Promoting themselves and their art is an important element of an artist’s marketing strategy. Digital marketing has become more and more relevant in every industry and this is no different in the art world. Online and social media promotion can reach a large audience of potential buyers and collectors and artists should use all avenues at their disposal to promote and publicize their art events and art career success.

Below are five of the most effective ways for an artist to digitally promote and leverage their art career success:

1. Post an Article on Your Website

These days all artists should have a website. A website is an investment artists should make a priority in order to be taken seriously. A web domain costs less than $20 per year and basic monthly web hosting costs as low as $5 per month.

Creating and posting an article on your website detailing information about your art news and/or event can help artists drive more traffic to their websites. Research has shown that artists with art blogs on their websites, where they post articles about news, events and exhibitions, receive more traffic to their websites.

2. Send an Announcement to Your Mailing List

Hopefully, you have been acquiring names and email addresses for people and visitors to your website and social media networks. Send these people a newsletter notice, a copy of a press release or a copy of your website article post.

Invite them to view your art or the event online as well as in person.  Provide dates, times, addresses, telephone numbers, and links.  Use your winning art as a graphic for the email, newsletter, article post and the press release to generate interest.

3. Create a YouTube Video and Promote It

Create a YouTube Video (Slide Show) about the art, the art exhibition, the opening of the show, etc.  There are many free or inexpensive programs you can use to create these videos. 

Create a YouTube channel and upload and promote the video to your contacts, networks, and friends.  You have the ability to share and distribute the video directly from YouTube. 

4. Post Your Event and/or News on Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool for both reaching new fans and staying in touch with established ones. In order to announce your news, event or exhibition, post your article post, press release or YouTube Video on your social media networks multiple times at varying times of the day.  Ask your friends to “share” these social media posts too.  Be sure the post contains active links back to your website as well as to the art exhibition or event.

5. Create and Distribute a Press Release

Create a professional press release announcing your exhibition success in the third person (as if someone other than yourself had written about this event).  Then research online press release distribution companies and select someone to distribute the release for you.

As we have posted in previous articles, there are companies that will distribute a press release for as little as $10.00, depending on the type and amount of distribution that you want.  Make sure that the press release targets the art industry and contains active links back to your website as well as to the art exhibition.

In terms of expense, except for the professional press release distribution, the steps above are free, requiring only the artist’s time.  In that spirit, starting with the 10th Annual “Botanicals” online art exhibition, the gallery will be providing a new award. We will be gifting our top winning artists, including special merit award winning artists, with a complimentary VIP Membership to Art.base.co.  Art.Base produces 100,000 page views per month, 35,000 monthly unique visitors and has 10,000+ newsletter subscribers. With this complimentary account, artists can post their art news and events for free.

Also starting with the 10th Annual “Landscapes” art competition, entry fees will increase by $1, to $15 and $25 respectively. Early registration and the "Solo Art Series" entry fees will also increase $1, as we increase our awards, marketing and promotion efforts on behalf of our artists.

In the coming weeks we will be posting new and updated articles with helpful hints and suggestions for creating professional art press releases. If you are not already on the LST mailing list, please subscribe to receive our newsletter and announcements of new articles and competitions.

There are certainly additional ways in which artists can promote and market themselves and their art.  However, we believe the above suggestions are the most effective ways in which artists can digitally promote their art career success.