If you think that having a Facebook page, or a presence on Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter is enough to showcase your art, think again.

Yes, it’s incredibly important to have a presence on various social media platforms. Clients we’ve worked with have some amazing success stories, from selling artwork, to landing commissions, to garnering gallery interest. Along with the more general interest sites such as Facebook and Instagram, sites such as Zazzle, Etsy, and Saatchi allow you to get your work in front of potential buyers.

But having a social media presence is not enough. Every artist should have a dedicated website. As Facebook changes have illustrated, the one thing you don’t have by being solely on social media platforms is control. You are basically at the mercy of the platforms. When they change, whether you want to or not, you’re going along with those changes.

Having your own website is like building your own home. It’s yours. You live there. You call the shots. You control exactly how it looks, what it says and how and when it changes. This is vital to how you present your work, your art, your story and yourself.

Your personal site is your primary online residence. The social media sites feed it but your site tells your full story, exactly as you want it told. That said, you don’t want to simply cobble a site together in order to have an online presence. Use as much time, creativity and when building your site as you would give to one of your works. Don’t simply put up some images, write some basic copy and let it go at that. Do your homework. Study various sites. If you have some basic technical savvy, you can start with a relatively basic site on WordPress or similar platforms and perfect it as you grow. If not, it’s worth investing in a website that accurately reflects who you are and effectively showcases your art work

Don’t just focus on the aesthetics. For example, you can have the best looking site on the web and if it takes too long to load, or is difficult to navigate, it’s not going to serve your needs. When it comes to the net, patience is apparently not considered a virtue. Akamai Technologies, commissioned a study through Jupiter Research which showed that, on average, online shoppers will wait only four seconds for a site to load before moving on.

Anticipate your visitors’ needs, their questions and try to address them before they are asked. Make your site as easy to navigate as possible. Don’t feel you have to tell your whole story on your site, or you’ll end up with dense copy and dozens of pages that will both confuse and bore people.

Once you have your site up and ready to share with the world including, collectors, galleries, and the media, that is when a social media outreach can be successful particularly when combined with an effective PR campaign. When you share feature stories that highlight you and your work on Facebook, Instagram and other platforms, you immediately separate yourself from the competition.

And that in turn will drive visitors to your website, which is exactly where you want them.

Copyright © PR FOR ARTISTS / Anthony Mora / Aubrie Wienholt 2016