Delivered 19th March 2013

1. Social Media
for the arts
Image c/- smashinghub.com
Kim Goodwin
Projects Manager

2. Agenda
• Why use social media to promote your art practice
• Before you start
• Social media etiquette
• What social media site to use?
– Blogs
– Facebook
– Twitter
– LinkedIn
– Google+
– Flickr
– Pinterest
– Instagram
– Video sites
• Tips for social media writing
• Measuring success
• Managing your brand online
• Intellectual Property and social media

3. Why use social media?
UNIQUE ACTIVE USERS as at Feb 2013
• Facebook 11.7 million
• YouTube 11 million
• LinkedIn 2.4 million
• Twitter 2.2 million
• Instagram 1.1 million
• Pinterest 630,000
• Blogspot 3.2 million
• Tumblr 2.8 million
• Free promotion
• Already receptive audience
• But use wisely

4. Social media isn’t
just about promotion
• But, each post you make on social media helps
increase your search engine optimisation.
• The ‘social’ in social media means you can help build
relationships with current and potential customers.
• If isn’t just about informing, it is about engaging,
web.2.0 is about interacting with others, not just
broadcasting to them.

5. Before you start
• Define your goals and objectives
– How do you want social media to support you art practice?
– What social media platforms will reach your desired
audience (link your social media strategy back to your
broader marketing strategy)
– Define measures of success
• Website traffic referral
• Sales
• Online mentions
• Ensure your goals are SMART

6. Before you start
• Research
– Familiarise yourself with various platforms
– Search for topics, people and organisations that interest
you
• What platforms do they use?
• How do they ‘speak’ on social media?
– This not only helps understand what will be successful, but
also helps generate content that you can use later.
Remember to think of social media as a conversation. You wouldn‟t
join a conversation without listening to what is being said first.

7. Your website
• Everything you do
should relate to your
website.
• You website needs to
be up to date, user
friendly and be a
source for all your
activity.
• Mortgage versus
rental.

8. Social Media Etiquette
• Respond quickly to any comments or messages you
receive,
• Retain your brand at all time, any interaction you have on
social media is a representation of your brand,
• Respect ownership of digital content,
• Don’t try and sell things all the time, you are building a
brand, not pushing product,
• Pay attention to negative comments, but don’t pick
fights,
• Engage in meaningful conversations,
• Promote others with along with yourself,

9. Social Media Etiquette
• Don’t overuse the same responses, keep your responses
personal,
• Disclose. If you are promoting yourself and your brand
(or others) make sure you disclose it,
• Keep things concise,
• Stay active, don’t just post once a week,
• Participate and cooperate, share and contribute to
conversations,
• Keep things visually appealing,
• Don’t over emphasize your praise; sharing all the
compliments you get can come off poorly.

10. Content Development
• What type of content will support the achievement of
your goals?
– Align your content with your areas of expertise and/or your
interests
– Mix things up so not to seem staid
• Create a good first impression when people visit your
page/profile. This is when they’ll decide whether to
follow you or not.
• Dip your toes in the water. Start by commenting on other
people’s posts, posting comments on blogs and forums
and answering questions on LinkedIn.

11. Blogs
• A good alternative to building your
own website
• Generally in first person narrative
• Content is short and regularly
updated
• Frequently uses lots of images
• Companies that blog have 55%
more visitors to their website
TIPS
• Update regularly (mornings are better)
• Link your blog URL on all marketing material and email signature
• Put an RSS feed on your blog – this will alert readers to new updates
• Become part of the blogging community by commenting and linking to other blogs
• Involve people – people will return more often if they can participate, e.g. quizzes and
competitions
twitterfeed.com
This tool will automatically update your Facebook and
Twitter accounts whenever you create a new blog post.

12. Search Engine Optimisation for blogs
• SEO is all about being seen on Google and other search
engines,
• Key is to use phrases that people are looking for, e.g.
‘contemporary Australian art’ or ‘modernist furniture
Brisbane’,
• To see what is being searched in your area of expertise,
sign up for GoogleAdWords and run a search,
• Look for Global Monthly Search Data – the higher the
searches the better the phrase is to use.
• For the specifics on this search for “SEO for Creative
Bloggers” on Google for a free book by Court Tuttle.

