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Read the next post in this marketing series: Posting Your Artwork on Facebook

Original Post: Marketing Tips: Creating a Facebook Fan Page

Welcome to the first message in a new series of posts to help you with your social media marketing! Our goal is to help you get as much exposure to your art as possible and using social media is one of the most inexpensive and best ways to do it. This post will focus on setting up a Facebook Fan Page for your artwork/photos.

Do I need to be on Facebook?

The short answer is: YES! The long answer on how and why will be described in this post and several others over the next few weeks/months. Facebook.com has become one of the top websites in the world. It’s estimated that 1 in 4 hits on the Internet are happening on Facebook. With now over 550 million users and growing, being on Facebook is a must have for any artist that wants to be successful.

Is it good enough to have a personal page on Facebook?

No. Your personal Facebook profile page is for you to connect with friends and old high-school buddies. When we say you need to be on Facebook, we are talking about creating a Facebook Fan Page for your art and nothing but your art. This may be confusing to some, so let’s break it down for you. There are basically three types of entities on Facebook…

• A Personal Profile Page
• A Fan Page
• A Group Page

Profile pages are for people only, but it’s required to create a fan or group page. People “Friend Request” you and you must accept them as a friend. Profiles are limited to 5,000 friends and normally your posts are more personal to your friends who know you. Generally, your posts can only be seen by the friends you have accepted. You don’t want a bunch of strangers sending you friend requests, which is why you need a FAN page for your artwork.

Fan pages are for businesses, brands, products, public figures, artists, bands or causes. Fan pages have “Fans” that “like” your fan page. Information on fan pages is available to the general public, without becoming a fan of that site. You can have unlimited number of fans for your art/business. Fan pages also give you great statistics on your users and your page. This is what we recommend all artists have.

Group pages are for people, places and businesses with a common interest. Groups can be public or private, so only certain people can join them. For our discussion today, someone could create an “abstract art” group, and allow any abstract artists to join that group.

The purpose of this post today is to get you to create a fan page for your artwork.

How do I create a Facebook Fan Page for my art?

First you will need to join Facebook.com if you have not done so already. It’s easy and free. Once you have an account, then you need to go to the “Create a Page” section of Facebook. When you get to this page, you are given 6 choices of what type of fan page you want to create. They all have the same basic features, but the category you should select is “Artist, Band or Public Figure” and then select “Artist” from the category drop down list. Type in your name and click the “Get Started” button.

When you do this, it will create a new “Fan” page for your artwork. You will use this page to market your artwork to everyone that likes your style of art/photography.

What should I call my new art page?

While many people will just title their fan page with the artists name, we suggest you add something about art and maybe even your specialty. For example, you may name your page “Joe Blow Art” or “The Artwork of Joe Blow” or even “Joe Blow Fantasy Illustrations”. By doing this, you will increase your hits from Facebook searches. You will also be ranked higher on the Facebook search results when users are searching for art or the type of art that you specialize in.

Currently, you can change the name of your page until you have 100 fans. After this, your page name will be locked and can’t be changed.

You can also get a Facebook shortcut like “Facebook.com/ArtWanted”, but you must have at least 25 fans before you can request a custom Facebook username. When you do, go to: Facebook.com/username to reserve your custom Facebook URL.

What should I post on my fan page wall?

This is a very important question. You want to post things that your fans are going to be interested in. If you don’t, your fans will leave you (or not even join in the first place). As an artist, it goes without saying that the most important thing you post is your artwork. You can upload final artwork pieces, works-in-progress, sketches, photos of you working on your artwork, etc. You can either post a link to your artwork (for example a link to your ArtWanted.com images) or you can upload your artwork as photos via Facebook. There are pros and cons of each option, but no matter what option you choose, you must post your artwork for your fans. This is the main reasons why someone became a fan in the first place.

Besides artwork, other posts you can do on your fan page are:

• upcoming events/showings you have going on
• sketches or works in progress
• personal notes to your fans about you or your feelings about your art
• sales or promotions on your artwork
• art industry news/articles
• photos of you painting/drawing in your studio or outside
• links to your blog
• awards or recognition
• anything else your think your fans will be interested in

How often should I post on my fan page?

This depends on how much time you want to put into it. With social media, the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it. We suggest small frequent posts over huge dumps of artwork/information. For example, don’t upload 50 images in one day to Facebook. Instead, upload 1-3 images per day and space them out throughout the day. This will give you the best chance of someone seeing your artwork in their news feed. Experts say that you should post multiple times a day, but if you are just starting out (or can’t justify that much time), just post a frequently as you can.

The thing about Facebook, is that it’s a feed of information that is always growing. Most people will only check their news feed and read the most recent posts. If you don’t post often enough, many of your fans will not even see your posts/artwork.

Can you show me some examples?

To wrap up this post, we wanted to share with you a few artist fan pages, so you can see how other artists are doing this. Some of these artists are members of ArtWanted.com and others are not, but you can get a good idea on what others are doing with these links:

http://www.facebook.com/AmyLynBihrle
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Maigan-Lynn/97971927213
http://www.facebook.com/Meredith.Dittmar.Art
http://www.facebook.com/SusanFayeArt

Conclusion

Well, this is probably enough information for this first topic. We hope you have learned something new and are inspired to go create a Facebook fan page if you don’t already have one.

We have many additional topics coming up about social media marketing, so stay tuned. We welcome your comments and suggestions for future marketing tips. Thanks!

UPDATE: Read the next post in this series: Posting Your Artwork on Facebook