Social Media

When it comes to showcasing your art, getting eyes on it, and engaging a community of followers, there is likely no better platform today than social media.

Instagram

With Instagram not only do you get to leverage the block-style gallery view of your posts feed and captions, but you have access to features like stories to supercharge the visual elements you can portray about what goes into making your art. Here are a couple of tips to help optimize your profile and get the most out of Instagram: 1. Profile optimization. ‍

- Include your name or artist pseudonym. - Give a short description of who you are (bios have a 150-character limit so use it wisely or make use of emojis to save space). - Use Linktree as your “website” link to create a menu people can browse directly inside of Instagram that includes your website, other social channels you create content for, your collection’s jpg.store link, and more! 2. Create a beautiful posts gallery. ‍

If you’re releasing a collection, chances are the art will be similar in aesthetic and will naturally look on brand so to speak. Uniformity and consistency are key to making a gallery people will want to browse. 3. Use captions to highlight the story behind a specific piece. ‍

- @ mention marketplaces where your NFTs can be purchased. - Create a branded # tag for your collection/artist name and use additional hashtags around the art, what it stands for and some NFT tags through research. - Engage with comments and interact with your community. 4. Use stories to share more about your creative workflow. ‍

- Use video to document your creative process, answer FAQs about your art’s inspiration, and more. - Get creative with your stories and follow best practices. - Save stories as highlights on your profile for easy access to your story content. 5. Follow other artists, NFT marketplaces, and projects to learn how they’re using the platform.

Twitter

Seen as the mouthpiece of celebrities, high-profile business people, and disgruntled presidents, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Twitter is worth exploring as a platform to push your collection, but the bite-sized messaging platform has been completely adopted by the crypto and NFT community en masse. There is probably no better social platform to get your fix of real-time news and NFT community chatter than Twitter. It’s a place where NFT projects leverage hashtags and live Twitter spaces to announce NFT drops, giveaways, project updates, and more. If, however, you’re an individual artist without a team behind you, it might seem a little daunting trying to establish yourself on the platform and you might even question if it’s worth the effort... Well, as the “watering hole” for NFT enthusiasts, it presents the perfect place for you to connect with collectors where they live online and build a community of people who celebrate your art. Here are a couple of tips to help you get the most out of Twitter: 1. Profile optimization. ‍

- Use a high-res image for your profile photo of your artist identity and create a banner that represents your collection and/or art. - Link to your website. - Include keywords around NFTs and feel free to describe what your art is about. 2. Post visual content. ‍

- Tweets that are accompanied by visual content are liked, shared, and retweeted more often than a simple wall of text. - Utilize hashtags in your tweets to increase the likelihood of being found and followed. - Engage with replies, retweets, and when you’re tagged. 3. Become a part of the Twitter NFT community. - Comment on and retweet content from NFT projects that vibes with your artistic style. - Join Twitter spaces and hear from industry leaders. 4. Cross-promote content between your social media accounts. - Tweet as often as twice every single day to avoid your content being buried and stay relevant. - Share popular tweets on your Instagram stories and share popular posts on your Twitter feed to get it going. 5. Follow other artists, NFT marketplaces, and projects to learn how they’re using the platform and use best practices.

Discord

With Insta and Twitter at your fingertips, you should be well on your way to promoting your art and sending interested followers back to your website and collection page, but for the relevance of this NFTs explained guide, it’s important to talk about one more platform, Discord. If Twitter can be described as the “watering hole” for all things NFTs, Discord is like the “swiss army knife” of community building and management in the NFT space, and it is especially useful for NFT projects that have bigger collections and anticipate garnering a massive following. ‍

Users can create unique channels (kind of like Slack) that help onboard new followers and manage certain functions with the use of automated bots like: - A general chat room where new fans can interact with each other. - Announcements for all important information regarding the project. - Events like NFT drops, whitelists, and giveaways. - And more. Each server uses moderators from the community that are assigned specific roles to ensure that things run smoothly and can be a really powerful place to engage a growing community. But, investing in Discord can also be very time-consuming and if it is not set up correctly may leave your followers exposed to scams and hackers taking control of your bots to post bogus minting offers and abscond with their cryptocurrency. The best thing to learn if this is a tool you can use at some point is to dip your toes in slowly by joining a server of an NFT project that you like, and taking notes on how channels are used. ‍Just remember to never, ever, click any links while using Discord, and be sure to turn off your DMS or direct messages so you don’t fall prey to scam artists. If you’re interested in learning more about Discord bots on Cardano, check our review out here. Join The Monet Society’s Discord server!‍