Setting up Facebook Groups for Artists

SETTING UP A FACEBOOK GROUP – AN ARTISTS GUIDE

 

Facebook Art by Jonathan Matas Usage Restrictions: Images may only be used when featuring the Facebook product, or used to illustrate an article about Facebook

 

Wow, love, like, angry, sad, yada, yada, yada. I along with the rest of the world were expecting the addition of a dislike button to be added to Facebook, not a whole myriad of emotions. Now I’m never too sure if it is appropriate to feel sad or angry or if I should just say wow. Life with only like was way simpler.

I knew Facebook was big, I have been using it since it became a thing, but only periodically. Only in the past two or three years have I been using it on a daily basis and more so for business. But what I had never really grasped was just how big it is. I hadn't realised it was bigger than China which is the world’s most populous country, yet Facebook also feels a bit like home.

Despite the trust and privacy issues that have done the rounds over the last few years, you know the ones where we all decide to never share anything on the platform again because Facebook is allegedly spying on us, (it is, that’s how it works) and that the social giant owns everything we post including all of our art, (it doesn’t, and that’s not how it works) and five minutes later we write a status update decreeing our position of never using it again.

Just five minutes later we are back to posting our stories and we are friends again. Facebook does get a lot of bad press in regards to how it handles privacy but much of what we read on Facebook itself and from unknown third-parties saying how evil the platform is, is nothing more than groundless urban myth. That’s not to say that I agree with everything, but I signed their terms and conditions, I joined without paying a penny, and I can close my account whenever I want. I am essentially a visitor to the house of Facebook while I am there.

I use a myriad of social media services to promote my art and engage with the art world’s communities, yet every time I leave Facebook and go to use another service I feel as if I have left home as I start engaging with a different set of people. All of the time I engage in another platform I am wondering if anyone on Facebook is missing me or what they are saying. I can’t explain it. My wife says it is an addiction, in which case she has it too. For me Facebook is where my friends hangout and where I run two my two Facebook arts groups, The Artist Hangout, and The Artists Exchange.

1.55 billion People use Facebook every month, of those around 1.39 billion access Facebook from a mobile device. More than a billion people use it every day, and of those, some 894 million are accessing it daily from a mobile device. That's an awful lot of mobile data that all routes through the Zuckerberg infrastructure.

That infrastructure extends out even further because Facebook's nearest competitors WhatsApp, which has 900 million users per month, Instagram which has 400 million, and Facebook's own Messenger has 700 million users, all of which are owned by the social media behemoth. The platform has a billion more users than Twitter, and around 1.5 million advertisers.

I have written before about the dreaded Facebook algorithm and how it decides what you see and don't see, but for artists Facebook's numbers are just too big to ignore. The downside as an artist is that whilst there are many art buyers in the mix of daily users, there are also more and more creatives vying for attention.

1 Facebook Way Usage Restrictions: Images may only be used when featuring the Facebook product, or used to illustrate an article about Facebook

 

Absolutely there has to be an algorithm to sort the wheat from the chaff, but unless you have a big budget to spend on boosting posts there is little that you can do other than to work with the algorithm and try to make each post that you make, the very best that it can be. I discussed the algorithm and how you stand a better chance of extending your organic (non-paid) reach recently so if you haven't read it yet, I suggest that you take a look.

In short there is a community that is larger than the population of the whole of China that you can reach out to, the reality is that just like in a real community in the real world, there are pockets that seem unreachable. As an artist you need to reach out to those people that you are currently missing, whether or not you go down the paid ad and boost route is dependent on your willingness to part with your cash, or if you really want to put in the extra effort required to reach those people organically.

I favour the latter not because I don't like spending money on advertising, but because I am a firm believer in organic interest from people who want to engage over and above paid interest where people may just randomly like the look of a page or group but then never really interact. Ultimately I know deep down that at some point I will need to spend something, the algorithm will always favour paid over free no matter what we are told to the contrary. You can beat it for a while, then it changes. I also favour because well, I love to work hard!

