Everyone wants a successful brand. But you have to learn what it takes to get there. Contrary to popular belief, you need help building a prosperous business. Even if you’re a jack-of-all-trades and a master multitasker, you require other people’s skills and perspectives to help you grow. That is the reason why team building is so important. 75% of office staff claim that collaboration and teamwork are critical components of corporate success. But what are the secret advantages of team building? Well, you’re about to find out.
In this article, we will address the following:
The effectiveness of team building
How it increases productivity, improves morale, builds employee appreciation, and more
Helpful suggestions for cultivating a healthy, constructive team environment
Why Team Building Is Effective
Team building has increased in popularity because it builds community and solidarity among an organization’s employees. When people feel that they’re not alone when facing a company problem or challenge, it helps to improve their resolve, especially during pandemic isolation. According to research, when the global work environment changed to remote work because of enforced Covid regulations, more than 2,500% of businesses began financing virtual team-building activities. Additionally, a fully involved workforce can double a company’s profits. Moreover, it fosters better collaboration and communication, which is essential for retaining valuable employees and increasing loyalty.
Benefits Of Team Building Activities
There are many reasons for making team-building a vital part of your brand’s marketing strategy. Here are a few of the best:
Increases Productivity
Besides helping workers feel part of a community, it also increases productivity. When people are encouraged by other employees to do their best and complimented on their strengths, they purposefully improve their performance, increasing company productivity by 12%. In addition, they invest more in the company’s success because they know their employer and co-workers appreciate and reward their efforts. Instead of one person multitasking into oblivion, teams can help carry each other so that the overall workload doesn’t overwhelm them. As a result, each member can work faster, increase their strengths and pick up new skills.
Suggestions:
To help enhance the productivity of your business, motivate your employees to participate in team activities that highlight each of the team member’s strengths. Activities that engage them to work together to build or create something for a cause or charity inspire trust and move them to work more efficiently and effectively.
Improves Company Morale
When your employees feel overwhelmed and overworked, they tend to shut down or approach their tasks with little to no enthusiasm. The social aspect of teams helps to improve motivation and well-being. In addition, team members with more experience in challenging duties can act as teachers, mentors, and support, which makes otherwise tense situations more tolerable. When employees know other people are there to assist and educate them, they are less stressed and more open to undertaking unfamiliar jobs. The constant communication between team members helps to lessen feelings of isolation, loneliness, and frustration.
Suggestions:
Try virtual team-building activities that promote better communication and boost morale. For example, virtual ice-breaker games like Gif Wars, which uses Nectar software to encourage team members to shout out others for appreciation or acknowledgment, can help build trust, camaraderie, and loyalty.
Promotes Better Communication
For a business to run smoothly, all employees must be on the same page and working towards similar goals. Besides, team building promotes better communication because members must reach out to others on their team to complete a task successfully. Members can learn skills they wouldn’t have acquired alone. As their comfort grows, they know to see their team members as allies lessening suspicion, unproductive competition, and in-fighting.
Suggestions:
Check out games like Secret Agenda, which helps enhance collaboration activities, or Blind Design, which enriches your team’s instructional abilities.
Stimulates Creativity
It’s challenging to devise alternative solutions to common problems, especially when you have to do it all yourself. However, with teams, you have many different perspectives, which allow you to benefit from other people’s experiences. Moreover, group members can share their unique insights on how to solve a problem.
Suggestions:
Creative Games like The Paper Tower and Scavenger Hunt teach planning and strategic thinking.
Fosters Solid Relationships
Along with improving communication and collaboration, team building builds solid work relationships. People need people. And trust is key to getting your employees to share new ideas, concepts, and advice with their co-workers. In addition, knowing they have extra support during busy and challenging times gives members more confidence and a sense of relief. Also, when the team is successful, all members share in that success which often results in a more positive outlook, increased confidence, and willingness to work together.
Suggestions:
Remote Activities, like Coffee Chats, use the Donut Slack app to randomly pair employees who are encouraged to share coffee, a snack, and a casual conversation. The rules ensure that employees avoid work talk and share small details about their lives and appropriate personal stories.
Aids In Conflict Resolution
When employees have to work with a team to accomplish goals, they have more incentive to mend relationships to ensure your company succeeds. Team building forces co-workers to focus on a shared objective, not individual ambition. So maintaining solid, healthy relationships based on cooperation, collaboration, and trust is necessary.
Suggestions:
Try fun conflict/resolution activities like Dizzy Debates which involves perspective exercises, and the You Said, I Heard game which emphasizes better communication.
Identifies Leadership Skills
Working in teams also spotlights individual members’ talents and soft skills, which is perfect for discovering future leadership in critical areas of your company. For example, someone that excels in conflict resolution could be the ideal candidate for an upcoming HR position. Another member who is good at noticing behavioral patterns and delegating group responsibilities firmly yet with compassion and insight could, one day, be the next Office Manager.
Suggestions:
To highlight the best in your team members, try activities like Plane Crash and Minefield, which pinpoint members who are creative, good at organization, and decisive.
Now that you know why team building is important to the strength and growth of your business, you can discover how to select and manage team members to make the most of your brand. However, even though you’re aware of the benefits of team building, it can still be challenging to implement all of the above suggestions immediately. An easy and obtainable solution to this problem is to focus on the two most important improvements to your team’s ability to work together.
What can additional reasons for team building help you boost your business?
Meet The Author
Marisa D. Aceves
Hello, my name is Marisa D. Aceves. I’m a forever curious B2B/B2C freelance writer, artist, and marketer. When not toiling away in the studio, I enjoy sharing articles on marketing strategies and tools and technologies. Follow my blog and receive my latest tips on art marketing, digital marketing, and business software reviews.
