How To Promote Your Artwork on LinkedIn by Frank J Casella

With LinkedIn the main platform that I use online to promote my artistic photography, as I’ve been a LinkedIn member for a decade now, I’m noticing more and more artists doing the same as well. I’ve been asked the question several times how to use LinkedIn to promote your art, so I thought it be a good idea to post my answer here, as many of you might be thinking about this as well.


There are an increasingly number of ways to utilize LinkedIn, so I share here the top five that work for me at this time. Considering you have the basic information completed on your profile using appreciate keywords in all the areas provided (Headline, summary, and experiences, etc.):



Share an Update - The update box is at the top of your LInkedIn feed on the homepage. Posts there are known to go deeper in reach than Twitter. But LinkedIn is NOT like Twitter, meaning that you don’t post a dozen updates a day with sales words that say ‘buy me’. The key is to share one to four updates a day, or at the very least three times a week, that are interesting and uplifting to your connections. You want to develop relationships that can help with referrals or sales and, remember, on LinkedIn as in life, it is better to give than to receive.


I share to my LinkedIn feed once every three or four updates my thoughts and a picture. The rest of the time I share articles or updates that I find might be helpful to my connections (some from my blog), about art and photography, or just about making it through life. For my pictures I share inspirational words that came to mind when I made the picture, and these are usually a copy from my posts on Flickr that have good traction already.



Followers and Connections - The thing about LinkedIn is that it's not only about your connections or who you know, its about who they know. What I mean by this is it’s important that you make connections with people who you know, or who know you, and not everyone who asks to connect with you. This is because you are a point of referral for all your connections, just as much as they are for you. I have two separate audiences on Linkedin, for my photography and for my nonprofit, and I overlap them for better networking.


For this reason I usually ask people who request to connect with me to Follow me. I state on my profile summary that “Instead of sending a connection request, please Follow me found at the 'More' button (I save the 30k LinkedIn connection limit for people I know, clients I work with and potential prospects.)” The reason for this is when I need to make contact with a potential prospect then I can reach out to my connection base and be confident that we know each other enough for me to ask for an introduction, and the same goes for them with me.


The way to increase your connections is to join groups, as you can then communicate with group members as if they’re a connection. You really don’t need a lot of connections to do business as an artist, you just need the right connections. More about this I will share in a future article.



LinkedIn Blog - There is a powerful blog platform on LinkedIn, sometimes called ‘Pulse” or “Publishing Platform” all the same thing. The main function of this is to share your expertise and not use sales lingo, but save your call to action for the bottom of the post (if you use one at all). LinkedIn encourages that you copy your blog posts from your website or other platforms where you share articles, and it’s up to you if you want to link back to them or not, I usually don’t. I more often link to the picture used in the blog that is posted on Flickr, and in my Flickr picture descriptions are the links where to purchase my works.


The thing about the blog post is to share information that inspires the reader to want to share it. You won’t do this right away, but over time, and with practice. I am still working on this myself, and the important thing is that you practice the good habit of developing your writing towards this idea. You also have articles now that you can personally share multiple times on your LinkedIn feed and with people who ask about your work, and save you the time to explain things multiple times with your prospects.



LinkedIn Company Page - If you are familiar with how Facebook works, you can have a personal profile and you can also as an Artist have a business page. Well on LinkedIn the Business Page is called a Company Page. The main function to use a Company Page as an Artist is for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as if you keep posting to the feed at least once a week, your page should show up on the first page on the search engines. Beyond this there are other features that are more useful to a larger company, but make sure the image to your Company Page is linked to your experience section on your LinkedIn profile. Because then a visitor can click the logo and be taken directly to your Company Page for more information or to follow for updates.


I post at least once a week on my Company Page a blog entry from my artist website, otherwise I usually share a new picture from Flickr that have my words of thought or inspiration.



Website Section - If you look at your LinkedIn profile page, you will see a link that says something like “view contact info”. This is where LinkedIn allows you to post at least three websites and your Twitter account. You can post here locations that you want your visitors to find you. As of this writing I post where to buy my art, the blog for my nonprofit, and the subscription form for my mailing list.


Depending who you talk to, its optional to also share your contact information in your profile summary section. There are many LinkedIn gurus now, and I’ve read many of their books, the two who seem the most grounded and make things digestible for me as an Artist are Melony Dodaro and Wayne Breitbarth. Check them out.



Everything I'm doing recently on LinkedIn is for feedback to master my craft, the rest of what happens I consider gravy. Though I have seen business from being on LinkedIn, the key about social media and online communities is that activity doesn’t mean accomplishment. Rather a means to promote what it is you do and develop professional relationships.

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