Whether you’re writing for a blog or a newsletter, spend extra time on subject lines and titles, images, links, and your call to action.

These four components distinguish great from good content.

Audrey Phillips, Ray of Hope, 82 x 50 inches.

Subject Line or Title

The title you select for your blog post or subject line is critical. It will either entice people to open and read further or it will encourage a quick delete.

Images

Being an artist, you understand that art is a form of visual communication. Images are engaging and should be used frequently to illustrate your content.

Links in Blog Posts

When you discuss a good resource or talk about an experience, link, link, link!

Call to Action

What do you want readers to do as a result of reading your article? Sign up? Attend? Participate? Ask them to take a specific action.

How do you distinguish your content?

You not only need ideas for your art, but also for content in newsletters, blog posts, and social media updates.

Artists trying to connect with others online are also content-generators.

Dawn Brose-Jerome, One Step at a Time. Watercolor on paper, 22.5 x 30 inches. ©The Artist

How do you come up with something to say that is worthy of being heard above the noise?

Step 1
The first step to generating ideas is to identify your audience.

Step 2
Identify your purpose for connecting through these platforms.

Step 3
Listen to your ideal audience.

Step 4
Finally, mind map your content on paper.

Mind maps and content ideas are part of the Blog Triage Self-Study. If your blog is one of the many out there that needs a little TLC, check it out.

How do you generate content ideas in order to be heard above the noise?

Aside from your contact list, your artist statement is your most useful marketing tool.

You will use language from your statement for wall labels, brochure text, website text, informal presentations, conversations and more.

The process of writing your statement – and it is a process – will help you gain clarity about your art. You should continually review and hone the language you use to talk or write about your art.

©2010 David Bender, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Stainless steel, hardware, cast beeswax, cast paper, cherry, 48 x 80 x 2 inches (as a triptych).

Answering three basic questions will get you on track for a stronger artist statement.

1. What do you want people to see in your work?

2. What is a distinguishing characteristic of your art?

3. Based on your conversations, what do people find delightful or surprising about your art?

Everyone knows that the #1 way to attract fans for your art is to make amazing work. That’s no secret.

But I’m going to let you in on a hush-hush marketing strategy that will draw even more people into your circle: education.

Before you doze off at the word “education,” consider why you should heed my advice.

Most of the population was raised without an art education. If they were a student of the 1960s or 1970s, as I was, they probably had to make clay ashtrays or embellish turkeys from an outline drawing of their hands.

But that’s about the extent of it. Most adults haven’t been trained how to look at and appreciate art.

To these people, art can be stuffy, elitist, and inaccessible. Here’s where you step in.

Part of your job in promoting your art is to give viewers a pathway to your work — to show them how to look at and appreciate it.

If you want to reach the widest possible audience, it’s critical that you accept your role as primary educator for your art.

Most artists think of educating about the media, but I’d like for you to teach people how to look.

Showing people how to view your art empowers them. It gives them skills they’ll use forever.

Whenever appropriate, talk about some of the formal elements of your work:

• Line (parallel, symmetrical, straight, diverging, undulating)
• Color (muted, intense, complementary, monochromatic)
• Shape (geometric, organic, repeated)
• Texture (rough, smooth, bumpy)

If your work leans toward the conceptual, discuss ideas and how viewers can use their life experience as an entry point.

To be the best educator, don’t lecture, but engage people in a dialogue. Listen to the questions that arise and pay attention to the aha moments.

Making amazing work is one thing, but helping people to understand why it’s amazing can lead to more fans.

How do you educate people about your art?

Email. We love to send it, but we really don’t want or need anymore in our inboxes.

You probably send a lot of email. I’m asking you this week to reexamine what you’re sending people. I want you to improve your messages and make sure you’re not sending the same ole, lame ole email messages that everyone else is sending.

Slow down. Think before you send.

Think of your email as another art form. You’re reaching out and trying to build connections with every email. Create an engaging composition as you would with your art.

Don’t waste the one chance you have to get the message right. More importantly, don’t junk up other inboxes with ill-advised email.

