By Dina Brodsky

This is part 2 of Dina’s download on the do’s and don’ts of Instagram. Go here to read part 1.

I think of Instagram primarily as a marketing channel, although most of my sales come from it as well. It’s a bit like casting a wide net – most of your audience will not have money to buy your art – they are there to learn from you and cheer you on in your art practice.
Only a tiny percentage of your following will actually buy anything, but provided your following is big enough, that’s all you need to make a reasonably good living. (I don’t need 700k people to buy my art, but maybe 50-100 for a good life.)

Artist Valeri Larko’s Instagram posts show videos of her working in her unusual “urban fringe” settings as well as process shots of the work at various stages of its creation.

Very few people who start to follow you will buy your work right away. Rather, they will follow along with your studio practice for months and sometimes years until the right work of art speaks to them. It’s therefore very easy to close most of those sales.
How Do You Handle Sales?
All you really need to do is let your audience know the work is available and give them a way to contact you about it. I prefer to use Instagram’s direct message (DM) feature. After the initial contact, you can talk or do an online studio visit to give them a closer look and discuss pricing and delivery. I accept payment via PayPal, Venmo or Zelle, and I ship the art via UPS after receiving payment.

DO NOT Post anything that looks like an advertisement.

Instagram is an amazing tool that can sell your work, fill your workshops, and take full control over every aspect of your art career. However, the best way to achieve this is to make sure that your posts look organic and engaging. Anything that looks like an ad (postcards from exhibitions or open studios, etc), will push away enough of your initial audience to ensure that the algorithm will only show your work to a tiny percentage of your followers before burying it in the feed.

DO THIS instead:

If you want to promote a studio sale, workshop or gallery exhibition – Instagram is the perfect place to do that. You just need to make sure that the visual part of the post ( the image or video – doesn’t look like an advertisement. Stay away from everything that feels like a postcard or a poster – even if your gallery sent you a postcard template with your work, and asked you to promote the exhibition.

Instagrammer Kristin Noh Juchs keeps her 100K+ followers’ attention through all manner of playful postings. Here she advertises a special on her work available over on @spoonflower, a different Instagram account that functions like an online gallery/storefront for artists and designers. Sometimes a simple announcement is all you need, but most of the time it should be about context and sharing insider information with your followers.

You should absolutely promote your show and your gallery, just do it in a way that won’t be automatically suppressed by the algorithm (and keep in mind the algorithm isn’t trying to prevent you from selling your work, it’ll just suppress anything with low initial engagement) Here’s an efficient way to promote a gallery exhibition/studio sale:

  1. Put up a multi-image post of the strongest work in the show, either in context, or close up enough where viewers can see the work in detail
  2. The cover image of the post should be the strongest painting you have, that you feel is the most likely to catch the viewer’s attention. Stick to vertical or square format rather than horizontal
  3. If you want to include a postcard for the show with text, save it for the last image in the carousel – by that point the viewer is already invested in that painting, and isn’t going to drop off
  4. In the caption, give the logistical information for the exhibition, making sure to give your gallery a shoutout. Something like: “Thrilled to be participation in a group exhibition at ______ Gallery on _____date – please attend the opening at ______pm” Make sure all the most important information is in the first 1-2 lines of your caption. After that, write anything else you want about the exhibition

A few more things: If you want to understand hashtags, I have that section of my “Instagram for Artists” class available for free here: https://www.insightsforartists.com/ifa If your account has plateaued or you feel stuck, I also have a free troubleshooting guide for some of the most common reasons that happens, available here: https://www.dinabrodsky.com/free-guides.

If you are serious about giving your art business a boost, browse through Eric Rhoads’ free videos on making money as an artist – part of his series of interviews and features on his YouTube channel, Art School Live with Eric Rhoads.

Artist Yigang Mao wins Best Plein Air Oil in PleinAir Salon
Yigang Mao, “San Gabriel Mountain,” oil, 12 x 30 in.

Yigang Mao has won First Place in the “Best Plein Air in Oil” category of the monthly PleinAir Salon.

Yigang is best known as a landscape painter, though he paints the figure as well. Born in Beijing, Mao Yigang graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). His plein air work, such as “San Gabriel Mountain,” as well as his idealized landscape paintings of the panorama in China, Yigang integrate the techniques of the Eastern and Western landscape tradition.

Now underway, the next round of the PleinAir Salon ends on the last day of the month. See the rest of last month’s winners and enter your best art in the PleinAir Salon here.

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