But Facebook to me is not just about selling my art. If it were I wouldn't spend nearly as many hours each week on it as I do. For me Facebook is a way to reach out and put something back in to the community, and a global community at that. I'm almost 30-years in selling my art so I have picked up more than a few things along the way. I can definitely tell you what doesn't work, what does work though is harder to predict and it's a constantly changing landscape.

Despite that only in the past couple of years have I entered the print on demand market, I historically sold through more traditional routes previously. I've also made mistakes in the past and whenever I see a new artist come along with enthusiasm, I feel compelled to help them. I had no mentor, I was late attending a formal arts curriculum, and I never quite mastered the art of marketing myself over my art. But if you are an artist today, you need to engage with social media. It makes no difference if you are a well-known artist or a newcomer, having a social presence is expected and I think it is very rare for artists not to have a presence these days.

This is exactly why I created my two Facebook groups. The Artists Exchange, and the Artist Hangout. There are over 925 million groups on Facebook. Yet when I started to look around all I could really find was a series of replications of other groups. I wanted to create two very different groups. There were many great Facebook groups at the time, there still are, but there was nothing that encouraged less self-promotion. That seems a little bizarre, why would you even consider less promotion when I tell everyone to promote, promote, and promote?

This week we have a theme week in the Artists Exchange!

 

I am working on a post that will explain how self-promotion can help, and when the balance is too far the other way, and over self-promotion can reduce your visibility. I started that post thinking the whole thing was simple, my research to date tells me it's not. If you want to make sure you catch that post, sign up for emails and you will get it delivered right to your inbox. You'll only ever receive the posts on the page, I really don't like spam at all.

So what does Facebook define a group as? Essentially what they officially say is that more than 925 million people around the world use Facebook Groups every month. Groups give people a private space to share with small groups of people, like family, teammates or best friends. Privacy settings can be customized for each group. Within a group, people can post updates, share photos and files and organize events.

Some groups are not small, I have almost 3,000 members in each of my two groups, and there are some groups with in excess of 70,000 members. Not exactly what you would call small.

When I created the two groups I didn't do it all in one day. I set the Artist Hangout up first. A place where great artists could connect and share their work. The strategy was to provide a single group where people could post anything they liked as long as it was legal and related to the arts, handmade products, and other crafts. For a while the membership stayed at around 60-members.

Then the second stage was to create the Artists Exchange. A group where artists promote other artists. No more than two self-promotion pieces per week, but if you want to share the work of others you can share as much as you like. The rules had to be a little stricter as I was looking to create a very different community. I knew it would grow, and I couldn't see the value in a few thousand members sharing their own work five times a day. If they did, then you would miss the whole point of the group. Hence the restriction on self-promotion posts.

The theory behind the Artists Exchange is simple. For example, I promote Joe, and Susan promotes me. Joe promotes Susan. Joe has fifty people on his friends list, Susan has 75 friends on her list, and I have a hundred. Suddenly we all collectively have 225 potential users who could see our works. What’s more, these users might never had heard of the other two artists, they in turn want to tell their friends and suddenly you start to create an almost neural and infinite network of potential buyers.

But selling art and not my art, was not the only reason that the Artists Exchange was created. I am inspired by the works of other artists and love to see new works. I am also a huge fan of new and emerging artists and a group that could possibly spot the next big name was appealing. Sometimes I just need a little inspiration, whenever I see what people are creating, it motivates me to explore new techniques.

DO IT YOURSELF

We know that Facebook groups are useful, we also know that they are easy to set up. They are, it can take less than five minutes to set up a group. At this point you are probably asking why I am telling you that it is easy to set up a group and wouldn’t this make users move to new groups? The answer is that each Facebook user can join up to 6,000 groups. However anyone can realistically keep up with 6,000 groups is beyond me, but new groups emerge every day.

