Facebook Analysis:
The name of my Facebook page is The art of Jan L. Benson
It is a place to show, tell and sell  my artwork.
The description on my page for my presence and mission is:

I am creating this face book page to show my art work and to stay motivated as an artist. I am hoping to stir interest of those who enjoy looking at art. Paintings are much more enjoyable to see in person, so this is mostly to hopefully wet the appetite. I plan to post notifications of art shows. I am hoping for feedback to know if people like what I'm working on. I would also like to use this as an avenue to stay in touch with fellow artists and people affiliated with the art world.

My primary medium is oil and I mostly paint landscapes. I am increasingly including figurative subjects and more. I plan to share information about each painting I post and I may share my experiences in the creation of it. My goal is to become a professional painter.

My market persona's for my Ad are:   Industries-Arts, entertainment, sports and media.
                                                             Interests- Business and Industry with emphasis in Design and
                                                                             Small Business.
                                                             Hobbies- Arts and Music.
                                                             Behaviors- Luxury Brands and services and Shoppers.       

 This is my current Ad preparation. I plan to change it soon as I would like to incorporate selling prints of my better pieces that are popular, so I can appeal to a larger audience. Prints are much more affordable than original pieces. Younger collectors are apt to buy prints and middle age collectors are more likely to purchase oils.

My plan to reach my audience is that they will find the art appealing. I also have hoped that some description would make each piece more interesting.
I do have two success stories.
My husbands cousin is in the process of purchasing two paintings from me. One of Delicate Arch and one of the family ranch house. She seemed to like my description of  plain-air painting in the cool fall weather at the ranch. I haven't painted the ranch house for her yet.

Another success came from sharing one of my paintings on my regular page as I wasn't getting much traffic on the art page.  The piece was accepted in the student art show and so I used it to let people know about the show. My neighbor whose daughters were models for me for the painting, shared my post with her friends and received some great responses.  Shortly thereafter she told me she would like to purchase the painting.

Another tactic I recently tried to make posts more interesting is to include photo's taken during the process. The first time I did this I put a mid shot in with the finished piece. The second time I had more photo's and so I separated the finished from the process photos to see if people liked the process part. I was a bit sad to see that I got likes on the process but not on the finished painting. I think it was because the people that responded had already seen the painting in person. I suppose I will continue experimenting with process photo's and eventually get brave enough to video the creation of an entire painting.

 Screen Shot of Page:

Insights:
What worked best to get people to follow my page was inviting them individually from the page!
Posting close to 5pm seemed to be a good idea. Posting later in the evening seemed to also reach morning people.

 

 Summary:

My objective for this campaign was mostly to get comfortable with sharing my art work with a larger audience and possibly stir interest for artwork to be purchased.

For most of the posting time I did not have a very large audience. I posted messages on my regular page to encourage followers a couple of times and assumed most of my friends saw them. However, I must have been wrong because when I recently invited friends individually as was suggested to me; my followers increased dramatically! I think it helped to create a business card and include my page and I had it available during my Senior Exhibition. Sharing art related posts on my regular page has also increased interest.

I have generally posted once a week and checked for responses a few times a week. My original plan was to just post completed paintings and share some information about them. I decided it would be a good place to announce where my work is being shown. For variety I have included some photos during the process of creation. I am not very comfortable with videotaping myself while working yet but I will try that out sometime. I also created an album of 10 landscapes and I plan to create several albums of various subjects. I haven’t run an Ad yet but I think it will be a great idea!

I had mostly planned on selling oil paintings themselves, but I have concluded that I would like to create prints of high interest pieces, so my artwork can be affordable to more people. Oil paintings take time, so I have to charge a fairly high amount for the original. I charge a low beginner artist rate right now though. 

Selling my first painting due to my art page has got me very excited. It helps me realize that perhaps I can paint for a living. I have a long way to go but I feel more motivated in my goals.

Self Evaluation:

Not knowing for sure who is looking at my work is kind of a strange feeling, so I have definitely been out of my comfort zone with this.  I especially felt nervous after a gallery owner suggested I only post my best work on my Facebook page. I felt a bit limited by this idea, and I felt I should only post items she would put in her gallery initially.  I'm pleased she was willing to look at my work but; I think I would prefer to share my journey and a variety of styles I’m experimenting with.

Surprisingly my process photos caused increased interest. People also seemed to appreciate announcements of gallery showings. The time I post makes a big difference too.

What I would have done differently is: I think it would have been smarter to invite friends individually from the beginning, but then I wouldn't have had the excitement of great improvement at the end.  I should have checked the insights sooner too, this could have helped my progress I suspect.

 I am really glad to have conducted this experiment though and I plan to continue on with it!