Social media has completely changed the way that we interact with one another. It’s easier to connect to the people and interests we love most and it’s a crucial tool for artists who want to promote their artwork, build supporters and share their practice with a wider audience.
Over the next five weeks MAFA will be sharing some top tips to build you confidence with social media and re-invigorate your strategy as an artist online. Let’s start with which social media networks to join and uploading your images.
Choose your networks
We have this misconception that it’s important to have a profile on every single social network that’s out there. But as you collect networks, you start to spread yourself out so thinly that it becomes nearly impossible to juggle them all.
Prioritize your work to only a few social networks. Here’s a list of social networks you can join. Limit yourself to only a handful that you can manage and update often.
Top Social Media Networks
Photos Rule the World
Pictures are amongst the most shared content across social media. Every day 350 million photos are uploaded onto Facebook. So why are you still posting just links? We live in much lazier times. And if you’re scrolling through Facebook or Twitter, the last thing you want to do is click a link that opens up a new window. The only reason you would do this is to drive traffic to your website.
Upload your art directly to social networks. This makes it more likely to be shared. You can always include links to higher resolution images in the post description. Make sure that you check your setting on Facebook so that people can share your content. If you don’t want to allow people to share all your content then you can edit individual posts to allow them to be shared. On your mobile:
Find the post you want to make shareable and tap the three dots in the upper right corner.
In the pop-up menu, tap Edit Privacy.
In the Privacy menu, tap the checkbox next to Public, then tap Done in the upper right corner of the screen.
Check your images before posting. Your images present an impression of you as an artist. Make sure that you only post images that have a strong composition, are well-lit and are not blurred. Camera phones create amazing high resolution images but make sure you use your knowledge as an artist to filter, compose and edit; only post your best images.
Adjust Your Image Size. Speaking of poor resolution, not all social media sites are great for art. Facebook, for instance, compresses your art to a point that is unrecognizable.
For all the social networks you use, get familiar with their allotted image sizes. Here are the key images sizes for the top 3 social media networks, for more information, this is a helpful dimensions guide.
Facebook image post size: 1200 x 630
Instagram photo sizes: 1080 x 1080 (square), 1080 x 566 (landscape), 1080 x 1350 (portrait)
Twitter post image size: 1024 x 512
Keep them in mind when posting new work, so that you can adjust them yourself instead of letting the site do it. You can avoid awkward and unnecessary clipping by cropping them ahead of time.
Resizing and cropping images can easily be done using Paint or Photoshop.
Was this blog useful? Join us next week as we look at how to use tags and shortening your links. Why not follow MAFA on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram?
Posted: January 19th, 2021
Category: Events And Activities,News