But first, what is the value of Facebook for artists? Why join, especially if you have hesitations about using this social media platform? Although there are aspects of Facebook you may resist, in fact it is a very powerful tool for promoting your work and allowing others in on your process and ideas. 

This is because Facebook offers us as artists a free and easy to maintain way to show our artwork plus any other information we would like our collectors and followers to know. Once you get the hang of it, uploading photos of recent work, your studio, or sources of inspiration takes very little time. Your Facebook page can function like an up to the minute, easy to maintain, and informative website. You can include a bio, contact information, and photo descriptions, and if you choose public settings anyone to find your page on a search engine. 

“Facebook offers us as artists a free and easy to maintain way to show our artwork…”

Depending on your settings, your images on Facebook can be completely accessible to the general public, and there are obvious advantages to that for self-promotion. However, that is also the reason many people shy away from using this platform. The public aspect of it can be off-putting. So how can you use Facebook and not feel overly exposed online?

Basic Facebook information: 

To set up an account, go to facebook.com, click on Create New Account, and enter the requested information into the fields under the "Sign Up" heading on the page. Facebook asks for your full name, e-mail address, a preferred password, your gender and your birthday. You can choose to keep at least some of this information private to your audience.

In the introduction to Facebook, above, “page” is used in a generic way for your account, but Facebook actually distinguishes between personal accounts (called Profiles) and what they term “Pages”. Pages are used by businesses and personal brands—for example, by artists who want to promote their work, and are open to the public. Profile accounts allow you to set your privacy settings to be as open or as restrictive as you wish. 

Once you have set up a Profile account you can go to facebook.com/pages/create to set up a business page for your art. You can then decide whether to only your business page, only your profile page, or both, to promote your work. 

Pages are always public, since they are intended for promotion of products and services. You will have a unique URL for a Page, which is searchable just like a website. Instead of Friends, Pages have Followers (people who “like” your page.) It’s good to attract Followers because they will be more likely to see your posts on their home page. 

Knowing that the Page is public means you probably won’t use it for more personal aspects of your life. But for either your Profile or your Page, some selected personal content does allow people interested in your art to see you as a fellow human, and that can be a good thing. The occasional pet photo, landscape shot, or other glimpse of your life can be good. Some artists are very open in what they share, though. Our lives and art are often very integrated.  But it’s all up to you and under your control. 

An example of a Facebook Page is this from the Dixon Studio Tour: 

Profile accounts: Your Profile is accessed by what Facebook calls Friends or by the general public, depending on your privacy settings. Friends require approval—you will receive a request if someone is seeking you out, which you can either approve or not, or you can initiate the request. Friends will see your posts on their own home page, where all the posts of their Friends are displayed (you will see your own Friends’ posts there, and they see yours.) If you select a public setting for your Profile, anyone can see it, or you can choose a different level of privacy depending on what you post there. Friends, though, are the people who are likely to see your posts when visiting their home page. So, accepting Friends –even people you don’t actually know, but who are interested in your work—is a good thing. (If you change your mind about a Friend, you can easily “unfriend” them with the click of a button.)

“Friends” can comment on your posts or signal their approval in other ways, and also share your posts with their own Friends, depending on the privacy settings you put into place. There are other details to learn about how to use and manage your Profile, but it is a fairly intuitive process once you get started. 

Posting: Putting photos and text on Facebook is easy. You can see a box on the right in the photo above inviting the user to create a post, and you will have the same thing on your own Page and Profile. If you want to include a photo just click the photo icon—you can then upload a photo file from your computer or from your photo app. You can post as many photos as you want at a time and add captions and information also. Your posts appear both on the location where you put them (on someone else’s Page or Profile, or your own) as well as on the home page that everyone sees. Again, you can regulate the privacy settings of your posts. 

Spreading the word: Once you have a presence on Facebook, you will need to spread the word about it if it’s going to be useful promotion. —that means inviting Friends and Followers, posting about your work and sharing your posts with others, putting your URL on business cards, and also engaging with others on Facebook by commenting and reacting to what they post. It doesn’t do much good to simply set up a page and then expect people to find you. Just as with a website, that’s only the first step. 

Other features: Besides posting and sharing posts, you can also use Facebook to explore other features like private messaging, temporary Stories, video chats, and special interest groups. Any of these may turn out to be useful to you in promoting your work, but it's not necessary to understand them to get started with the basics. 

This should be enough to get started, but for more information you can go to www.facebook.com and search for the topic you need to know more about. 

Please feel free to send any other tips or tricks you have to make Facebook easier to use & understand, we hope to build & improve on these every year!