Social media for the visual artist: 11 ways to promote your work

You'd think I was in enough places on the web, between my four blogs, two company Facebook pages and personal FB profile, a Google profile and Google+ presence, a Twitter feed, an About.me page and a few other things. But shame on me, when I sold my first works of art at a gallery exhibit last August, one of the buyers emailed me afterward to complain.

"You've got something on the web about everything but your art," he said, accurately. "I want to see more."

Well, you don't need to tell me twice. (He emailed me via About.me, by the way.) So even though I've been studying and making art--primarily collage and its three-dimensional cousin, assemblage--for the past decade, I'm now blogging about my works on a specific site about my art, explaining my works and letting readers see them before they go on exhibit. I've helped several artist and gallery friends take the plunge into social media, and I'm about to help my current gallery do the same. So here, where my worlds collide, are 11 ways visual artists and their galleries can share and promote (and even sell) their work using social media tools:

1. Blogs offer artists an easy way to update a website, as well as share and sell their latest works. A longtime favorite of mine is Molly Brose's blog A Day's Work. Aside from a recent hiatus prompted by the birth of her child, the blog has been featuring--and selling--a painting a day since 2006, largely small 6" x 6" watercolors. Bonus: Her frequent posts help drive her higher in search-engine results, and make it easy for potential buyers to find her. Galleries can use blogs to keep their sites updated, drive search engine results, promote events, point out nearby restaurants and museums and much more. (And you can feed blog posts into Facebook and Twitter to further their reach.) More recent, the nine-month-old blog Experiment Station blog from the Phillips Collection, a contemporary art museum in Washington has done a great job focusing on its events, permanent collection, and local angles; this post sums up some of the ways it looks at the world.
2. Facebook and its improved visual aspects, from timeline photos to larger thumbnail pictures with posts, offers visual artists and galleries a world of opportunity--and with its fastest-growing audiences in their 50s and up, it has an art-buying audience well in hand. Galleries can take advantage of its easy events posts and corporate pages, encourage sharing by their artists, and tag photos of attendees at receptions and openings. Artists can share their works as they are completed, invite friends to openings, and use apps to build their email newsletter lists of prospective buyers. They even can build sales growth on Facebook. While it's not fine art, this wedding photographer now makes $100,000 a year through gigs that come through just one simple Facebook sales technique: Posting photos quickly, and tagging people in them. The rest comes from sharing and word-of-mouth. Visual artists can do the same at receptions, openings and open-studio events.
3. Pinterest, a new and highly visual social sharing site that's currently in beta test, leads with photos and lets others find them, like them, comment on them and "re-pin" them to their own sites. While overt selling is discouraged, artists can share their new works with links to a blog or website, and get feedback and interest indicators. It's no mistake that many Etsy shops are active on Pinterest, expanding the visual links and driving customers to a site where they can buy something. If you need an invitation to join, email me at info[at]dontgetcaught[dot]biz.
4. Twitter's another suitable network for art buyers, populated as it is by working middle-aged folks. Twitter also has improved its options for posting pictures, and is highly effective at driving traffic to blogs and websites, making it an ideal complement to your social media base. The Art League in Alexandria, Virginia, has a gallery and a fine-art school to promote, and its Twitter account shares its finds about art in a Paper.li daily summary, and links to its blog. Here's a wonderful recent behind-the-scenes blog post about retiring a gallery wall that's seen too much service, called "If This Wall Could Talk." The accompanying tweet said "Nailed: After years of service, a gallery wall is retired," a summary that drew me right in and provided the link to the post, too. I found a similar behind-the-scenes post about how the League juries art for its shows--in this case, winnowing down more than 500 entries to just 150 in a couple of days.
5. Foursquare might also be overlooked by artists and galleries, but in addition to noting a gallery location, you can add tips to any location ("My latest work is on display here until November 30" or "ask about renting our gallery for your next special event") so that searchers can find out more. And you can make Foursquare lists for any gallery/studio/museum your art is in, sharing nearby restaurants, describing a quick "art tour" that includes your location and any nearby collections, pacing off how far you are from various public transportation options or major landmarks and more. About Foursquare is a useful blog to read, and it has these 5 tips for creating Foursquare lists that get noticed. At a minimum, get your staff, volunteers, donors, buyers and others to check in on Foursquare when they walk through those gallery doors.
6. Art Spotter is an iPhone app that helps tourists and others locate nearby art, making it ideal for galleries and museums, as well as art shows, sales and events. It's international in scope and casts a wide net; venues also can get information on what users are doing.
7. Art.sy is in private beta and you need to request an invite to participate, but it's a fine-art tool that aims to help people discover fine art. Galleries, museums and private art collections can explore partnerships with Art.sy.
8. QR codes can work for both artists and galleries. At a location, a QR code lets passers-by find your website quickly from a sticker on your door, even if the gallery is closed; at an opening, an artist's card might include a QR code. As this New York Times roundup of recent QR code uses notes, the Museum of Modern Art recently mounted an exhibit that included QR codes on the labels for each piece of art. The enterprising artist might include such a code on her artwork's labels at a show, inviting viewers to find out more, on the spot.
9. Museum Analytics, now in beta, is less for sharing and more for metrics, as it calculates the social reach of various museums in one place. If nothing else, it's a trove of data that you can use to compare your own social reach. If your gallery's located near one of these museums, the site will offer lots of clues about how to maximize your reach with the same nearby audience.
10. Flickr is always a good social repository for photos of your work, and galleries and museums can use it to encourage members and attendees to post their photos of events and art. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has a robust collection of Flickr photos tagged by users who visit the museum, and used Flickr to encourage photo entries to its clever ad campaign "It's Time We Met," which used winning photos from its visitors in the ads.
11. YouTube might seem out of kilter for many visual artists, at least those whose work isn't moving. But in fact, you can create a channel that includes interviews with you, footage from openings and art events, views of your most recent painting along with you providing some narration about the work, an "open studio" tour, a look at some of your works-in-progress. Don't forget that YouTube is one of the most popular search engines of all--and be sure to post your videos not just on YouTube, but on Facebook, Twitter and your blog. It's worth remembering that online video is still the strongest trend in social media, attracting billions of views a day. Here's an artist who shows herself at an art show and sale, including a work-in-progress:

The advantages to all these approaches? They allow you--you, the artist, or you, the gallery or museum--to demystify art, answer questions, note what's for sale, invite attendees, support artists and engage viewers. And yes, sell art, attract sponsors and partners, sell items from the gift shop, encourage commissions and all the other business that makes the art world run. Try it, artists. You'll like it.