Art Marketing Secrets

Wondering how Twitter can help your art business? Get the low-down from Art Licensing Guru Tara Reed in her fabulous 70 Minute Audio.

Yesterday we learned an important lesson about the power of social networking to help you align with your target market. It was delivered, curiously enough, not through facebook or twitter but through an email campaign. Here is what happened.

Its been 6 months since our article, “Selling Art With Twitter – Have You Sold Any?”, in which we asked the question: Are artists genuinely selling art as a result of Twitter? Back then we had a mixed response. Now its time to ask again – is Twitter delivering effective art marketing results?

As we prepared the copy for yesterday’s featured artist column it came as a blinding flash that in finding and choosing Kazuki Takizawi a classic social marketing sales process for art had been revealed to us.

Are artists genuinely selling art as a result of twitter? This has been a topic on our minds for several months since we first started with twitter. We see much sincere and engaging activity from artists sharing their philosophies, sensibilities, passions, and of course, their art. But is the online community building leading to actual sales?

Just as networking with people has ALWAYS been the key to success in any field of business (Remember the old saying NETWORK = NET WORTH), now online social networks like Twitter and Facebook allow you to expand the reach of your networking efforts beyond traditional geographical boundaries. This allows you to be a global networker in your field of interest – great news in a niched interest area like art but to be successful you need to have a strategy..

There is a huge proliferation of flash-based art and photography websites today and while many of them look sleek and sexy I have some doubts about their effectiveness as marketing tools. Here are my biggest concerns:

In this excellent post , Art Business blogger Barney Davey tackles that most interesting question we’ve all been wondering about: “Can I make it as a visual artist without having a Twitter and Facebook account? … And the answer is…. “Yes, but…”

Open Studios are a popular way to show your latest work to collectors, arts professionals, and the public. They can also be a successful and consistent way to sell your work. Read on to find out how to stage one successfully. In Part 1 we’ll talk about preparing for the event. In Parts 2 and 3 we’ll go over important details for the day of the event and follow-up activities for when you have cleaned away all those empty champagne magnums!

I participated in a webinar this morning hosted by Marketing Experiments on the topic of Twitter For Business, or to use their title, Getting beyond the “Now What?” … I felt more positive about Twitter by the end of the session – it seems like it has really valid applications in selling, marketing & branding, as well as customer service.