How to Promote Your Artwork on Instagram

The artist Ashley Longshore sells her artwork for at least $30,000 on Instagram and accordingly says, "I can post a painting and it will sell before the paint is dry." 

Besides Ashley, the artist Chris Austin likes his recent work's flash sales, resulting in receiving direct messages from interested buyers after a few minutes of uploading his artworks to Instagram.

Based upon these instances, it should be noted that Instagram has become artists' social media platform. It helps startups promote their artworks and artists communicate successfully with buyers interested to buy their artworks.

The question now is: how can any artist make money out of Instagram News Feed?

In fact, the more famous your Instagram account is, the more in demand your artwork will be.

It is worth mentioning that getting more and more followers isn't something that happens overnight; it needs effort. 

Mentioned below are 6 ways to get more followers on Instagram and accordingly make money out of your art business.

Focus on your best quality artwork

To start with, you should deal with your Instagram account exactly the same way you deal with your artwork; you do not let any of your artworks out unless you make sure everything is perfect in terms of quality and professionalism.

Your Instagram account in this case should be like a gallery; you only display the best-quality paintings.

It has to be your who-I-am platform in terms of professionalism and creativity. In this case, you are advised to give more attention to details because in the end who cares about buying artworks from an artist who never concentrates on quality, uniqueness, or design? 

Additionally, a perfect background and suitable lightening are considered necessary when it comes to designing your artwork. In order to get such results, install your painting by the window to get sufficient lightening.

Making your artwork photos look exactly like your real paintings is also highly recommended and in demand to attract more followers to your Instagram account. Otherwise, potential buyers will press the unfollowbutton or they will be put down since the artwork they bought wasn't exactly like the one they found on your Instagram account.

Describe your artwork in a few seconds

Along with posting your artworks to Instagram, it is recommended that you cohesively describe them in the caption side in an attractive way. Artists with no marketing degrees will at first find it difficult to do so, but experience makes perfect.

These days, people tend to read captions of Instagram photo posts to understand who you are and what you are posting at the first glance.

The more impressively attractive your Instagram feed is, the more professional you will be considered by your followers. 

Whatever you use, hashtag, voice, normal caption, etc., stick to a unique style that embodies you and your artwork.

Never underrate excellent content power

We've emphasized it before: never ignore quality; always put so much effort on quality over quantity on social media.

Always keep an eye on the posts on which you press like on Instagram. Your friends often forget blurry photos, but when it comes to potential buyers, they might not be impressed if your photos and captions aren't that good.

It's your responsibility to catch their interest; all you have to do is excel your photos; leave your audience impressed as much as you can.

As a side note, try to post behind-the-scenes posts and before-and-after shots that often help fuel your progress. 

Or else, dig into artist accounts you follow and admire; make their ideas yours. 

All in all, Instagram is a wonderful platform through which you can easily promote your artworks. 

Again, do not ignore the importance of captions

It is necessary to mention titles and prices of your pieces, but your followers may want more about it.

They want to be magnetized; they yearn for being told a story; who you are, what you feel, how were you inspired, the issues you faced and overcome, and how the artwork came to being.

A related point to consider is to write your post captions in a way that stimulate conversation so that the post gets spread and viewed by as many people as possible.

One of the popular ways to do so is to leave a question at the end of your caption. Even if they do not answer the question at first, they will in the end, especially when you respond to those who leave their own answers.

Collaborate with other successful Instagram channels

Reach out to other channels on the platform that have a successful following of artists and ask for opportunities for collaboration. This could come in the form of sponsored posts, challenge posts (where you and another channel will create a specific art related challenge with an associated hashtag and spread that challenge collectively), guest posts.

Instagram is all about growing your follower base, so actively participating and commenting on similarly related channels and content will help engage those same users to your own channel and content and provide many collaborative opportunities.

Put hashtags in your post captions

Hashtags are considered Instagram maps; these maps are an easy way to make your posts easily discovered by people who are interested in artworks similar to yours. 

It is one of the easiest ways to grow your fan base on Instagram.

An additional aspect of this is the hashtag rule. It is preferred to narrow down your tashtag. That is, the hashtag #artistis very popular; its tags exceed 300 million posts. In other words, you need to be more specific when it comes to tagging your posts.

According to Hubspot, "as a user, I am more likely to find what I need if I search for something specific, and when your business comes up for my specific search request, I am more likely to be happy with what I found." 

Think for a minute about the keywords people in search for works similar to yours might use. For example, the hashtag #abstractart is apparently more specific than the hashtag #art. 

Yet, you have to avoid any competition with other artists; that is, you want your hashtags to be common enough so that people can find your work easily, but not so common to the extent that you get involved in an artwork competition.

To do this, type a popular hashtag on the Instagram bar designated for search. After getting the results, type in your captions the appropriate hashtags you found to get your posts spread.

It's worth mentioning that Instagram gives you permission to use about 30 hashtags at the same time in one caption, so use them wisely. 

Save a list of the best and popular hashtags you have found on Instagram's search bar, and make sure you make a connection between your hashtags and what the photos and posts are about because a mismatch can possibly push followers away.     

Here is a list of popular art related hashtags to get you started:

#artoftheday 
#creative 
#artwork 
#artists 
#inspiration 
#art 
#instaart 
#paintingoftheday 
#watercolour 
#WIP 
#customart 
#abstract 
#fineart 
#portrait