Oh-Too-Common Email Blunders

1. Not saying anything. You’re just sending an email because you think it’s time and you don’t work on your message long enough. Don’t waste your readers’ time.
2. Saying too much. If you haven’t sent an email update in awhile, it’s tempting to try to catch up with all that’s been going on. Don’t do that to your poor readers. That’s what blogs and Facebook pages are for. Get to the point in your email.
3. Apologizing for not staying in touch. Really? Do you think we missed another email in our inboxes? Don’t apologize, just get to the point. In the future, when you promise to send a monthly missive, keep that promise unless you have extenuating circumstances (always understandable and forgiven).
4. Putting your entire list in the TO or the CC line. Every time you do this, you share email addresses with everyone on your list and risk pissing people off (sorry, there’s no nicer way to say it). Use the Bcc line!
   
5. Using a dull or trite subject line. Your subject line encourages people to open an email – or not. Vary your subject line and compel us to open what’s inside.
6. Bunching up all of your text. Your message should be scannable. Use 1-2 short sentences per paragraph, add subheadings, and bold important points. (See how I’ve done it in this post?)
7. Sending images that are too large and take a long time to download.
8. Putting all of your message in an attachment. Rule: Attachments are bonuses. They support the message, but they don’t replace it. ALL images are attachments. Even though they look great on your screen, they might show up as a big red X and an attachment in someone else’s inbox.If you want people to open the attachment, you have to give them reason to do so. Put all of the details in the message itself.
   
9. Not using precise locations. Remember that email messages go out to the world – not just your local audience. Don’t forget to add the name of the town, the city, and perhaps the country. Saying “It’s near the mall” doesn’t mean anything to your readers if they don’t know your town and aren’t anywhere near you.
10. Sending your bulk email message to anyone who didn’t request it. If you’re sending your email to people who didn’t opt in to your list you risk violating the CAN SPAM laws. More importantly, you risk alienating potential fans. Nobody appreciates receiving bulk email that they didn’t subscribe to.
11. There must be more. Maybe you know of a #11. Please share it with us in a comment.

Correct any of the above blunders you might be making and you’re on your way to mastering email marketing for your art.

Guest blogger: Kim Bruce

Chris Tyrell of Opus Framing says that people who buy your work not only have a monetary investment but an emotional investment as well.  Chris wrote that artists need to talk about their art because:

. . .  very often buyers of art (especially those who do not buy art often) want to have something to say about the work they buy because when they put their work on display in their homes or offices they want to have something intelligent to say in response to the compliments it generates. They value being able to respond by saying such things as, “the artist told me that . . . ” or “the inspiration of the work is an interesting story. . . . “

Having an insightful anecdote or two to tell admirers of the purchased art provides a lot of the emotional benefit to making the purchase.

After much resistance and with Chris’s article making so much (common) sense I finally started to write about my work online.

About 6 months into my blogging foray I received a phone call from New Haven artist Suzan Shutan. She was in the process of finalizing an exhibition proposal on artists that work with pins and needles and needed to turn over the proposal over to the curator  within 24 hours. But on a whim she decided to Google “pins & needles” to see what else was out there.

Kim Bruce, Dress Maker 1. Cast beeswax, pins, and gauze, 8 x 8 x 5 inches. ©The Artist

It just so happened that I wrote a blog post on my fine art site about my work with pins and needles.

Suzan found my post on Google, thought my work fit perfectly with the proposal, and picked up the phone.  She was able to select the work she wanted from my website, grab my bio and lo and behold I have been included in the exhibition proposal with some pretty amazing artists.

What astounds me is that Suzan and I are a continent apart and with a simple Google search we were able to connect – because I was finally writing about my work.

I firmly believe that if I had not started to write about my work that this would not have happened. How could it if there was nothing out there to find?

If you have a success story about how your website or blog has furthered your art career please leave a comment below. We would love to share it with our readers.

Kim Bruce runs Artbiz: the business of art “web design,” where she creates websites for creative types. She is an artist herself and uses WordPress as both a CMS and a blog. Kim works out of her office/studio located in the foothills of Alberta just outside of Calgary.

Arthur Comings, Bad Nurse. Mixed media, 63 x 15 x 15 inches.

I attended a slide presentation by an artist that was unlike any other I’ve been to.

Before speaking about her work, the artist scrolled through her slides relatively quickly and without comment so that we could familiarize ourselves with the images.

It was effective!

Even though we may have known her work previously, this silent introduction grounded us. We stayed with her because we looked forward to the point in which she would talk about this or that slide.