Good groups are difficult to come by and I am all for the creation of good groups. There is plenty of space. Some groups are started within five-minutes, they go on to become successful, others are started and then quickly abandoned as soon as the not quite so easy bit starts. That bit is the constant administration that it takes to create and maintain a good group.

I already said that the process of starting the group was easy enough, but it is the work that is needed to maintain it that ends up putting a lot of people off. I have known groups emerge who came up with some great ideas to get their communities engaged, less than a month later they were abandoned. People underestimate just how arduous the administration can be. Imagine a party where 2,000 guests arrive and you need to provide them with food on your own.

You are not even close to thinking that would be difficult, with a Facebook group, the party goers expect a starter, main course, dessert, and for the snacks to flow forever, and occasionally it doesn’t hurt to throw in a bottle of champagne. If you are thinking that running a larger Facebook community on your own is going to be easy, think again. You are most definitely going to need some help, and you definitely need great members. Thankfully I have both great members and great admins in my two groups, but it’s still hard work.

THE PLAN

When I started my first group the Artist Hangout I wanted a place where artists could connect with each other and share their work. It was intentional that initially I would focus only on the quality of the group and not growing the membership. Building the foundations and setting the tone was key.

If you are thinking about starting a Facebook group there are some things that no matter where you look online, you just won’t find out. So here is mostly everything I have learnt over the last twelve-months of developing a Facebook group for artists.

IN THE BEGINNING

First off don’t go anywhere near Facebook. Sit down with pen and paper and write a book full of notes. You want your group to be different so taking inspiration from another group will make your end result similar to the group you took the inspiration from. That’s not a huge problem, but essentially you will be reinventing the wheel and you might upset the other groups owner. If you want your group to be different you need to think differently and taking yourself offline while you go through the thinking stage will give you the freedom to think outside of what is already available.

If you can at this point start to think carefully about who your group will be aimed at and why, you will start to build something that is unique and without the influence of other groups.

Once you have done the offline work you can start to build in the influences from other groups. Participating in groups will give you a feel for what is involved. You will notice which posts get more likes than others, and importantly what time of the day those posts were uploaded. You will also see that the groups admins are the ones who respond frequently, think of them as floor walkers. They will be checking posts to ensure that they are relevant to the group and fall within the group’s rules. We’ll come on to rules a little later.

Once you have done this work you can start to formulate a description for the group. The description is your shop window. It is what people will read before they join your group, for the most part. If you can describe your group well, it will tell people what your group is about.

A good description is actually easy to create if you break it down. Imagine you are setting up a group for abstract artists and you only want to cover abstract artists who are unrepresented by galleries, would you call the group Abstract Artists or Unrepresented Abstract Artists? If you go with the first choice all abstract artists might be tempted to join, but if you are clear, you will get unrepresented abstract artists.

Once you have made the notes, set a strategy, and decided on the description you can start the process of engagement. Speaking with your Facebook friends who have similar interests is a good idea, and initially those are the first people who will be more likely to support your efforts moving forward.

At this point it is worth mentioning that any groups you do create will eventually gain members, but there is a something that you will need to factor in, and that is that if your group has 100 members, only a percentage of those members are likely to get to see your group posts unless they specifically set notifications from this group to on in their notification settings on each post. Facebook unhelpfully turn it off by default for everyone. With this in mind, unless people do this or they specifically visit your group page, they will miss posts.

Some people seem to join every group imaginable, surprisingly some people will join thousands of groups. It is difficult to keep up with so many groups so some people will either forget that they joined, or will simply not bother to leave the group because they are not getting notifications and most likely thinking that no one else is engaging in the group. Others will not realise what Facebook is doing with the notifications and won’t know that they have to manually tell Facebook to provide them with alerts of new posts.

Always expect lower engagement than the total number of members. Some people will join a group and will view the content of every post made, it is just that they never post anything or comment, it’s not that they are not engaging. Others might not engage because they cannot see the posts, but there will always be a core of members who engage fully.

