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Does your Facebook presence show your friends and fans that you’re going places with your art?
Here are 4 quick things you can use to improve your professional presence on Facebook.
1. Connect Your Biz Page to Your Profile
You want your friends to become fans, right? Make it easy on them! Lisa Call outlines how to show everyone you have your own art business in this article.
2. Add a Welcome Page
What do first-time visitors see when they visit your page? Is it your Wall by default? Facebook expert Mari Smith says custom Welcome (or “landing”) pages result in a 47% conversion rate! I recently added my first Welcome page, which first-time visitors see.
(If you’re already a fan, click on “Welcome” in the left sidebar to see what it looks like for you.)
I had a lot of help with this process by referring to Nithya Swaminathan’s guest post.
3. Curate Your Images
You want excellent images of your art – like Frances Vettergreen’s page – to show up in the stream at the top of your page. The more cohesive your images are, the splashier your page will look.
If you have images you don’t want to show up in your image stream, remove them by hovering over the image’s upper right corner and then clicking on the X.
4. Bonus: Recommend a Business
Social media is all about being friendly and generous. Now Facebook lets you recommend businesses in the right sidebar of business pages.
If you’re a fan of, oh, let’s say Art Biz Coach, you can add a recommendation on my business page. This is a nice thing to do for businesses that have done right by you.
Note: Facebook only allows you to write recommendations from your personal profile – not as your business page identity.
You’ll be fine-tuning your online presence in my Social Media Immersion workshops in Golden, CO and Philadelphia, PA this fall.
Get the details and sign up before early registration ends.
28 thoughts on “Fine-Tune Your Artist Presence on Facebook”
Alyson, I would love to have your opinion about personal profiles along with business pages. I currently only have a business page on facebook, but that limits my ability to interact with other pages, plus I’ve heard so many complaints about keeping them separated (posting as personal, instead of page, people friending but not becoming fans, etc.) Since facebook for me is strictly a business tool do you think it is worth it to create a personal profile to increase my ability to interact, or is that not worth the effort? I’d also love to hear from other artists about their experiences. Thanks!
I believe that it is worth the effort to have a personal page. I find more people prefer to interact as a friend vs. via the page – I have over 2000 friends and something over 1300 fans. When I suggest they will see more art if they also like my fan page, I get little response.
I post a wider range of topics on my personal page and this seems to be what people like.
I wrote an article about how I use my different social media sites here:
PS – Alyson – thanks for a link to my page again!
Thanks for your input Lisa. For me, I don’t think I would post anything on a personal profile (as far as status posts) just use it to like and interact with other art related pages and list my website and business page. Facebook is a charming time thief and I wonder if a personal profile would just complicate things or actually increase exposure and opportunities for my business page.
Casey: I think a little differently than Lisa. I enjoy FB for personal interaction with friends and family, so I’ve been unfriending lots of people that I don’t know and saving my biz interaction for my fan page. It’s just the way that I prefer to work. But I do understand Lisa’s point. Just be clear WHY you’re having the personal profile and how you’ll use it.
Casey,
I’m wondering why wouldn’t you post anything on your personal profile?
Hi Laura,
I already post regularly on my business page and since facebook for me is a business tool that is where I would want people to go to see my work. I think Alyson had a blog post not too long ago about not posting on both if you are trying to drive traffic to your business page. Though I do understand there are people that want more friends and just aren’t interested in liking a business page. Lisa Call’s reply mentioned that. Thanks for your feedback, I’m looking at all the pros and cons.
I have a personal page but have not yet activated my business page (SOON). However, I enjoy the comments re my work that I post on the personal page because of the comments,etc. Seems that gets more attention. Also, on my blogspot I added three checkmark areas for awesome, interesting,etc which gets more than people commenting.
Another thing I enjoy is the addition of a world map which tells you where in the world people are logging on and that is fascinating,,,,,
Sandra,
I would suggest you get you business page up as soon as possible. Since facebook is on a watch for personal profiles used for business and they cancel such profiles.
Also, when you create a page add someone you trust as Admin (apart from you) so even if for some reason your profile gets cancelled you will still have the business page with the other person as Admin.
Casey,
I think you”ll find SO worth it to setup a personal facebook page. You could learn a lot while strengthening ties with folks you know or used to know but don’t often see. Facebook is personal.