If you talk about your art to groups, I suggest adding a silent run-through of your images the next time you open a talk.

Keep a library of words in a shoebox, database, or notebook. Never mind that first one. If you keep them in a shoebox, you’ll go crazy trying to find them when you need them.

Use a database or notebook.

What words can you count on?

Jaimee Todd, Medea. ©The Artist

What words do you need to have at the ready for your next brochure, artist statement, or wall label?

Words to Describe Color in Your Art

Don’t just say something is red. Is it “as red as a maraschino cherry in a daiquiri”? Or as “red as the Oklahoma clay”?

Maraschino-cherry red. Oklahoma-clay red.

Words to Describe Texture in Your Art

Stuck on “smooth” and “rough?” Try slick, shiny, glassy, jagged, or bumpy.

Words to Describe Line in Your Art

For artists to whom line is important, “straight” or “curvy” rarely says it all. Choose your weapon: sinuous, energetic, straight as an arrow, or gestural.

Words to Describe Space and Form in Your Art

You don’t have to be a sculptor to have the three-dimensional aspect of your art be paramount. Are the forms open and expansive? Or contained and dense?

Words to Describe Mood in Your Art

Why opt for “happy” or “sad” when exuberant and melancholy are much more interesting?

Words to Describe Action

Colorful verbs: shoot, paint, pull, carve, study, build, weave, throw, hammer, obliterate, rub, fire, melt.

Less colorful verbs: is, are was, were, has, have.

Add your own! Leave us a comment and tell us about the words you use.

Don’t write your artist statement for someone else. 
Do it for yourself.

Don’t write your artist statement because you have to. 
Do it because you will grow and learn.

Don’t write your artist statement and then forget about it. 
Do it so that you fully embrace the words.

Jill Saur, Autumn Promise. Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. ©The Artist

Your self-promotion efforts get much easier once you have the right words to define your art. Here are six ways you can use a good artist statement.

1. Print your statement off in a large font, and turn it into a label for your exhibition.

2. Use it as the basis for text in a grant application.

3. Separate each sentence and expand on it in a blog post.

4. Print your statement on a brochure or in a catalog you print through a site like Blurb.com or Lulu.com.

5. Review it each time you’re asked to talk about your art. Make sure your presentation reflects your statement and vice versa. If they don’t support one another, regroup and rewrite.

6. Post your statement on your website, but not on a separate page. Instead, post it next to the art that it’s supposed to be about.

When you have an artist statement you’re proud of, condense it into a single smashing sentence. Use this sentence in the following ways.

1. Turn it into the opening sentence of your About page or biography.

2. Add it to the back of your business card.

3. Adapt it for your social media profiles.

4. Make it into a T-shirt, mug, or bumper sticker.

5. Post it on your studio door.

6. Have it printed on cocktail napkins.

7. Build a blog post from each word in the sentence.

8. Tweet it. Use the #artiststatement hashtag so we can read it, too.

9. Add it as a tagline to your newsletter or blog.

10. Laminate it on a small card and carry it with you.

If your statement is more than a year old, consider a rewrite — unless you haven’t been doing any art for 365 days.

How do you approach, write, edit, and repurpose your artist statement?

Making art is all about you and what you have to say to the world.
Marketing your art isn’t about you. Marketing is about your audience and potential audience.

When you’re actively engaged in promoting your art, the tools you use are less important than the end result. You’re aiming to connect with others.

Elaine Kehew, Misty Blue Mangold. Oil on linen, 36 x 30 inches. ©The Artist

It’s hard to connect if your marketing is I-centric — when it’s all about “I did this” or “I did that.”

Look over the last blog post or newsletter you shared. How much of it is for your reader, and how much of it ignores the reader?

Whether you’re sending an email or postcard, writing a newsletter, or posting to your blog, always consider the person at the receiving end.

Whom do you want to read it?
Who is your ideal fan?

Describe this person in detail.

Are they male or female? Do they live in a certain geographical region? What kind of work do they do, and how do they spend their leisure time? What are their values?

Perhaps you can identify your ideal fan by name. I can do that with my business. There are two or three people that I call my perfect clients. I try to keep them foremost in my mind when I’m writing or creating a new product.

Sometimes I falter and forget about them. That’s when I struggle. When I need to get back on track, I think about my ideal fans and target my message to those people.