To start, if you’re an artist and you’re marketing your work, congratulations!
You are already ahead of so many others in your field.
But, you don’t simply want to market yourself and your work, you want to efficiently and effectively do so. The trouble is that artists are seldom taught the art of marketing. When it comes to PR and promotion, artists are generally left to fend for themselves and simply hope for the best, which is not the best approach.
As an artist you’ve probably been advised to land media coverage, launch a tradition PR campaign and start a social media outreach. All good advice, but if you traverse these marketing arenas and mind fields on your own, chances are you’ll end up going down the wrong path. Without training and know-how, you can think your moving forward, while basically standing still, or can be headed in the right direction, but not taking advantage of all the opportunities available to you.
Below are two of the most common marketing mistakes artists make, and how to avoid them.
When it comes to traditional PR, mistake number one is thinking that the stories you find interesting will also resonate with the journalists, producers and editors you’re pitching. Remember you have a vested interest in your career and in your art, so, understandably, gaining media exposure for you and your work is of foremost interest to you. But, that’s not enough for the media. You need to present them with a story that is of interest to them and their readers, viewers or listeners. When I worked as a magazine editor, many of the pitches I received were interesting, but the downside was they were interesting to the person pitching the story, not to me or my readers. To be honest, this is not a PR problem that is specific to artists, it is probably the biggest PR mistake made. So think backwards, put yourself in the place of that TV producer or magazine editor. Why would he or she want to cover you or your art? What about your work, your style, or your journey as an artist could pique their interest? There is a story there, you simply need to find it.
Now jumping from traditional PR to social media, it’s tempting to believe that the more followers or likes you get, the more effective your social media outreach is. Whereas that could be true, there is no set-in-stone correlation between the number of followers you have and how effective your social media outreach actually is. According to an article in SEO Advantage, the more-followers-the-better approach is not necessarily effective. Unless the followers are truly interested in you and your work, studies show that the more followers you add can actually reduce the value of your overall followers. Go for quality instead of quantity. And don’t simply post in order to get as many likes as possible. This “high school popularity” approach to marketing can be seductive, but it’s seldom effective. You could write a post or post an image that gets 20 thousand likes, but if 99% of those likes are from high schoolers, I doubt they going to do you or your art much good. So be selective in who you follow, who is following you and what you choose to share on social media. Remember, this is not a popularity contest, or a friend-fest, this is a marketing outreach for your business as an artist.
So, by all means, launch a traditional PR and social media campaign for you and your art work, but think it through, be savvy.
Remember, this is the art of marketing.
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