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. 

If you have not done so yet, have you determined and set up your art marketing goals for the year 2017? If not, here are 5 relatively easy things that an artist can do to help improve their marketing and branding of their art in 2017.

I believe that if an artist were to schedule and engage in the following activities on a consistent basis, they would begin to see an increase in traffic to their website along with more interest concerning the sale of their art. Let us review what an artist can do to help improve the marketing of their art in 2017:

1. Start a Blog – Artists should consider starting an art blog as a way to attract and direct additional interested viewers to their art websites. An art blog is a great way to expand the artist’s target audience and it is an effective platform to help an artist market their art as well.

Read our article “Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Have an Art Blog” in order to fully understand the power of a well-executed art blog.

2. Use Social Media – Social media is the perfect platform for artists to employ in order to help market themselves and their art. Why is this? In my opinion, it is easy to identify and connect with the art community when using social media.

I also think it is an effective medium because it is a visual and a simple way in which to present your art. Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, Linkedin, Instagram and even Twitter provides an artist with opportunities (if targeted properly) to reach viewers who were previously unreachable.

Read our article “Top 10 Reasons Why Artists Fail with Social Media” along with various other social media articles on the LST website.

3. Press Release Marketing – Press release marketing is a low-cost alternative whereby an artist can market their artwork to a wide range of potential viewers. There are many “Free” press release websites which take, publish and market an artist’s press release copy. However, if pressed for time, I strongly suggest that an artist use a “Paid” press release distribution service. LST uses a company called Star One Public Relations and they charge $15.00 for distribution to 70+ press outlets.

Read our articles “Press Release Marketing for Professional Artists” and “Helpful Hints When Writing an Art Press Release” to help guide you in these efforts.

4. Evaluate & Edit Your Website – When was the last time that you went page by page and link by link through your website? If you are like most people (never mind being an artist) it has probably been a very long time! I think that if you were to do this with your website you would find broken links, pages that do not load quickly, graphics, images and other items that have moved, along with pages with misspelled words and similar issues.

Is this how you want your website visitors to see your art? Take some time to make these corrections. Also, if you have pages that do not load quickly due to large image files or due to flash and music features, these items should be corrected or removed as people do not have the time to wait on your pages to load. Otherwise, if not corrected you will be losing these valuable visitors to your site.

Read our article “Art Portfolios – Is it Time for a Spring Cleaning?”

5. Become a Guest Blogger – Another way in which to reach your target audience is to become a guest blogger on other successful art bloggers websites. Target potential blogs that are related to your art niche, are active blogs and blogs that attract a large following.

Active bloggers are always looking for new material, topics, and articles for their sites. Be able to show them any articles that you have previously written in order to demonstrate that you can write well. They will probably only take your articles that have never been published before, therefore be prepared to write new content.

These website owners may have some ideas and topics on what they would like for you to write about. Otherwise, prepare and have some ideas ready that you can propose to them. Just make sure you are not proposing duplicate or similar content that is already on their website.

Read our article “5 Ways an Artist Can Attract Readers to an Art Blog”.

In 2017 vow to make these suggestions part of your marketing efforts, If followed, I believe you will see an improvement in traffic to your website, interest in your art and ultimately, more sales of your art.  As with any marketing program, your efforts need to be well executed and performed on a consistent basis in order to be successful.

Read our article “The Rule of Seven Explains Artist’s Discouragement”.

Good luck and have a successful and creative 2017!