 Well hello and welcome to this video where today I'm talking about the artist's Instagram marketing strategy for 2022. Now I don't know about you but there are not enough hours in the day to keep up with all of Instagram's updates, the changes, the new developments, what's in, what's out. So what I've done in this video is I've broken it all down and I've just put forward the seven things I think that you should be focused on when you're using Instagram as an artist this year. Now stay right to the end too because I'm going to share a hot tip that could really ramp up your positive results with your posting. You are going to want to hear that, I promise you. And if you're new here, then welcome. My name's Sophie Mahia and I'm passionate about helping artists just like you to build a profitable business around your existing art practice. If that sounds like you and you like to learn all things art business rated, then you're in the right place. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and look out for my weekly videos that come out. Yes, you guessed it on a Wednesday. Before we dive into those seven things, I just want to say a quick reminder. I've spoken about it before and no doubt I'll speak about it again. On Instagram, you don't need hundreds of thousands of followers to be successful. It's so easy to jump on there and see other artists to perhaps start it up on Instagram a bit of a while ago and got that kind of momentum and they've now got hundreds of thousands of followers and you're stuck there starting and not really getting very far. And it can be quite daunting. So what I want to say to you is it's not about the number of followers. It's about the quality of followers and having the right followers. So really the most important thing is that you're actually getting the right followers. People who are really interested and engaged with what you are posting. And the second thing is that you post high quality content that they're going to love. Once you get an engaged following, you could have 100 people, 100 followers on Instagram and still do really, really well. Now this is one of the things I learned many, many moons ago in my coaching business back in the day in the UK. Before we had all these online strategies, I built a small but highly engaged mailing list and of course it was not done via social media or anything online. It was purely done from actually getting out and about and talking to people so everybody who was on my list were people who were actually interested in what I was doing. So when I sent out an email I got immediate sales and that's what I want for you. So focus on getting the right people to follow you on Instagram and then give them content they're interested in so when you are ready to put out a sales offer you've got people ready to pounce on it. Does that make sense? All right, it must be time to be looking at those seven marketing strategies for Instagram this year. Let's start off with number one. Number one is your bio. Now you're going to say to me, Sophie, I've done my bio, you know, I've heard it before, boring, I'm going to switch off. And I'm going to say to you stop, hang in there and listen. It's really important now more than ever that your bio exactly explains what you do and who you do that for. So what you offer and who you serve in terms of your audience. I've seen a lot of accounts with a really wishy, washy, confused or using some funky words but it doesn't make any sense. So if I as the viewer were landing on that bio I would look and I would think, well, I don't know, I'm seeing a confused feed. I'm not really sure that person does, I'm not going to follow them. Do you really want to make sure that that's little sentence that fits in your bio exactly explains using some key words. So if for instance, if you're, I don't know, an abstract artist and you do abstract landscapes of Scotland, that it says abstract landscapes of Scotland. So that people who are looking for that and are interested in abstract landscapes of Scotland are going to follow you. You want to make sure that that account only does one thing. All right, you're not trying to cover a multitude of different things that you do. You just do the one thing, the abstract landscapes of Scotland for example. So that it's very clear, make the bio clear, make sure that you've got a link in the bio that takes them to where they can find out more. And that's where you can have other things for people to look through. But the bio must be short, sweet and to the point. Tip number two, stay on topic with your content. I don't know how to say this in a million times actually, we don't want to see what you have for dinner even if you eat healthily and you think it looks great. If that's not what you talk about on your Instagram account, please don't post it. If you said in this today's example that you do abstract landscapes of Scotland, we want to make sure that that account has content that has everything to do with that thing that you do. So make sure that you stay on topic but at the same time make sure that you vary the post type. So if all you did was a close up of your painting, close up, close up, close up, that's going to be really boring for the audience. You know, right now we have so many posts to look at. We're scrolling down and if you see the same thing over and over and over again, it's dull. No one's going to jump over and look at your profile. So whilst you want to stay on topic, you want to have that variety. Sometimes a video, sometimes a close up, sometimes a far away, sometimes a material, sometimes a process. You want to make sure that you use all the tools Instagram has on offer. I'm going to say that again. Make sure you use all the tools Instagram has on offer because they will reward you. If you do a reel, they're going to love you. If you do a little video, they're going to love you. If you do a live, if you use stories, if you use all the features, if you're tagging and geolocating and doing all of the things, then they will be super, super happy with you. So tip number three is about sharing behind the scenes. You're an artist, you're a creative. It's really tempting just to keep showing the end result. Whilst that's great for people, people are generally nosy. So make sure that part of your content strategy is a behind the scenes. It's the materials, it's the process, it's what inspires you. All of those things, a sneak peek behind it, open doors into the studio. All of that is really appealing to your audience as well as seeing the finished product. So that's really, really important that you do that. Whether you do that in your stories or you do that on your feed or you use a combination of the two things, then that's super important too. Remember that the feed is really going to be going out to new people and the stories get seen by your followers. So