There are other things too that will affect how your group is seen and by whom. Going above a certain number of members will affect some of the statistics and will lessen the group’s visibility to potential new members, not enough engagement might reduce visibility, and once you go over a specific number of members, the group status may change from public to private. You can change this if it does happen, but suddenly finding out that your group status has changed can be a shock.

GROUP ENGAGEMENT

Whenever you are participating or running a group there are a few things that people like and many things that will put people off, and nothing puts off people more than a drive-by post.

A drive-by post is one that has been scheduled to be posted on a given date at a pre-determined time. There are exceptions to the rule, if you post a daily update or something motivational but you need to ensure that you are posting “live” as often as you can.

There are third-party apps that will post on your behalf, but if you are not around to answer replies people will move on very quickly. Whilst it is ok for some posts and especially if you are reaching out to members in other time zones, you will want to set aside some quality time to spend with your members at some point.

Branding your posts is something else that is frowned upon. I quickly learnt that branding appears like it is cheap advertising. Now whenever I create some inspirational quote I produce it specifically for use on social-media. It’s not to sell, it is there purely as showing appreciation to your group. Whenever I see a motivational quote these days with the name of a website across the bottom I quickly scroll on. It is an advert, let’s be honest! But also remember that a watermark is not branding, but generally if it is for a group, give it to the group!

If you really want to provide inspiring quotes and motivational messages then either crop off the advertising or even better, create something especially for that group. Group members are more likely to share something that they have only seen within that group, whereas generally most of the inspiration/motivation posts are all over the internet, and they all look the same.

There might be the odd occasion when a branded image is required, usually these occasions are officially called adverts. If the post is truly original and inspiring, people will seek out the creator. I created a post in 2011 on another social platform and even today I still get people asking if they can buy the image as a print. I didn’t post any information at the time, just the image.

Every artist including me is occasionally guilty of the next one! It is when you promote something by sharing from your own business page. I do this so you don’t have to remind me, but wherever I can I will create different posts for different timelines. In fact my business page rarely has anything about my art posted. Only when I release a new work or I am offering a promotion will you see it. I tend to keep it as a support page for this blog and post interesting things I have come across, or news that people might have missed. I literally have over 200-alerts set up for breaking news, so if it is happening, chances are I will get to see that news story first and I can quickly write a post or share the breaking news.

If you customise your post for each timeline and each social media platform you will gain credibility and it shows that you care. You will notice that my few Instagram posts are different to the ones I post on Facebook, as are my Twitter posts. My Google Plus page is similar to Facebook, and I do try to be a little different whenever I can. The time spent on all these social channels is not inconsiderable, so you also need to be careful around over-committing. At one time I was active on 11 social media networks, now I focus on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+, but mainly Facebook and Twitter. I must say though that I am becoming more and more impressed with Instagram and at some point I will start developing a new Instagram strategy.

I have done the next one so many times as well but I really should stop. The excuse is that I am busy all of the time (actually that is true), but I need to stop cross-promoting on the same day. Many of the groups I am in have the exact same members! So why would those members want to see the exact same post in so many groups at the same time? If you've seen me do this, sorry, I will try harder.

I need to start cross-promoting with a strategy. Share the work on the main timeline, wait a little while before sharing it on another timeline and maybe remix the post so that it appears differently each time we post.

Cross-posting is okay to an extent. If you can receive more feedback then all well and good but sometimes you need to promote something over a period of time so that it reaches a wider audience. Think about TV commercials, when you run a TV commercial you may want to have it displayed in a prime time slot, perhaps in the middle of the Super Bowl. Actually I doubt any of us could afford that slot, but imagine you ran one advert and that was it. Now believe it or not, some people don’t actually like watching the Super Bowl. If you run another advert at another time, not only will you reach those Super Bowl lovers, you will also reach many others who didn’t see your post the first time around. Spread the love folks!

