One of the biggest mistakes I see artists making online is simply posting their art when it’s finished. If you look at their blog or their social media pages, it looks something like this:
*very long period of time where the artist hasn’t posted anything*
Finally! Here’s my art!
Come to my show!
Buy my art!
Buy my art!
Last chance to buy my art!
Just kidding, now it’s the last chance to buy my art!
Why aren’t you people buying my art?
People just don’t appreciate art.
*very long period of time where the artist hasn’t posted anything*
Can you see what’s wrong here? Artists frequently spend days or weeks holed up in their studio creating art, with little communication with the outside world. When they do finally emerge, all they seem to talk about is themselves.
As Emily Post would say, that’s just rude.
In order to be interesting, you have to be interested. You need to remember that you have fans out there waiting to hear from you. If weeks or months go by with little word from you, it’s no wonder they don’t respond as soon as you leave your studio.
Sometimes art just takes a long time to make. That’s okay. You just need some other things to talk about besides your finished piece. Here are a few suggestions.
Document the process. Stop every few hours or at least a couple of times per day and take a picture of your piece in progress. These pictures have two benefits. 1) You can share the good ones on your blog and social media as a way of giving people a sneak peek (and we all love movie sneak peeks, right). 2) The pictures give you a way of stepping back and reflecting on what you’re doing. In the first week of the Content Marketing for Artists course I have students do this and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Here’s a good guide for how to photograph your art.
Share the journey. Let people know how things are going. If you’re working on a large piece, post a few thoughts about what you’re envisioning. You don’t have to give away the whole story, but a little teaser can work wonders.
Share what happened along the way. Again, the film industry does a great job with this. Major motion pictures release not just one trailer, but two or three more after the film has been announced. You’ll even see “First look” features at the movies when the movie is still a couple of months away from being released.
In addition to teasing the art itself, you can share some neat stories of what happened to you along the way. The artist Amber Jean does a great job of this on her blog. She talks about skiing, ice climbing, and the bears pooping in the local neighborhood, then finds ways to relate these things back to the art that she’s working on.
Give your people a deadline. When you have a good idea of how long it will take you to complete a piece of art, let people know that you have a release date or an unveiling. Make sure it’s a couple of weeks or even a couple of months away. Use this lead time to build up interest, build your mailing list, and create buzz about the upcoming event. Also, deadlines are great for actually making sure you finish a piece.
So, what about you? How do you hold your fans’ interest while you are working on large pieces?
Hi Cory,
it’s been a while since I’ve been following your blog, congratulations for your awesome work helping us out. Thank you for that!
This is the first time I comment because I feel this problem.
I draw realistic portraits with ballpoint pens, and every single one takes a minimum of 20/25 hours (often over several weeks), A5 size.
So I try to post WIP pictures along the way on my Facebook page (don’t have a website yet). And I noticed what you just said, people like to follow the progress of the work. I share other stuff too so the page doesn’t seem abandoned…
I do suffer from the “I don’t know what to post!” syndrome from time to time… 🙂
Keep it up with your great blog!
Cheers,
Vitor
I LOVE to see ‘work in progress’ images. Artist Chet Zar does that regularly on Facebook. He will post a pic after working on a piece… and it is a lot of fun to see how the work progresses as time goes by. It often sparks a conversation about the piece, where he plans to exhibit it, and so on. I’m not sure if he views it as a marketing angle or not… but it certainly has that end result.
I usually post WIP pics on facebook. I get several comments that they can’t wait to see the finished picture or comments on what they like about it. Sometimes I post two different versions and ask them which they like better. It keeps them involved in what I’m working on.
Hi Cory,
I first want to thank you for all the useful spot on information you blog about. I am in the process of implementing many of the things you suggest into my art marketing plan. I know it needs to be consistently updated ( website, social media outpost, blog) build a motivated targeted market of art patrons that are interested in what I create as an artist as well as motivated to purchase my work. I have been actively utilizing Twitter for daily exposure of my art, retweeting informative articles etc. and have linked Twitter to a myriad of other social media venues. I sold a painting last week from my efforts. The key is consistently updating and engaging your followers. It’s not easy to balance your time in the studio and marketing your work on social media, blog, newsletter etc. but this is a business and if we as artist want to make a living on are art sales and not be a starving artist we are going to have to find that balance in our art careers.
Thanks again for your great articles and blog.
Suzanne MacDonald
Follow me on Twitter:
@sooziesart
Thanks for the kind words Suzanne!
I also enjoy keeping track of other artists’ works in progress, so I understand the appeal. As a photographer, I haven’t figured out how to translate that concept to my own work. Living in the Midwest, the winter months are a real “down time” for me, with fewer opportunities for scenic landscape photography. I’m open to suggestions of ways to keep my social media pages interesting during a lull in my productivity.
It’s not just about WIP pictures. It’s also about letting people know where you’re going artistically, what you find interesting, and what the community, and the world around you, are doing that is interesting. Be a curator of your world so that people see you as a valuable resource.
would love to see How to photograph your paintings..not coming up though:(
Sorry about that. Should be fixed now.
I think WIP photos are very important. I do it all the time, and those photos get more interest than anything else that I post in social media. But the most important thing is sharing the journey and things that happen along the way. Sharing means not just posting about yourself, but including others into your process and your journey through life. it also means involving yourself in the journeys of others.
