(This is a guest blog post by Gayle Mahoney, an artist and arts marketing consultant. You can follow her blog about arts marketing, Make a Living Making Art.)
As artists, marketing our work entails much more than selling products. People buy artwork in part because they feel a connection with the artist. When someone buys our work, she is also buying our experience, vision and story. With the unprecedented ability we now have to directly market our work through a variety of web tools, the “personal brand” has emerged as a way for individuals to sculpt their own public relations personae. Considering your personal brand can help you determine what resources are most beneficial in building your connection with your audience.
Product branding is a group of tools that help create a unique identity for a product in the marketplace; Personal branding is a group of tools that help create a unique identity for an individual in the marketplace. The quality of our work, our reputation, personal style, business practices and other factors shape the overall impression people have of us. Notoriety and reputation have a direct bearing on both the perceived value and the actual price of an artist’s work.
Here are some tips to help you develop and support your personal brand:
Identify and emphasize what sets you apart.
What makes you unique as an artist? What makes your story interesting? Write a list of qualities that make you stand out from other artists and consider how you can communicate those qualities to your audience. Post this list where you will see it often and refer to it when you talk to someone about your work or when you write publicity materials.
Use web-based media to manage your public image.
Social media is one of the most effective ways you can maintain your personal brand. Through social media and other web-based tools, you can easily and inexpensively model the way people perceive you as an artist. There are many resources here on ArtyBuzz.com to get you started (for example, the free Artybuzz e-book about promoting your work online here).
Make your own buzz.
Look for opportunities to generate excitement about YOU, the artist! In addition to publicizing your shows and sales, look for opportunities that support what sets you apart as an artist. Volunteer to give a talk or do a demonstration for a community group. Plan an “unveiling” of work in progress at a local coffeehouse, send out a press release and invite all your friends. Events like these give you a reason to get publicity and generate buzz between shows. Be creative!
Make a plan.
Include tools to build your personal brand in your budget and other business planning. This can include longer-range goals such as developing a class or workshop at a new venue, joining a professional arts organization or furthering your education. You can also create a media plan to build your personal brand, making sure to blog once a week or “tweet” on a regular basis. Start by taking small steps you can realistically meet. Make a schedule and stick to it.
Make it a priority to use good business practices.
Make sure your work is original and well made. Practice good customer service. Meet deadlines. If you have problems in any of these areas, identify the reason and find the resources you need to fix the problem. This is the area where you have the most control over how people will perceive you.
Get feedback from others.
Get feedback from your audience about how you are coming across in your communications. You can do this informally by asking friends, strangers and patrons for their thoughts. You can also use web-based surveys: Social media tools like Facebook, blogging platforms and email database programs have preprogrammed surveys you can customize to get feedback from your followers.
I hope these tips have helped you think about ways to cultivate your public image to improve your personal connection with your customers. What are you already doing to build your personal brand? I would love to hear your ideas and questions.
We thought we’d highlight some of the great panoramic art on Artybuzz today. These images often don’t look their best on the normal view on Artybuzz, so we thought we’d display them in all their panoramic glory for you below. To take a closer look at these images, simply click on them to view and buy…
Paul Shiers
Adam Bresnen
Jaison Cianelli
John Gaffen
Jaison Cianelli
Today we are featuring Lou Murphy, an artist from Cheshire in England. We spoke to her asking a few questions about her art…
How long have you created your art?
I was always creative when I was younger, making and drawing things. I studied art right up to A’Level, but I veered away and followed a different path for my degree. After a couple of years in work, I realised I wanted to return to something more creative, so I went part time in 2005 and started an art foundation course. I absolutely loved it, and went on to do a Fine Art HNC.
What drives you to create?
I just get ideas and they bug me until I try them out! As I have a day job, I don’t have the luxury of spending all day being creative, so the time I do have has to be spent wisely. However, I do spend quiet moments in my job trying things out in my head and mulling over my ideas, which is useful. I often use how I feel at the time to create work, so if I’m feeling annoyed or angry, I’ll get my sketchbook out and channel that energy onto the page. Some of my best stuff has been produced that way.
What kind of things inspire your work more than anything else?
