by Rebecca Sciullo | Sep 18, 2020 | Artist Blogging 101, Learning
Dilemma One: Who is My Target Audience?
Your artist blog should offer content that interests an audience that you can grow a relationship with over time. Because of this relationship, they will take action, such as enroll in a workshop or purchase your work.
When I present my Blogging for an Art Business program, a concern I hear from artists is that they aren’t sure of their audience. Who are they, and how to connect with them? Who are the people that will be interested in the artist’s work?
Have you identified a target audience for your artist blog? Who will benefit and be most interested in following you? In other words, who is the target market that you wish to attract with your blog? Before you start posting on your artist blog, you need to understand who your blog will be serving. Understanding who that audience is will help you to create content that keeps them visiting your site.
Why Can’t Your Artist Blog be for “Everyone”
First of all, if your goal is to sell something – such as a piece of art, a piece of jewelry, a commission, or a workshop – you have to accept a universal law of sales – if you are selling to everyone, you are selling to no one. If you are trying to target “everyone” with your content, you will likely interest no one. You need to understand who will be interested in your work and your message, and then fine-tune your site and message accordingly.
Once you have done this, it is much easier to determine which marketing channels you can use to best find and connect with them.
How to Identify Your Audience
Here are a few strategies to figure out your target audience.
Look at Your Existing Customers
If you’ve are already successful at selling work, one of the best ways to do this is to analyze who has purchased work from you in the past. Write a description of your typical client.
Do they come from a specific geographic area?
Do they have any common interests?
Who are the people that attracted to your work?
Are there topics and questions that they like to discuss with you?
The answers to these questions will give you insight into who your audience is and what kind of content they will want to hear from you. Once you’ve analyzed this group, take some time, and see if you can expand on the group. Are there any common denominators that will help you to grow the audience.
Identify a New Audience for Your Artwork
If you are new to selling your work, you may have to work a little harder to come up with your audience. There will likely be some trial and error involved in this process. Take time to develop one or more buyer personas. Hubspot offers a succinct explanation of buyer persona here.
If you haven’t started selling or found an audience, can you put yourself in someone else’s shoes? What would you want to know about your work? What would you like to hear about your work? Who do you think will be interested in this work? A buyer persona is simply working to build a profile of a potential customer, identifying the same qualities, and you would if they were an existing customer.
Does your subject matter appeal to an audience with a specific interest? I’ve explained in prior posts about how I started working with my father, artist Robert Yonke. In his case, the subject matter was an important detail that led us to a niche. Repeat this process to find an audience within any interest group.
Could an audience connect with the emotion behind your work?
If creating functional art, is there an audience that could utilize your work?
Figuring out your target audience is going to take some time to brainstorm. Then, there may be some trial and error involved as you work through this process. Stick with it, though, and you will eventually identify an audience that could have an interest in your work.
Should I wait until I’ve figured out my target audience to start blogging?
While it’s good to start thinking about this and have some idea about who you want to target, it’s unnecessary to have this in mind to build your blog based website. The first thing to do is tell your story and show your work, and you can do that with or without a target audience. You can start blogging before you’ve identified your target audience. Writing about your work may even help in the process of identifying them.
What’s Next?
Once you have identified that audience, your next step will be to figure out how to reach them. Stay tuned for the future post, Dilemma 2: How to Reach My Target Audience.
Would you like to be notified of future posts, events, and more? Please join my Create! Sell! Newsletter.
:Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash
by Rebecca Sciullo | Sep 14, 2020 | Events, Learning
I want to thank the McMurray Art League for inviting me to present Building a Dynamic Web Presence during their member meeting via Zoom last week.
We discussed how visual artists can use blogging to strategically and systematically promote their work.
While I’d rather meet artists in person, I’m thankful that technology provides a way for these programs to continue.
Interested in having me present to your group? Please contact me at becky@artisan-advantage.com.
by Rebecca Sciullo | Sep 12, 2020 | Artist Blogging 101, Learning
When setting up an art marketing system using blogging, there are undeniably some technical components that you must include.
Did you know they are some less tangible but equally important elements that are critical to your success? I like to boil them down to three key ingredients you should strive to include in your blogging efforts.
Three Important Ingredients for Your Artist Blog
These three things impact how useful your artist blog will be in marketing your business.
Show up.
With a traditional artist website or even artist blogs, the prevailing thought is that all you have to do is create it, and it will bring you business. Many artists build websites with the expectation that people will either find you by you giving them the link in some form of marketing or through an internet search. The reality is that you need to offer people a compelling reason to visit your site, whether it is a traditional site or a blog. Now, a blog is going to entice them, even more, to view your work as the content is likely more exciting and dynamic. However, this is not all that you need. You need to show up with your blog in the places where your audience hangs out.
