As an artist, your Instagram profile can be a powerful tool to showcase your work, build your brand, and connect with your audience. But with millions of users using the platform daily, it can be challenging to stand out and gain a following.
Luckily, as artists, we have the advantage that art often stands out on Instagram. This will increase the chances of you gaining a decent following.
So, how can you increase your art Instagram following today? In this article, I’ve compiled many tips to help you optimize your profile, post engaging content, and promote your account.
Some of the tips in this article are based on my experience promoting my art on Instagram, where I have built over 100k followers. You can check out my Instagram profile here.
By the end of this article, we hope you’ll have the tools you need to grow your audience and take your art to the next level. So, let’s dive in.
Optimize Your Instagram Profile
Set Up Your Instagram Profile For Success!
Optimizing your profile is the first step in gaining a more significant following on Instagram. Your profile is your first impression, and it’s essential to make it count. Start by selecting a profile picture that represents your brand and style. It can be a picture of you, your work, or anything that embodies your brand.
Craft an Instagram Bio that speaks about your personality
Make sure your bio is concise, clear, and engaging. For example, I teach artists to paint and help them with their art business so I have a clear statement in my Instagram bio:
“I help landscape artists improve their skills and grow their business.”
I also have a call to action for viewers to get my free ebook by sending me a DM with the word GUIDE.
Use a Link in Bio Tool in your profile
Link-in-bio tools have evolved significantly since I first wrote this guide. I’m now using Allen Store from Allen AI, which has proven to be an excellent solution for artists and creators.
Allen Store allows you to create a comprehensive hub for all your links, including your website, online store, social media accounts, and even sell products directly through the platform. What sets Allen Store apart is its AI-powered features, which help optimize your link performance and provide valuable analytics about your audience’s behavior.
The platform is designed specifically for creators who want to monetize their social media presence effectively. You can showcase your artwork, sell prints, offer courses, and drive traffic to multiple destinations – all from one clean, professional-looking page.
Build Your Allen Store With Allen AI
Other popular options include LinkTree and Stan Store. Still, I’ve found Allen Store to be the most comprehensive solution for artists looking to build a serious business from their Instagram presence.
Choose an Instagram Username That is Easy to Remember
Ensure your username is easy to remember and reflects your brand. Don’t use complicated usernames or ones that are filled with characters such as hashtags for example. Just keep it simple.
Lastly, remember to switch accounts to business account to access additional features such as analytics and the ability to promote your posts.
Have a Consistent Art Style
A consistent art style on Instagram is paramount to building a solid and recognizable brand as an artist. It allows your audience to quickly identify your work amidst the sea of content on the platform. Consistency in your art style creates a cohesive visual narrative that tells the story of your artistic journey.
To maintain a consistent art style, explore different techniques, subject matters, and mediums to discover what resonates with you. Once you’ve found your artistic voice, embrace it wholeheartedly and let it guide your creative process. Consistency doesn’t mean stagnation; it means refining and evolving your style over time while staying true to your core aesthetic.
Ultimately, having a consistent art style on Instagram sets you apart from other artists and strengthens your brand identity. It enables you to carve out a unique space in the art community, fostering recognition and opening doors for collaborations, exhibitions, or even commercial opportunities. Embrace your art style, nurture it, and let it shine through your Instagram feed, captivating your audience and propelling your artist following to new heights.
Post Regularly (Updated for 2025)
Posting regularly is crucial to gaining more followers, but the game has changed significantly in 2025. The Instagram algorithm now heavily favors daily reels above all other content types.
Current best practice for 2025:
- 1 reel per day (minimum) – This is now essential for growth. I’ve been trying to post at least two reels per day
- 2-3 Instagram Stories daily – You can share your reels to your stories
- 1-2 feed posts per week – this is not essential as it’s best to focus on reels.
Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity, but consistent daily reel posting is what the algorithm rewards most. The Instagram algorithm prefers consistency, so posting reels regularly will increase your content’s visibility and drive more views and engagement.
Post Reels Daily for Maximum Growth
Daily reels are now non-negotiable for serious growth. While static images are mainly shown to existing followers, reels help new audiences discover you and are prioritized by Instagram’s algorithm.