ALL ABOUT ME

When joining and creating a Facebook group it really is all about having a community of people coming together. I love nothing more than to see some friendly chat, helpful advice, constructive critique, and that community engagement with everyone included.

Sometimes though we forget that we are in a community and we constantly only ever engage to promote ourselves, promotion is fine, but if it is like spam you are adding nothing else to the group. Occasionally to often it is fine to promote but it seems a little rude to just turn up at new product release time and advertise the latest in sunglasses technology within an art group. Especially when they're fake sunglasses. I once forgot my Ray Bans on vacation and ended up paying over the odds for a pair of Roy Bons. Had a constant headache.

Not too long ago I encountered a member who had joined a few hours before making the first post. That first post though wasn’t actually a post. What that member did was wait until a popular post had been posted, noticed that likes were increasing and then in the comments gave out all the information that you could ever need on how to lose your money to a scam, without actually saying that, by clicking the link you will become a part of this scam too. The comment was as near to being art related as a discussion about the financial services sector in the year 1810. It was to advertise a financial product that actually had high interest rates and was only done for one thing, in the hope that enough people would see it and many would engage. Note to people who think this is a good tactic, we can see right through it. But not the sunglasses.

This is where being an administrator of a group becomes challenging. Every new member is checked by an admin. There is a little science to how it is done which I only discuss with my admin teams, but essentially anyone who joined Facebook less than an hour ago, displays a fake photo (the same ones used by hundreds of people with fake profiles), and has no likes, comments, or friends, isn’t coming in to the party. Being a group administrator will eventually teach you to become an expert in spotting fake accounts. There are people who prefer to have no Facebook friends, don't post, but wish to join a group, actually you can spot the genuine ones.

Occasionally a member request arrives that looks legitimate. They belong to many groups, and they seem to engage with people on their timelines, but they lurk for a few weeks before making a drive-by post that will offend, break the rules of the group, and most of the time Facebook too, and action has to be taken.

Reporting the post to Facebook is something that all good admins need to do from time to time, and also they need to block the member. If you are an admin of multiple groups you need to check to see if the name appears in those groups too. I know other groups share their worst offenders like a neighbourhood watch scheme. It's a good idea because there are also some not so nice people on Facebook.

Facebook Artist in Residence collage Usage Restrictions: Images may only be used when featuring the Facebook product, or used to illustrate an article about Facebook

 

Rarely a blocked member will get in touch some other way. Before you set up a group, buy yourself a Teflon jacket. The haters are going to hate. I could tell you the story of half a dozen or so that I have had to deal with when their accounts have been blocked. Usually for posting things which are indecent, illegal, both, or just plain rude. Criticising other members and admins is not something you want to encourage if you want to keep a healthy group.

My best advice is to take away their stage. Delete their offending post and comments, and then block the member entirely. Make sure you report the post to Facebook too, but whatever you do, do not engage or fan the flames no matter how strongly you feel. It is a sad fact of life that there are a very small minority who purposely look to pick a fight. I’m all for lively debate, but when it gets personal you don’t need that negativity in your life. It is after all a social media network, not a life support system.

If you do wish to promote yourself, make sure you are part of the group. You need people to trust you before you try to sell them something. If it persists, more often than not you could end up being banned from the group, some groups are so much less lenient than others. It doesn’t take long to write a useful post or answer a comment. If people see that you are not just promoting yourself and that you are adding some value to the group, they are more likely to engage. Equally if you are creating a group to promote only you above all else, people will see it for what it is.

The same is true when you set up a new group. What you don’t want to do is overly promote yourself unless of course your group is entirely about self-promotion, but if there are only sellers and no buyers, it might not be such a good tactic.

THE ADVERT

I encourage people to display their works in progress as it is a great way to get early feedback on your work and make it even better. People who see the process of creation are more likely to engage and possibly even buy the competed work. It can work just as well as any other promotional tactic but you are adding an interest to the group and you are engaging.

