Reviews of digital tools  on social networks:

Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn,

YouTube, Twitter, Instagram.

Artists who are serious about promoting themselves and their art practice could greatly improve their business marketing strategies by using a combination of social networking platforms and their digital marketing tools. The most popular social networking platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+.

One of the most powerful digital tools is Facebook Analytics for business. This tool gets anonymous data from users of Facebook, to give an overall picture of those interested in your business. The data analyses show how your page is being utilised, along with the audience demographics and their behaviours. Facebook business page analytics can view the interaction across this page, bots and your website in the one report.

Facebook analytics also reveals data on customer purchase activity, which allows you to make changes for improving your customer sales and therefore the opportunity to increase your business productivity. Advertising your Facebook page can be adjusted accordingly to target and reach the needs of your customers to further enhance your business profits (Facebook Analytics, 2018). Facebook Analytics are very similar to those used by Google Analytics.

Google+ analytic tools can also help your business to be “more productive and efficient” (Digital Insights, 2018). One tool is CircleCount where exploration throughout Google+ enables you to engage with communities that are popular to your brand. The analyses data looks at the engagement and activity of people who follow your postings. Your most popular posted content data is measured for its effectiveness, enabling you to determine what times are the most suitable for you to post. Hence, a ripple effect is created between your followers and postings.

Instagram’s power lies in its hashtags. Forsey (Forsey, C 2018) comments “an Instagram post with at least one hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than a post with no hashtags”. Hashtags enable you to categorize a post and to help reach your target audience who follow that hashtag. They are also popular to use in Facebook and Twitter posts, therefore crossing several platforms simultaneously. Used carefully, hashtags can greatly increase your business popularity. However, for optimal engagement on your Instagram post it’s advisable not to overuse the same hashtag, as its efficiency may decrease.

As with all business marketing, advertising and growing your business is necessary. Analytics help you in reaching and engaging with your target audience. The Twitter analytic dashboard tools analyse the number of engagements your tweet post has had, at any specific time of the day or week. In a snapshot you can see how your tweet has performed from hashtags, keywords and shared links.

Another Twitter competitive analytic tool is Twitonomy. Copp (Copp, E 2018) comments “Twitonomy gives insights into anyone’s tweets, retweets, replies and mentions”. This tool also enables you to view analytics on those who do not follow you back.

In YouTube, account holders have a dashboard inbox, similar to your email inbox. One paid dashboard marketing tool on a YouTube account is known as Agorapulse. This tool enables businesses to engage with their audience, as you can instantly see comments made on your channel to immediately reply or remove inappropriate comments. Popular comments your business has made can be saved and re-used instantly with a simple click. This feature would be advantageous, particularly for artists who upload many videos (eDigital, 2018).

Another important account for artists to hold would be with LinkedIn. LinkedIn could further promote your artistic talents and services professionally, and it also offers digital marketing tools. LinkedIn’s Content Marketing Toolkit  measures more precise, strategic, efficient and effective marketing tools. The SEO checklist tool will help ensure that every “piece of content is optimized for organic search” (Bunting, J 2016). The Content Audit Template is a spreadsheet which categorises your content, so your content can be categorised by purpose and type to track its performance, with suggestions on how that content may be repurposed to achieve better results. The Metrics and Analytic Dashboard tool can help show you if your content is really meeting your business needs. Content marketing tools can be powerful and are designed to help you and your business become better organised and therefore more successful at marketing to your target audience.

Succeeding as a successful artist and business, often requires you to incorporate several social media platforms, and to utilise their digital marketing tools. Many digital tools are freely available to social networking account holders; however, some features may only be available to paid subscribers. Marketing and self-promotion are a must these days, and social media a great way to begin!

References

Bunting, J 2016, LinkedIn 2018: Introducing the content marketing toolkit, viewed 29 August 2018, https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog/linkedin-b2b-marketing/2016/introducing-the-content-marketing-toolkit

Copp, E 2018, Hootsuite: 40 twitter tools you can use in your marketing strategy, viewed 29 August 2018, https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-tools/

eDigital 2018, Best YouTube marketing tools 2018, viewed 29 August 2018, https://www.edigitalagency.com.au/best-youtube-marketing-tools/

Facebook 2018, Facebook Analytics: People-first analytics for an omni-channel world, viewed 1 August 2018, https://analytics.facebook.com/

Forsey, C 2018, HubSpot: The ultimate guide to Instagram hashtags for 2018, viewed 29 August 2018, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/instagram-hashtags

Digital Insights 2018, Digital Insights: 5 Google Plus tools you should not ignore for your business, viewed 2 August 2018, http://blog.digitalinsights.in/google-plus-tools-for-businesses/05144587.html