Why daily reels work for artists:
- Painting reveal reels consistently go viral – people love transformation content
- Process reels showcase your skill and build trust
- Highest potential reach of any content type
Batch-create strategy:
Film one painting session and turn it into multiple reels – sketch, color mixing, details, and final reveal. This lets you maintain daily posting without creating new content every day.
Respond to Your Comments (Critical in 2025)
The first 30-60 minutes after posting are critical. Quick engagement signals to Instagram that your content is worth showing to more people.
Key practices:
- Respond within the first hour if possible
- Heart AND reply to comments for maximum algorithm boost
- Ask questions in captions to encourage comments
- Use Instagram’s new pin feature for your best responses
Instagram rewards creators who show up consistently and engage authentically. Daily reels + active comment engagement = accelerated growth in 2025.
Use Allen AI to Find Viral Content Ideas and Grow Your Art Business
One of the biggest game-changers for my Instagram growth has been using Allen AI to discover trending content and viral patterns. This AI-powered tool analyzes millions of posts across Instagram to identify what’s currently working in the art niche and beyond.
Allen AI helps you:
- Spot trending topics and formats before they become oversaturated
- Analyze successful posts in your niche to understand what makes them viral
- Get content suggestions tailored to your art style and audience
- Track performance patterns of top-performing art accounts
- Build and optimize your Allen Store for maximum conversions
- Create ebooks for both freebie giveaways and paid content
- Generate product ideas for your art business
- Develop comprehensive business strategies beyond just social media
Instead of guessing what content might work, Allen AI gives you data-driven insights into what’s actually performing well right now. This has been invaluable for creating reels that resonate with both my existing audience and help me reach new followers.
Beyond content creation
Allen AI has become my go-to tool for building my entire art business ecosystem. Whether I need ideas for new products to sell, want to create lead magnets for my email list, or need help strategizing my business growth, Allen AI provides actionable insights that save hours of brainstorming.
The platform saves hours of manual research and helps you stay ahead of Instagram trends rather than always playing catch-up, while also serving as your business development partner.
Use High-Quality Images
Posting consistently is vital to growing your art Instagram following. Still, it’s also essential to maintain the quality of your content. This is where using high-quality images comes in. Ensure you post your best-quality artwork.
Your artwork also deserves to be showcased in the best possible light, so take the time to ensure your photos are clear, well-lit, and properly edited.
Invest in a good camera or phone and use editing tools to enhance your images. You want your artwork to stand out and catch the attention of potential followers. Remember, your posts reflect your brand and the quality of your artwork.
By using high-quality images, you’ll attract new followers and keep your current ones engaged. Your art Instagram following will grow with regular posting and visually stunning content.
Now, you may be thinking, what if I don’t have enough artwork to post daily? You can do a couple of things to create more content to post if you don’t have enough finished artwork to share. One of the things I have been doing recently is making posts of my painting process, where I will share a load of images of my artwork in the various stages of creation in one image. My viewers have found this intriguing, and many of these posts have received a lot of engagement and likes. You can create these types of posts by using Canva.
Another thing you can do if you are running low on content to post is to reshare old posts and reels that have done well in the past. In 2022 I had a reel that went viral, receiving 1.4 million views. I reposted the same reel a year later in 2022 and it got even more views than when I first posted it, getting 2.2 million views.
Promote Your Art on Reels
Instagram Reels are a popular feature for sharing short, engaging videos and have been one of my most effective ways of growing my following on Instagram. As an artist, you can leverage Reels to showcase your creative process, provide art tutorials, or share time-lapse videos of your artwork coming to life.
Create Hooks at the Start of Your Reels
Most people these days have a short attention span, so you only have a couple of seconds to hook in your view to engage them with your reel. It doesn’t matter how good your reel is; if it doesn’t have a good hook in the first second, people will swipe up to the next video.
Spot Trends by Watching Other People’s Reels
Spot trends on reels, copy them, and put your spin on them. You can spot trends by looking at other people’s reels and taking note of the similarities between the reels that are doing well.
In the art niche, it is pretty easy to spot trends as many involve an artist revealing a painting. I have had a few reels go viral, receiving over 1 million views using this strategy.
Another thing you an artist can do to increase your following using reels is to ask people to follow you. You can write something like ‘Follow me if you like my painting’, for example, and place it in your video’s last couple of seconds.
