Marketing people have known for aeons how important a personality is to their brand. If a company doesn’t have their own Walt Disney or Richard Branson, they’ve had to create one: Ronald McDonald, Uncle Ben, etc. Luckily, you don’t have to.
OK, I understand we can’t all be great scribes or mistakenly think our lives aren’t exciting, but to others who love what we do, we are. So why not take advantage of it and use our uniqueness to enhance our art and sales?
Why do you do what you do? What inspires you? Where do you do it? Why this or that location? Why do you use that medium? What do you love about your job? These are all relevant questions that people like to have answers to. Gush about your inspiration. Talk about your influences. Tell us about your passion. This is how you inspire and sell. Or to quote Marketing Consultant Simon Sinek “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
We are all drawn to stories, so the stronger you make yours, the more people will be drawn to them. Who doesn’t like an on-going soap? Without being negative, talk about your challenges too; issues like having trouble finding the right location, inspiration, mediums… things they can relate to. These are all things that will draw people in to your ‘world’.
Whatever you do, try not to get downbeat. As much as people don’t feel a ‘happy, happy’ existence is real, they won’t enjoy reading incessantly about your emotional or family complications, either.
I’m quite a philosophical person so have ended up starting all my monthly newsletters with a ‘thought for the month’. Does everyone like it? I’m sure not. But those that do always tell me they look forward to my emails and my (over 50% – double the industry standard) readership seems to reflect that.
I’m not being clever, just being myself. Talk about things that interest you; make them upbeat and light-hearted; let people feel your presence in the work you do. All of these things will help you find your public and keep them.
But how best to put that out there?
I can’t emphasise enough the power of regularity. If people know you’ll write every day/week/month around the same time, they’ll begin to rely on and enjoy it. Make you their guilty secret; something they’ll want to dip into every now and then.
Personally I do my utmost to post at least once every day on all my social media feeds. The goal of your posts should be to inform and spark a conversation with, and amongst your fans. If you do this, you’ll get higher engagement and activate a platform’s algorithms, giving you a better reach.
Use great Apps (more on those in a later chapter). They will make your content more exciting and animated (video posts get better viewers than just images). Stand out from the crowd and discover new, exciting ways to make your posts personal and exciting; there are a ton of new, free Apps out there to help you do just that and more appearing all the time.
For newsletters, I rarely post more than one a month unless absolutely necessary, but the one I do post is always regular: TheHarbourGallery.co.uk on the 1st of each month and BritishContemporary.art on the 15th. Let your subscribers know what you’ve been up to and what you intend to get up to that month.
Let people know what’s sold and what’s new too: what’s sold gives them a feeling of movement and even ‘missing out’, and what’s just been finished and what’s on the easel is giving them a chance to get in there first.
Make sure you have a ‘newsletter signup’ button on your website. If you use Mailchimp, they have an accompanying (paid for) widget called ‘Chimpy’ which creates a popup on your website. Filling that out instantly puts them onto your Mailchimp account, so you don’t have to physically do it. There are others as well, but they might affect your Google rankings… I think they’re worth it though.
Most artists I know are self-deprecating souls. If you’re one of those, all I can assure you is people do want to hear from and about you. No, you’re not showing off, you’re being professional. No, you’re not dribbling on about me, you’re informing those who love what you do about how and why you do what you do.
Allow your fans, followers and buyers to know more about you. Make sure you give them even more reason to love, follow and buy from you. Make it easy for them to do all of these things and you’ll be doing them, the art world and yourself a favour… simple as!