you want to build trust and engagement with your current followers, so make sure that you are putting some of that stuff on your stories as well. It doesn't need to look fancy, it doesn't need to look anything. You can just grab a quick video or a quick shot of process or something you're doing and put it on the story. The feed you want to make sure it's quality and you really want to think, is this useful to my audience? Will they relate to it? Will they want to save it? Will they want to go back to it again and again? Tip number four, engagement. You've got it. You need to make sure that you're doing some engagement. It's a reciprocal process. Don't just post and wait for people to give you a like and write a comment. You want to go out there and find people as well to leave your own comments on. You like to save, to share. It's a two way street. Engagement is a two way street and you need to get on that engagement kind of role in order for the whole Instagram algorithm to work. So if somebody is going to like your post make sure that you go and have a look at their account and like some of theirs or leave them a comment or send them a private message and say, hey, thank you so much for following me. It might take a little bit of time but I promise you it's worth it. Tip number four, we know this really. It's all about video. There's video, video, video. Have you noticed when you look down the screen about 60, 70, maybe sometimes 80% of the feed is some sort of video. Whether that's a live video, whether that's just a short little video that's on your feed or whether that's a real. You need to be thinking about video because people want to watch stuff. They're bored with pictures quite honestly. It's all right to run a carousel so there's a few things to look at but ultimately I want you to think video, video, video. Tip number six, it's all about the reels. You know, this year more than ever you need to be posting reels. So reels, check out this video that I did on reels. There will be an update video to it as well. The reels is where Instagram's at. This is where you're going to get the most bang for your buck if you like. You're going to get in front of a new audience likely. You could be found on the explore. You need to be seen by more people and eventually one of those reels is going to go viral and you can go from a handful of followers to a whole host of followers and people that really like your content. So it's really important you might have to just post a few and try a few things out. We're all doing that experiment but at the end of the day reels is where people like to hang out. There's a specific place where you can just click at the bottom of the reels tab looking for engaging, funny, interesting educational content. So get creative what could you come up with and if you'd like me to make a video on real ideas for artists I like that. A video on real ideas for artists then it's coming up because I can already feel people saying yes please, yes please. So reels, reels, reels. Tip number seven and batch as much as possible. You know at the end of the day the more you can post the more you're going to be seen. So you don't want to be thinking on a day by day basis oh it's Monday I need to post what have I got in here you want to be actually creating a plan for the month what am I going to be posting over the next month the next two months, the next three months now I'm not saying to create every post but at least make a plan of roughly what content hey this Monday I'm going to be posting that Friday I'm going to post that the weekend I'm going to post a funny reel of messes I've made in the studio whatever it's going to be stay consistent with your posting if it's every day do it every day if it's three days a week do three days a week super, super important the more that you can save time by planning ahead and batching the more sanity you will have at the end of the year I promise you So I hope you're getting a bit excited by that I hope you've got some ideas of what you're going to be doing with your Instagram strategy for this year and now let's talk about that little hot tip that I mentioned at the beginning here it is now I'm sure you're all familiar with your insights and if you're not you want to get familiar so you want to go over to your Instagram account on the main on your main profile and you could see there's a tab there or you can go top right hand corner look at insights and then you want to start checking not just your follow account and what kind of posts are getting most engagement but now you want to look for what days of the week your followers are online more or what hours of each day are they online more this is going to be different for everybody so my days of the week tend to do that but my times tend to go like that and this is because I have a mixed audience in different geographic locations then it might be the same for you so what you want to do is you want to post your content to the feed just before the most people are online so if you have a dip if you have a dip say in the middle of the day and your numbers start to go up by four o'clock and by six o'clock they've peaked don't post at six o'clock because what happens at six o'clock the numbers drop off, people drop off you want to post at four or five o'clock just as things are mounting and the most people are coming online so you want to post just before the most people are online and the second bonus tip is really you want to make sure that you've done some engagement just before you go and post, well before and after there are various different things you can do but definitely around the time that that post is going out because let's face it if you get a comment on your own account you look at it and if you're not sure who that is you're going to go and look at the profile and then you're going to say oh look I like that post, that post is really interesting and then you might leave a comment for them and the conversation ensues alright so that's a little top tip there are loads more, if you've loved top tips on Instagram or anything else to do with building an art business this is content that we share on a week in week out basis over at the Art Business Academy membership, our monthly membership program now below this video there is a link where you can get on the waiting list because we don't have the doors open all the time but we are just about to open it in the next few weeks and if you'd like to be one of the first people to find out about the Art Business Academy then you want to make sure to get on that list and get your emails before we actually open the doors so thank you so much for watching, if you've loved the content please give me a thumbs up as that helps more people see the video and look out for next weeks where I think we're talking about Pinterest alright take care, bye bye everybody