13. Facebook
• Good idea to set up a Facebook page for yourself as
an artist (those who „like‟ will be updated when you
post)
• You art practice shouldn‟t have a personal profile as it
isn‟t about a person, and Facebook can shut your
profile down if you try and sell something,
• You can only have 10,000 friends, but a page can
www.pagemodo.com have unlimited „likes,
Designs custom pages for • Facebook pages are supported by applications which
free will allow you to engage users by including galleries,
quizzes and competitions.
• Write a good biography
TIPS
• Facebook has rules around what is acceptable on the site, read their Policy page.
• If you upload images of your work be aware that the act of uploading content to Facebook,
automatically grants Facebook a license to use it. You could watermark them, with your name and
perhaps the copyright symbol or All Rights Reserved. This would not necessarily prevent the image
from being distributed but you will be identified as the copyright holder.

14. What a successful Facebook Page looks like

15. Facebook and audience reach
Facebook assumes users have limited time and tries to show you what is most
interesting. They use a program called EdgeRank.
EdgeRank looks at a number of factors to determine a posts place in the news feed:
– Likes
– Tags
– Comments
– Shares
The more of these, the higher the ranking. But they aren’t all weighted the same.
Comments are more important than likes.
• Every time you like or comment on a post your are effectively voting for it to be
seen by more people.
• But there’s more:
– The affinity Score: Not all Facebook users are equal. You are more likely to see content from
users with whom you have interacted with recently.
– Freshness counts: newer content attracts higher EdgeRank scores, this is known as decay
– Type of content matters too, weight: images and video are best, followed by status updates,
– Images with superimposed text are most likely to go viral.

16. Key to Facebook success is
ENGAGEMENT (not this one )
1. You successfully grab the audience’s attention,
2. They’re consistently interacting with you,
3. And ideally, they’re interacting with each other as
well.
Source: Dave Awl on Creativepro.com Oct 29 2012

17. Twitter
• Twitter is a microblogging service where
users post messages (tweets) to their
network of followers. Messages are
confined to 140 characters.
• Through the site’s search facility you can
also track what people are saying about you
and what they are saying about topics that
interest you.
• In addition you can use Twitter to promote
hootsuite.com
other content you‘ve created, including
Enables you to manage multiple
blog posts and interviews. social media outlets on one
• The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to platform. You can schedule Tweets
mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was to go out at a particular time and
created organically by Twitter users as a also create and save customised
way to categorize messages. Twitter searches so you see all
Tweets relating to that search.

18. Twitter and audience engagement
Unlike Facebook Twitter shows all tweets, how many people see them
depends on number of followers watching the stream at that time.
Some tips to engaging twitter followers:
• Have a call to action, (relevant for all social media tools.) Ask for
action from your followers and you’re more likely to get action.
• Hash tags increase exposure and response rates,
• Say it with pictures,
• Increase tweet frequency (engagement improves up to 20 tweets
per day, then flattens.) You can tweet more than you think,
• Keep tweets under 100 characters as this allows space for RT
commentary.
Source: Social Media Today

19. Linked In
• Sometimes called „the TIPS
professional Facebook‟, has • The way to then build your network and
nearly 200 million members profile is to join groups.
• Allows you to foster a network • The more „complete‟ your profile, the more
of contacts within your chosen likely you will appear in searches
field, undertaken by others.
• LinkedIn is more about • To maximise the relevancy of your
building an individual career LinkedIn profile you can also add other
brand, rather than marketing sources of information about you; Twitter
your practice or your products. accounts, blogs or slide share
presentations.

20. Why LinkedIn is good for artists
LinkedIn is all about:
• Highlighting the skills your have, as opposed to the
products you might sell,
• Increasingly artists are using their skills to engage in
other forms of paid employment,
• Use LinkedIn to show your suitability for creative
based jobs, e.g. writing, curating, arts administration,
festival development, fund raising, website design.

