Tips on How To Use Pinterest to Get Your Art Viewed by Potential Buyers

From Cory: from time to time, we get a really great, high quality guest post from other artists and professionals working in the field. I definitely couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share this blog post from Marie Kazalia. Marie definitely does some powerful things when it comes to helping artists make more money online. You’ll want to read this one as well as our previous article, which has some great introductions to Pinterest. 

Many artists understand that a huge part of getting online sales depends on buyers finding your work. Some buyers may come upon your work in an online gallery and you may get some sales that way. Or they may read about your work in a blog article or find your website in a Google search.

Many artists use social media to drive viewers to visit their personal websites to (hopefully) buy.

Tip: use Pinterest to get your work viewed by more potential buyers.

For artist using the social media platform Pinterest, millions of Pinterest users have a new way to view your art images (known as pins). When you add images of your art to Pinterest, you take your art outside of your website, or any online gallery, to where Pinterest users and potential buyers may find it. Plus Pinterest is fun! Everyone who uses Pinterest loves it!

Tip: add retail prices to pins of your artwork

Pinterest has a new feature that actually allows you to send your individual art image pins or an entire board of your art image pins directly to Pinterest users who may have missed them. Pinterest has had the new *send* feature for about two months now. Use it to easily send boards or individual pins of your art to other Pinterest users such as Interior Designers or home owners looking for art for their walls, or those looking for art to give as gifts. Send your art pins and boards to art gallery curators and art consultants that you connect with on Pinterest. In addition, you can send any pinned image or Pinterest board via email. So it’s also easy to send your board of images to non-Pinterest users—all you need is their email address.

Tip: be sure to add a nice note when you send your art image pin or board of pins. This is a must! Here are some suggestions on what to say in your note to an Interior Designer, for example:

“These artworks are available to meet your project needs and are ready to ship.” or “I have artworks available for every room”

Some artists want to fly solo and may have just one or two boards of their artwork on their Pinterest profile. Those artists eschew the group boards, saying that they don’t want their work viewed along side other artist’s work. That’s one Pinterest philosophy. These artists may wish to send individual art images or boards of their available artworks with retail price tags to art professionals and potential buyers.

Tip: join an active group art board

Other artists understand that adding their art to a group board results in even more visibility. It’s a group effort! The group board of artworks appears on each participating artist’s Pinterest profile, making it likely more Pinterest users will find it.

While some group boards are simply enormous collections of images on a topic or theme, the group Pinterest board that I created, Art Direct From Artists, is for promotional purposes and for increasing sales for artists. All pins by artists who join my group board must be available work and have a retail price tag.

Tip: create a group board and use Social Media to find artists to join

During the first week after I created my Pinterest group board, I alerted artists in a blog post on my Artist Marketing Resources blog and started a discussion about the group Pinterest board in my Artist Marketing Resources LinkedIN group. By the 2nd week, over 40 artists had joined the board and pinned over 190 art images with retail price tags.

With this new group board full of great art images, and artists eager to sell, I began to work to get the work viewed. I sent the board to three large Interior Design firms, and then began tweeting the board link on Twitter. I also asked artist members of the group board to tweet the link to the Pinterest board.

Immediately after I sent my first tweet, I received this direct message on Twitter from CreativeArts @hotcreativejob,

“@TransmediArtist Hi Marie, do you know if I have to pay extra if I buy the art from your pinboard in the UK? Great board! Thanks!”

Tip: Once you have your board of art images with retail price tags—on either a solo artist board or on a group board, build your followers, then send your board to potential buyers to make sure that they have a chance to view your available work!

Marie Kazalia is an artist, art marketer and artist agent and promoter, and arts blogger. One of her paintings is published as a full page in the current October issue of Professional Artist magazine (image attached). You can view her work on her site Marie Kazalia’s art and read more of her art marketing articles on her blog Artist Marketing Resources. Contact Marie Kazalia via email.

Not sure if Pinterest is the right fit for your art business? Here’s a helpful tutorial on how to choose which social media platform to focus on.

image from mkhmarketing