Instagram is clearly the most influential social media platform for promoting one’s artwork and I can honestly say that I get more engagement, which turn into sales, from Instagram than any other platform. But my following and level of engagement has plateaued in recent months so it was time to come up with a strategy. My previous post discussed the importance of imagery and this one will explore positive engagement. It turns out that it’s good to talk!

It really is all about engagement. There are many accounts out there with apparently thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of followers but all may not be as it seems. It turns out that you can buy followers or even pay to get an inflated number! Of course, this means they are not real followers and therefore not real potential customers. One way to spot this is to look at the level of engagement in someone's post. Someone with over 10k followers but only getting around 100 likes and a couple of comments is clearly not looking too genuine or has a very large but disengaged (disinterested?) audience.

I have therefore learned that success on Instagram is not measured by the number of followers but more by the level of engagement. I now make a point of not only liking an image I genuinely like but also commenting back and sometimes starting a dialogue with someone. It could be about their current work, their inspiration and motivation. Anything, as long as it's meaningful. And it's working. I may only have just under 700 followers but all were organically grown and I get around 15-20% engagement if I count direct messaging. Some of my sales have come directly from Instagram too!

So, put simply, it’s good to talk! I’ve been using this strategy for about a week now and, combined with the photos of me smiling a lot, my engagement rate and number of followers has significantly increased. I’m less concerned with the number of followers as that doesn’t necessarily mean more sales. I think the number of followers is mostly a vanity measure. The engagement level, however, does tend to give an indication of success. If people are contacting me and discussing my paintings it is far more likely that they may want to buy something or, if they are an artist themselves, they may wish to collaborate on a joint article, for example.

It really is good to talk!