Marisa D. Aceves. Softness and Light. Abstract Photography/Photo manipulation. 2022.
Abstract Art Prints Created From Plants
Watch Everyday Objects Transform Into fascinating abstract artwork.
The vibrant Plants and Powder series combines the tranquility of garden plants and pictures of moving powder pigments to create remarkable abstract expressionist artworks.
Visit Aceves Artand explore your art and design possibilities.
Are you tired of spending hours figuring out what to post on social media? Do you find it near impossible to keep up with the consistent posting schedule required to gain more followers, leads, and sales? Social media automation allows you to preplan your posts to spend more time working on the parts of your business that matter most. According to emailmonday’s Ultimate Marketing automation statistics overview and Demand Spring Marketing Automation Platform Insights, 96% of marketers have added a marketing automation platform.
Social Media Automation Software Part 2
In part one, we reviewed the benefits and drawbacks of three top social media automation tools Coschedule, Hootsuite, and Sendible. In this installment, we’ll check Zoho Social, Later, Buffer, and Drum Up.
In this article, we will cover:
The necessity of using social media automation tools to scale your business
The Automation Tools Zoho Social, Later, Buffer, and Drum Up
How to use each social media tool and what they do
Which social media tool is right for your business
Pricing Packages/Plans
Pros and Cons
Why it’s necessary to use social media automation tools to help you scale your business?
When you’re a business owner, you have many responsibilities that take you away from strictly focusing on social media marketing. However, social media platforms present the perfect opportunity for reaching your target audience online. Posting manually on social media every week and managing various social media accounts can take its toll as you have to juggle many tasks to meet your weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. Social media automation helps you build your network and find new customers more efficiently by allowing you to easily adjust your weekly postings to align with your business’s content calendar and stages of the buying process. As a result, you can reduce your marketing cost, raise brand awareness and increase customer engagement.
These useful social media automation tools help simplify your marketing efforts:
Zoho claims to be the easiest way to manage your social media. In addition, it boasts some impressive features to maximize your marketing efficiently, such as creating custom reports and scheduling unlimited posts when your audience is most active. Besides, it was voted the best social media management software of 2022 by Forbes Advisor.
With its intuitive content calendar, you can easily keep track of your content, organizing the posts the way you like.
Keep track of relevant news across social media platforms using multiple listing columns.
Use Zoho’s pre-built or custom analytics reports to gain valuable insights into the content your audience loves.
Who can benefit
It’s flexible and an excellent choice for small businesses with a limited budget and established companies looking to save money.
Pricing Packages/Plans
Zoho Social Platform has three pricing plans. The Standard Plan, which is $10 a month billed annually, allows you to post on seven channels. It includes twenty-four-hour email support, helpful features like user tagging, summary reports, and a handy URL link shortener.
The software’s Professional plan, at a low $30 a month billed annually, lets you post on eight channels and includes standard features such as Livestream, bulk scheduling, Media library, and Cloudpicker.
Its Premium plan at a reasonable $40 a month billed annually allows you to post on up to nine channels and supports professional features such as exporting posts, team member audio/video and chat, exporting posts, and SmartQ.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Zoho’s affordability and ease of use make it one of the top social media automation software. Here’s why:
It allows you to keep up with all your customers from a shared database.
The pricing plans are flexible and affordable, enabling you to choose which one is right for your budget.
It offers fluid desk and CRM integrations.
The software includes helpful analytics and publishing features.
You can preplan your posts for a variety of social media platforms.
Cons
Although Zoho Social has many practical features, some areas need improvement:
There are no premier integration or consulting services
It cannot edit content
There is no accessibility for Instagram stories, carousels, or reels.
You cannot forward development teams to notify them of updates.
Later is an all-in-one social media scheduling software that is user-friendly and allows you to quickly and easily pre-schedule posts on several popular platforms like Tiktok, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Linkedin.
If you’re having problems creating content, this social media software helps you find content ideas you can tweak to fit your brand, then share in a matter of minutes.
Also, its detailed analytics allows you to track sales, determine which posts receive the most engagement, and drive traffic. You get personalized insights into what works for your business and how to improve your social media content strategy.
In addition, the free custom design feature helps you to create a consistent look across all your social media platforms.
Who can benefit
It’s perfect for small businesses, startups with growing teams, and more established brands with multiple clients and locations.
Pricing Packages/Plans
Later has three initial and two-scale plans for business managing several clients and locations.
The Starter Plan is $18 a month. It includes social media automation on one account on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tiktok, and Linkedin. You get a maximum of 30 posts on each social media profile, three months of analytics data, and a LinkedIn bio page with limited customization.
Later’s Growth Plan is a moderate $40 a month. It covers three social sets on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tiktok, and Linkedin. Three employees can preplan posts. In addition to 150 posts per social media profile, you can access brand management and team tools, full analytics equalling one year of data, and complete Linkedin bio page customization.
The Advanced plan, at $80 a month, is an excellent choice if you manage multiple brands. You get six social sets with six users on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tiktok, and Linkedin. Also, you have access to features such as Live chat support and an unlimited number of posts.
There are two scale plans if you are a large, well-established business requiring more support.
Later’s $200 a month Scale 15 plan comes with 15 social sets/90 social profiles on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Tiktok, and Linkedin and supports up to 10 users.
The Scale 30 plan, at $400 a month, includes 30 social sets on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Tiktok, and Linkedin and supports 20 users.
Both Scale plans have advanced features such as Multi-Profile Scheduling, Saved Captions, Visual Instagram Planner, and Media Editing.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Later has several outstanding features that make it stand out from the competition:
You can post on a variety of social media platforms.