A small but very important addition to your list of Facebook Page improvements:
Add a link to your website in the ABOUT section. Be sure to add the “http://” before the url so that it is clickable. For example:
About
Fine Artist, landscape painter
http://BMcElhaney.com/
Brennen: Absolutely. There is a LOT that could be added to this list.
Alyson,
I’m curious about your decision to not post your newsletter articles to your blog anymore. What is that about? Is it recommended to get more subscribers? Or something else?
Lisa: It’s about a couple of things: 1) duplicating content and effort and 2) making my newsletter subscribers feel special.
As for #1, some people subscribe to both my newsletter and blog and it’s confusing when they get the same post in their inbox.
Re #2 . . . The people on my newsletter list trusted me enough to give me their email addresses and email them weekly and sometimes send reminders. Giving them content that no one else sees is the least I can do for them.
Lots of people have their blog posts set up like newsletters, but I don’t have that capability yet. If I could get all of my newsletter subscribers to subscribe to blog posts, I might reconsider. But that’s in the future.
Hi Lisa,
I was excited to read this suggestion, as my art page feels invisible. But I am unable to save Art page name to employer info 🙁
Any suggestions would be welcome. My facebook profile:
http://www.facebook.com/june.rollins
Thanks,
June
The copy and paste method in the article had more success than trying to type in the name.
Hi Lisa,
I meant to leave my art page link (below). Not sure if sharing either will give any additional info for you to offer a suggestion as to why I can’t implement your great suggestion.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/June-Rollins-ART/218855448134686
Oh-kay, I’m embarrassed. But I got it to work. I had not typed ART in caps on earlier attempts.
Maybe someone else will learn form my mistake.
Lisa, thanks for this great suggestion,
June
June: Glad you got it to work. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Thanks so much for using my page as a good example! I’m flattered…and it’s so nice to hear I’m doing something right :).
I’m with you, Alyson, about keeping my personal profile separate from my business page, but I’m finding it’s challenging. Many other artists don’t have pages or don’t use them, and my page can’t follow personal profiles. So I have friends I don’t know despite my best efforts. I do direct friend requests from non-artists (usually in response to a comment I’ve made somewhere) to my page, but they rarely “like”.
I use my page to follow other pages, in and out of the art world, so that my comments show up as “Frances Vettergreen Visual Artist”, making it easy for people to link back to me. I’ve had a slow trickle of “likes” that way & it’s picking up.
Thanks again!
Hi Frances,
Thanks for your post regarding personal vs. page. Could you clarify what you mean by “I have friends I don’t know despite my best efforts” ? Also I like the idea of liking from a business page so it links back to your business page instead of your profile, but it is also a big distraction from a page to see all of the likes. Is it possible to hide likes on a business page?
Thanks, Casey!
P.S. love your paintings!
I created a welcome page but since I don’t see it when I sign on I’m not sure if other people do either. Do they have to click the Welcome option? And thanks Brennan for the great link suggestion!
Thank you for the insight into connecting my art biz page to my profile. Such a simple addition that may prove to be very effective!
LOVE the tip about removing images from the image stream – I had no idea you could do this! (off to share your post on my page! http://www.Facebook.com/ConcertinaPress
This was super helpful. Thanks.
DeAnne: I’m glad it was helpful.
I have a profile and a business page, though I really only want FB for my art business. (I’d rather connect with friends and family via email or face to face.) I use a personal profile because my business page can’t follow individuals, and I prefer my business page because it’s easy for people to “like” it without feeling they have to become friends. Though I haven’t posted much on my personal profile yet I’m going to start using it to show people the person behind the brand ie it will be more personal than my business page but whatever I post there will reflect my brand image and values. That way I hope both profile and page will complement each other without duplicating information.
i have a note to add regarding the top row of photos on your web site. you can plan which photos you have here by paying attention to what you upload and “crossing off” the photos you don’t want to display there by clicking the x as alyson described.
if you want the photos to display properly, size your photos to 97 x 68 pixels. this will avoid the strange cropping that can be problematic. i load specifically sized photos to their own album on my fb business page and only let those teeny images display up top.
you may see this in action at my business page – /danarogersphotography
hope this is helpful. cheers, dana
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