matter. It’s the conversations that do.
It would be lovely to have repeat experiences like the one I had with Twitter in 2009. In the meantime, I have lots of art to make and people to meet. That’s where the real connections begin.
Your Turn.
What has your journey with social media been like? Do you favor specific platforms and why? Has it helped your business (be it artist, creative entrepreneur, or other profession) or has it been a colossal time-suck? How do you feel about social media in general? I would love to hear your thoughts. I respond personally to all.
