How do I promote my HUG Shop on social media?

We know that marketing tends to be a creative's biggest challenge. While HUG does our best to promote each artist, be it on our platform, social media channels, or even email, no one can market yourself better than you. In fact, from our experience, our most successful sellers are those who:

• Are extremely comfortable with promoting themselves as much and as frequently as possible. Successful HUG sellers like Jackson Alves and Amber Vittoria can often be found promoting the exact same items they have available for sale on a daily basis.
• Are open to experimenting with different ways and mediums to market themselves. Sellers like Leah Ibrahim Sams take to both X and Instagram, and posts both still images as well as videos to share their Shop.

Need some ideas for social media content? Here are a few of our favorites.

• Sneak peeks: Treat this as a soft launch to kickstart curiosity with your audience and tease what is coming next. When selling art, you can simply showcase a small crop of your artwork.
• Work-in-progress: This gives your audience a real-time view of how your artwork evolves. Time-lapse videos and sequential photos can illustrate the stages of creation, helping prospective buyers understand the intricate process behind the final product. Here, artist Sarah Script shows how she makes a heat foil calligraphy keychain from scratch.

• Behind the scenes: Share behind-the-scenes glimpses of your creative process by offering a look into your studio space through photos and videos. This transparency humanizes your brand and builds a deeper connection with your followers. 

• Invite engagement: Why not involve your followers in your creative process? For example, Leah Ibrahim Sams ran a poll on Instagram to ask her followers which color variant they would most prefer.

• Show your products in context: Share photos or videos of your artwork displayed in various settings can help potential buyers envision how the artwork could enhance their own space, making it feel more real and personal. For example, artist Sara Baumann uses a mockup app like Smartist to bring her work to life.