It allows for multiple users.
The price is affordable.
It has detailed social media analytics plus timely data reports to help you improve your content.
Cons
While Later excels in many critical areas of social media automation, it lacks some key features:
It needs more features for Twitter and Facebook.
Later claims to support TikTok and Instagram scheduling when it doesn’t.
It needs to improve its analytics software.
There are no placeholder images to use when posting on social media.
Buffer is a social media automation software that lets you handle various social media accounts on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, analyze audience engagement, and schedule posts. In addition, it helps you to collaborate with others as you plan your marketing campaigns by permitting you to pre-schedule your posts. Also, their Hotkeys and Labels features allow you to focus on the most crucial comments in your niche with a response rate that is twice as fast as its competitors.
Who it benefits
Buffer is a fine choice for freelancers, small businesses new to social media, experienced business professionals, and agencies with multiple teams.
Plans & Pricing
Buffer has four pricing plans: Free, Essentials, Team, and Agency.
The Free plan gives you three social media channels with ten posts per channel. In addition, you can access simple publishing tools, their Landing Page builder, and a buff.ly link shortener.
Buffers Essentials plan, starting at $5 a month per channel, permits you to store two thousand scheduled posts per channel and access analytics, planning and publishing, and engagement tools.
Their Team Plan starts at $10 per month with unlimited social media channels, draft collaboration tools, and unlimited teams and clients.
The Agency Plan at $100 per month for ten channels comes with custom access and permissions, additional team features, and unlimited users and collaborators.
Pros and Cons
Pros
This agile social media software is perfect for all stages of your business journey:
They have easy-to-understand exportable reports.
Their active community of users can help you troubleshoot and learn the software.
You can use its free image creation tool effortlessly to create social media images.
Its productive social media automation software can help you discover the right content and times to post, especially during marketing campaigns.
Cons
Although Buffer offers several helpful features at an affordable price, it needs improvement in these areas:
It lacks a social media library feature.
Buffer doesn’t synch well with Facebook’s algorithm to suggest effective posting times.
DrumUp is a social media automation mobile and web application software for freelancers, startups, and established businesses explicitly created for social media management and content curation. Its Automatic Content Schedule and Content Suggestion features help you to schedule expertly crafted content to get more leads and sales and promote your brand. Additionally, you can add several social media accounts, adjust their settings, and monitor them for engagement. Also, it makes hashtag recommendations and permits you to set compelling posts on repeat schedules. Besides timely content generation advice, it provides detailed social media analytics to help you measure your performance on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Who it benefits
DrumUp is an excellent choice for freelancers and startups as it offers lower-priced, budget-friendly plans. It’s a good choice for established businesses and agencies as well.
Plans & Pricing
The Free plan allows you one content suggestion stream, three daily posts, custom scheduling of posts, one social account, and Hashtag and @mention suggestions.
DrumUps Starter plan at $15 a month includes ten pre-scheduled daily posts, three RSS feeds up to three social accounts, one thousand posts in the content library, a URL shortener, and a set repeat schedule for posts.
Their popular Pro plan at $39 a month has twenty content suggestions, streams, five RSS feeds, twenty social accounts, chrome extensions, and Group social accounts.
Finally, the Small Business plan at $79 a month includes twenty social accounts, five thousand posts in the library, detailed analytics, custom scheduling of posts, and a slack extension.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Besides timely content suggestions, detailed analytics, and automatic content scheduling, DrumUp has various features that make it a hefty social media automation tool.
You can share quality content with your industry, networks, and co-workers using one account.
Its intuitive interface makes it relatively easy to use.
It includes Chrome and Slack extensions.
Their content suggestions and research tools help you to improve your audience engagement.
You can integrate the software with various platforms.
It’s a productive content management tool for social media content.
Cons
While DrumUp can help you vastly improve your social media presence and marketing productivity, there are areas where the software could use a boost:
It cannot add sources to the generated content suggestions.
There are problems with formatting errors on posts. Sometimes editing posts is difficult.
The setup for social accounts needs better organization; it’s confusing.
An increasing number of marketers are using at least one social media automation tool to help them with their marketing strategy. With all your responsibilities running a business, it’s critical to dedicate your time and energy to areas that require immediate attention. Social media automation tools may require a learning curve as you navigate the software of your chosen platform, but it is well worth your time to choose one that will help you perform more efficiently. So what social media tools do you use to save time and money?
Marisa D. Aceves
Hello, my name is Marisa D. Aceves. I’m a forever curious B2B/B2C freelance writer, artist, and marketer. When not toiling away in the studio, I enjoy sharing articles on marketing strategies and tools and technologies. Follow my blog and receive my latest tips on art marketing, digital marketing, and business software reviews.
Everyone always talks about how social sharing is vital to your business strategy. However, once you begin sharing your products and services on social media, one thing becomes clear. Your busy week can quickly become the enemy of your regular posting schedule. So how do you maintain an active social media presence while accomplishing all the tasks your business requires? The answer is simple. Automate your social media. Social media automation tools will help you preschedule your content to increase your exposure and satisfy your customers.
In this article, we will cover:
What social media automation is, and why it’s beneficial to your business
The Automation Tools CoSchedule, Hootsuite, and Sendible
What each social media tool is and what it does
Who can use each social media tool to their advantage
Pricing Packages/Plans
Pros and Cons
What is social media automation, and why should you consider it?
Many years ago, before the internet age, people used newspaper ads, phone book ads, and referrals to get people to visit and buy from their business. Now, people use the internet to search for products and services to fix their problems and address their pain points. With the creation of various social media sites and apps, businesses realized they could reach potential customers on these platforms. But marketing on these platforms takes time and money. Something most small businesses don’t have. Social media automation solves this problem. Tools to manage social media let you plan and schedule social media posts when you know your leads and customers will be the most active. Then, you can release perfectly designed content aligned with your monthly and yearly goals.
