Creating an effective facebook page and building your following list. 

I am an artist. Two or three years ago I created a Facebook page to showcase my artwork. Through a few viral campaigns, and a heavy presence amongst a number of different facebook groups, I have built up a following over over 15,000 people. Over the next few posts I shall share my tips and tricks to get your page noticed, interact with potential customers, and build your following. In this post I'll touch on a few things, but in further posts I'll go into greater detail. Here is my page. 

Here is a snapshot of what you see when you view my art page on a laptop or desktop computer. You will see I have an eye catching cover photo, and a silly selfie for a profile picture. 

I have always approached my art business from a very personal point of view. Interaction with people is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING. 

I produce custom artwork, tattoo designs and coloring books. So, with facebook groups running into the millions, thats a heck of a lot of potential exposure. 

You'll see from my page that I post a lot. I like to take a mobile phone picture of the work I am creating, often with my hand in the picture. This is for a number of reasons:

1) Mobile phone photos of artwork can't be stolen and used.....

2) It makes people realise you are an actual person

3) High resolution scans, whilst impressive, often get lost on facebook. 

Now when I post a picture, I often incorporate a question into the post, or ask people's advice. This gets people commenting, and the facebook algorithms mean the post gets shown more. When someone comments on my picture, I ALWAYS answer them. This is so important - imagine you were offering things at a craft show, and someone came up to your stall to compliment you on your items. And you ignored them. Do you think they would buy anything from you? Of course they wouldn't. They've bothered to comment on your photo. It's only polite to respond. 

When I have posted a picture, I then share it in a specific group. I'm in hundreds of groups. Get in touch with me if you'd like to know some of the art groups on facebook - I know loads of them. 

Cover photos. 

These are more important than you think. Like a pinned post, the cover photo is the first thing people see when they visit your page. So change it regularly, then add links into the description. 

Here are some of the cover photos I have used.

Boosting posts. 

Opinion is divided on this. Occasionally I do it, but only for a few bucks. You can either choose to boost a post to be seen by friends and family of those who already like your page, or you can be specific in interests and location. It can work for harvesting likes, but I'm not sure it will result in sales or commissions. 

So there's a little starter on facebook pages. I'll do more posts about my art business in the future. In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed reading this, and please feel free to ask me any questions by replying to this post. I'd be more than happy to share my experience with you.