I post a lot of things that relate to my art -links to related articles; photos about my own pets (I’m a pet portrait artist); photos and activities related to my community’s art scene; and little thoughts about life that everyone can relate to. I also comment and share in the postings of others, especially those who buy or share a lot about my work. I “like” photos they post of their kids and pets and enter into dialogues about interesting topics. In a word, even if I am not sharing artwork on a particular day, I am remaining present and accessible to my audience.
Before you do those things, though, you need to have some sense of your “brand’ and a strategy. You do not want to be out there posting or saying things that negatively impact or contradict your brand. You need to be authentic, but also have a filter that keeps your persona and your art within some boundaries of consistency.
I find that all of this is not only helpful in marketing my work, it also nourishes me creatively and moves me forward in new directions. Who’da thunkit?!
So true! I am good about posting updates and step by step on my social media sites but not so much on my “blog” I don’t really want to call it that 🙂 I am very sporadic as far as posting etc. Lots of info via social media though.
Cory this is so true, people love to see the steps and I have sold quite a few pieces before they were even finished by doing this. It allows people to be apart of the journey and express what they would lik to see, they get all exited if they thought something was one color and turned out to be something totally different. I will incorporate a deadline though, haven’t done that, and I also post things going on I’m my life, my 7 year old is an artist too and they get a kick out of seeing the stuff she draws too! Thanks for this:)
Thanks – this is the kick I needed as I just usually post “something” and not tell a story at all…..
Doing something like this has been so helpful for me. On Facebook, I post a sketch every day for the first six weeks of the year and get a lot of interest. I get shares, make new friends, sell sketches, get commissions. In addition, it helps generate ideas, refine my skills, and test market potential pieces at the same time. By the end of the six weeks, people are asking for an extension or a book or whatever. Here’s this year’s crop: http://on.fb.me/Nb83rt
Thanks for your post!
Soooo true! and well, I probably do the same thing, so something to think about and work on.
I’ve started to post on slideshare the process of building a painting AFTER it’s finished, now thinking how to do the same as a prerelease tease. Cheers Cory
Thanks Marcus – remember that it’s not just about Works in Progress, but also about the whole package.
When I saw this, it was so timely and right on the mark that I figured it was in answer to a question I had asked of Cory, that being “What do I write about?” Maybe I did, it’s the one question I ask all the time.
I can’t get past this mental block and project beyond “This is my art. This is why I do it. This how I do it.” That’ll cover the first week, but as you said, it’s all about me. Mildly interesting but who cares? Then I saw your reference to Amber Jean and that she writes about skiing, ice climbing and pooping bears. This is not about her art! Woohoo!!!
So does that mean it’s OK to post about other subjects? Do I view it like a face-to-face friendship where we would talk about all kinds of subjects, not just my art (it would be a short friendship if that’s all I did!) And does it all have to be related to art somehow, or can it be a way to let people know who I am OTHER than an artist? For instance, I am heavily involved in the dog world – training, competing, showing and so on. The only way it relates to my art is that I started out as a pet portrait artist. I still am, I suppose, but I have expanded to include the rest of the world, as it were.
My view is also a bit controversial and could alienate some people. Ben Settle says that’s fine. He doesn’t want those people anyway, and I see his point. BUT be careful because it will be my brand, my image, so it has to be authentic and consistent and true to who I really am.
Sorry, I’m rambling a bit – to cut to the chase, I’m sending a HUGE THANK YOU for this post. (And ditto to BZTAT for his very helpful comments as well).
I’d like to add one last thought. I have unsubscribed from almost all the blogs about how to run a business on the internet. If you’re reading this and new to the whole process, I can save you a lot of time and aggravation. There are two that have helped more than all the rest put together, in part because they are designed specifically for artists, not normal people. OK, joking. One is Cory’s and the other is Alyson Stanfield.
Hey Carole – thanks for the kind words.
It is my opinion that the artist is the brand. That includes the art as well as the artist herself. This will, of course, alienate some people, but that’s fine (unless you’re a raving lunatic or a bigot or something) – the ones you alienate are likely not the people who will like your work anyway.
Most of the artists I know who are financially successful outside of the high-end galleries conduct their lives this way. They’re true to who they are, they share who they are and what they do, and they enjoy the process along with their audience.
I agree, Cory. The artist and the art is the brand. We love Van Gogh not just for the art, but for the stories we have of the man. We love Andy Worhol because his art reflected his life of pop sensibilities. People like BZTAT in part because they like my art, but also because they embrace similar values and interests that are my life and my art.
I do try to avoid controversial topics of posting, particularly political concerns, because my art is not about that, and I want people of all backgrounds to appreciate it. I do occasionally foray into a controversial topic, but when I do, I try to remain open to all perspectives in my dialogues. Were my art and “brand” more connected to those topics, I would go much more deeply into them.
BTW, if you learn a bit about me, Carole, you will find quickly that BZTAT is a woman, and female perspectives are a big part of my brand. 🙂
Previous comment, last paragraph…”in part because they are designed…” Drop “in part.” Just plain old “because.” Period.
Hi Cory
Since reading your last few emails I have created a facebook page that keeps my followers up to date on my art progress. Within 48 hours of creating the page I had 93 likes to the page. The page was shared by my FB friends and I have been contacted by other people who have left very positive comments and started dialogue about my work…who I do not know personally. I seem to be reaching a wider and growing audience and have given little taster peeks at new work that I have started, showing progress and giving a deadline date when the final work will be revealed. Through this I have had a new contact to by website asking for info and prices on my work and I just hope it will keep growing. I am eagerly awaiting your further ideas and am collating ideas to improve my contacts, email list and collectors list and improve my website contact page. Many thanks to you so far.
Kind regards Amanda