Marketing Yourself as an Artist

I find this is one of the toughest things about being an artist.  Often as artists, we don’t really enjoy marketing ourselves and it isn’t something that comes naturally to most of us.  But it is absolutely necessary, especially if you are trying to make a living off of your art online.  So let's talk about some tips that I have learned over the years from both marketing work online as well as in person at events like comic con.

Personal Connection

In my opinion, this is the most important thing when it comes to marketing your work (and yourself).  

You have to somehow establish and nurture that personal connection with your audience and people who view your work.  If you can make that personal connection with people, give them a positive experience and interaction with your work, then those positive feelings will come back whenever they see your artwork.  

This connection will make it more likely that they click on that link, visit you shop, and click the buy button.  

Something to keep in mind here is that you need to do your best to make sure this connection is genuine or as genuine as it can possibly be considering that it is through the internet, and we all only have so much time in a day.  You don’t want to go around trying to fake this connection because if it isn’t genuine, that will show through and it might feel “off” to people. 

So what does this personal connection look like?

• Share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences in descriptions of your artwork
• Share a story with your artwork
• Let followers get familiar with your characters (give them some background, stories, personality, etc)
• Reply to comments
• Reply to messages
• Chatting with your viewers if you are a streamer
• Giving people a peek behind the scenes in places like your instagram stories
• Share funny moments
• Share relatable moments
• Consider doing a toonme, self portrait, face reveal, art vs artist, etc.  This is something I only discovered recently, but many people seem to find seeing the artist’s face interesting, and because they are seeing your face, that’s one more layer of personal connection.  
• Ask questions 
• Fanart (this is a handy shortcut because many people already have an established personal connection to certain fanarts)
• Give love and comments to others’ work as well!
• Use people’s names.  (okay, I’m about to share something a little creepy. Sometimes when I am replying to comments, I will take a quick peek at someone’s instagram profile to see if their first name is listed.  Then I jump back and reply by using their name.  Like: “Aww!  Thank you Cindy!”  Maybe it’s creepy… but names are very important to people, and when I feel like going that extra mile, I think it is a nice touch.  lol)

Your art isn’t the brand, YOU are

Okay, so this is very much tied into the personal connection thing but I thought it deserved its own section.  

It is really important to consider that YOU are the brand.

The thing about your artwork is that it probably will and SHOULD evolve and change over time.  That’s part of growing as an artist.  The problem with that is that if people are only following you for a certain type of art that you are doing at the moment and are not invested in YOU, those people will lose interest as soon as you try something new.  

But if you have established yourself as the brand then more people will remain interested in what you are doing, seeing what you pull out of your hat next.  In fact, they will be excited to see you try new stuff and evolve your work!

A big Instagram artist who has done this REALLY well is Cyarine.  Her style has changed a bit over time, but she has still maintained and gained a following.  This is because she has made herself into a brand. 

• Draw yourself  Cyarine draws herself a lot.   This more easily establishes that connection and it helps turn HER into the brand.  She isn’t afraid to draw herself, share her struggles, and show her face.  Hell, she even has a personal blog account consisting of mostly selfies that has more followers than I will probably ever have!

• I’m not saying that you HAVE to be showing your face or doing self portraits all the time.  There are other ways to establish a brand and create that personal connection, but I think it is pretty clear, that at least on instagram, that is one of the easiest ways to do so. 
• A character that represents you Another option to consider is to create a character that basically represents you, and this character shows up every now and again in your work.  I have kind of done this unwittingly with my little elfsona.  An artist who I’ve noticed does this pretty well is Makabrotka (Fuki/Fukari).  They have a character named Yanek that often expresses their thoughts and feelings in relatable ways through little mini comics and I can tell that this character totally represents the artist even though I don’t think the character is even the same gender as the artist.  But it is through this character that I feel a connection to the artist themselves.  

• Share your Goals, Thoughts, Feelings Even if you aren’t yet ready to tackle drawing yourself or a character that represents you (or that’s just not your thing), you can totally start off by opening up about your own goals, thoughts and feelings with your audience.  Give them some insight about you, your process and what you hope to accomplish.

Many people like to relate to artwork they are looking at through the artist.

• Stay on Brand Most of us don’t really know what our brand is when we start out.  I still feel like I’m trying to figure it out myself.  BUT some things to keep in mind are the feelings you want your work to convey when people see it.

• Or maybe a good place to start out would be to actually identify what you don’t want people to feel when they see your work.

