Social Media Growth Question.

I am not an expert but I have noticed my artist friends that are successful on social media are because they get their work out in their community. Are there any art shows or other venues you can take advantage of to get your name out there. Your work is stunning!

I only use Pinterest, but I started making sales 4 months after opening an account. The problem with Pinterest is that the less people repin your pins, the less they will show your pins to others. Even if you had a million followers, if they Pinterest doesn't show your pins, none of the million followers would repin them.

There are three things you can do to get more traffic:

1. Join repin discussion threads. The more repinners we have, the better for all of us. Currently there are repin threads in the main discussion forum and in the following art groups: USA Photographers Only, Pretty in Pink Blue and Purple and Art District.

2. Join ACTIVE group boards. The more we repin each others - even though we are all artists - the more Pinterest will show your pins to others, including potential customers.

3. There is a Pinterest course by a FAA artist. First three lessons are free and they will give you a wealth of information. Here is a link:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/722546333946812247/

One word of caution: you really have to add pins to your account at least once a day, if you skip too many days without pinning anything, your views will drop drastically.

I am very impressed with your candid post about social media and trying to gain traction with your work.

The only thing you have not tried is getting yourself in front of people with your work. Try art fairs, hanging your work at coffee shops, art galleries etc. Try to network at events where people may buy your work (corporate events, interior designers, rich/wealthy art collectors).

Lastly, keep posting and sharing on facebook, as I hear that is still the best place to sell for artists despite it being saturated. Join Facebook Groups and post in buy/sell/art groups as well. That is all I can think of for now...

Also, when and if you run promotions again, send them buyer directly to the product to purchase instead of your landing page.Good luck!

I just checked out your Pinterest account. Your photos are stunning - but you only have 236! And who knows when you added the last one! My guess is that Pinterest considers this account inactive and hardly ever shows any of your pins to your followers.

If you don't have more than that, then make other boards which will attract views. Anything to make your account active! If you choose to participate in our discussion, you could save the pins to a board called "Inspiration from fellow artists" or make a board for one of your hobbies. When I don't have new images to pin, I just pin recipes. Anything is better than doin nothing.

pinterest stinks, its random and hard to use, i get little traffic from there.
instagram is pain because there only allow a link on your main page. i haven't uploaded to there in a long time. yet i seem to get followers for no reason.
google plus is gone
twitter - not as good as it once was. and they don't seem to show up in google analytics
facebook works if you find the right groups, but that's a pain too.
tumblr is kind of joke site now.

cards are only as good as where you are. spamming people with paper, they toss that stuff away. it depends on your area that you put these in. location and timing are important. did the cards say anything about photography?

for this site, i pick on avatars, but i think a face would go a lot longer than a thing. a lens thing i guess. a buyer will see a face first, not a camera part. you'll need more than a 127 photos. you have photos of the area, but the keywords aren't precise, or at least i didn't see if there were any hidden, like a street, the exact station etc. every image has to be posted in twitter and facebook - the bots alone should drive your views to 40 or more, and yet i see some with just a few hits.

you must set the store up in collections and sort it out. having to wade through stuff is a pain. your bio is wish washy, don't use we, and don't say - we hope so (in so many words). just tell us you shoot chicago, people don't know what stock is. you should have images of the area that people recognize, stuff they might be homesick for, a view from a park or something like that. a nice sunset or rise, a fireworks show over the city, night shots, stuff like that. have both color and black and white. you need to stand out from the rest, black and white tends to not do that.

because your not using your own personal unique name the name - Chicago In Photographs Art - will be much harder to find if someone did a search. be sure to look up google with the history off. i couldn't find you on twitter under that name, not from google. and on twitter could not find you there either under that name. i'm not going to try facebook, i'll get the same results there.

when i go to pinterest and type - Chicago In Photographs Art i get chicago photographs. and nothing from you specifically unless i know what i'm looking for, which i don't. so you may want to think that part through.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

The key to SM success anymore from what I can tell is to somehow get a celebrity or major SM influencer to share your posts.

I think ... The key to SM success is to be Social ... the more you interact with real people, their comments and likes and shares will make you more visible.

If you interact, you become a real person to your real followers. Personally I would buy something more from a real person, than from a company. By only your name and avatar, I dont know if you are a man or a woman, your name suggest you can be a collection of photos made in Chicago from different people.

I like to make it personal on my SM-s, so they talk to me about my art, they share for me, because I say them they help me with that, and they buy from me when they start to trust me and to like me enough.. at least I think :D

The other important numbers and eyes on your art, so if you are not willing to play any game, can be very slow the growth. play organic, it feels better, and is free :)

Good luck!