These useful social media automation tools help you painlessly run and market your business:
Coschedule prides itself on helping you reach maximum efficiency in your business by enabling you to organize all your marketing efforts together in one place. It supports creating, scheduling, and publishing posts to Facebook (pages & groups), Instagram business, creator and personal accounts, LinkedIn profiles & pages, Twitter, and Pinterest. Its many features provide a calendar that helps you preview, share, and schedule your marketing and a series of versatile products to manage your process, projects, and team. In addition, CoSchedule’s Actionable Marketing Institute provides valuable learning opportunities from industry professionals to hone and boost your skills. With these convenient tools, you can manage your marketing projects and blog in less time.
Who can benefit
This tool is suitable for people who work in marketing or small businesses that market and sell their products and services.
Pricing Packages/Plans
It has three plans: the free Marketing Calendar, the $29 a month Pro Marketing Calendar, and the negotiable Advanced Marketing Suite Plan, whose price depends on the size and scale of your business. The free Marketing Calendar includes a real-time marketing Calendar, popular marketing tool integrations, work management tools, content marketing tools, social media profile scheduled messages, and more. The Pro Marketing Calendar covers all of the features of the free Marketing Calendar, including team and task management collaboration, unlimited social media publishing, and priority support. Finally, the Marketing Suite encompasses all the tools in The Pro Marketing Calendar plus marketing campaign management, project & campaign templates, handy content optimation tools, etc.
Pros and Cons
Pros
There are many excellent things about CoSchedule that set it apart from other social media automation tools:
You can centralize all of your scheduling in one application.
Quickly schedule your business’ projects and content across various social media and marketing platforms.
It cuts the time you spend on your marketing endeavors in half.
It allows you to connect all marketing projects to your calendar effortlessly. Automatic calendar project updates help keep you and your team on schedule. In addition, you can preplan your social media.
The software is easy to use
You can choose the perfect package/plan for your marketing needs.
Cons
Although CoSchedule is a great tool that saves you time and money, there are still some annoying drawbacks to using this software:
While CoSchedule is relatively easy to learn, the complex layout can be confusing, especially when you only want to focus on simple tasks.
You can’t schedule items in bulk.
The packages/plans are more expensive than other automation software, which may keep solopreneurs on a budget from taking advantage of its perks.
Hootsuite, created by Ryan Homes in 2008, is a social media management platform that uses a dashboard to connect all your favorite social media channels. Regarded as the global leader in social media management, it properly integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, Linkedin, and Pinterest. Among its many advantages, you can keep track of incoming social messages and respond to leads and new and old customers from various networks. Moreover, it makes messaging and connecting with your marketing team a breeze. Detailed analytics and reports help you assess what strategies work and what you need to change to increase your brand awareness and revenue. Also, you receive expert social media training to help you run profitable campaigns.
Who can benefit
Hootsuite is best suited for agencies and small or established businesses with more than one employee.
Pricing Packages/Plans
Hootsuite has four plans: Professional, Team, Business, and Enterprise.
The Professional and Team plans have a 30-day free trial. The Professional Plan allows you to schedule unlimited posts and access all your messages in one inbox. Additionally, you can preschedule your social media posts in bulk. It costs a moderate $49 a month. At $129 a month, the Team Plan has all the features of the Professional Plan, plus you can manage your team’s roles with permissions and send comments or posts to your team members. Also, you can have up to three users and twenty social accounts. The Business Plan enables you to have up to 5 users and 35 social accounts. Besides scheduling bulk posts at optimal times, you can review your social messages before posting and extend performance with top apps like Slack and Zendesk. In addition, you receive 24-hour customer support. Its price stacks up to $739 a month. Finally, the Enterprise plan is customizable based on the needs of your business. You can include more than five users and preschedule and review over fifty social media accounts. Moreover, you can receive a quarterly business review to determine your business’s profitability, measure the performance of individual ads, and evaluate your team’s performance.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Hootsuite is one of the most versatile when it comes to social media automation platforms. Here are some of its many benefits:
You can install a variety of applications.
You can manage many different social media accounts in one dashboard.
It allows you to create detailed analytics reports on your social media performance.
You can quickly schedule your social media posts in bulk.
Cons
Unfortunately, there are still some areas where Hootsuite needs to improve.
Some of their packages are pricey for a new business or startup.
Hootsuite’s software interface may confuse people who aren’t as tech-savvy.
The extra Hootsuite University training and app additions are helpful but make your overall package less affordable.
Founded in 2009 by CEO Gavin Hammar, Sendible is a social media automation platform with more supported app integrations than any other social media software. For example, this social media manager tool supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, YouTube, etc. In addition, you can preview and adjust your posts on each social platform with the image editor and graphic design app Canva. Sendible allows you to customize your content, error-check your text, and publish your post in a flash. Also, it provides a way for you to analyze your best-performing content and send tailored detailed reports.
Who it benefits
Sendible is versatile in that it serves small businesses on a budget, larger, more established companies with teams, and moderately sized businesses in-between.
