Marketing Art Online: Promoting the Artist Site
A Guide to Five Simple Things to Do Now to Promote Art Online
May 5, 2009
A strong, successful artist website attracts the right audience with high-quality content that tells an authentic story, welcomes visitors with an easy to use interface, and connects with potential customers throughout the browsing process.
But having a great online gallery site to display work, even a site that is optimized for search engines, is only half of the battle. The following five simple tactics for promoting art online will help any artist to build their reputation online and gain visitors who are more likely to become followers and customers. Utilize the following tactics to attract, engage and continue relationships with customers, wholesale buyers, other artists and suppliers:
#1 Begin with an Announcement, but Don’t Stop Short
Every artist should issue a traditional press release (offline) and a social media release (online) when the new artist website is launched. The release should make introductions to the media and announce the launch. Too many artists stop short and never make future announcements to promote art online via these channels. Successfully promoting art online requires sending regular, relevant releases to promote a new line or series, to announce a show or opening, to publicize a feature in another publication or communicate any other artist news. Artist community sites may have forums or news sites that accept artist submissions.
#2 Join the Conversation
Use social media – media that connects people online – to promote art, meet and collaborate with other artists, collectors and art fans, learn new techniques and make friends. Social media tools, such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr (along with countless others) generate conversation streams with individuals and groups around the globe, helping to promote art and ultimately the artist website. Use these tools to discover and reach out to prospects, share new works (and even works in progress!), or promote collaborations or commissions. Most importantly – do not spam followers and friends – shameless self-promotion only gets one so far. Every conversation must be two-sided to succeed, otherwise important contacts can feel alienated.
#3 Communicate Personally, One-on-One
Using tools such as email newsletters or a blog to reach a large audience is a good strategy, but setting up a program to reach out individually to new customers, new visitors, visitors who comment on the art site or take some other action, will go a long way to build lasting relationships. Most artists can’t rely on one-time buyers to be successful online. Be sure to create unique connections with important visitors on an individual level. Also take time to visit other artist sites, storefronts or community profiles and give fellow artists feedback or input. These interactions can lead to collaborations or potential sales- after all, artists are customers, too!
#4 Mix It Up on Other Sites
Launching an artist website provides a core place to promote art online to potential customers, but artists with online galleries or sites still need to utilize other art marketplaces, directories and networks to promote themselves. Begin by creating an Etsy store to reach the 2.3 million members that use the site to find unique art, apply to become a Trunkt artist to introduce work to global wholesale buyers, or join the community at Deviantart, a well-known site for various genres that offers free virtual artist galleries. But because there are so many options for artists to promote art online, it is important to go slowly at first, evaluating the sites that are the best fit so that updating profiles and galleries does not become unmanageable.
#5 Become a Resource
For artists who are more comfortable online, publishing articles, reviews and blog posts for fellow artists and art lovers is an excellent way to build an online reputation and to promote art online. Start by sharing valuable tips on artistic craft or technique, good experiences with products, resources other artists can employ or successes. The more established an artist becomes in their genre, the more other individuals and sites will link to them, and one of the keys to optimizing site rankings in the search engines is to increase the number of inbound links.
Learn more about developing an artist website and attracting the right audience.
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