"it feels better, and is free :) "

It feels better, (assuming you enjoy using SM) but it's not free,it takes a great deal of time, it also requires that you focus on a niche, you can't be social about everything.

I'm on Twitter and Instagram. I think I have ~4.5k followers on Twitter and ~1.5k followers on Instagram.

I have come to the conclusion that if you want to be successful on Instagram, be prepared to spend an hour a day on it. Like you, I get very low engagement on Instagram (and Twitter too for that matter). Word of mouth works best, but that takes time to build.

Business cards really do work, but I find that it is best to hand them out only to people who have expressed a genuine interest in your work. Otherwise, you are not only wasting your time and money, it can also potentially devalue your brand.

Hope this helps.

Elisabeth Lucas, I appreciate your feedback on the Pinterest platform, I will take advantage of the link provided. To be candid, my time spent on Pinterest is limited, I have several boards for collecting things that I'm interested in, but those are all private. I've been keeping one board visible to the public and it contains only my photographs. Over the past couple of years, I've been posting one or two links directly from my website per month to Pinterest and that is about it. Although I have an enormous collection of photographs of Chicago, my thinking at least as of now is not to put up 1,000 images; in my mind, even 500 would be too many... It has always been my intent to publish only the best of the best and if truth be told, some of those 236 that you mentioned should probably be taken down.

However.....

I do see your point about adding pins every day to stay relevant in the searches. I would be curious to know in general terms how much of an influence Pinterest is for you in driving sales? Another question I would have is this, what if I put 500 images up on Pinterest on a schedule of say 5 a day then delete and re-add the older pins to keep the activity up?

One final thought that is somewhat related.... I have thought about where applicable, taking some of my black and white images and creating a color version doubling my total count. I realize that not everybody likes black and white and having a color version might be beneficial. This would also increase the activity of my account.

Thank you for your input :)

I don't think adding images and deleting them would work, let me try to find out.

I'm not sure how much of my sales come from Pinterest, but I definitely get a lot of views from there.

Adding color versions seems like a great idea!

You also could add a sepia version.

Ellen Weist and McClean Photography

I appreciate your input and I have thought along similar lines. I do think social media is over saturated and as a result, it devalues our work. When I set out to figure what to sell my photographs for, I looked at a basic 16x24 print and what everybody was selling them for; I was surprised by what I found. I think talking with potential clients needs to be a bigger part of my plan... I think the profits will be higher and the direct competition may be less? Social media is still an important part, but I don't want it to be an all-consuming hole where I throw countless hours after low margin sales. Living in Chicago, I do have an unfair advantage in that I have countless coffee shops, art galleries, and corporate events to call on.

Thank you for your input and reaffirming some thoughts I've had.

On Pinterest, you can pin something a second time without deleting the first pin. You can pin into a different board of yours, if you don't want to have an image in one board twice. Your descriptions can be different, and the product you're pinning can be different if you wish.

Mike Savad

Thank you for your feedback, I do appreciate it. I fully intend on setting up collections once I get a few more photographs uploaded which is taking a little time. Going back through every image and tweaking is very time-consuming.

I have certainly learned a thing or two about business cards along the way, what an experience that turned out to be. I agree cards are still relevant in the way you mentioned, but I would advise anyone reading this to NOT do what I did... major disappointment. To elaborate a little further on McClean Photography and Ellen Weist comments, I do plan on putting together a quality 4x6 glossy card for calling on face-to-face or direct mail opportunities.

Regarding my name Chicago in Photographs... well I'm on the first page of Google for the search term "Chicago Photographs" and depending on the day even outrank Fine Art America for the same term. If I make a blog entry, the rest of the week I'll be in the number one non-paid position on Google and on Bing. I'm kind of proud of that accomplishment. :) The lens is my logo and if you look in the center you can see me in an action pose taking a photo. Of course, in an avatar, that's all missed.

The bio, I see your point. I had originally written the following which has been my "statement".

"Chicago has its own vibe... Indeed, our city is so much more than a beautiful skyline. From the C.T.A trains’ rumbling overhead to the iconic architecture spanning 140 years, to the diversity of her people, Chicago is more than the sum of her parts. With a plethora of unique sights and sounds that can sometimes go unnoticed, this website attempts to be different from the ordinary stock photography website. Through these photographs, we've tried to capture the soul and essence of our magnificent city. We think we've succeeded."

To your point, the ending is a bit anemic.


