Digital Tips & Trends, April 2022
Greetings from The Birdbath! This monthly newsletter from Bower Blue takes a look at digital tips & trends impacting the visual arts & design communities.
For this month, we are looking at social media, specifically that long-standing (at least in digital terms) art world darling, Instagram. Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore it. We keep you up-to-date on the most important trends to watch and are here to help guide you through it. Any questions? Let us know!
#1. TURN BACK TIME
After users have been clambering for it ever since it was changed in 2016, the chronological feed is back! The three options are now ‘Home,’ the default, algorithmically sorted feed we’ve all become accustomed to over the years; ‘Following,’ a chronologically ordered stream of posts from accounts you follow; and ‘Favorites,’ a chronologically ordered stream of posts from favorites you select. We Are Social Media has a good round-up of what this means for you.
#2. INSTAGRAM FOR SMBs
This week, Instagram published a handy new guide — only available in PDF format 🤷♂️ — for small and mid-size businesses to highlight key marketing opportunities on the app. It’s fairly basic, but most of the tips are focused on highlighting in-app functionalities that you may not be aware of, so it is worth checking out. Social Media Today has a good summary, and if you want it, you can download the pdf here.
#3. GETTING ENGAGED
We’ve said it before: on social media, engagement is critical. Social media is a powerful tool for building your brand and cultivating an audience online. But to reap the rewards, you don’t just need an audience: you need engagement. You need comments, shares, likes, and other actions that prove your content is resonating with the people who see it. From Hootsuite, here’s an in-depth look at engagement: what it is, why it’s so important, how to measure it, and what to do to grow your engagement.
RECENT WORK
Our client Sean Kelly recently presented their fourth solo exhibition with renowned photographer Alec Soth, A Pound of Pictures. In this video, shot by Bower Blue at Soth’s studio in Minneapolis, the artist talks to us about the meaning of photography and the title of his exhibition. It was a pleasure to work with Alec and his studio crew, as well as with the other galleries involved in concurrent exhibitions, Weinstein Hammons and Fraenkel Gallery.
Bower Blue produces digital strategy & content for galleries, museums & cultural nonprofits. (Take a look at some of our clients.)
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