Can social media help me develop as an artist?

Emma Connolly is an artist based in Wivenhoe, Essex. Her website(www.emmaconnollyart.com) includes Bio and Artist statement telling us about her practice including art education and her art business. Working in paint or mono screen printing, her website above shows how eye-catching her web-site is and the images draw me in. She states that ‘During 2022, I have sold work across the world to 14 different countries as well as being included in permanent museum collections from the UK, to China and USA.’

Connolly is  a member of People of Print Ltd a company promoting artists and designers. Since 2008,they made over 12,000 posts on Instagram and have 222k followers generating much publicity for artists such as Connolly. Perhaps being part of other business models eg online gallery saatchiart.com, gives weight to an artist’s own business?

Connolly has 19.8k IG followers alone and she has made 891 posts and uses reels which get thousands of views. Her last reel on Friday17th March 2023 had 3983 views, 391 ‘likes’ and 7 comments (approximately 10% likes to views).

ruth_redgrave_art is my professional IG account which I use to share my ongoing work and exhibitions I have seen.  I now realise I can get analysis about clicks and ‘likes’ and other data  such as  viewership and interaction. I have 452 followers (and I follow 846). I have made 116 posts about my own art, exhibitions and related content. I do not post about my personal life but some artist do mix this up as a marketing tool. Between 28th March and 3rd April this year I reached 216 accounts and engaged with 64. The reached audience tended to be in Woodbridge, London and Ipswich, and 83% were from the UK.  68% are female and 27.8% between the ages of 55-64 yrs. My posts reached mainly followers (about 75%) and the one reel was liked by 20 with no comments. Before ‘reels’ existed on Instagram, I had posted 4 short videos which had between 59 and 134 views.

As a comparison, in my next blog I will look at an artist, Emma Connolly who has much stronger presence on Instagram.