As people it’s fun to social-network. As artists and business owners it’s more important to social-market. Social Marketing includes Social Networking – plus more. The “plus more” means mainly having a clear strategy about what you are doing and how this adds value to your other art marketing activities.

To get the best results you need to understand the different roles in the giant Twitter performance – and to choose and act yours out for the best results.

In my observation, there are 3 primary “roles” you can choose to play in the Twitter-verse as follows:

1. Content Creators: As an artist or a writer this is your primary role. You originate great content for others to read and review in the form of articles and artworks.
2. Connector Hubs: These folks are “well connected” – meaning that they have thousands or tens of thousands of followers and typically tweet A LOT! Their primary role is to find good content and retweet it to their many followers. They may also create content but it’s not their primary role in the performance. You can think of Connector Hubs as the marketing and sales organization for your (Twitter) art business.
3. Content Consumers: These are the voracious readers and consumers of content. They might find your art directly but more likely because something of yours has been retweeted by a connector hub. Content Consumers and the “Art Buyers” of your Twitter art business.

Of course it’s quite possible to be a mix of two or all three, depending on our frame of reference at any time. But as artists it’s always good to remember that your star role is “Content Creator”.

What does that mean about what you should do? Here are some thoughts:

• Focus primarily on creating high-quality content. That means painting, sculpting, writing, etc. If you’re spending 20% of your time or more on Twitter you probably are neglecting your art career.
• Remember that Twitter is just one piece of your art marketing – don’t neglect your facebook page, website updates, email campaigns, mailouts to galleries, etc. These are just as important as ever!
• Develop relationships with “the right” Twitter connector hubs. You don’t just want any old connectors. How will it help you to be connected to a major hub if most of their 20,000 followers are snake oil salesmen? It won’t! What you want is connectors who are (1) interested in art themselves,  (2) who have many followers interested art, and (ideally) (3) have a proportion of followers who are actually interested in buying art. I’m not suggesting this is easy but it’s something to have in mind when you are choosing who to follow and connect with. Think Quality!
• Have a plan for how Twitter dovetails with the rest of your art marketing strategy. You might find our article, “5 Essential Twitter Tips To Sell Art Online” helpful as a starter on this topic.

Twitter is still very much emerging as a marketing force and at Art Marketing Secrets we are learning too. The point of all this is simply to have a plan. It won’t be perfect but if you’ve thought it through it WILL work at least some of the time. That way when you’ve completed your first thousand tweets you might have actually sold some art or interested an art collector – which you really deserve after typing those 140,000 characters on your iPhone!

We very much welcome your thoughts and comments on this topic!