• For example, I don’t want people to feel negative, or angry when they see my work.  So, I don’t really talk or draw about politics or religion, and I try to keep any sort of negative talk about myself or others far away from my work and accounts.  Even with some of my moodier works, I still try to find the beauty and leave a positive spin at the end of my description.  

Absolutely do not put down your own work or abilities in the description of your post! I know this is super common, especially among younger artists, because of insecure feelings.  I get it!  All of us artists get it because we have all felt that, but leave it out of your descriptions, stories, tweets, etc.  

Have you noticed that through all of this, we haven’t even gotten to actually advertising yet?  That’s because establishing a personal connection is the KEY first step and if you skip this step, people might not care once you actually start trying to sell your work.

So you have been or are working on establishing this connection with your fellow online humans.  Now let's get into actually advertising your work.

Get a nice looking website and portfolio

With so many social media options now, it can be tempting to just forego having your own website.  Some artists don’t have one… and it drives me nuts.  

In my opinion, you need a website to act as a hub, and it makes you look way more professional.  You can showcase your portfolio, have an about section where people can read about YOU, the artist, and have links to all the places you live on the internet (including your shop!).  

Plus, if you are trying to get a job at a studio, it makes it so much easier for a potential employer to see your work and your cv if they are all on your website.

There are lots of easy options out there.  I used Wix to build mine.  

chrissabug.com

Make nice looking graphics when you are trying to advertise your work!

Look, just because we are artists, does not always mean we understand nice and easy to read design.  I constantly struggle with this myself!  BUT, if you want to show that you are selling your work, you have to make sure that the graphics you’re putting out there look appealing, or at least are not confusing!  

• Fonts This means you need to familiarize yourself with nice, and readable fonts.

• One of my go to fonts for both work and for personal art advertising uses is Open Sans Bold and Open Sans Extra Bold.  It's basic, it's free, it works with any language, it looks nice, and it's easy to read.  I love swooshy and curvy fonts as much as anyone, but those are usually damn hard to read, especially on a phone, AND I’m not a font expert, so going with something more basic tends to be better.

• Collages
• Learn how to arrange multiple works in a way that looks nice for one post, or story.  (I struggle with this one a lot when it comes to making the collages for each Patreon art pack.  Usually I will head over to an online collage maker to figure this one out.)  

• If you only have 3 or 4 images, what looks best is usually just cropped versions of your artwork side by side, but if you have more than that, that you need to showcase in one post, you might need to go the same route that I tend to and use an online collage maker.

• Commission Ads
• Choose the best work that represents what you are offering as a commission.  If you are offering character commissions, choose a couple of your most appealing characters, or character commissions you have done in the past to show off and easily show the pricing.  

Most Important Information front and center 

Despite us pouring our souls into descriptions under our work, the sad fact is that most people don’t read, or they only partially read.   That means that the most important info needs to be easily seen in at least one of the images of your post.  It doesn’t have to be the first image in your image stack every time (talking instagram specific here), but it should be easily seen on maybe the 2nd or 3rd.  

• Shop/Patreon/Ko-fi/etc. URL
• Key information:  New prints? Sale? Patreon Content?
• Is there a deadline?
• Try not to muddle it up too much with text or people will just skip over your post.  If you need to add more of a description, consider doing it in another image slide.  You can take a peek at my most recent patreon summary as an example.
• https://www.instagram.com/p/B_qdJZij7sh/

• Sometimes DON’T have the text on the first image  I know I just said Important info should be front and center, but hear me out.  Sometimes you should keep the ad on the 2nd or 3rd slide instead of on the first slide every time.  You don’t want your feed to just start looking like ad after ad after ad.  

• For example, when I advertise one of these tips articles, I do not usually put the text on the first image slide.  I usually do a close crop of the little character artwork that goes along with the article.  That’s because I know a lot of followers will appreciate the new artwork and I don’t want that appreciation to be tainted by the fact that it is kind of an ad for one of these articles.  Plus, it looks nicer on the Instagram grid (which is a whole 'nother topic).  Then they can swipe to see the full version that has the useful info.  Make sure to vary it up a little bit!  

Timing:  Not too little, not too much.  

You have to let people know what you have to offer, but you can’t let them know TOO much or they might get annoyed. 

• Sandwich your promotional posts. 