Plans & Pricing
There are four social media plans: Creator, Traction, Scale, and Expansion. The Creator Plan, priced at $29 a month, is perfect for freelancers, allows only one user, sharing on six social profiles, and unlimited scheduling. Also included are a handy content and hashtag library, automated client reports, and personalized onboarding. The Traction Plan permits four users and up to 24 social account profiles. Besides team collaboration, it also features post-assignment, approval, and personalized demonstration. It levels out at the moderate price of $89 a month. Sendible’s most popular scale plan, priced at $199 a month, allows businesses to add seven users and 49 social profiles. In addition, this plan also includes traction plan features, automated client reports, and custom approval flows. Finally, the Expansion plan, which costs $399 a month, permits 15 users and a generous 105 social profiles. Also included in the package are scale plan features, manage client permissions and white labeling.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Sendible has many features that enable you to organize your social media projects efficiently. These are the areas where Sendible excels:
The customer service is excellent. The staff is supportive, compassionate, and understanding.
The software is always up-to-date and constantly being improved.
The valuable ability to track the performance of each post
It’s more affordable than most social media management tools available.
It’s easy to schedule posts.
Cons
While there are many positive features, this software still has some areas that need change:
You can’t manage Instagram followers or preview posts before they go live
Sendible isn’t always intuitive; getting rid of unwanted notifications is difficult.
The spreadsheet isn’t easy to use; you can’t add videos to it.
The software has problems linking to the right page of your blogs.
There are no free plans or 30-day trials.
While social media automation tools can save you time and frustration, not all plans suit your business model. Therefore, comparing prices, features, and ease of operation is necessary for your software selection. Moreover, knowing your audience and niche will help you decide which expenses you may or may not need. What type of business do you run? What are its biggest strengths and most significant challenges?
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll cover Workflow, Later, BuzzSumo, and Drum Up.
Meet The Author
Marisa D. Aceves
Hello, my name is Marisa D. Aceves. I’m a forever curious B2B/B2C freelance writer, artist, and marketer. When not toiling away in the studio, I enjoy sharing articles on marketing strategies and tools and technologies. Follow my blog and receive my latest tips on art marketing, digital marketing, and business software reviews.
TikTok isn’t just a series of eccentric or funny videos for teenagers; it’s a marketing paradise. No one can deny the app has significantly affected culture, sound, and commerce. So, what does this mean for your art business? Well, you’re about to find out.
Here is a comprehensive guide to how to sell art on TikTok in 2022.
This timely guide will teach you:
How to find your audience
How to use creative content strategies to grow your reach, increase engagement and get more followers
How to monetize your account
And so much more
Let’s begin.
Sell Art on TikTok Guide Contents
What is TikTok marketing
Why it’s the perfect platform for selling your art
The TikTok demographic
How to market and promote your art
Types of engaging artist content
Creative Content Strategies
How to find and grow your audience
Monetizing your TikTok Account
TikTok Artist Success Stories
What is TikTok Marketing?
Online selling isn’t as hard as it may seem. However, it would be best to consider your art niche audience before you begin. So, what is TikTok Marketing in 2022? It’s time to dive in.
Here’s what we do know.
TikTok, initially known in China as Douyin, is a video-centered social networking service owned and operated by a Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. It features a variety of short-form (15 seconds to 3 minutes) user content like tricks, dance, and general entertainment.
Since its 2017 release, it has steadily gained popularity, acquiring a greater organic reach than other social media platforms. This new platform has achieved 1 billion active users as of January 2022. TikTok users watch 167 million videos each minute. If this eye-opening information doesn’t pique your curiosity about the benefits of marketing and selling artwork on this platform, then consider this: It garners the highest social media engagement per post. Who doesn’t want loads of likes, comments, and eyes on their art? What’s more, your art business will have less competition since only 5% of marketers are using the app. That means you leverage it to get a head start on your competition. Finally, users spend an astonishing 110 million dollars each month.
Why wait to join! Are you ready to promote your online art gallery but still unsure? Then, let me break these TikTok marketing basics down for you:
Set Goals
Before beginning your TikTok journey, make sure you know what you want to achieve with your marketing. For example, do you like to express how your brand is better or more exciting than your competitors? Is your goal to expand brand awareness or sell your TikTok merchandise by converting your viewers into regular customers?
Understanding where you want your latest art campaign to go will help you determine which promotions or trends you want to include.
Know Your Art Brand Identity
Knowing who you are and which niche you sell your art will help you create a consistent look and feel for your video content. For instance, if you’re a landscape painter, most of your TikTok videos could be filmed in the outdoor settings you choose to paint. Also, you can unify your videos based on the colors in your work or through clever branded graphics. However you decide to do it, all video content you create, even the silly, fun-loving videos, should follow the art buying process’s awareness, consideration, and decision stages.
Perform Audience Research
You need to be familiar with your audience and what types of content they like to explore. If you feel you’re missing the mark or failing to connect with online buyers, check out the TikTok accounts of artists that sell and market work like your own. Which hashtags are they using? What TikTok challenges do they participate in, and how has this activity helped drive traffic to their account and business. Try to pay attention to the words and phrases used when communicating with their audience. Watch their videos more than once and read their comment section. What are people saying about their content? Do people like the way they display their art? Do they dance with their art, share a small part of their art-making process, or create special, difficult-to-resist offers? Check out the likes on each video to see who likes their content. The more you notice about your potential customers, the more artwork you’ll sell online.
Study Trending Videos
Participating in TikTok trends is another way for your fine art brand to gain relevance and add to your online art marketing strategy. First, of course, you must keep up with the latest comedy sketches, dances, and viral soundtracks. However, joining these trends will give you a better chance at success, especially when selling art. That is because TikTok’s algorithm automatically boosts trending videos, giving your online art the exposure, it needs to build an audience. In addition, the more your videos’ exposure increases, the greater credibility your brand receives.
Use Cross-Promotional Marketing
To increase brand exposure, team up with influencers, particularly micro-influencers. Influencers provide a larger audience for your art brand. For instance, art buyers who shop at stores like Walmart may also like the art you produce. That’s why harnessing the power of influencers is such an effective marketing tactic for your online store or website.