21. Google+
• Launched June 2011 Make an online gallery of
• Allows you greater control of who sees your work via Google+
information through targeted groups (known as http://artistmarketingresou
circles,) rces.com/2012/08/28/artist
• Strong focus on the sharing of media and -tip-how-to-create-Google-
multimedia, albums-of-your-art-
• While it hasn‟t received the take up of some other images/
platforms, Google + can have a strong impact for
users through linking to Google search engines and
optimising audience reach.
TIPS
• Adjust your email settings – by default Google + will
send you notifications for everything.
• Disable resharing – Google + makes it easy for YOU
to adjust who sees your material, but places no
restrictions on others sharing. If concerned about
copyright select „disable resharing‟ when posting an
image.

22. Flickr
• A way to store, sort, search and share photos
online,
• By storing photos in Flickr you have a backup
of your images that could be valuable if you
computer is damaged or stolen,
TIPS
• You can also control the licensing of your
image. You can associate a Creative Commons
license with your content if you wish, to grant
people the right to use your work under certain
circumstances,
• You can set a default level of privacy for every
photo or video you upload into Flickr and
whether or not users can comment on photos.

23. Pinterest
• Dedicated visual platform – a
virtual pinboard,
• Fastest growing social media
platform in history,
• Quickly taken up by those in
creative fields,
• Generating more revenue for www.pinwords.com
users than any other social An app that lets you instantly add captions and
media platform. text to your images.
TIPS
• Being a visual platform copyright is very important, being a new service terms
and conditions have changed fairly regularly,
• Pinterest etiquette is that you do not „spam‟ board with your product, but
intersperse with other images.

25. Video sites
• Vimeo and YouTube are great ways to share content,
• Vimeo only allows original user content, while
YouTube accepts third party content,
TIPS
• There is a difference between YouTube and Vimeo privacy settings. YouTube
videos can be 'private', but those you wish to view it would need to have a
YouTube account. In Vimeo, you can 'password protect' your videos and an
account is not required to view it, just the password.
• An extra benefit of Vimeo is the ability to download the videos. This is
optional, but you can allow users to download a copy of your video in MP4
format, which can be played directly on the computer or even on an iPod,
iPhone, and other mobile video devices.

26. Instagram
• Instagram is a mobile application TIPS
with over 50 million users and • Never use others content without
was purchased by Facebook for permission,
$1 billion in 2012, • Use relevant tags. If your image is of a
mountain use #mountain #nature or other
• Great for engaging in dialogue relevant phrases. Irrelevant tags can upset
and building relationships, as users,
well as building knowledge of • Tone down the desperation. Posting
sub-communities, practices and messages like “please follow me” on your
popular trends, own or other users work will alienate users.
Build a community through a reputation of
• Exclusively a mobile platform quality.
• Change to T&Cs January 16th
• printstagr.am for instragram prints
has seen a drop in users • instacanv.as to sell your prints from an online
(sources say between 25-50% in gallery
daily users.) • casetagram.com for iPhone cases with your
images on them
• stickygram.com for magnets
• canvaspop.com/print-instagram for wall art.

27. Social Media Writing Tips
Writing for social media is different from other forms of writing, you need to
make your point quickly and interestingly.
– Find out what content social media users want and expect and what content is
consistently popular,
– Make your headline or opening line compelling,
– Remember people tend to scan web content rather than read it so they won’t
wade through a lot of text to find the important bits.
– Don’t forget the whole point of social media is to be social so make your writing
conversational and talk as if your followers are sitting in front of you,
– Write posts with useful tips or links to interesting websites and articles but make
sure these are relevant to you and what you do,
– Don’t forget to tailor your message to each platform. Each social media site has
slightly different users and a tone that users of the platform come to expect.

