Online marketing for fine artists: Part 1 – The basics

So you’ve got the show on the wall, the champagne on ice and all your hard work in the studio is about to be shown to the public for the first time. Exciting and nerve-wracking times that all artists have to experience in order to sell work. But how many members of the public do you want to come into your show? For most artists the answer is as many as possible. After all, the more people who see your work the more potential sales. Which is where online marketing comes in.

Online marketing will let you get more visitors to your show without huge expense.

1. Get active on Twitter

Maybe you’ve probably had a Twitter account for ages but have stopped using it. Or you’ve never had one. Either way get Twitter up and running. Use hashtags so that relevant people find your tweets. Add #art or #exhibition to your tweets. Add the location – people often search for things happening in their local area.

2. Get a website

If you don’t want to get involved in the world of webmasters and  domain names you can pick up a free website at wordpress.com. Start filling it with information about your show so that people know what’s coming.

3. Advertise online.

You can pay for visitors to your website, so make sure you have a page telling people where the show is and what hours it it open. You can use Google Adwords to pull in viewers, or you can find directories and sites around the web that let you advertise for free. Get searching!

4. Get blogging

Don’t stop work on your website once the details of the show are up. Start writing broader posts about your life as an artist. People like to get to know the person behind the work. Post some of your work, describe the experience of making it, invite the reader into your world. You want them to know you before they arrive at the show.

5. Tell The Flaneur about your show!

We want to support independent artists and shows. We can’t mention everything but we will try – so send us information about your show that we can use on the site and we can post about it. Contact shows@flaneur.me.uk