Social Media Marketing 101 for Artists and Small Creative Businesses

Jul 18, 2022Arts & Culture, Feature Story, Tips and Tricks

Sometimes it can be hard to take the first steps towards marketing yourself and your small creative business. Some measures are simple and only involve creating a social media account; others, such as building and keeping relationships, can be more challenging.

But when it comes to the social media portion of marketing, you can do a few things to make the process easier for yourself. More importantly, you’ll be able to get started with it right away.

“Why should I use social media for my business?”

Social media is most likely what your target market is paying attention to. Almost 5 billion people use social media worldwide – so if you’re not making use of free social media platforms to market your small business, you are definitely missing out on a useful information stream.

“How do I create a social media presence for my business? Where should I begin?”

There are several primary social media platforms that small businesses make use of. These are: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

Picking the right social media platform for your business to begin with might take some thinking. If your business is focused on visuals, for example, you don’t want Facebook to be your only social media account, Instagram or TikTok would be a good place to start instead.

If your business is more network or service-based, Facebook should be a primary focus because that’s what the platform is meant for. If it’s tech or writing based, Twitter will be your best option.

Once you’ve decided on which platforms, create those accounts! Start posting content and getting followers. Content-wise, start simple, post a few products or services. Don’t try to stretch yourself too thin. Focus on slowly building up your social accounts and learning what works best so you can implement those strategies.

Some of the questions which you’ll be able to answer in time are: What do your customers want to see from you? What do they expect from you? Who is your audience? These questions should be taken into consideration and constantly revisited throughout your social media journey.

Here are some resources to help you get started:

“How much should I post on social media?”

While everyone knows that regularly posting on social media as a small business is one of the ways for you to grow your business, get your products and services before more people, and engage with your audience; knowing how much to post isn’t as intuitive.

There are no official rules to how much and when you should post, but popular social media platforms have been proven to reward users who follow a set of instructions.

Posting consistently is part of those instructions, but finding the balance when you’re also dealing with user behavior, short attention spans, and fickle algorithms can get complicated pretty quickly.

And, because of this, while it’s important to post original and curated content consistently on multiple social media platforms, you’ll also need to treat them differently.

Facebook: If your account has less than 10,000 followers, the sweet spot is 5-10 posts per month. The algorithm only rewards those accounts who have more than 10,000 followers and post often.
Instagram: Only post 1-2 times per day in the feed, and you need to do it every day. Also important: you’ll need to mix up the kind of content you create as Instagram will reward users who make the most of all the features. Instagram has recently switched up its algorithm to prioritize Reels and short form video content. Here’s more info about making reels.
tweet is 20 minutes and most retweets happen within an hour of posting.
TikTok: The recommended posting for TikTok is 1-3 times a day if you’re building your following. You can increase the amount you post as you build your following, but there’s no real need to post more than 1-3 timesdaily.
Twitter: With Twitter, more is more. Post as much as you want, really. The lifecycle of a tweet is 20 minutes and most retweets happen within an hour of posting.

“What should I post on social media?”

The best things to post on social media involve authentic, original content. There are two types of content you can use to create posts and media for for your website and social media:

Curated Content – the stuff you’ve borrowed from other places and reposted with attribution
Original Content – the media and information you create and share yourself.

Words and ideas and images and videos that come directly from you are proven to be more effective in capturing your followers’ attention than media you’ve pulled from other sources. This is because original content like this is rewarded across all social media and website platforms.

Why? There’s incredible value in new information and that’s what consumers and followers seek out. This is especially true when so much of the internet is filled with generic ads, spam, and copied material.

But not everyone has the ability to constantly be coming up with new content, so using curated content to fill in the gaps between original content can be useful in moderation as well.

“I’m busy, is there a way to automate my social media marketing?”

There’s a reason why social media management is a full-time job for many people. But, if you don’t have much time to spare, you can put some handy tools to work for you. These sites can post to your social media platforms for you. So with a bit of pre-planning and preparation, you can save yourself a lot of the work.

While this is only the tip of the social media marketing iceberg, these tips will help you get started on your social media journey as a small creative business. Happy content creating!