In today’s fast-paced social media-driven world, it is essential that you continually engage with followers on any variety of social media platforms.  Not only to put yourself and your work out there, which you should be doing already as an artist but to truly help foster a passionate community of art and artist that you want to see come to fruition around you.  Here are five quick tips to keep in mind, so that the community you build around yourself and your art is engaged and excited about the work you are producing.

1- Find Your Core Audience

There is such a variety of social media platforms now with new ones catching on seemingly daily.  It is imperative to latch on to the select few that are going to show off your work in the best light and that have active users who want to engage with others in their creative spaces.  I’m not just talking about followers in general but finding people who really love and support the artist they follow.   

Diligently research each platform you come across and look up people you admire in your creative discipline to see how engaged their followers are.  This will help you gauge if that platform is right for you.  Sites like Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Behance, Deviantart, and are all great jumping-off points but there are handfuls of others that work in just the same way for sharing work and engaging with followers.   Each has different features and tools you can use to make sure that you are focusing on the ones that will help you actively directly reach your core audience and fans.

2- Be Active in the Online Community

Too often we passively stand on the sidelines watching what’s going on in the community but never getting involved or just ‘liking’ things passively.  Take the time to comment and share other artists’ posts and works that resonate with you and that you think will resonate with your followers.  This type of behavior with not only help you continue to be active and present in the online community, but hopefully some of your own works will resonate in that same way with other artists, and they will help you spread the word about your work and potential upcoming events you are involved with.

I know that this one might be the biggest no brainer of them all, but I feel like it needs to be said.  Too often I see artist accounts dormant for months on end, and then they wonder why nobody from the community is engaging with their posts when they finally emerge from their creative cave with finished work.  You don’t have to share your whole process or even a small part.  But showing a close-up of one section of a painting before its finished, or brush strokes you are practicing on a blank canvas, or even sharing what your workspace looks like after a particularly vicious creative outburst can engage followers into wondering what the outcome might be and eagerly anticipating when your next show or sale is going to be.

This might be the easiest or hardest tip to follow them all depending on who you are.  It is so easy to be fake online or to try and make yourself seem larger than life.  Please refrain from acting in this way.  Not only is it pretty see through to your followers, but it will dim down all the credibility and good juju you have built up over time being an active part of your creative community.  If you have nonstop work to share, share it!  But conversely, if you have a terrible creative block, let your followers know that too.  If you have kept in mind the tips previously mentioned, hopefully, your followers will help lift you up, suggest ways to break out of your creative rut, and encourage you to keep going because they do in fact enjoy the things you share with them.   

Being an artist is hard, but with the advent of social media, there are now more ways than ever to get in contact with and show your art to people who will like it.  Hopefully, some of these tips will help you out when it comes to building a following and engaging with that following to cultivate a strong online creative community.