Sometimes it’s an image I see walking down the street, or a phrase that I can imagine as a visual concept, or something that really interests me and I decide I want to explore it visually. I like to keep gathering information, even if I’m not working on a particular ‘thing’ at the time, so I keep a sketchbook, take loads of photos and just scribble ideas down. I think if you keep doing little things like that, eventually you become your own inspiration. I’m fascinated by light, or sometimes the lack of it as I really like taking night photographs. I loved spending time in the darkroom at college, producing quite experimental images. The things that can be done digitally in programmes like Photoshop are quite exciting, merging drawn and painted images with photos, for instance. Finally, I do like getting messy with paint and ink, I often use photos and memory to inspire painted images. You can see more at http://doodleloudesigns.blogspot.com
What are your future goals with your art?
This year I’d really like to have a couple of small exhibitions and produce my own cards to sell alongside my work. I also want to concentrate more on my painting, so I should probably spend less time on the internet and more time in the studio, actually creating stuff! It’s a modest goal, but in the future, I’d love to work part time and spend the rest of the time producing artwork.
Why did you join Artybuzz and what do you want to get out of it?
I joined because the idea of being part of an ‘artists community’ and being able to sell the work you’re showcasing really appealed to me. Letting someone else do all the hard work of getting the image onto a canvas or print or whatever was also attractive, as I don’t have a lot of space to keep stock. Plus, Arty Buzz is based in the UK, which keeps prices lower for UK customers who might otherwise have to order artwork from sites in America, paying high import charges and waiting longer for their purchases.
Now all I have to do is sell some work!
You can help Lou sell some work by visiting and buying from her profile here… http://www.artybuzz.com/member-detail-view/loumurphy/679
We have added a few new water related artworks to our page giving support to World Water Aid. You can check them out and all our other gifts in this shortlist by visiting http://www.artybuzz.com/water-art-gifts.php.
Remember, all profits from sale of this art goes to Water Aid, so it’s a really great cause, plus you get a great piece of artwork!
Some of the new addittions:
Today we are interviewing Carolyn Edlund from ArtsyShark. Her blog provides some great advice and features to help both new and existing artists improve and achieve greater success. We wanted to concentrate on getting some of her opinions and advice on how new artists can do better, and interviewed her below to get her opinions on a few issues…
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It is often hard for struggling artists to get noticed. What do you suggest to emerging artists to get their work out there?
Selling your work and becoming known in the world of art isn’t an easy job. If you are passionate about creating a full-time career, you need to embrace the fact that you will have to market yourself. Marketing can take up to half your work time. There are many ways to promote your own work, and I suggest trying as many of them as possible. Enter shows. Approach galleries. Volunteer. Exhibit in art shows. Participate in events going on in the art community. Networking is essential to meeting and getting to know people who have the power to show your work, recommend you and make purchases. Don’t just show up once – become involved and show that you are serious.
An online presence is essential as well. Produce and maintain a website that looks professional, with an up-to-date gallery of work which is professionally photographed. It’s a good idea to have a blog and update it frequently. Use SEO techniques, links to other sites and participation in social media to get your name out there and recognized. Participate in online sites where you can offer your work for sale and be part of an artist’s community.
People, including artists, often get de-motivated if things are not going as expected. Do you have any suggestions?
Have you noticed how life never exactly meets expectations? You can set yourself up for disappointment by having unrealistic goals, and expecting other people to behave in certain ways. Becoming overwrought emotionally can be a real drain on creativity. When we take things personally, we blame ourselves, and that gets unhealthy.
If you are feeling frustrated and unmotivated, take a break. Go out into a natural setting, like a beach or into the woods. Walk or relax into the peaceful calm that is nature. It can be very centering. I also suggest reading Eckhart Tolle’s books – he has an amazing perspective on life and is a very calming influence. Then go back into the studio, and allow yourself to just play. Experiment with new ideas, and don’t give yourself any goals. Sometimes you come up with totally new directions by not planning ahead.
New artists often struggle to find their own style. What is your experience?
As an art student, I tried many different things without having my own “style” yet. It is part of maturing as an artist that you go deeply into working in one direction, and sometimes you change that direction. My medium was clay, and I created series of works, trying many different things to develop an idea fully. I would imagine that artists in all mediums do that.
It also depends on what you want to do with your art. My goal was to earn a full-time income selling my work. Therefore, my customer’s tastes strongly influenced my design line. I had a production studio making ceramic jewelry, much of it whimsical, and if something wasn’t selling, it was discontinued. I became very detached from my work, because it became more of a “product”, and everything was made in multiples, many times by the hundreds. I had a production staff, and eventually employed a designer as well. I was more of an “idea person” and a businessperson. I came to understand fully that art is a business and if you want to sell your work to make a living, you must be a smart businessperson.