There are though other tactics that people often use to promote themselves without it appearing to be an advert. Thing is, we can all see it for what it is, it’s an advert! It is fine to occasionally promote your sales pages where the group allows you to do so, but another way that adverts slip in is when someone posts something similar to: Hi, I have this great new art page that I would like some feedback on. Actually that sounds like a reasonable request for help, the issue is when that post is reposted multiple times over the course of a whole year. You click on the link and low and behold it is exactly the same page as it was 12-months ago.

It doesn’t work, people will quickly come to realise that it is a ploy to drive people to your site. If you want people to visit your site, be honest with them. Something like hi, I have an art page that I really would like people to visit, if you have the time I would appreciate any feedback that might make the site better or any advice as to how I can increase traffic would be welcome.

We have all been there, we want people to come to our sites to increase traffic, but you need to target the traffic that you want. Do you want visitors, or do you want sales. If people like your work they will visit. If 2000 people click on the link and no one buys anything, would it not be better to have 20 people come to your site and five people buy something? This is a much better conversion rate. If it’s sales you want then target customers.

When you ask for feedback try to be specific. If you think the page needs fewer images and more text, or more images and less text, ask. If you want to find out how it presents in different browsers, ask. People are far more receptive if they think they are truly helping and not being duped in to a click.

The same is true with Facebook groups, advertising your group in a myriad of other groups is frowned upon.

If you want to promote your shiny new Facebook group then you need to have a strategy. The Artists Exchange as I said earlier was a slow-burning candle for a while. This was deliberate. I was keen to engage in other groups and be part of their communities, taking some time to build up a relationship with other members and admins.

When I felt ready to move in to second gear I started a little promotional campaign on Twitter and used my own Facebook page to promote the group. I never once spent anything on advertising fees, and eventually I found that people were sharing my group on their timelines.

You may be going for a similar target audience to another group and it is tempting to reach out to those members and promote your own group. My advice is to share it on your own timeline, ask people to share, and if you want to post your group in another group, first ask the admin if they would be okay with you sharing the link in their group.

It is surprising how many people will engage, if I am asked to allow a group link, as long as it is relevant to the arts, I will support it, and I will promote it if it is a well thought out group. But it is polite to ask, after all, buying a boosted post or ad is going to be expensive and may not reach as many members as some groups already have. You will get free promotion more often than not if you ask.

When you join a group you will want to introduce yourself. Make sure that first post is fun and relevant. You can usually put links in that first post, and some groups such as The Artists Exchange have a directory in the files section of the page. You can put your links in this directory, or an admin will do it for you. This is actually a great way to connect with other artists and buyers, and your link is present in the group all of the time.

THE OTHER DO’S and DO NOT’S

As an admin of a group you will quickly start to figure out what seems to be acceptable in your group and what people don’t like. I make a point of reviewing the timeline (where the member has posted something before and their timeline can be seen) of everyone who joins. Firstly I can do a quick check to make sure that their account doesn’t appear to be fake, secondly to make sure that they are not some kind of deviant, a timeline can tell a story, and lastly to learn what people who are joining like. It gives me a great insight so that I can make the group as relevant as possible to everyone.

If things are slow in your group you will want to start an interesting conversation. Posts where there is something unusual or new seem to do very well. I spend way too much time scouring the internet for new things and whenever I come across them I make a note. At some point it will be relevant and I will be able to create a post that sparks some interest. As a group admin it is all about getting people engaged.

Groups are also a great way to not earn any money at all. I am sure some people think that the admins of a successful group on Facebook are making a ton of money. That’s not the case. To date my estimated earnings per year for running two Facebook groups are exactly zero. In fact, it costs me time, and as they say, time is money.