The keywords, you bet they need work, but it’s my understanding that they only apply to Fine Art America and since I'm not generating any sales, I'm at the bottom the pile for the foreseeable future. I will mention that the photos that I've posted here are *ALL* on my social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and many are on Twitter).

By the way, I have read many of your advice threads (THANK YOU) and I am looking for ways to incorporate your ideas into my flow.

David King

Tell me about it! We have a photographer here in Chicago named Barry Butler who is VERY prolific and has learned to master Instagram. Every day he publishes a color photograph of the skyline from a different location. Did I mention that he does this every single day and he has been doing this for years and years. He's managed to amass 4,332 posts and 25.1k followers and as a result, he's been featured on WGN news, ABC news, and a plethora of radio shows. Barry hit the proverbial grand slam. He's been a nice guy every time our paths have crossed in those early morning hours chasing the light:)

always speak in the first person as well, i might have left that out, none of this we stuff, your talking directly to the customer.
mostly you have to upload all the time, keeping it fresh, at least once a week upload a batch. people get bored of seeing the same stuff every time.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Deleting pins is not a good idea because pins stay around for a long time. Even if you pin doesn't get repinned today, how do you know it won't get repinned three months from now?

Do you have a personal account or a business account? If you only have a personal account you could save some pins to a business account. They are both free.

You could also make another board for Chicago gift ideas and pin your images as mugs, towels, etc.

On any given day you can name any of the Social Media platforms and there are going to people here tell you it sucks, it doesn't work and don't waste your time, I never sold a thing.

Then there are going to be people tell you it's wonderful, I love it, do a million posts a day and I get 7 zillion sales a month from there.

And everything in between the two exaggerated extremes above.

The fact is, they all work for some of the people and they all fail to work for some of the people.

Any of them will work if you take the time to really figure out how to make them work for you. And only you can determine that.

I am going to mention one specific that you brought up regarding Facebook. Your 500 followers are not even a fraction of the number of people you need to reach to produce any significant level of sales, IMHO. You reach more people by joining groups and participating in them at some level. Think in terms of hundreds of thousands of not hundreds.

You may want to read the Sales Aide I wrote on advertising talking about vertical vs horizontal reach.

Understanding Advertising and Why You Simply Cannot Do It All

https://fineartamerica.com/blogs/understanding-advertising-and-why-you-simply-cannot-do-it-all.html

Best of luck to you!!

Hi Chicago! :-)

I'm Matthias, the FAA Artist with the Pinterest Course that Elisabeth mentioned above. Both, Corinne and Elisabeth, nailed it: don't delete your old pins.

Create more boards. Join some Group Boards (Chicago, Photography, and Art related). Pin your photos to all of these boards, with different descriptions (but not all at once, space them out). Pinterest loves fresh content!

Use hashtags (not more than 3 or 4 per Pin). #chicago would be great of course. Hashtags did not make any sense on Pinterest some time ago but they are a thing right now. Use them.

Make some Video Pins if you can, Pinterest is pushing them right now. Use your photos, animate them and add some text. Keep them short (under 20 seconds). Try different styles, see what works for you. Some of my Video Pins have gone viral, others not. You will have to try.

Feel free to register for the free trial of my online course (How to sell more Art with Pinterest), the first three lessons are free to read. Just use the link from Elisabeth.

P.S. Floyd is absolutely right, every social media site can work if you do it the right way. Dora is the "cat queen" on FB and Insta because she manages to be social. I love Pinterest (it brings more than 80% of my traffic and many sales) because it is no social network (but a visual search engine). Your mileage may vary :-)

Hey friends!

I just joined FAA and uploaded some of my personal work, now I am exploring the community. Besides being a photographer I also own a couple digital marketing agencies and have extensive experience with social media marketing.

Well the truth is that social media is becoming more and more difficult as a traffic driver. This is because the platforms such as Instagram are purposefully reducing reach because they want users to pay them for boosting posts and advertising. What better way to do it than strangle your organic reach? Unfortunately their post boosting and advertising is very expensive for the results they give you... frankly it's not worth it unless you are a brand with a six figure budget.

The best way we find to maximize social media is: 1. Be social...Post consistently, use quality hashtags, like, follow and comment on users that would be your target audience or your peers. 2. If you have the budget, consider hiring a digital marketer that can use techniques to drive traffic to your social media and your sales page.

Most other tricks you may read about out there such as buying shout outs, engagement groups, etc. are not highly effective and can also be easily detected by the social platforms.

Anyway, my 2 cents... if you have any questions or need advice, just ask.. I am happy to help :)