About ten years ago, I closed my studio and am not creating art any longer, but am very passionate about helping other artists who are launching their careers. I hope that my blog at Artsy Shark is helpful to our next generation of emerging artists.
We have an offer from one of the companies we work with to share with you today…
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Artsbowl Celebrates World Theatre Day
World theatre day is being celebrated on 27 March and Artsbowl would love to help get more people excited about the experience of being at the theatre, enjoying a drama, musical or other performance, or even taking part on stage!
Dame Judi Dench has written this year’s World Theatre Day Message in which she speaks of theatre as “a source of entertainment and inspiration (that) has the ability to unify the many diverse cultures and peoples that exist throughout the world.”
In celebration of World Theatre Day, Artsbowl – a creative courses hub – is delighted to announce their first competition.
All you need to do for a chance of winning tickets for you and a friend to a theatre near you, is tell us why you love theatre – on or off the stage – in the form of a blog. Post a blog of between 200 and 300 words, or a video cast of up to 1 minute long – on our Artsbowl blog pages. Further details of the competition are available on our website here.
The closing date is Friday 16 April 2010 and the winner will be announced at the beginning of May 2010. Other favourite blogs may be featured in future newsletters.
We’ve added a few more pieces to our water art selection, so now you have even more art that you can buy and see the profits go to a charitable cause. Please click the link above to see our artwork selection, or view more details about the actual feature and cause itself by clicking to view our ‘What’s Buzzing‘ page.
We’ve picked another two from our selection and highlighted them below:
(click image to view in more detail)
(click image to view in more detail)
As creators of art, we should have no agenda other than our own. Many people have set ideas about art and what it can be. Even artists, on occasion. To many people, the definition of art is a painting in a frame or an exquisite statue of a nude. Yes, that is a concept of art, but a quick skim of Our Lord Wikipedia gives us this definition:
“Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions.”
In this definition, they have it right to my mind. Of course, this is only a very basic definition of art, and there are many sub genres of all the arts we could possibly think of and more. To whit, the only obvious answer to the much asked question “But is it art?” can be “Of course!”. So many artists have broken the conventions of traditional art settings and are now commanding huge sums for their work. Examples include Damien Hurst with his extremely avant garde works that caused many people to laugh him off initially, Yoko Ono has been creating challenging pieces of modern art since the early sixties and no doubt will continue to do so – even if people somewhat unfairly mock her for it -and going even further back into art history The Impressionists revolutionized the art world after going against the grain of the traditional Parisian art scene. There are many more examples but the message is clear.
Art is an expression of yourself, and if you consider it to be art it is art. Now go forth and create!
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This guest blog post is written by Seba Rashii, whose website can be found at http://seba-rashii.blogspot.com/
The Artybuzz ‘What’s Buzzing‘ feature has changed today from the previous mothers day feature we had been running to a new water themed feature to help support World Water Day.
The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, and aims to raise awareness and support for areas of the world where people still do not have access to clean water. If you would like more information on this, then more can be read at http://www.worldwaterday.org/.
To help support this great initiative, we are selecting some of the best water related artwork on Artybuzz and are displaying it on our water gifts page here – http://www.artybuzz.com/water-art-gifts.php. World Water Day is on 22nd March, and to give our support, we are donating all the profits from any artwork purchased from our selection of water related art to Water Aid.
All Profits Go To Water Aid
So if you was already thinking of buying some art on Artybuzz, then you have another great reason to purchase from our great water art selection. Alternatively, if you had no intention to buy previously but want to support this great cause, then there is an opportunity to make a difference here…. while getting a great piece of art as well!
A quick peek of some of our water gifts can be seen below:
Please visit http://www.artybuzz.com/water-art-gifts.php to see all of our water gift products, and to buy these images above. We will be adding more water related artworks later in the week, so if you want your own water artwork adding, please let us know.
This week, some artybuzz t shirts have been featured and reviewed and featured on the popular t shirt blog t-shirtfarmer.com.
It’s a nice blog featuring t shirts and reviews of them from all over the world, and it’s great that some of Artybuzz.com’s t shirt designers designs have been chosen for feature.
The lead writer for T-Shirt Farmer Michael said “Our goal for the site is to aggregate t-shirts available on the web that rise above the common crap found at many of the most popular web based t-shirt retailers”. A pretty good philosophy, and based on some of the great t shirts that Michael shows and reviews on his site, a philosophy that holds strong and carries through on his site. Michael will also be writing a guest blog post for us very soon, so keep an eye out for that.
You can check out the t shirt design review by clicking… here