Social Media for Fine Art Photographers
OK, you have uploaded your best work to your favorite Print on Demand site and are sitting waiting for sales – where are they? How long do you have to wait? I’ve been through those anxious days and although I am far from satisfied in my results, I am starting to see a little progress. My latest sale came last week with a framed 10 x 7.5 inch print of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington DC:
I’m following a three track attack on the problem of getting visitors and buyers to my artwork. Firstly, I am going through my entire portfolio (backwards) and highlighting images that I think would look good on a wall. Often I reprocess the image – partly because I am better at that now (and Lightroom has more tools) and partly because the selling images on FAA tend to be brighter and more saturated. I select images by adding them to a collection to simplify the process and then every day or so I go to the collection and export the latest images ready for upload.
I noticed that one of the artists I follow on FAA, Debra and Dave Vanderlaan, seem to add at least five new images each day. Goodness knows how they have created so many images (they are at 10,600), but they always seem to have more bright and happy images to upload. Their pricing seems a little lower than mine, they have their own website that they mention in each upload (which, to be honest is the sort of thing in vogue 15 years ago), but on their Facebook page they report sales and hardly a day goes by without some substantial sale of a print. It is interesting (if you are on Facebook) to track their sales to see the sorts of subjects they cover.
So track one for me is to add 5 or 10 new images to FAA each day. I have almost 1300 now, so progress is being made. I will double check my pricing against other sellers and report back if I make any changes.
Track two has been to take part in internal promotions on the site. I talked about this before, and although I am not as active, I still enter images into contests and comment on the images of others.
Track Three – the main subject today – is the external promotion of my images. I have a couple of pages on Facebook – one is a personal page, the other is BackyardStockPhotos where posts about stock photography appear. This is aimed mainly at photographers trying to improve in the world of stock photography. I had a dormant Facebook page called Backyard Image Photography and I have given that new life and intend to use that to try to appeal to people more interested in looking at (and perhaps buying) my better images. I first added some new images to the page, spruced it up, and then started inviting my existing contacts to visit, like and hopefully follow the page. Each post is intended to be more than just a photo – I wanted to talk more about the image and perhaps what I was trying to achieve. I also intend to try to get more conversations going around the images as I move forward.
I then started to add things to my Instagram page, which I have used from time to time, but found it too complex to put images on from my computer. But a lot of people look at Instagram and so I don’t want to miss out there.
Finally, I added images to my LinkedIn page. I have a lot of technology contacts and perhaps someone has an office to decorate (when we go back to offices!). Although most of the posts I see in the feed are technology or PR, a few people have commented that they like to see something that is more interesting and artistic and so that gave me a warm feeling that I might be doing something right!
But I quickly ran up against an issue – how to get all these posts (in the correct format) onto these sites? I read a bit about options, but came across Buffer, which seems to do what I need. There is a free trial, but the main package that would fit my needs is the Pro package at $15 a month (cheaper with an annual package). I don’t like spending money, but without something to manage these posts, I would never do it. So I am signed up there. I can enter the image I want to post and the text to go with it, and then can customize that to fit the needs of each site, adding tags (in a comment) to Instagram), shortening for Twitter and clean for LinkedIn. I’m not sure yet about including a link back to Fine Art America – for now, I don’t. Buffer then schedules the posts – for a specific day and time – and you can create a full calendar of posts when you have some spare time and they will be posted at the designated time.
I also have some analytics that I can check for each channel and each post as seen above.
I’m going to add Pinterest next and see if there are any other routes to market that seem worthwhile.
So if you feel like “liking” or following my facebook page, please do so. As you can see, you can also check me out on Instagram and Linkedin as well – I’ll be all over the place. As usual, I will report on progress and if you have any comments or ideas about how to improve this, please let me know!
Thanks Steve, interesting post. How do you post to Instagram from your computer?
That was the issue (apart from time and effort). I used to use a LR plugin called InstagramLR I think, but this no longer works and the author does not seem able to fix it. Buffer overcomes that because it appears to use the Instagram API because it gets comments back as well. I think I can reply to comments from Buffer as well.
How often do you post on Twitter? I use a product called OneUp that let’s me repeat daily if I want to, but I am looking at Buffer and Zoho Social.
I don’t directly tweet, but every time I add an image to FAA it sends a tweet. Same with posts to this site. The ones I am adding are the posts that I now use Buffer for. I just added Pinterest and I was able to quickly repost my ones that went to Facebook to Pinterest with little extra work.
