6 Degrees of Instagram

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It’s been four years since Instagram changed the way mobile users share and promote their businesses and artwork. Since its inception, Instagram has helped over 1 billion users share their passions with one another, many of whom are artists. What is Instagram? Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. Many web hosting services also allow you to post an Instagram Feed onto your website, which is a simple way to update people on your recent events. It is easy to become overwhelmed by all of the new and trendy social media websites that continue to pop-up. The increasing need to stay relevant in today’s market can lead to many artists giving up on social media marketing. Instagram can fix that! Here’s how:

The beauty of Instagram is you can easily update all of your social media outlets at once! Every time you upload a photo, websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr can be updated at the same time with the simple push of a button. The integration of hash-tag key words can also help people find your work. Popular hash-tags for caricaturists are, #caricature #caricatures #illustration #drawing and #art , which carry over to the other social media sites as well. Continually sharing your art with hash-tags can help you become more visible and desirable to today’s evolving market. Two individuals that are a shining example of how well Instagram works are Nick Mitchell (@nickmitchellhatesyou) and Sean Gardner (@seangardnerisawesome), the masterminds behind Zombie Caricatures. Between their individual artist pages and their business page, they have over 24,000 followers! I conducted an interview with Sean and Nick regarding their experiences with Instagram and here’s what they had to say:

How did Instagram change the way you promote your business?
Instagram has the amazing ability to make the art world a much smaller place. Instagram gives you the ability to reach out and be seen on a different social media platform and to potentially connect with a different audience then other platforms. It differs from other platforms in that it’s essentially a picture based app which is great for artists like us who are very visually based and feel that writing long descriptions can sometimes be daunting. This makes for a great platform to display your portfolio for everyone to see that is easy to navigate, communicate with your audience and best of all… it’s free! We saw the potential in this platform and created our @ZombieCaricatures profile to help our business expand by not only using it as a way to exhibit our artwork on a daily basis, but to also share with our audience what events we will be attending, contests we are hosting, giveaways and products we are offering. It’s another great way that our fans can follow us and see what disgusting zombies we came up with next.

What are some tips you have for artists joining Instagram to promote their craft and business?
Treat Instagram as your portfolio, only post artwork that you are proud of. A good way of doing this is to periodically go through your posts and delete the ones that are weak. Post often! Keep your page exciting and new for your followers. Limit the amount of posts you make that don’t apply to your art. There are only so many photos anyone can take of your sloppy dog(s), lumpy headed baby or care-free meal (#foodporn) you’ve enjoyed before your audience loses interest in you…or worse, your art. Another key ingredient would be to follow other artists that inspire you. Like their photos. Comment on their work. This will not only help you be inspired, but get you noticed. Instagram is a community. Some of those artists that inspire you will follow you back, and if you’re lucky they might give you a shout-out which will help you gain new followers and broaden your clientele. Hashtags can work well on three levels. They can help people find you or your business (i.e. #seangardner #nickmitchell #zombiecaricature, etc.) They are also great to help new audiences find your work through general searches (i.e. #caricature #zombie #art #illustration, etc.) Having popular hashtags such as #fun #photooftheday #girl will help you reach an even more general audience.

Creating that network is very important and will help your business grow. There have been so many times where people would come up to our stand and get drawn because they follow us on Instagram and love what we do.

Elaborate on a situation where Instagram helped give you more business.
With every new caricature we draw, then post on Instagram, it stirs up new interest in people wanting to be drawn themselves. Especially if the client posts the drawing on their page, tags @zombiecaricatures or hashtags us in their post. This will give you new followers and more interest, resulting in more business and opportunities! One of the newest things we’ve been playing around with on Instagram are contests. We just recently had a giveaway with our new book “Zombie Caricatures: Infections and Exaggerations.” In order for them to enter the contest they had to follow us, hashtag #zcbookgiveaway, and repost the image we used for the contest (tip: keep it really simple, don’t make people go to a website, or give people too much to text.) The results were fantastic! We gained a ton of new followers, got the word out about our book and made someone very happy by winning a new copy of our book. You have to give in order to receive. It’s a very powerful marketing tool.


Nolan Harris is the current ISCA Vice-President and co-owner of Over the Line Art. Check out his art at www.nolanharrisart.com

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