Fairs
Your Guide to Social Media When Exhibiting at Affordable Art Fair
The way you promote your gallery before, during and after you exhibit at an Affordable Art Fair can have a huge impact on your overall success. Learn all about how to up your social media game at your next fair.
Aminah Cohen-Shah
Friday 6 January, 2023
With the ever-evolving tips and tricks involved in running a successful social media account, it’s not always easy to maintain growth and keep followers interested. Your next Affordable Art Fair offers the perfect opportunity to increase your followers and engagement. With visual stimulation, smiling faces, immersive experiences and your stand displaying beautiful works, you’re surrounded by endless potential engaging content options.
Find out how to utilise the before, during and after of your next Affordable Art Fair to step up your social media presence.
Before the fair
The period leading up to an Affordable Art Fair affords you the chance to get ahead with your social media planning. Ideas can percolate, surface and help you to win the social media game, rather than just play it.
It’s all in the planning
Preparation is key. A content plan takes the pressure off producing consistent content or forcing ideas for posts on the spot just to fill a void. Build this plan throughout the year. It might be weekly, it might be monthly; whichever suits you and your team best. Be sure to include all your ideas to engage and grow your followers.
Luckily for avid social media users, it’s now possible to schedule posts well into the future. Social scheduling platforms are important and helpful tools. Think about what you want to say and when you want to say it. Once your post is scheduled, you won’t have to give it a second’s thought, which means more time to spend chatting with clients and collectors.
Get followers excited for their visit with a countdown post, just like this video from Affordable Art Fair UK (@affordableartfairuk) on the run up to their Battersea edition.
Promoting your gallery
When it comes to posting about your complimentary tickets, it’s important to target your most engaged followers.
Rather than blanket posting the code, asking your followers to DM or email you for more information will ensure you are able to gauge their interest in what you’re offering at the Affordable Art Fair. Remember, it’s great to get your tickets used up, but you also want to get the right collectors through the door. If, after you’ve shouted about it online, one of your followers gets in contact about your complimentary tickets, then that’s the first encouraging sign that they’re interested in what your gallery has to offer.
The Affordable Art Fair team will provide a range of branded graphics to share to your grids and stories to announce that you’ll be exhibiting with us. Do make use of these as they’re an easy, visually engaging way to attract new and regular customers. Take a look at some story post examples from Melbourne and Hamburg 2022.
At the Fair
Use your time at the Affordable Art Fair to drive active interest in your brand by engaging with the Affordable Art Fair social accounts and other exhibiting galleries. By posting consistently, you’ll keep the ever-elusive algorithm happy and ensure you’re at the forefront of your follower’s minds.
Behind the scenes
Giving your followers a behind the scenes glimpse of what you’re getting up to can make them feel involved in your brand. Take some snaps of your set up process and post them to your Instagram stories so customers can know what to expect when they visit your stand.
Community feel
To give your content a wider reach with minimal effort, make sure to tag other relevant accounts. If you’re posting work by a particular artist, tagging them can give you an automatic reshare opportunity, alerting their followers to the fact that they can purchase the artist’s work directly from you.
Increase your visibility by tagging the Affordable Art Fair account where you are exhibiting, or @affordableartfairexhibitors. We’ll be posting throughout the day and aim to share as much as we can from our exhibitors.
Try a ‘Meet the…’ post to get your followers feeling part of your brand’s community.
Think about photography
If you can, use professional photography where possible. As images, particularly on Instagram, become more and more high-quality, it’s important to make sure your photos stand out. If enlisting the help of a professional isn’t an option, utilise bright lighting to your advantage to capture the detail in the artworks you’re showcasing.
Static or video?
Don’t forget – it’s not just about photos! Social platforms are always rolling out new features and it’s well worth giving these a try. Whether you want to create some engaging stories, or have a go at a reel, it’s always a good idea to harness the power that video content has as Instagram shifts more towards moving imagery.
Reels are now Instagram’s preferred type of post, ensuring those engaging with video content get more visibility and engagement than static posts.
How to create an Instagram reel:
- Tap the plus icon at the top of your page and select ‘reel.’
- Record or upload your video clip.
- Edit the reel – you can add audio, adjust the speed, trim the length.
- Add any relevant exhibitor assets to the begging of your reel, or add as the cover image.
- Add a caption or tag other accounts.
- Hit share!
To go more in depth, take a look at our full guide here.
See how Tim Fowler (@timjfowler) documented his artworks on show at Affordable Art Fair New York.
After the fair
Try not to let your engagement with social media slip after the fair has finished. This is a great opportunity for customers to share their purchases and for you to answer any post-sale questions.
Thank your visitors
As a first post-fair step, send or schedule a post to thank your visitors for stopping by during the Affordable Art Fair. This way, you can drop in details of how they can stay in touch throughout the year and how to reach you if they have any immediate enquiries.
A simple, genuine online thank you can go a long way in terms of making your customers feel valued. We often see our best engagement on ‘thank you for visiting’ content.
Insights and analysis
It’s important to keep track of how your social media presence and performance is growing fair-on-fair. This could come in the form of a tidy spreadsheet, or use the in-app analytic functions to monitor your success. You can see which posts performed particularly well and repeat these at your next fair, as well as learn from any poorly performing content. Either way, it’s a win because you’ll be able to keep improving.
Have fun
Perhaps the most important point! Sometimes it can be easy to forget that social media was created with fun and connectivity at its heart. Social media is a great channel for driving engagement with your current and new audiences, as well as showing them what you’re all about. People want to see authenticity, so some content that is a bit rougher around the edges might also perform well. Just have fun with it, and your followers will see your ethos and personality shine through.
We hope this guide has inspired some ideas on how to make social media work for you at your next Affordable Art Fair. With a little planning and preparation, you can take your online presence up a notch and see it transfer into more sales!