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. 

Many artists are either not aware or are not fully utilizing the event feature that Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+ provide them as part of their service. By placing art events, in the following manner, on these social media sites, this will provide an artist with an additional form of promotion and ultimately increase the audience for that art event. In addition, posting on these sites, any public, published event will become immediately “searchable” by all of the major search engines such as Google, Bing, and AOL. Here is a quick overview of the event feature for these 3 social media platforms.

Facebook – The Facebook Event feature is available to individuals, groups and business pages. The event tab is located on the upper left-hand sidebar of your page’s Home Page.

That event tab will then open to an event page. At the top near the header is a “+Create Event” tab. Once that tab is accessed a screen will appear which provides a very simple form to complete. The form allows you to have a name for the event, details of the event, a place or location for the event (this also will trigger a dropdown map for the location of the event), dates/times for the event and finally whether this is a public or private event.

Once the art event is completed, Facebook then allows you to promote and notify directly from the completed event tab to selected individuals and friends on Facebook. We suggest the following when promoting any events online;

1. Always have an event avatar (event image/logo) as it will draw interest to the event versus the standard social media calendar avatar.

2. Do not send invitations or promote an event to people who would not be interested in that type of event. We all receive too many posts, events, and messages as it is. Do not add to the clutter and confusion, as it will only annoy people with the potential to drop you as a friend or contact.

3. The event description should always be short and simple to read. The larger and longer event descriptions will be dismissed and not read by most viewers. Always make the event description short, interesting and always provide a link to a site for further and detailed event information.

Linkedin – The Linkedin Event feature can be found in the page header under “More”. This tab will then drop down to a list and under the “applications” section of the list, there is an Events link. Linkedin has in their Event section an area of “suggested” events based on your profile, your connections and the Groups that you belong to. Linkedin also provides an event search feature here as well. To the right of the search bar, there is a “Promote Your Event on LinkedIn” feature box which then contains a “create an event” tab.

Completing the information form for the Linkedin event feature is similar to the Facebook event feature, except Linkedin allows you to distinguish between a “live event” and a “virtual” event. Also, the Linkedin event feature allows you to “Share” this event to the public, individuals and or groups on Linkedin. They also make it easy to post this event quickly to both Facebook and Twitter. In addition, they also provide a shortened event URL in order to be able to post an event elsewhere on the internet.

Google+ - Recently Google+ introduced their new event feature. This could be a game changer and eventually cause the other 2 social media platforms to upgrade their event features!

Google+ has created their event feature which defines and separates any event into 3 phases;

Prior to the Event – The Google+ event function is customizable and has the ability to contain different themes based on the event and it also allows for video and animations as part of the invitation. Any event can automatically be added to a user’s Google Calendar when a person RSVP’s for that event.

Throughout the Event – Google+ has a feature called “Party Mode” and if you are an attendee and are there taking pictures or videos at this event, you will then have the ability to post those images and videos to this event listing in Real-Time! This feature alone makes their event feature interactive and superior over the other social media sites.

After The Event is Over – The Google+ event function does not remove the event from the event calendar after it is over (like most event platforms where there are a start and end date and then the event is eliminated from the site). Google+ allows attendees to post pictures, videos and comments after the event is completed. Google+ even has an event “Highlights” section which also categorizes the most viewed photos and comments from the event.

The Google+ event feature not only helps to create interest but also helps to build and maintain a brand. In addition, Google + creates a sense of involvement and community for the attendees and this is something that the Facebook and Linkedin event features do not provide.

The event features on these 3 social media platforms are easy to learn, post to and to administer. Any artist, art gallery or art promotion organization should be fully utilizing all 3 of these event features, along with their other event marketing and promotions in order to help create a buzz for their art event.