28. Measuring Results
All this blogging, tweeting and posting is great but if you don’t know what it’s
doing for your business there’s little point.
What you choose to measure should relate to the goals you created in your
plan.
• How many times you’ve been mentioned on social media. You can use
Google Alerts to help measure this or Twitter has tools.
• The number of visitors to your website or blog. Google Analytics can help
you do this. It’s a good idea to also compare the number of website visits
to the number of people who have signed up to your newsletter or who
have purchased something through your site.
• Use a URL shortener such as bit.ly to help you measure which links you
post are the most popular.
• The number of Likes your Facebook posts receive. Use the Facebook
Insights functionality to check how many people are engaging with your
page.
• Check the average number of @replies per Tweet.

29. Measuring tools
kurrently.com
Find out what’s being shared on social media with Kurrently, a free,
easy-to-use, real-time search engine for results from Twitter and
Facebook.
socialmention.com
Social Mention allows you to set up social media alerts so you can find
out when you are mentioned on social media.
Google Alerts
Find out when a particular topic or term of your choosing is mentioned
on the web.
friendorfollow.com
Friend or Follow helps you improve your Twitter marketing. It tells you
who’s not following you back on Twitter and who you’re not following
back.

30. Managing your online brand
• Once you have decided to market yourself,
and your product, online you have some
responsibility to ensure that the way you
are represented suits your needs. To Me Inc.
important points to note:
– Online brand management is exactly the same
as offline brand management.
– In addition to your work you are also
advertising yourself.

31. A few free marketing ideas
• A blog is a great place to start as it is CONTENT and
FREE,
• Guest post on other blogs. These will then link back
to your own website. Art blogs and publications are
often looking for writers,
• Publish free e-books. What? Free? It’s a great way to
get your brand out there,
• Participate in online forums.
Source: http://www.finearttips.com/

32. Personal Branding
Everyone has a personal brand because that’s just a label
we give the collection of assumptions and expectations
people have about you – whether they’ve personally met
you or not. Hopefully their preconceptions are original and
accurate, but they always exist.
• Personal branding is the just the management of those
expectations and assumptions.
• Every post, comment, share or like you make on social
media, not to mention your profiles on every site you
use, are communicating to others your brand.

33. Intellectual Property
and Social Media
What should you do if you want to stop others
from posting your copyrighted material:
– Include a copyright statement on all your images posted to
social media and all your web pages,
– Use only smaller, low resolution images (72dpi),
– There are programs that reduce the ability to download or
right-click (e.g. wordpress plug in),
– Be vigilant in monitoring social media and contacting those
who post or copy your images,
– Read all website terms and conditions very carefully as
some sites claim copyright of works published on their site.

34. Watermark or not?
• Watermarks can impede the image. Disrupting the
image isn’t necessarily supporting your brand,
• Watermarking implies you see viewers as potential
thieves (as opposed to advocates and customers),
• Watermarks discourage sharing. This may be what you
want, but if so why are you on social media?
• Watermarks can be removed via photoshop.
But…
A signature style watermark plays an important marketing
role if your viewers share appropriately.
Source: Finearttips.com

35. Intellectual Property
and Social Media
What if you want to use an image you find on the
Internet?
– To comply with copyright law you should seek permission
from the copyright holder.
– Many sites, such as Flickr, have provisions to contact the
image owner and request permission. Other sites, like
Pinterest, will retain links to the original owner’s website if
the image has been repined.
– If in doubt, always contact the image owner before using
an image.

36. Intellectual Property
and Social Media
Moral Rights and Social Media
• Moral rights are also a consideration in the world of
social media. Simply, moral rights are the right of
creators to be identified as the author of their work,
regardless of who owns the physical manifestation of
the work.
• To ensure you comply with moral rights:
– Accurately identify the artist if you use, share or post any
works on social media,
– If you do want to use a work, get the author’s consent.

37. Keep in touch
Level 1 43 – 51 Cowper Wharf Rd, Woolloomooloo
Post PO Box 60, Potts Point, NSW 1335
Telephone (02) 9368 1900
Email admin@visualarts.net.au
Online visualarts.net.au, arina.org.au
facebook.com/home.php#!/NAVA.VisualArt
twitter.com/#!/NAVAvisualarts
pinterest.com/navavisualarts
youtube.com/user/NAVAartistcareer