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During the Corona Virus Lockdown Using These Hashtags

How You Can Build Your Art Followers While Quarantined?

What a start to 2020! Life as we know it has been shaken up and our new normal is something far from normal.

While we are all doing our best to self-isolate and practice social distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19, this is the perfect time to focus on growing your social media following. With so many people isolated to their homes, people are spending much more time on social media. But while everyone is watching Netflix and scrolling through social media to keep themselves entertained, you can build your business!

If you now suddenly have more time on your hands at home, you can use this time to show up online and grow your following so that when this pandemic is over you will have a bigger fan base to sell to.

Remember: the more eyeballs on your artworks, the more sales you can make.

While sales might be slower or more difficult during this time with so many people losing work, you can work towards a better future by making the most of the situation and focusing on growing your fan base and engaging with your fans.

How You Can Use Hashtags Help Grow your Instagram Following For Your Art?

Hashtags are like keywords that you would put into google to search a topic.  Users can discover your content by searching hashtags or tapping on hashtags in posts to see other content with that hashtag as well.

Instagram users can also follow hashtags to see posts with that hashtag in their feed.

By using hashtags that are of interest to your target audience you can increase the chances of being found.

So…. Neglecting to use hashtags on your Insta posts makes it almost impossible to build your audience.

Let’s face it a lot of work goes into a single post from taking the perfect picture to writing a winning caption. You don’t want all that work to go to waste if no one sees the post. Right? Adding ​well-crafted hashtags after your caption will help viewers discover your brilliant art business.

How to Choose the Right Hashtags

Don’t go mad and start throwing in every popular hashtag you can think of on your posts. While it is generally recommended to use at least 11 hashtags (and the maximum you can use is 30), it is essential to make sure you are using hashtags that will benefit you.

When you post on Instagram, Instagram’s algorithm determines who gets to see your post and for how long it stays around for in the feed. Part of how they do this is by looking at how much engagement your post gets within the first few minutes to an hour of being posted.

If you are new to Instagram and don’t have that many followers or much engagement, this can make it difficult to get your posts seen. Hashtags can help you overcome this – however, sticking the most popular hashtags on your posts probably won’t help you much.

When you start adding hashtags in the Instagram app, as you type it will start to bring up a list of hashtags and next to it will tell you the number of posts using that hashtag – telling you how popular that hashtag is.

If you don’t have a big active following yet, you are much better to use hashtags with less competition, giving you more chance to get your post seen. 

The most popular hashtags have lots of people using them, which means that only the most popular posts using that hashtag will get seen. Posts with high levels of engagement (likes and comments) within the first few minutes of being posted will be shown to more people and therefore continue to get more engagement and be seen by more people.

Stay away from hashtags with over 1 million posts until you have high levels of engagement on your posts.

You want enough people looking at the hashtag to give you engagement, but not so many people using it that you never get seen – and therefore don’t get any engagement. Using a variety of hashtags with different popularity levels will help you with this.

As you gradually build up more followers and engagement you can start using a few more popular hashtags.

Taking Advantage of Using Trending Hashtags…

While you might not get much benefit of using hashtags that are super popular, identifying hashtags that are trending can help you to grow. Picking up on a hashtag that is starting to trend might help to give you some more traction (especially if it is not over saturated with posts already) and expand the audience that sees your posts.

But remember, just because a hashtag is trending doesn’t mean you should use it if it doesn’t fit with your content, target audience, your product or your brand. There is no value in using unrelated hashtags to fill up your hashtag quota.

Hashtags can be trending for lots of different reasons – for example, hashtags regarding current events, whether that be current news, competitions or challenges, events, fashion trends etc.

At the moment the whole world is focused on Corona Virus – whether that be trying to stay safe, trying to entertain themselves while in self isolation or trying to keep positive during this time.

Consider how you could create content relevant for your audience that is on topic with what is on everyone’s minds right now. Have a look through our list of hashtags below to see what hashtags could be relevant to your art, your customers, your brand or your story that you could share.

Consider if a trending hashtag is or could be relevant for your post – or create a post relevant to the hashtag that is still relevant to your brand and audience.

As long as trending hashtags are used in moderation, they can help expand your reach without you looking desperate or spammy.

Why don't you try a Challenge?

People often set challenges to complete certain tasks and post on instagram using the hashtag. Participating in a challenge can be a good way to keep you posting regularly and also to help build your following as these hashtags are viewed by all the people completing the challenge.

Join our
#2020isolationartchallenge

We are posting weekly art challenges that you can participate in to practice and build your skills, build your portfolio and/or help you to grow your following.

Our challenge is a little bit different from the norm - we like to mix things up a bit and give you some flexibility.  Check out some of our recent challenges below:

Join our Facebook Group for weekly challenges, support, tips and advice…

Art Related Hashtags You Can Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The following hashtags are gaining popularity at the moment – try out some of these hashtags with your regular hashtags to help get your art seen by more people:

Tip: Use these hashtags as ideas for content you can create for your audience!

For example, celebrities are using the #safehands hashtag to demonstrate proper hand washing technique. As an artist, you could use the #safehands hashtag to show yourself washing paint of your hands after working on your latest work of art - and your tips for getting paint off your fingers.

Think about how you can make some of these hashtags relevant for your audience.

Coronavirus Hashtags You Can Use

These hashtags aren't specific to art, but can still be used and apply and help you to get your art seen by more people in the current time.

General Hashtags That Are Relevant at This Time

Try out some of these general positivity, business and art related hashtags that are particularly relevant at this time:

Use the right hashtags to get your art & designs seen!

Tracy xx

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