Groups are run by people who have no affiliation with Facebook, usually to support a cause or maybe to share the family holiday photos. Where people can make money with groups is when they have a physical product or a service to sell and people who buy or use that product or service will join the group usually as a support mechanism or to find out more about the product or service.

The rules of Facebook are different to the rules in groups, but you still have to stick to Facebook rules as well. Groups are not operated by Facebook, they are run by people just like you and me. As a group founder/admin you will need to set your own rules. These rules should help you to achieve your long-term vision for the group. You are also likely to encounter those haters again at this point.

There are a small minority of people who will disagree with the rules. That’s fine, you cannot be everything to everyone. The rules are what you feel comfortable with, and remember that the group is linked to your account. I have had people suggest rule changes and I changed the rules because they were great ideas, but if someone is persistent, the reality is that it is your group and you allow them in.

If someone walks in to a shop and asks the manager to change the look of the shop because they don’t like the colour scheme, the manager will take it on-board and will maybe take this feedback in to consideration the next time they redecorate. If someone walks in to a shop and gets very angry with the manager and then goes on to pick a fight, the manager has every right to ask that person to leave. This is where you need that Teflon suit. Thankfully 99.999% of people accept the group’s rules, but there will always be one. If you haven’t met that one yet, it’s only a matter of when and not if. I am pretty sure that one is the same person.

Occasionally you will need to remind members of the rules. It is best to do this whenever you have a new surge of members. I tend to post a reminder every 200 new members or so, or if there has been a spate of drive-by postings which break the rules. It is also worth pointing out to members to read the group rules occasionally which can be found under the “About” section on the right hand column, by clicking “see more”. If you do change any rules, make sure that you post an update to inform everyone, although Facebook will automatically post an update if the rules or about page is edited.

BE HELPFUL

Most of the groups on Facebook will provide a great support opportunity where help is nothing more than a click away. Today it seems as if Facebook groups are overtaking the traditional forum pages of websites because groups are easier to manage from an administration perspective.

As an admin you need to be there to support, help, offer advice, police, and handle member requests. My advice to anyone thinking of giving it a go is to make sure that member requests are set to be approved by an admin. This prevents people joining without you knowing and posting a series of drive-by posts before leaving the group.

But most of all be helpful. I don’t mind making 10-minutes each day available to members who really need some help and advice and I know my other admins don’t mind either. A little help can make a huge difference to someone and increases your credibility overall. I hope I'm helpful anyway!

You also need to remember that members are human. Being human too will benefit your business overall and in a better way than cross posting what are essentially just adverts. There are so many Facebook groups and a high percentage of them are run by committed individuals to provide support. There is room for many more groups.

THE ARTISTS EXCHANGE

You can join the Artists Exchange at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/940723089340284/

And you can join the Artist Hangout at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/940723089340284/

Facebook artist Barbara Holmes - Usage Restrictions: Images may only be used when featuring the Facebook product, or used to illustrate an article about Facebook

SETTING UP A GROUP

If you are thinking of setting up a group on Facebook please do get in touch or leave a comment. If the group is art related and can benefit members of both of the above groups I will be more than happy to share it. If you need any other advice, please do get in touch using the contact form at the bottom of the home page. I will be on vacation over the next two or so weeks, but I will respond as soon as I get back in the land of Wi-Fi!

AND FINALLY

Remember that you can be successful running a group but it needs some hard work. If you have any experience with any of the above, did they work for you? Have you set up a Facebook group? Please do get in touch if you have any other ideas that might benefit fellow artists!

SUPPORT AN INDEPENDENT ARTIST

If you would like to see my range of works you can do so on my M.As Fine Art Store page on this site or visit: http://10-Mark-Taylor.pixels.com and you will be supporting a truly independent artist, even if it's just a greetings card!

Any purchases will not only give my confidence a much needed boost, but the proceeds from sales allow me to devote time not only to my art, but also to this blog and my Facebook groups and allow me to support local and independent artists from around the world.

 

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