Use your Hashtags Wisely
Like Instagram and Twitter, hashtags play an essential role in promoting your original art. You can use the discovery page to find appropriate hashtags for the products you sell. In addition, taking part in hashtag challenges helps to boost your brand. Whether you start a brand hashtag on your business account or create one through TikTok influencers, neglecting to participate in hashtag challenges can keep you from making art sales. Moreover, look for hashtag challenges covering popular world events, seasonal hashtags, or centered on a specific holiday like Christmas or Easter.
Post Frequently
TikTok videos are short. Consider posting more than once daily.
While this may seem like time-consuming, unreasonable advice, the nature of the platform and the immediate and constant consumption of content means that you must work twice as hard to stay top-of-mind.
Why It’s The Perfect Platform for Selling Your Art
Despite the apps ‘ growing popularity and influence, few people actively use TikTok to market their business. What’s more, a whopping 74% of marketers claim they don’t plan on using the platform next year. That means there are several opportunities to create your art empire without as much competitor resistance.
Top museums and galleries like Uffizzi Galeries and The Metropolitan Museum of Art have TikTok accounts. So, the chances of cultural art institutions noticing your work doubles.
There’s also a substantial welcoming art community on TikTok. So, it’s an exciting place to showcase your latest paintings, crafts, sculpture, and other artworks.
TikTok users are from a younger generation. They’re used to eCommerce, Shopify, and the online marketplace, affecting their spending habits. Because they tend to participate in buying and selling online, they are most likely to purchase TikTok merchandise.
Furthermore, its unique algorithm sends only organic traffic to your content. Therefore, it’s unnecessary to incorporate paid advertising into your marketing strategy to bring viewers to your account. Instead, the audience decides which content they find interesting.
If users enjoy your uploaded art content and the content receives positive engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares, then TikTok’s For You algorithm will expose it to a larger audience that likes your niche art. If not, then the algorithm will limit your reach.
Surprisingly, it’s inexpensive and relatively easy to learn because TikTok relies mainly on user-approved trends. As a result, aspiring art brands can effortlessly join trending content and use it to promote and sell their products and services.
The TikTok Demographic
To better understand how to market your art and make money on TikTok, you must grasp its demographic. Here are some areas you should examine:
Age Range
While the general fanbase for the app is between 13 and 40, leaning more toward the millennial and generation y population, as word gets out, older audiences are gradually joining the app.
Number of Users Per Country
China (600 million) and the U.S. (65.9 million) have the most TikTok users, with Indonesia and Russia trailing behind.
Income
Even though the app’s average user is relatively young, that doesn’t mean they can’t afford to spend money. On the contrary, many TikTok users’ household income is at least 100 thousand a year. That’s 40.2 percent.
Gender
Many business owners are reluctant to join because they don’t believe their target audience uses TikTok. But, astonishingly, having a presence on the app is beneficial no matter the gender of your target audience. So don’t hesitate to set up a curated account to attract more art buyers.
Frequency of Use
You may think that most users post an average of once per day or twice per week, but this isn’t the case. In reality, 90 percent post once a day. Therefore, one of the tricks to increasing exposure is to post often.
How to Market and Promote Your Art
And now, for the main reason, you visited this article to learn how to sell art on TikTok. So let me launch into these helpful tips, and we’ll get started:
Note Instagram Art Niche Influencers
When you’ve decided to sign up for an account and figured out your art niche and audience, your next step is to determine which artist influencers are selling art. Once you find out who they are, please take note of their posts collectively and individually. Do you notice any patterns? For example, do they tend to post one content type over another? Which content types perform the best on their channel? Also, what hashtags accompany their highest-performing posts? Finally, what comments are people making about their most popular posts?
Don’t forget to visit the accounts of the people who like, comment, and share these influential artists’ posts. That way, you’ll better assess what they want and are more likely to respond to in the future.
Research Brands That Might Promote Your Genre of Art
While you visit the app daily, pay attention to top brands like Walmart, Target, and Starbucks. How could your art fit in with their brand message? Maybe you could create artwork geared explicitly toward a holiday, social cause, or popular event that major brands and the media actively promote. There’s no limit. So, get creative with your pitch to popular name brands. And since TikTok favors creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, who knows how many views you might acquire from the exchange.
Select Compelling Sounds
When it comes to TikTok videos selecting the right sound and music to go with the rest of your content is essential to building a mood and atmosphere around your artwork. The app allows you to create your original sound or music or select one of many popular sounds or music others have used in their videos. In addition, if you make your sound and others use it often, TikTok will give you credit, driving extra traffic to your account profile.
Add Links
TikTok doesn’t have Shops that allow you to link your products to your online artist website or Fine Art America account. However, you can add a link in your profile bio or add a linktree if you desire to include more than one link. Then, when people click the link or links, they can visit the sites where you sell your art and art products.
Participate in TikTok Challenges
TikTok challenges are the fun, experimental part of TikTok that we love. Challenges help your brand gain exposure, putting your business ahead of potential buyers and fellow artists. Look out for trending challenges as well as art challenges.
Choose Helpful Hashtags
Like various other social media platforms, hashtags play an integral part in finding your artwork and TikTok merch. After creating each art video, add appropriate hashtags so people will see your brand. You don’t need to add a ton of hashtags. However, a few related hashtags should be sufficient. Hashtags like #artchallenge and #arttiktok will bring in more fans and potential customers.
Be Yourself
Social media audiences want to know who you are, seeking authentic connections instead of made-up personas. So, when appropriate, share your career triumphs and trials, as well as the joy you get from creating your art. Remember to connect with your audience, fans, and collectors in a meaningful and respectful way. People take time out of their busy day to share your post content, like, and engage. Extend them the same courtesy.
