Social Media Strategy Tips & Tricks

Social media is a useful tool in any artist’s toolbox but with many platforms to choose from and constantly changing algorithms it can be daunting to manage. Digital marketing consultant Kacy Ratta shared some social media strategy fundamentals to help you define your social media strategy and create effective content, including: 

• Understanding the purpose of social media 
• Defining your goals 
• Planning and creating content 
• Connecting and providing value to your audience 
• How to identify what is working and what isn’t 

A well-rounded digital marketing professional, Kacy is an expert at working with teams, clients and agencies to deliver KPI breaking campaigns for internationally recognised organisations and events. 

DEFINING YOUR STRATEGY  

There are four key steps in building a successful social media strategy:

1. Decide where to dedicate your time

We all have limited time and social media is not your day job. To effectively manage your time and have the most impact: 

Choose one platform to focus on and create content specifically for that. If you try and manage multiple platforms you will likely spread yourself too thin and not be able to achieve significant growth or engagement across any.  

Four main platforms are recommended for visual arts: 

Instagram – Primary recommendation
-Multi-modal platform which has features from each of the other platforms with stories, reels IGTV but also feed.
– Can diversify and experiment with different styles of content while keeping audience growth within the one platform
– Highly visual
– Mix of in the moment with edited content
– Discoverable content – hashtags allow you to be seen by the people you want to see your work and also within a specific geographic location 

TikTok – Secondary recommendation
– If you are more adventurous provides great opportunities for visual artists
– As it is a newer platform, and in the way it is built, ability to grow a large audience in a short amount of time IF your content is good. 
– Video only, short form content
– Reliance on personality and trend hopping
-Focus on processes
– Skewed toward a younger Millennial and Gen Z audience so need to consider if this is right for your brand
– Look at how other visual artists are using to assess its benefit  

Facebook
– Very established platform
– Great if exhibition heavy (has an Events feature)
-Ability to develop connections with established communities via Groups
– Not really designed as a visual channel
– Skewed towards an older audience, less users from Gen Z and onwards 

YouTube
– Higher time investment
– Great for educational or diary content
– Ability to monetise
– Slower growth and less interaction  

2. Define your content strategy

AKA what are you going to be posting and talking to your audiences about. This will be different for everyone but there are three key pillars that need to be present for your posts to be effective.  

Consistency
The most important factor and often done wrong by small businesses and artists. 

Social media platforms are built on complex algorithms, which determine how many people actually see your posts. Consistency across the quality of what you are posting, how often and when you are posting, is an important factor within the algorithms, and if people are not seeing your posts, it is very hard for them to engage with it, and to develop new followers.   

E.g. Posting 27 photos in the space of 3 days when you have time and great content to share but then nothing for the next 3 weeks is a surefire way to damage your account! 

When you do have time to work on content, create posts, but then plan out when you are going to post (pop in diary reminders or use a spreadsheet to track). Be realistic with what you think you can achieve. It’s better to post once a week consistently then 7 days one week and none the next.

Authenticity
Consider how much or yourself do you want to put on display. How much of your brand is you, and how much is your artwork only?  

This is important to consider as it will help to set the tone of your account and dictate the kind of followers and follower growth you achieve. There is no right or wrong answer but it best to pick one style to avoid confusing your followers and see a drop in growth or even lose followers.  

Knowing your Audience
Most artists are naturally quite good at knowing their audience. Important to keep in mind who you are talking to when creating content.  

Examples of great artist accounts: 
Amanda Oleander – mix of art and personal but via different features. Feed contains art, Stories more personal.
Catana Comics – Just focussed on the art, but the art itself is personable