Now, more than ever, it is essential to take care of your online presence in order to reach worldwide collectors and build your web audience.
1. Give Collectors the Tools to Acquire your Artworks Easily and Smoothly
There are many online art galleries that allow artists to offer their artwork to a wide range of collectors. They all have their own their restrictive features: entrance selection, subscriptions offering limited/unlimited functionalities, lower/higher commissions, limitations on the number of artworks to sell...
Favouring platforms with good visibility is an advantage to meet collectors. This will allow you to be seen by a greater number, thanks to the promotions set up by these qualified intermediaries. In order to judge the visibility of an online art gallery, you can easily check it on Google with simple keywords. You can also take a look at its social networks: the number of followers (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest...) is a good indicator of a platform's influence.
In fact considering this point, we are confident that our platform has many advantages for emerging artists. However, as this is not really the purpose, we leave you free to discover our advantages at the end of this article*.
Once you've found the ideal platform to make your artwork available for sale, focus on it. Then insert the link to this platform accessible from all your social networks, so that interested buyers who discover your artwork can quickly and easily access the cart to pay for your artworks. After your first sales, don't forget to update your artwork listing in order to avoid the disappointment of a collector faced with an artwork that is finally unavailable for sale: you are now a professional, so you will have to act accordingly to build customer loyalty.
2. Online Presence: Take Care of your Image
Today, social networks are the most obvious pathway between an artist and his potential audience. This doesn't mean that without them no success is possible, but it is now absolutely necessary to adopt these powerful distribution channels.
Write an inspiring biography, a masterpiece, that can be used on your different interfaces (sales platform, social networks, personal website). Collectors who discover your artwork through these channels will not buy without reliable and interesting information about your artistic approach. The acquisition of an artwork is a personal process, more or less expensive for a majority of art lovers, it is unlikely that a collector buys an artwork without information about its author. For some collectors, this act is an investment, the buyer hopes intimately to be able to get a profit in the future, so she/he wants to be sure that you will not abandon the art career too quickly. Don't hesitate to express and reveal your ambitions in your biography, in order to reassure collectors about your ability to rise your value in the contemporary art market.
An example of a comprehensive and inspiring biography by the Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Balbyshev.
Picture of you in the middle of your artistic process or in your studio allows collectors to visualize the quality of your work: such as here with the Lithuanian artist Aspencrow.
3. Take all the Chances on your Side: Cultivate your Digital Relationships
Be a player! Since you have to maintain your social networks, take advantage of this opportunity to do it in the best possible way! Reply to messages, comments, and be authentic.
The art world is a community, and as with any community, you should contribute to it rather than just expect to benefit personally.
Find a "circle of intimacy" on social networks, especially on Instagram. To do this, target artists with similar approaches as yours (and artworks you like). Also follow digital curators, more or less popular, who highlight the style of art in which you thrive. Then, start a relationship with them: comment on their posts, request advice, share their work when you like, respond to their stories when they are interactive, and above all, be sincere.
Building a virtual network is often easier than in the real world, when you give yourself the means to do so. Art enthusiasts like you, whether they are artists, curators or editorial writers, love to be asked questions about their approaches, their selections, or their analyses. Take advantage of this opportunity to react with them as you would like us to interact with you. There is no point in being overly flattering, just be yourself, ask questions about technique, about the subtleties ... Kindness attracts kindness, and when the time comes to showcase your work, your most authentic digital relationships will obviously be there. The more active you are in your artistic segment, the more visible you will be: that's the reasoning behind it!
If you experienced difficulties in finding artists or curators similar to your approach: hashtags are your friends!
4. To go Further: Entertain your Audience!
Today's algorithms and social networks make it possible to connect artists to their audience. You don't have to be highly skilled in video editing or have the latest equipment to share inspiring and interesting content. Use your phone, film yourself creating your artwork, focus on the subtleties of your creative process, on what an uninitiated audience isn't used to seeing, or on the specifics of your approach. An artist necessarily has something interesting to show, i.e equipment, studio, creative process...
Several free or inexpensive tools can help you create dynamic videos that will captivate your audience. Time-lapses (accelerated videos describing the progress of your creation), and short videos compiling creative sequences and energetic transitions are very popular today. This is especially true since the rise of social networks such as TikTok, which now allow artists who have mastered the art of showcasing their work to reach a multitude of potential fans.
We therefore advise you to use the TikTok application, certainly the most complete and entirely free. It will allow you to edit videos, add effects, transitions and music, thus accentuating the rhythm and power of your creations. You will then be able to export your videos to broadcast them on the networks of your choice, notably Instagram, which brings together an audience that is more qualified for artistic acquisition, older and "loyal".
If you want to avoid the famous Chinese application, you can opt for Inshot, an application that also offers many quality transitions and interesting effects. However, its free version contains only basic transitions, and you won't be able to export your videos without a transparent watermark at the bottom of the image. In order to benefit from all the power of this application, and remove the watermark, you'll have to opt for a subscription of about ten dollars for an annual subscription.
If this new way of highlighting your work scares you, don't panic! Take the plunge, experiment with the possibilities offered by these editing applications...
A creative spirit will blossom just as easily in the creation of an artwork as in a short video: A multitude of tools are at your disposal to shine, the only limit being the one you have set for yourself.
We hope you find these tips useful. We could have offered you many more, but here are the essentials to build and expand your artistic community in 2021. If other ideas come to mind, please feel free to add them as comments. We are already preparing a new article with additional tips, as well as an article to show you examples of interesting digital strategies to boost your audience in the era of the all-powerful Instagram and TikTok: stay connected!
* Why should I choose Artmajeur to present and sell my artwork?
Artmajeur is a human-sized company. Here, the artist has an adequate environment to showcase her/his artworks, and more precisely her/his work. On the same interface, accessible to collectors and art enthusiasts from all over the world, you will be able to explain your approach via the Biography tab, add the artistic events you will join, as well as the prizes and awards received during your career.
Registration is free, deposit of artwork is unlimited, and no selection at the entrance: With us, there is no need to invest money before getting your first sale. It is more secure for you, and we are more comfortable with it. You can deposit as many artworks as you wish on the platform, and this totally free of charge. Enjoy yourself, and let us discover all your work! Finally, we leave to collectors the interpretation of the quality of your artwork, we refuse to censor some artistic approaches. After all, contemporary art is about novelty!
We apply the lowest commissions on the market: From 10% to 20% depending on the profile (20% without subscription), 15% with the Platinum subscription, 10% for art galleries).
Our curators, specialists in the art market, select remarkable artworks every week to highlight them on our social networks. They ,thus, offer you collections on different themes that will be sent in recurring newsletters to our international collector members. Also, we produce a paper magazine, which highlights selected artists with outstanding approaches. With more than 400,000 followers on Instagram, 40,000 on Facebook and more than 10 million monthly visits on Pinterest, our highlights are particularly powerful, both in terms of visibility and purchases.
To register or discover our services, follow the Link!
Bastien Alleaume
Content Manager - Artmajeur Online Art Gallery
Bastien Alleaume