I’ve been doing some online training this week with a rather wonderful French lady called Gavriella. It’s all been about how to attract customers as an artist. It’s most definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone! You see, as an artist, I have one major weakness. I’m British, and we British don’t like to be a bother. But what this week has shown me is that if you do marketing for your art in the right way, you’re not really bothering anybody, and if anybody does feel bothered, they can always unfollow you!

So what have I had to do this week that has pushed me a little outside of my comfort zones? The first thing I had to do was put a picture of my face on social media with a short introduction to me and my work. Anybody who knows me will know that selfies are not my preferred mode of self-expression. In fact as soon as someone brings a camera out I dive underneath the nearest table. So that was pretty gruelling as a first challenge.

The second challenge was to target a social media post specifically by using hashtags (huh?!) so that it was seen by the people whom I would like to see my work. But…. that means potentially actually engaging with someone real – albeit someone safely at the other end of the ether. But anyway, I posted a painting I’d done of St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, and I used lots of hashtags and tagging to make people notice me. Not sure if it worked, although the insights do say this:

206 Accounts reached

45% weren’t following adamart70

That can’t be a bad thing?!

Day three… OK, this was easier. I had to design a landing page to invite people to subscribe to the newsletters which I’m obviously now going to be writing! So I signed on to an subscribers email service which takes the head-ache out of sending hundreds of emails from my own mailbox. I even imported some nice pictures. Wait a minute… hundreds of emails? Who am I kidding? Maybe 10 if I’m lucky…

And Day four’s challenge was perhaps the most technically challenging. I had to do a live session on Facebook. Actually, once I got talking, I was fine, but I was almost scuppered before I began when FB wouldn’t communicate with my webcam. Naughty old Facebook. So instead I did it on my phone, which was fine – if a bit like watching someone pretending to be calm in the middle of an earthquake.

But all in all, it’s been a week of discovery – a week of finding out that I can push myself a little out of those comfort zones I so like to stay in. And if I’m going to really start making it as an artist, I have to get on top of marketing my work. Exciting times.

These are also skills I need to use to start bringing my music to people’s attentions as well. But that’ll be next week’s task….

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