(This is a guest blog post by Richard Wilde, founder of Artybuzz.com, an online artists community that allows anyone to exhibit, sell and buy great artwork. Please visit Artybuzz.com to read my post about Personal Branding for the Artist.)
If you are an artist and you’re not using the internet to your full advantage, then you are missing out on a huge amount of publicity, opportunities, sales and influence as an artist, no matter what kind of work you produce.
Good old fashioned exhibitions are great, but if you really want your work and ideas to spread faster and further than they ever have done before, then use of the internet is probably the most effective way of doing so.
I recently wrote an ebook on how to market your artwork, and talked about many marketing ideas, including how to promote your work online. Below, I’d like to expand on some of these points and add a few more especially for readers of this blog. If you take these ideas and implement them consistently, then you will start to see a growing pattern in the popularity of your work on the web, which will open so many more doors.
Blogging
If you don’t have a blog, then seriously think about getting one. They are great for keeping your fans updated and finding new fans as well. Also, if you are passionate about something, it will show through in your writing, and your niche market will find you and tell others about you; spreading your ideas faster than you ever could do on your own.
Social Networking
Ignoring Facebook, Twitter and many other niche social networking platforms is madness if you want to do well online. These platforms are generally free and provide so many functions to help you get your artwork noticed, sold and also gain bigger followings of fans and admirers. My website, Artybuzz.com, provides some social networking features like being able to create groups for your kind of art, and also networking opportunities with other artists. It’s not as advanced as Facebook obviously, but it’s good if you’re an artist who wants to interact with like minded people.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is also a good way to get your work noticed. Sites like Stumbleupon, Digg and Delicious all allow you to ‘bookmark’ your work on the web with keywords and phrases. Then when people search for these kind of words, web pages with your work on can get picked up and seen by new people who may have never have found your art if not.
Add Your Work to Other Websites
This may not be for everyone, especially if you just want to keep everything on your own website, but adding your work to other sites that list, show and sell art is a great way to make sales and get your art noticed in places you wouldn’t have done previously. If a website has good quality work on it already, it won’t devalue yours, so I personally don’t see a downside to doing this.
If you apply these tips above then you are likely to gain more success on the internet. The golden rule is to be consistent and focus on quality in everything you do. People like to see regular patterns, so if you do the above regularly then it will get noticed and people will come back for more. So don’t just write a blog post or write something on twitter once a month for example, it’s basically pointless.
I hope this article will be of some use to people, and if you would like to read my full ebook exploring these ideas and others further, feel free to download it and share it with others at www.artybuzz.com/ebook.php. If you are an artist or art enthusiast, then you are also very welcome to join the community I have at Artybuzz.com... if you join, take these ideas on and add your work and comment on others to get yours noticed as well.
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