Types of Engaging Artist Content
When learning how to sell art on TikTok, producing compelling content to please people and the algorithm isn’t always easy. However, here are some helpful tips to get you started:
Studio Visits
Now you can share your studio with the world. Take your viewers on a personal tour, discussing your typical studio routines and materials you work with regularly. You could even tell them a colorful story about how you acquired the space.
Places That Inspire You
Everyone has places that inspire them. Maybe there is a favorite nursery or observatory you like to visit. Perhaps you want to take walks in the park or visit a sports stadium or arena. Audiences love accompanying you on your latest adventure.
Completed Artwork
After so many process video posts, you must show them a finished work. Then, tell them a story about how you arrived at the finished piece. Include what you appreciate about your latest creation, as well as things you wish to change.
Favorite Art Materials
Expose viewers to art supplies you like to use often. Tell them why you use specific tools over others. Afterward, make professional recommendations and answer any questions aspiring artists have about particular brands and mediums.
A Day in Your Life
Here’s where you can let them know a bit about yourself and your personality. What sparks your interest? What do you love most about your day! You can share the challenges and triumphs of living life as an artist.
Challenges
Challenges are an excellent way to increase your brand reach. Since challenges are community-sponsored, artists can challenge fellow artists to make paintings, drawings, sculptures, or digital art on a specific subject.
Things You Enjoy
Sometimes you find a perfect piece of artistic jewelry, clothing, home decor, or collectible that sparks your interest. When you come across something you’ve newly collected or something that you’ve inherited or acquired from an estate, express your enthusiasm. What about this piece makes it exceptional? If you can, recount the item’s history or tell an entertaining tale about where you bought the item.
Duets
Duets are a clever way to add another video to your existing video. There are many uses for duets. For instance, you could use duets to compare different art techniques and styles. Another way to take advantage of this feature is to use it as commentary on the art worlds’ politics or for cross-promotional purposes.
Art World Politics
There are two things people tell you to avoid at family gatherings: religion and politics. However, on TikTok, you can ask your community what they think about recent art world news and decisions. Often, they are more than happy to offer their opinions.
Tutorials
People always like to learn new art tips and techniques. Tutorials work exceptionally well if you teach workshops. Don’t forget to mention upcoming ones in your posts. Plus, they’re some of the best performing content on Instagram and YouTube as well.
Art You Admire
The work of other artists inspires many artists. Discuss artworks that helped you decide to become an artist. Share artworks you think are playful, innovative, or that motivate you to push your artistic boundaries.
Art Process Videos
Your audience and collectors want to understand more about what you do. Showcasing unique videos about producing your artwork gives them a glimpse into your artistic discipline. In addition, viewing parts of your process gives them a new appreciation for the effort you put into each piece.
Creative Content Strategies
Finding innovative ways to market your art online can be an intimidating and frustrating process. However, you can avoid the hassle and aggravation if you make more effort to understand what types of content people engage with the most. Do you want to be a successful art brand everyone admires? Then follow these helpful marketing strategy suggestions:
Cross-promote with TikTok influencers
To boost your advertising campaigns, team up with influencers that already have a big following. These social media movers and shakers can help expand your audience of potential customers by linking your account with their quality content. In addition, their thoughts and opinions can often hold greater weight with social media audiences than your average media celebrity. That is why well-known businesses rely on their phenomenal pull to increase engagement, leads, and sales.
Use Ads to Showcase Your Work
Advertising on the app is convenient and easy. Besides being mobile-friendly, video ads can help to inform your audience about your artwork and art and design products. The stats don’t lie. According to the Nielsen Custom Authenticity Study, commissioned by TikTok, more than half (52%) of the apps’ users discover new products from TikTok ads. So, purchasing ads to promote your original artwork could potentially bring in twice the number of leads and customers. In addition, its creative partners like Canva and Vimeo make creating an engaging video for your art business a snap.
Include Interesting Graphics and Effects
Add engaging graphics and effects to stand out from other users in your art niche. If you’re not into creating unique branded graphics, you can always employ one of many fun effects. Search under the Effects tab and select from the available categories
Coordinate Your Video Posts with Other Social Media
During significant marketing campaigns, consider posting information about where people can find your paintings online or other art products and services on other social media apps as well. Don’t hesitate to ask people to join you on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. This method guarantees they’re exposed to your message more than once and on more than one platform. Remember, they’re less likely to forget about that beautiful art for sale you mentioned earlier in your latest post if you remind them.
Mention Your Website and Add Bio Links
Once you have it up and running, another critical way to bring people to your website is to mention your art website in your video posts during your marketing campaigns and special offers. As discussed earlier, remember to add links to your Bio so buyers can quickly make their way to your website, shops, or stores.
Regularly Communicate with Your Audience
Your fans and followers want to know you care about their thoughts and opinions. Show them that you appreciate their input. Spread encouragement and kind words whenever possible. Also, visit their pages as well and comment on their videos. Social media is about conversations. Potential art buyers and current collectors value this type of interaction.
Use Relevant Hashtags
Although hashtags are mentioned earlier in this article, knowing which ones will bring you the most engagement and business is a vital part of your art marketing strategy. When choosing specific hashtags to include on your posts, use the following advice:
Use relevant trending hashtags and add your artsy take to your video post.
Include art and niche-related hashtags that best describe your work.
Add hashtags related to art challenges in which you participate.
