Promoting your creative practice can be daunting: building a profile, launching a website, using social media effectively and spreading the word about projects. Where do you start? How do you establish and maintain a clear voice that is authentic to your practice? The marketing approaches presented at this event are tailored for creative practitioners.
Drawing on the experience of two local experts, this session of (Artist) Life School offers a marketing toolkit for visual artists. It aims to demystify this important element of your professional practice. This session includes practical advice about how to build your own website, social media strategies, and other ways for promoting your work across digital and physical contexts.
Check out the slides from the presentation here.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS:
CARMEL ROWDEN
Carmel Rowden is a marketing and communications consultant currently living in Ōtautahi. She has a bachelors in fashion design, and spent her twenties travelling
and living abroad, and working in arts libraries. She went on to complete a postgraduate diploma and later a master’s degree in communication studies.
Having worked in marketing at AUT for four years, she moved into freelance work in the arts and community sectors, with clients that include Gus Fisher Gallery, Te Tuhi, The Warren community wood workshop and Rei Foundation. She makes websites for individuals and organisations and occasionally works as a graphic designer in art departments for film. Alongside this, Carmel is a ceramicist. Carmel’s approach to brand and marketing is to keep it simple and authentic.
MOSES ROBBINS
Moses Robbins balances two lives. One as an improvisational live looping guitarist, session musician, songwriter, and recording artist, and one as Creative Director for Te Waipounamu’s longest-standing creative agency. With music, he has toured Australasia and abroad performing, writing, and recording
with and alongside a multitude of local, national, international, and award-winning musical artists. With marketing, he has worked with many of Ōtautahi’s leading brands and successful start-ups with a strong track record of launching innovative initiatives, many of which have gone on to become standard industry practices, particularly in social media marketing. Moses is fascinated with the intersection at which art, self-expression, branding and digital storytelling meet. His ideas and unique perspective on concepts around digital etiquette, socially conscious marketing, and authenticity online are grounded in real-world experience and success.
NOTES FROM CARMEL’S PRESENTATION
On social media:
Slide one: It’s not selling out, making it accessible in a way your audience can absorb. Find your audience
Two: “marketing channels” can be marketing or can be fun! Being open isn’t always “networking”
Three: (IG and FB), consider your audience in your tone. Balance posting between process pics and finished product pics (and beach pics).
Four: Instagram: Worth having a separate art account? Keep private private, though it’s a lot of upkeep, consider one and balance that content. Tag galleries and other artists (where relevant) and title your work in the caption.
Five: Facebook: Less popular. Still valuable for documentation in lieu of a website, can link people there. Facebook shows up in Google searches and you can make
events so good for visibility. CHECK if you’re posting on your personal or public!
On websites:
Slide seven/eight: Why do it? It’s fun, affirmation for you, makes it real! Send a link rather than 100 JPEGS.
Nine: We like cargo!
Ten: What goes on the website? (See slides) Caution on blog to keep it updated so that the site doesn’t look abandoned and informing of old news.
Eleven: Audrey’s spreadsheet, if there’s a lot of content it can be good to organise beforehand.
Twelve: Aim for a nice user experience, simple is good. Get friends to check links are working, check for bugs.
Thirteen: SEO, ( see slides), all these things help Google find you
Fourteen: Easy to lose steam before starting so find a friend to commit with and hold each other accountable.
Fifteen: Links
From questions/comments
– Avoid shadow-banning on Instagram by making a website and owning your content!
– SQUOOSH instead of photoshop to change file sizes
– How to manage unwieldy content on websites (already existing): use ‘tags’ ie: using keywords which is an option on most web builders which filters through
pages and content.
NOTES FROM MOSES’ PRESENTATION
Slide one: Keep these in mind: scepticism (can hold you back), integrity, reality…
Two: Moses started young, age 16, ‘how to play guitar’ online pre-youtube. Had a foot ahead as social media started. Sees it as a tool rather than as an extension of
self. Not a capitalist; started by working for hospitality outlets in order to be paid in bar/restaurant tabs (cassels, vesuvio, cooking with gas). Favourite client at the
moment is a festival organiser.
Three: Challenge beliefs, assumptions.. (on slides)
Four: Facebook is creepily effective on how much information it has on you. If the product is free then you’re the product.
Ads manager in IG and FB > all tools you can access in the back end of Facebook/Instagram.
Five: If you pay $10 you reach 1000 people, but the key is to find the right 1000 people
Six: Broken into ‘campaigns’, you can make custom audiences and look at detailed targeting so you can market specifically.
Returning to scepticism, it can be used in a yucky way or in terms of art, you just want to get it out to people.
Eg. Pizza republic. Targeted everyone in Ōtautahi who is 20 — gave them a “anyone got a 21st coming up?” And everyone 29 “got a 30th coming up?”
Seven: Chch school of music, target audiences were either kids finishing high school, parents thinking about their kids, or people returning to study.
Eight: breakdown, data (on slides)
Seven: (referring to encouraging people to come to your exhibition) how to interrupt the flow of “the scroll” action, to click and make an action.
“Incentive, affinity and effort”
Incentive: what’s in it for me? They might wanna come to your exhibition, or they might want to buy it,
Affinity: do they know you? What’s the effort involved in signing up to an event? If there’s less affinity you might need to incentivise, but if there’s more they will likely put in more effort.
Effort: ask one thing: click through, show up. The simpler the ask the easier the follow through.
Eight: Practical posting stuff: Content calendar, having a framework means that you don’t have to rely on being in the right mood for it all the time, you can pre-plan it all.
Anatomy of a good post (on slide) “share a feeling” brings you/a human into it. And then only ask for one thing, make multiple posts if necessary or dial it down.
Facebook loves faces, in terms of algorithm, and also for human connection. Be consistent and try not to overthink it, just carry on.
Nine: On networking: loaded word but it’s just friendship. Go easy on ourselves, a lot of us are managing anxiety and imposter syndrome. But if you’re feeling good then make the most of it and reach out and make connections. If you meet someone, follow up on FB or IG (it’s not weird). If people comment on your stuff, comment back! Try not to post at 11:30 at night, schedule it for the morning so people will actually see it.
Ten: ‘Stripe’ for online payments, ‘Ticket tailor’ can plug into any platform.
Questions and Answers:
– Do I move to paid ads on Facebook or Instagram to sell art? Yeah, you can run an ad for a week and reassess and change to make it more effective. Again, $10 reaches 1000 people, the question becomes am I reaching the right people?
– How important is it to post all the time? There’s definitely a threshold/sweet spot but not sure what that is. Once a week is a good rule of thumb to stay
relevant.
– How do you look for a target audience for an exhibition: age, visits to that location/gallery, geography (target those in the right city), can go for types of
wine brand. Another similar question: target people with money, look for the latest phone models, cars, 40s-60