Promoting your Art Utilizing PR

If you’re a sculptor, painter, photographer, craftsperson, musician, author, cartoonist and/or performance artist, creating your art is step one when it comes to launching a successful career. From my perspective, once you’ve given your time and care, blood, sweat and tears to your artwork, you owe it to your art to get it seen and experienced. Have fun with it. Don’t just keep your creativity for your art; use it in your marketing. You owe it to yourself, your work and the public. The following are four PR tips to marketing you and your artwork.

If you’re a sculptor, painter, photographer, craftsperson, musician, author, cartoonist and/or performance artist creating your art is step one when it comes to launching a successful career. Once you’ve created your art, you next need to build the bridge between your art and the public. From my perspective, once you’ve given your time and care, blood, sweat and tears to your artwork, you owe it to your art to get it seen and experienced.

There are a number of ways to promote your art including advertising, direct marketing, guerrilla marketing, social media and publicity. For artists, PR can generally be the best route. Public relations and being featured in the media offers the validation and credibility of being featured as a news story. Often the most effective approach is a combination of medial relations and social media. The two complement each other. You can amplify and magnify your media placements via social media and a creative social media campaign can result in coverage in TV, magazines and newspapers. The most important element when launching a PR campaign is coming up with compelling stories that meet the media’s needs. Below is a quick overview of approaches you can use when pitching the media:

1) Pitch An Event: Do you have a show or a gallery opening coming up? Here you have something concrete to point to. You can offer the media somewhere to go something to see. But keep in mind that journalists, editors and producers are inundated with offers to come to shows and events. So find a way to make your story different, compelling

2) Something New: Give the media something new to cover. Have you begun working in a new medium? Have you changed your subject matter? Is there a new approach or style you’re utilizing?

3) Tell Your Journey: Your art is a story, but so is your journey to becoming an artist. Offer the media human interest stories about how you became an artist, how you followed your dream. Outline the obstacles you overcame, or the uniqueness of your journey.

4) Defining A Trend: Are you a part of, or are you helping to define, a new trend? You might not initially think so, but give it some thought. Don’t just think of art-oriented trends, keep in mind demographic, cultural commercial, and aesthetic trends as well. Think of how you can position yourself as someone how illustrates that trend.

These are just some approaches that artists can use to help promote their work. Keep in mind that, like it or not, this is a part of your job. Have fun with it. Don’t just keep your creativity for your art; use it in your marketing. You owe it to yourself, your work and the public.

Copyright © Anthony Mora 2012