When I worked with my artist father, Robert Yonke, to develop inroads in the bluegrass music industry, I went out and found an interested audience and presented him to them. I didn’t wait for them to discover him. Showing up means you find and present yourself to an audience, rather than waiting for them to find you.
Make a connection.
The best way to connect with an audience is to find common ground. Strive to build relationships with people that have an interest in some level with your work. It could be that you’ve met them at a prior event. You may share a mutual hobby. They may be interested in learning more about something that you are doing.
Work to find an audience that naturally connects with your work. Use stories, thoughts, and images to grow the connection. Artist Cory Bonnet instantly makes a connection with people who have a love for his hometown of Pittsburgh, as he weaves his knowledge and love of the town’s heritage into his work.
Once you identify your connection with your audience, make sure that it shows up in your blogging.
Be authentic.
Your work is authentic to you because you have created it. Write and present yourself in an accurate manner on your blog. Post content that is true to your work and your vision. Write in an authentic voice. Rather than worrying about writing a literary masterpiece, write as if you have a one on one conversation with your reader. Your audience can sense whether you are authentic or not.
Read Mara Carlini’s Mara’s Mandalas Blog, and you instantly understand that each piece is unique and authentic.
Make sure that your blog has all three ingredients to give yourself the best chance of moving your business forward.
Would you like to create a dynamic blog for your art business in thirty days? Join my new program, 30 Days to a Dynamic Web Presence, starting October 1, 2020. We go into all three of these elements with specific actions that you can take to make sure your blog has them!
Photo by Calum Lewis on Unsplash
by Rebecca Sciullo | Sep 8, 2020 | Blogging, Events, Learning
I want to thank the East Suburban Artists League for inviting me to present during their member meeting via Zoom last week.
The topic was Building a Dynamic Web Presence. We discussed how visual artists can use blogging to strategically and systematically promote their work.
This was my first time presenting via Zoom. I thank the group for allowing me to do that!
While I’d rather meet artists in person, I’m thankful that technology provides a way for these meet-ups and presentations to continue.
Interested in having me present to your group? Please contact me at becky@artisan-advantage.com.
by Rebecca Sciullo | Aug 29, 2020 | Blogging, Events, Learning
Free Webinar! Use Blogging to Build Your Art Business
Registration is now open for How to Use Blogging to Build Your Art Business. This webinar was previously named, Build a Dynamic Web Presence for Your Art Business.
Choose from one of two opportunities to attend this live webinar on Tuesday, September 15, 2020. This free presentation will explain how to use blogging to create an effective marketing system for your visual art. All participants will also receive a complimentary “How to set up your blog” guide. Reserve your spot at one of the sessions below:
Tuesday, September 15, 12:00 PM EST
Tuesday, September 15th, 7:00 PM EST
by Rebecca Sciullo | Aug 21, 2020 | Blogging, Learning
Free Webinar! Blogging for Your Visual Art Business
Many creatives are feeling the pain of canceled exhibitions, festivals, and other opportunities due to Covid-19. It’s more important than ever to have a web presence. Opportunities still exist on the internet. The key is to prepare and position yourself to take advantage of them.
Some artists, however, find the task of creating and maintaining a website daunting. They don’t think they have enough technical know-how to build one. Then, once established, it can be a struggle to get visitors to the site.
My free webinar, Use Blogging to Build Your Visual Art Business, offers some answers to the following questions:
How to set up a vibrant web presence for your art business in an effective way without hiring a web designer?
How to keep your website up to date without a web designer?
How to reach an audience interested in buying your work with a blog?
Set up a Simple System to Drive Your Art Marketing Efforts
This presentation uses my personal experience and real-life examples to outline a system any visual artists can use. The information is relevant for many popular web platforms such as WordPress, Weebly, Squarespace, or FASO. Learn how to consistently share work with an audience across various marketing channels such as social media and email marketing using an easy to use blogging platform as the driver for your business.
My goal is for you to gain a new enthusiasm for building a web presence, whether you are starting from scratch or improving upon an existing website. I will offer tools and advice for starting and maintaining this system in a manageable way.
How to View a Live Event
Art Groups
I will be presenting to various arts groups during the program segment of their monthly meetings over the next few months. If you’d like me to present to your art group, please contact me at becky@artisan-advantage.com. As a follow-up thank you, your group members will be offered a discount to my course “Build a Blog Based Marketing System for your Art Business in 30 Days”, launching October 1st.
Individual Artists
I will host two live presentations in September here at Artisan-Advantage, open to all visual artists. There is a size limit of 20 participants for my self-hosted events. The schedule will be released next week. If you would like priority notification for these free events, please sign up for my Create! Sell! Newsletter.
