Ever since the Instagram application has launched, it has received love and support from people in abundance. In fact, today this application has millions of downloads. Hence, every business model considers it as a powerful tool for increasing their visibility and thus the sales of their products or services. Thus, the field of art too is no exception. However, there are many contemporary artists who are completely oblivious and unacquainted with the social media sites like these.
Therefore, in this blog post, we will calm all your inquisitions pertaining to the hashtags on Instagram. Take a look.
- Hashtag-
The symbol ‘#’ when precedes a word or phrase becomes a hashtag. There are also referred to as tags. One can use a group of words without any space or a just a word in a hashtag. Moreover, Capital letters can be used to make it easier for the people to read. Not just this hashtags can also contain an emoji or numbers or a sign. A hashtag is primarily a keyword.
- How they work-
Anyone who clicks on a particular hashtag says ‘painting for sale’ (#paintingforsale) will be able to see all the posts under that hashtag. Hence, if an artist uses the most appropriate and the most searched hashtags for his or her post, he would be able to reach the ones who are searching for paintings that are on sale. Moreover, this also helps them in reaching the target audience. In fact, the use of right hashtags can actually increase the sale of your paintings as that would help you in coming in the eyes of those who are genuinely interested in making a purchase.
- Ideal number-
Though Instagram allows one to put up to thirty hashtags, it is not mandatory to bombard your post with so many hashtags every time. Many experts suggest that two hashtags should be used and others suggest using five to ten. It is advisable to check both these ways of reaching your target audience. Contemporary artists can try these on a weekly basis and can check the results thereafter.
If one wants to include many hashtags and still don’t want to make the caption look too crowded, they can put them in a separate comment. Apart from this, you can also use hashtags in between the caption, wherever it seems to be fitting.
- Best hashtags for contemporary artists-
Hashtags can be used by anyone, however, if one will use them appropriately according to the post then it will increase the sales more. While deciding the hashtags, you should search the most famous hashtagsfor illustriouscontemporary artists etc. on the browser. You can also quickly check how many posts have been posted under that hashtag.#watercolor, #contemporarypaintings, #paintingsforsale #affordableart etc. The quickest way to check this is to start typing the hashtag in the search option and see tags. It not only will show the hashtag which you have typed but also others related to it. Apart from this, instead of typing the whole hashtag you should wait for Instagram to recognize it. This way you would be able to see other hashtags too. Besides this, it will also show the total number of times this hashtag has been used.
However, besides posting your post under famous hashtags, you should also use hashtags which are less popular but are still relevant. This will save your post from getting lost with other posts under that hashtag.
- The right time to make your own hashtag-
One can create his own hashtag whenever he wants to. However, the challenge is in popularizing that hashtag.
One creates a hashtag either to get the pictures from different accounts of the same event at one place or to give a particular hashtag to all of his creations. For popularizing it one can create a campaign or competition. People will then use it in their post if they will be participating in your campaign. For instance, you can create a hashtag #paintingsgiveaway and ask people to tag three other persons in the comments then post it on their timeline. Thereafter, they will tell you why they should be given away this painting. Another example of a good competition can be to ask artists to tag you in their creations to get featured on your timeline. Ask them to use a hashtag that you have created specifically for this purpose. This not only will help you in promoting yourself but also in promoting fellow emerging artists.
In a nutshell, there is no denial to the fact that the presence of every artist on social media has become imperative. Hence, having adequate knowledge of hashtags is quintessential. So, be mindful of the aforementioned points and see your art sales multiplying.