How to Find and Grow Your Audience
As part of learning how to sell your art on TikTok, you must figure out unique ways to find and grow your artist audience. However, if you want to become a successful social media force of nature, don’t neglect these simple steps:
Post Often
I know, when you’re a new user, the thought of posting every day seems daunting. So, you may want to start posting only twice a week until you can work daily posting into your busy schedule. Consistency is critical to your art business exposure and growth.
Research Artists Creating Similar Work
To steadily gain momentum on this platform, it’s vital to check out the pages of artists producing artwork like your own. First, observe the format of their videos. Notice what does and doesn’t work. Read their comment section. What does their audience say about the artist and their art? Also, being aware of how many times they post will give you an idea of when and how often to post yours. Finally, notice the content of their posts. For instance, do they get high engagement for sharing stories about their art process? Whatever it is, it’s worth noting so you can create quality content with a spin that’s distinctly yours.
Ask Collectors and Viewers to Share
Once you’ve established a thorough understanding of your audiences’ preferences, ask collectors and viewers to share your posts and profile page. With this tactic, you create a solid social media referral system. Of course, you don’t have to do this every single time you make a video. That would be spammy. Save it for marketing campaigns, sales offers, or contests.
Sign up For a Pro Account
To determine how well your posts are performing, you’ll want to sign up for a Pro Account to study the metrics of your profile. In addition, you’ll receive essential metrics like gender, interest, and location to help you create strategically targeted content. Besides, it’s free, so you don’t have to pay to access these extra features.
Contests
Everyone loves the chance to win something they find valuable. So, if your audience has been admiring some of your latest pieces, you might want to offer them a chance to win a free, archival print. You could ask them to sign up for your newsletter, share a branded hashtag or take part in a challenge in exchange. There is no limit to your marketing possibilities.
Monetizing your Account
If you’ve been wondering how to make money on TikTok, you’re not alone. It’s a reasonably straightforward process, but it’s not a guarantee. Still, to give your brand a better chance at success, you’ll need to figure out how to set up your account to conduct business.
How is that done?
Follow these suggestions to make more money on TikTok:
Understand Your Target Audience
Knowing your audience and what drives them to engage with your art will help you figure out how to get paid on TikTok. There are several paths to monetization. Many of the highest earners use various methods to increase their income.
Link Your Profile to Your Instagram Shop and Website
When your audience becomes comfortable with you and the art content you produce, eventually, they’ll want to become a collector. If you provide a link in your profile, future collectors can effortlessly make a beeline for your Instagram shop, website, or online store. Then, add affordable collectibles like printed cups, iPhone and iPad covers, T-shirts, and a variety of your artwork in different sizes and price ranges.
Connect to TikTok Creator Fund
Once you’ve built up a large following, you can make additional income through TikTok Creator Fund. The precise amount of money you earn depends on how often you post, your audience size, and user engagement quality. Unfortunately, if you’re a TikTok beginner, you’ll have to find other ways to earn income.
Accept Donations through Live Gifting
With the apps’ Live gifting feature, you can monetize your account through live streaming. In addition, TikTok is different than other social media platforms in that it allows your followers to send you virtual gifts/donations as a form of appreciation. You can then redeem these gifts for payment.
Sell Branded Merch to Collectors
Another simple way to monetize your content is to sell your artwork and branded products to your collectors and fans. For example, print-on-demand companies like Pixels and artist websites like Art Store Fronts allow you to make archival prints and printed commercial products. Fans and collectors appreciate owning a part of your brand and message. Additionally, whenever they use your products and services in their homes or wear your clothing items, they advertise your business to their friends and family.
Use TikTok Ads Manager
While many unpaid marketing opportunities exist, you can also use paid advertising to increase your brand awareness and acquire more leads and customers. In addition, TikTok ads ensure the right demographic of users views your content. Another benefit is that it integrates perfectly with Shopify so that you can track your ads performance straight from your Shopify store.
Partner With Top Brands
Once you’ve reached a micro-influencer status and know you produce valuable content, you can take advantage of Creator Marketplace.
TikTok’s unique Creator Marketplace feature helps connect popular brands with appropriate influencers. In addition, it removes the misunderstanding and hesitancy brands commonly experience when approaching influencers.
TikTok Artist Success Stories
Yes, artists can be successful on this relatively new platform. Here are a few examples to inspire you to action:
At 73, Shiabasaki’s warm, joyful smile, child-like enthusiasm, and colorful watercolor paintings and drawings have captured the imagination and admiration of his 417,000 TikTok follower base. His content consists of short tutorials and expert art-supply recommendations.
At 19, this Saint Paul, Minnesota, artist earned 90,000 selling clever pop-art paintings on TikTok. Labuzetta, whose subject matter ranges from celebrities to superheroes, boasts an impressive following of 1.4 million users. He even accepts requests from his audience to create work based on characters and subjects they love.
Alpay Efe’s profile provides users with a window into his photorealistic painting process. He specializes in time-lapse posts, which show his work from start to finish. Efes’ vibrant, punchy style is reminiscent of movie posters and fantasy art.
In Conclusion
Figuring out how to sell art on TikTok is more accessible than you think. However, your age or lack of technical ability shouldn’t stop you. There are plenty of online articles, guides, videos, and tutorials to help you complete your TikTok marketing mission.
Can you think of someone who would benefit from this TikTok article? Then send them the link or share it on your social media pages? Also, if you have any additional advice on TikTok marketing, make sure to comment below.
Meet The Author
Marisa D. Aceves
Hello, my name is Marisa D. Aceves. I’m a forever curious B2B/B2C freelance writer, artist, and marketer. When not slaving away in the studio, I enjoy sharing articles on marketing strategies and tools and technologies. Follow my blog and receive my latest tips on art marketing, digital marketing, and business software reviews.
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