Thanks for this week’s blog. Very interesting as always! I post to Instagram from my laptop using a programme called Planoly (free version). You add the image to Planoly, adding any narrative and hashtags. I keep hashtags on a word doc ready to copy and paste. Save that. Next I open Planoly on my phone and post from there to Instagram. Next I go into Instagram and finish posting. It sounds a bit of a faff and the first few times it is. However, like anything else it becomes very quick once you start doing it regularly. If you want more details, just let me know.
Thanks Loren – it does sound like a faff a bit! If it was just Instagram I was posting to, it would be worth investigating, but with five social media sites now, it is better to pay for Buffer and avoid all those complexities. I can add those tags in the comment field and I did create a word document with the tags I tend to use as well.
Steve
I am not sure about promoting images on Facebook for fine art selling. Unless you have a budget for advertising on Facebook and targeting the right people, the terrible algorithm lets your post be seen by a handful of people only. I would rather use LinkedIn because when people like or engage with your post, other people in their network will be able to see your post as well, just like the old Facebook days. However, it’s worth trying all platforms and see what’s working. All the best.
I’m very new to this Mohammed but by coincidence I’m talking to someone later today about facebook advertising. I want to find out how much it would cost to target ads to particular post codes. During lockdown I’ve been only taking local views so I’d like to find out if I can generate interest in my prints locally. This would seem to have a double benefit if I can promote my photography services at the same time.
It would be interesting to see how the form of advertising goes, Loren. I have some local prints of WVU that I am planning to mention in various Facebook groups that are dedicated to this area – the sort of groups formed of people who grew up in an area, for instance. Just advertising to those would be intriguing. And, Mohammed – you are right about the poor reach of posts. But I do see some of the artists with prints on FAA that have very active pages with thousands of followers and quite active comment sections. Now whether anyone buys a print, is another question!
Steve
From my experience on LinkedIn, I found that people showed interest in good photographs and the engagement was good, with some posts reaching greater levels of engagement and views. In my opinion, it’s far better than Facebook, albeit you need to have a sizeable network. I haven’t tried promoting fine art prints though. May be it could be a good idea to try anyways.
Yes, I have over 750 contacts so I might get some interest from someone!
Hi Steven. Interesting post, as usual. You do not comment, so I think you do not know Facebook Business Suite. It allows you to manage your Facebook pages (not your personal one) along with the Instagram profile that you have linked to them. In my case, in addition to my personal Facebook, I have two Facebook pages, one for landscape photography and another one for stock photography, each one linked to two Instagram profiles. It was a qualitative advance to know the possibility of programming a single post for one of my pages together with its corresponding Instagram profile. This causes me to use part of my Sunday to schedule the weekly posts of four profiles at once. You also have content statistics. I also use the weekly post schedule on Twitter, using a similar text to that of the other profiles. Unfortunately LinkdIn does not have this possibility, although there are external payment options for it. A few days ago I created a Facebook store to test the direct sale of prints of my photographs, also doing a paid promotion of a post informing of its opening. In my case, a large part of the people who like my profiles are photographers, so I really don’t think they have an excessive interest in buying my photos, both directly and through print on demand websites. I’m thinking about the way to promote my images in sectors such as galleries, decoration or interior design. Any experience with it? Greetings!
You are right – I didn’t investigate the Facebook business suite, although I don’t think it would help with putting posts on LinkedIn and Pinterest, which was part of my plan. I totally agree that we need to move beyond attracting other photographers, who won’t buy prints, and try to find buyers of artwork, or buyers for commercial properties. I read a different article about a photographer who did try to do that, although it wasn’t that clear how he did it: https://fstoppers.com/business/how-make-60000-one-year-selling-fine-art-photographs-213373. He does expand on his ideas in the comment area by the way. I’m open to any and all ideas about how to find these elusive buyers!
Steve
I knew Matias’s works, but not his story. Thanks for the link, I have seen some of his videos, including a TEDx talk and I find a very interesting point of view. I think he and I have a detail in common, the way to face an element before pressing the shooter, a bit spiritual, meditative or sensitive. The truth is that it is a radical change, to think about selling some of our photographs on Print On Demand websites for a few dollars to do it as pieces of art almost by commission for thousands. I keep researching on it
Yes, there is a big choice – is it 100 perfectly created images that you sell and probably fulfil yourself, or go for 1000’s but make less on them. I think the easier choice is the latter, the more artistic and possibly more financially beneficial is the former. By the way, your work is great – very moody and artistic. Not an over-saturated bright image to be found!