| While we're all sequestered in our homes, we're all facing the potential for lost or wasted time. So let's ask ourselves: How can we use this time to get better? How can we be of service and use? I know, without a doubt that great art is being created around the world at this very moment. Perhaps by you! Our entire team is focused 100% on whatever we can do to help you market and sell more art. With that in mind, we're focusing FineArtViews on sales and marketing ideas more than ever before. The following article was selected from our archives as it seems quite timely in the current situation and provides ideas we think you can use to improve your own art marketing.
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The goal of much of your art marketing is to build your own community of fans and followers in a way you control, without ceding your community to Facebook, Instagram or even your art galleries. And, not only must you build a community of true fans but you must become the leader of that community.
I recall reading an article in Wired magazine (issue 15.12) years ago, Almost Famous by Clive Thompson. The article discusses the (at the time relatively recent) phenomenon of microcelebrities. This trend has continued and accelerated in the years since the article was written.
Clive put it this way:
Microcelebrity is the phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions but to a small group - a thousand people, or maybe only a few dozen. As DIY media reach ever deeper into our lives, it's happening to more and more of us [If you engage in online information publishing via web sites, blogs, and newsletters] odds are there are complete strangers who know about you -- and maybe even talk about you.
You, dear artist, need to become a microcelebrity (and no doubt many of you already are).
So, what does it take to become a microcelebrity?
Again, from wired magazine, "adapting to microcelebrity means learning to manage our own identity and "message" almost like a self-contained public relations department."
You must take control of your message. What this means you must do are exactly the things we, at BoldBrush, have been telling you to do for years:
1. Build and use your own in-house email list, regularly.
2. Build and use your own in-house snail mail list
3. Maintain your own stand alone web site as your online "home base"
4. Use big communities as lead gen sources - Use big communities like Facebook and Instagram as sources to prospect for new true fans, but don't be overly reliant on traffic generated by other communities where you are a small fish in a big pond - create your own pond where you are the most famous fish in the water.
But does it really work?
Let me illustrate with a personal example. Although I conduct the vast majority of FASO and FineArtViews business online, I've attended the Oil Painters of America exhibition as a sponsoring vendor a couple of times. Once, I set up a booth to demonstrate our software and was present at the show for two days. I enlisted the help of a photographer friend to assist me with manning the booth (most of the FASO staff members at the time were out of state and thus it was easier to get a local friend to help).
As the show progressed, a constant stream of artists, art industry experts, art collectors and acquaintances approached the booth to greet me. Everyone seemed already to know who I was and wanted to say hello. It was a bit of a strange feeling - they knew me, but I didn't know them.
My photographer friend turned to me and said, "Dude - you're a rock star!"
Actually, I'm fairly uncomfortable being described as a "rock star", those who read this space regularly have probably picked up on the fact that I like to remain kind of "low key." I'm certainly not a rock star but, the point is, that to my friend, it seemed like I was famous. And indeed to a very small group of people - I have to admit - I am.
If I can accomplish this with a blog, a software service and an email newsletter, I've shown that it's not that hard to become a microcelebrity, so I encourage you, an artist who is surely much more interesting than I am, to get started today.
For my latest thoughts on art marketing, art sales ideas, and insider announcements about new FASO features we are working on and releasing, you should Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. That's where I publish ideas and opportunities in real time. Be the first to know.
Until next time, please remember that Fortune Favors the Bold Brush. |