Engagement with marketing style posts is always WAY less than regular artwork posts.  So, you really need to make sure there is some time between your marketing posts.  When you need to make an marketing post, I suggest you sandwich it like this: 

• Post some regular artwork that gets better engagement
• Post your promotional post the next day while you are still riding on the engagement from the previous post.  
• Then post another regular artwork post a day or 2 after that.
• Don’t post back to back ads unless you  want to see your engagement drop like crazy.

• The same goes for advertising in your instagram stories.  You can get away with more ads in your stories, and it is really handy if you have 10k+ followers because you can use the swipe up link feature.  HOWEVER, if that’s all you are posting in your stories, people aren’t gonna want to look at your stories any more.  

• There’s an artist I love to death, but the only stories she ever shares are advertising her print shop, so even though I love her work and I support her on Patreon, I don’t usually look at her stories any more because I already know it's probably just going to be a print ad.  So share other interesting things in your day as well, not just ads.

• Beware of market saturation  If you follow art accounts on social media, you will probably have noticed that artist accounts are especially saturated with advertising at the end of the month.  I wouldn’t say shy away from advertising at this time, but be careful not to over advertise.  Plan to sprinkle your promotional posts throughout the month, rather than flooding social media at the end.

Casual Advertising

I may have made this term up… but it’s something that has worked for me so I’m going to share.  

• Not every ad needs to look like an ad.  In fact, the best ads don’t look like ads.  The best ads look like regular posts or stories.  Companies have realized this, and that’s why “influencers” are paid shit tons of money to take a photo wearing a necklace while they tag “x-brand company”.

You can do the same thing.  

• Share how excited you are about how those stickers or prints came out, share that you are busy working on x-video, or artwork for patrons, share your favorite print and how it looks on your wall, even share how close you are to x-goal.  There are so many possibilities here, and they don’t have to look like a regular advertisement.

Links Links Links 

People have super short attention spans on the internet, so you must make it as easy as possible for people to find your shop, patreon, ko-fi, or wherever it is you are trying to direct them. 

• One Link to Rule them All Most of the time I do not use a service like Linktree in for my instagram because that adds an extra step for people to get where I want them to go.  Yes, I have a ton of places on the internet I would like people to visit, but there is only 1 link that I consider to be the most important.  

At this moment, for me, that link is my Patreon link.  So most of the time, that is the link I have up as my main link on instagram.  The same goes for other platforms on Social media.  Patreon is always listed as my main or top link.  If I didn’t have a patreon, then that link would probably be my shop link.  Just remember, make it as easy as possible for people to get to where you want them to go.

• Cross Pollinate your links: So you have your main link that you direct people to.  Lets say it is patreon.  Make sure that on patreon you have links to other locations you would like people to visit like your shops or other social media in case they are interested.

What do people really want?

Okay, this one is individual to you, your followers, and your brand.  Figure out what people really want from you.  

Real talk time: Even if you do the best advertising in the world, if you aren’t selling something that people really want, then you are going to have a hard time.  It is certainly possible for people to not realize they wanted something until they see an ad for it.  It happens all the time, but lots of the time that’s not how it happens for us artists.  You really have to do some searching deep down and figure out how you can bring value to people.  And YOU CAN!  It just takes some digging into yourself, research into your audience, and probably some trial and error.

Final Thoughts

Marketing yourself while still staying authentic and true to yourself as an artist is a balancing act.  You have to put yourself out there, but you also have to be genuine. 

Cheap tactics that come to mind when we think about "salesmen" don't work and they leave people with an icky feeling.  That's the LAST thing you want when you are advertising your work.  

Remember that even if someone doesn't leap to buy your work, jump on your patreon, or donate to your ko-fi right away, that's okay!  You should still always try your best to give them a positive experience when interacting with you and your work, because (A) You are a nice person, and (B) they have the potential to be a really loyal customer in the future.  

This type of thing was really apparent at comic cons.  Early on at the convention people come by and browse my booth for a while, chat with me but then walk away and not buy anything.  But then later in the day, or maybe even at the very end of the convention, that customer come back and buy 10 large prints.  The same thing can and does happen with online interactions, they just aren't as noticeable because you aren't usually seeing customers in person.

I believe in you!

Like anything, this takes practice and figuring out, but you can do it! 

 I hope you found this helpful and as always, if you made it through this giant article, I commend you!

Feel free to let me know if you have any thoughts or tips that you have discovered for yourself when it comes to marketing as an artist.  Also, feel free to let me know if you have any  topics for article tips you are interested reading in the future.

Read Past Articles:

• Patreon tips for Artists 
• Instagram Tips 
• Ways to Make Money Online as an Artist