How to grow a social presence Pt.1

Now t

hat we have our new business accounts, that is if you did last week's homework, on the world's largest art-selling platforms- Facebook and In

stagram (a.k.a Meta). Tonight we'll discuss a "lite" overview on how we can utilize them, and start gaining attention. Next, after this week, we'll get into a deep dive into attention and how incredibly important it is. But for now, let's check out our shiny new business pages.

First take all the metrics, and insights and throw them out the window. They're useless and we don't need them. What we do need to know are the 3 basic components and how they can work together. Learning these three elements and how people view them, will help us understand the attention problems we might have.

First.. A History Lesson.

Meta, is technically three social media platforms in one. Instagram at one point was Facebook's major competitor so Facebook bought Instagram and became Meta. Later meta, tried buying their next competitor, Snapchat. But Snapchat was like "Naw, I'm good". So Meta copied Snapchat entirely and created Facebook and Instagram stories. Later, the same thing happened to TikTok and now we have Facebook and Instagram reels as a result of meta-copying TikTok.

So, the feed is the main element of meta, where we scroll and look at cats and vacation photos.

Stories are those bubbles up along the top, they're mainly videos but also still images, that last for 24hrs then disappear.

Reels are 30-to 90-second videos, the same format as TikTok.

Three social media platforms in one. But for now, let's focus on Instagram because is the most important one to have.

Let us imagine a house with 3 rooms. One room is named the Feed, the other is named Reels and the last room is named Stories. What we don't know is that certain people go on Instagram and only hang out in certain rooms at a time, or only hang out in one room and one room only. So in other words, some people only use Instagram to watch the reels. Others might hop on and check the stories, and then bounce. Some scroll the feed all day then go to bed and watch reels all night. However it goes, imagine if your art is only hung on the walls in the feed room, and the feed room only. How many people hang out in the feed room? Who is popping in, looking around then leaving for the reels room? See what I'm getting at? With three social platforms in one, it would be smart to use all three and cover all your bases, so your art can be seen in all three rooms by all the different kinds of social media consumers.

Example time.

Say you posted an advertisement for your big gallery opening in just the feed room, around noon. Do you think people scrolling through the feed around 2 p.m. are going to see it? A good chance they won't. But if you posted at

noon, and made a story post, that will be up for 24 hours, it can help direct traffic to your feed post for those who want to learn more.

The same goes for reels. Make a reel that advertises your gallery opening, people will go check your page, and they see your story ring is red, ( pink or whatever), now they are interested and want to see your story, and bam there's more advertising for your opening. However you choose to do it, just remember that by favoring one room over the other you're missing out on so many potential eyes on your art. This doesn't mean you have to make a reel to go with all your posts, but doing 1 to 2 a week would be ideal. Then later down the road, you can re-post those reels again, and we will get into more Instagram reels later on. As for now, it is important to understand how the moving parts of Instagram work and how people interact with them, so we can max out our social media presence and gain some attention.

So when planning out our week of posts, please don't worry about hashtags, and metrics, just worry about consistency, and how you can fill your three rooms with your art for all to see.

Thanks for reading and many more blog posts to help you navigate the scary and intimidating world of social media are on the

way. We are slowly heading towards the most important fundamentals of owning an art business, but again we need to clarify what is needed of us before we start taking on heavier material.

Till next time!!

Homework!!

Yes, we are back with more homework, and if you haven't already guessed, its going to be about posting on social media!

For this weeks homework (and yes I'll be checking) you must make:

1 feed post

1 story post

1 reel post

Each one must be about introducing yourself as an artist. How ever you want to do it, just introduce yourself, then send me some screen shots!