21/06/11

For afine art artist one of the quickest and most effective ways to promote your artwork nowadays is to set up a personal website and use "social networks" such as Twitter and Facebook in order to direct people to it.


It all sounds very simple doesn't it - but trust me it isn't. I read in a magazine the other day and I quote "Our society today is all about social networking, so it is important to keep up with the times and stay current. Social networks are both great opportunities to provide fine art artists with a free platform to promote themselves and it just broadens your client base and the amount of people who can view your work. I see it very much as a positive thing."

What a fantastic philosophy but the problem with social networks is that primarily it is all about sex, perverts and weirdos getting away with what they do under the cloak of free speech and all that. And some of the others are sad people who have no life outside the zone of the computer screen. So what is left? Well basically it is your own friends and contacts, all of whom presumably are aware of what you do already. Try connecting with people on social networks and be prepared to be branded something other than a fine art artist.

The article went on to say that "having your own website is expensive but when you think about how much exposure this will give you, it is worth every penny." What are they on about? Firstly, you can get a website for free if you shop about but the exposure isn't instant. The work involved to get you up the search engines is immense and is an arduous job if you do it yourself and can take along long time to work, years in fact. However if you have someone to build your website and then optimise it - can someone please define expensive? Bottomless pit of money is what is required in my experience.

Having a website is such a quick way of keeping people up to date but please do not think it will be easy because it isn't. Just doing a website with no optimisation is like having a shop with no road going to it. Optimisation takes time whether you do it yourself or pay someone to do it. Doing it yourself an hour a day is free, getting an "expert" is costly and if you are like me you want instant results if you are paying someone. That doesn't happen. So hit the books and see what you have to do. It is free and much more satisfying.

Chris Sabian is an artist with http://www.kutefineart.com/ and co-owner of http://www.paragonprints.co.uk/