Use a photo of you for your personal profile on Facebook and an image of your art for your business page.
Yes, it's nice to see artists' faces (I agree! I like to see faces, too), but are you promoting your face or your art?
When people visit your art page, you want them to be wowed immediately. You want your page to scream, “I'm an artist! And I'm a damn good artist!”
As pretty or handsome as you might be, your art should be the star here.
The #1 Reason
The main reason you use your art as your image on your business page is this:
When you comment on other pages as your page, you leave an image of your art on those pages. If someone likes it, they might click on it.
I know of at least one artist who commented as her page on my Facebook page and was then asked to show her art at a gallery. The gallery saw the image next to her comment and contacted her.
This wouldn't have happened if she had left a picture of herself next to her comment.
To confirm: face on personal profile and art on business page.
19 thoughts on “Why Your Art is the Profile Picture for Your Facebook Page”
This seems like very obvious advise but I assure you it isn’t . I’ve visited lots of sites, social and business and none of this advise was evident. Hopefully, through posts like this the message will get through. Being in the arts is a good business. Unfortunately places that train and educate artists don’t teach the fundamentals of making the business profitable.
When I created my LinkedIn profile, I opted to use one of my images rather than a picture of myself. I recently began posting on the Women in Photography blog and that image goes everywhere. As I create new work, I will rotate images through the various social media sites.
Thank you, Ethel! I was about to ask if it worked on LinkedIn too. Guess I will go change my profile image right now. Love the idea of rotating images – I wonder if that is good, or if it confuses viewers because there isn’t one image to associate with you. Perhaps if your work has a distinct “voice”, it doesn’t matter.
Hi, Jana –
Glad to help anyway I might. What I hope will happen is that people will begin to recognize the style of my work and then associate that with my name, hopefully eliminating some confusion as to whose work they’re looking at. I enjoy being a little flexible, but I’m super looking forward to the challenge of selling my preferred style, which is dark, moody, and edgy.
Jana: I’ve heard at least one person on Twitter say he doesn’t like images changed because he has face blindness or amnesia or whatever you call it. He strongly identifies with one image and then when it changes, he’s lost.
I, though, like to change it up and don’t mind it when others do. I think it can be difficult to constantly shift the avatar associated with you.
Yes, if your work is strong and consistent, it shouldn’t be a huge problem.
Thanks for sharing that, Ethel. I hadn’t noticed it much on LI as I don’t use LI very much (okay, “never”). But it sounds like you think you made the right decision.
Alyson, could you comment on Linked In, too, at some point? I’m on it, because someone asked me to recommend her, but don’t have much info there at all. Now people are contacting me through it to connect with me – and I’m thinking oh GEEZ! I’ve already got three blogs, two websites, and a Facebook page (plus the one I work on for Open Studios). This is nuts! Do I really need to do Linked In too?
Thank you for bringing up responding to things as a page – I try to keep my page and my personal accounts separate on FB, but have to remind myself that I can respond to things from my page, if I want to….
Karen: I do need to write about this. I mention it in my workshops, but not much here. I don’t think you need to be on LinkedIn. I’ll try to elaborate in a post.
I’ve suddenly found LinkedIn to be pretty important, but that’s because there are finally groups relevant to me to interact with. Already found out about a call for entries for a book that will include animal art that I would never have found out about otherwise. Plus, since I have a serious specialty niche- animals, land and people of Mongolia- the one or two Mongolia-related groups are obvious places to have presence in hopes of attracting buyers. I also have a fair amount of expertise on the country, having been there six times now, so might also now start getting queries and questions.
For the longest time I used my logo, a blue/turquoise stitched flower as my picture on my profile and business page. Then people started asking for a a photo of me on my profile. Didn’t want to ‘confuse’ my friends and connections on FB who they were ‘talking’ to so I incoorperated my small blue flower on a personal photo.
Have to say I personally do like seeing a photo of peoples work on their pages.
I appreciate Karen’s request …but having taken your amazing classes …I’m going over to Linked In to change out my profile picture right now…I’ve been using an image on my Face Book fan page but now I realize it’s time to change er’ up.
Thanks Alyson and all!
This is a great group, blog and lots of wonderful information 🙂 Thank you.
It’s done! and …It felt liberating to place one of my paintings into the profile picture zone on LinkedIn…I love the idea of allowing the work to speak in an unconventional way.
Do you have an article on, or can you tell me how to set up a Business Page on FaceBook? I have a personal one.
Thank you
kd
Kathleen:
The article you’re looking for is here: https://aaartbizold.wpengine.com/2011/05/create-a-fan-page-on-facebook.html Some of the info may be slightly outdated, as facebook is always changing things, but that should be a huge help.
Also, if you search “Facebook” in the search bar of the right side of this blog, you’ll hit a wealth of articles about using facebook as an artist’s marketing tool. Alyson’s provided a lot of great info. Lots of luck!
Well, I’m glad to know I’m doing one thing right! I’ve been using my art as my avatar for a good while now on most all of my social media. Lots of other great tips here, too, which as a newcomer to selling art on the net, I very much appreciate! Thank you so much Alyson! I have been receiving your emails for years and have your book, both of which have been a great resource for providing me the tools to get it going!
Thank you so much!
One thing that wasn’t mentioned (unless I missed it) is Facebook and copyright issues. A lot of artists are concerned with the “ownership” of images posted in facebook, and whether or not facebook actually can own them. I have been reluctant to post uncropped images on facebook for this reason, even if this is disinformation.
How ’bout a self portrait (painting in your style,I mean) as avatar? Eh? 😉
How about including your face as a self portrait :o) I went for this option because I’m a portrait artist https://www.facebook.com/portraitra and I think its works well. I’m looking for ways to increase my fanpage membership though as it’s going pretty slow! Any advice would be welcome.