Share Your Process
Sharing your art process is an excellent way to give your followers a glimpse into your creative world and build a stronger connection with them. When you show the behind-the-scenes of your art and progress shots of a painting you are working on, you allow your followers to see your personality, skills, and dedication.
You can share your process through photos, short videos below, or Instagram Stories, depending on your preferences and the best way to showcase your art. You can also use captions to share your insights, thoughts, and inspiration. Sharing your process can spark conversations, answer questions, and inspire your followers to create their art.
Moreover, sharing your process can help you attract new followers interested in your style and approach. People love seeing how art happens and appreciate authentic and transparent content. When you share your process, you show that you care about your followers and are willing to let them into your world.
Sharing your process can also help you utilize hashtags strategically. By including relevant and specific hashtags in your posts, you can reach new audiences searching for content related to your art and style.
Use Hashtags Sparingly (Updated for 2025)
The hashtag landscape has undergone significant changes since I first started using Instagram. While hashtags used to be the primary method for discovery, Instagram’s algorithm now prioritizes other factors, including engagement rate, relationship with followers, and content quality.
Current best practice
Instagram now recommends using no more than 7 hashtags per post, and honestly, I’ve been having great success using even fewer – sometimes just 3-5 highly relevant hashtags.
The key is quality over quantity. Choose hashtags that are:
- Directly relevant to your artwork
- Not overly saturated (avoid hashtags with 10+ million posts)
- Mix of niche-specific tags (#landscapepainting) and broader art tags (#painting)
Many successful content creators I know have stopped using hashtags altogether including myself and are focusing entirely on creating engaging content that gets saved and shared. The algorithm seems to reward authentic engagement over hashtag optimization.
My current approach
Recently, I haven’t been using hashtags at the time of writing this blog; however, sometimes I use 3-5 specific hashtags that directly describe my artwork, but I don’t spend time researching hashtag strategies like I used to. The focus should be on creating content that people want to engage with naturally.
Use Instagram Stories
Another effective way to increase your art Instagram following is by using Instagram Stories. These short, 15-second videos or images can be an excellent way to showcase your art and your process more personally. By showing your followers behind-the-scenes glimpses of your work, you can build a stronger connection with them and keep them engaged.
You can also use features like polls, quizzes, and questions to encourage interaction and gather feedback from your followers. For example, you could ask your followers which artworks they would like to see more of or which colors they prefer in your work.
Using Instagram Stories can also help you reach new audiences through the right hashtags and location tags. By including relevant hashtags and locations in your Stories, you can attract more viewers searching for content related to your art and style.
Now that you know how to use Instagram Stories effectively, let’s move on to the next tip: running giveaways.
Promote Your Instagram Account
Now that you have implemented various tactics to grow your Instagram following, it’s time to take your account promotion to the next level. After all, only so many people will stumble upon your profile on their own.
One way to promote your account is to collaborate with other artists or brands. Reach out to like-minded individuals or other businesses and propose a collaboration that benefits all parties involved. This could be as simple as a joint Instagram post or a more complex project. Collaborating with others exposes your account to their followers and can lead to new creative opportunities.
Lastly, pay attention to the power of cross-promotion. Include links to your front page, blog, and Instagram account if you have a website or blog. You can also include your own page and Instagram profile in your email signature and business cards.
Promoting your account increases engagement, the chances of attracting new followers, and helps grow your audience and follower base. With these tips, you’ll be on your way to a thousand followers and becoming an Instagram influencer in no time.
Use Instagram Broadcast Channel to Grow Your Account
An Instagram Broadcast Channel is a new feature that allows users to share messages, updates, polls and videos with their followers through direct messages. It’s like sending a mass WhatsApp message to your loyal fans. Followers will be able to react to your messages but not be able to send messages.
This feature opens up endless possibilities for artists looking to engage with their followers in a more personal and interactive way. I am using this feature myself and so far it has been very beneficial.
Conclusion
In conclusion, growing your art Instagram following is a process that takes time. Still, by implementing these tips, you can start seeing results sooner rather than later.
Remember to optimize your profile, post regularly, use high-quality images, engage with followers, share your process, utilize hashtags and use Instagram stories to promote your account.
Above all, stay true to your brand, have fun, and keep creating and sharing your beautiful art with the world.
