Leveraging Your Online Art Community

Juniper Rag artists get posted daily to our social media channels.

OPEN UP TO SUCCESS

There is no roadmap to success, but with most efforts in life, diligence and hard work lead to opportunities if you are open to them. By posting your art on social media, immediately, you are sharing your work within an audience of people that may live outside your local radius, depending upon your connections. The simple act of sharing to your audience and businesses that follow you have made an impact in your virtual world, whether you realize it or not. Social media is a long game that has hot spots. Building engaged followers is a commitment that can take years. Sometimes you have active events that push your follower count up overnight. Press releases, an influencer share, a strategic collaboration could be ways this can happen. Then there are the unicorn anomalies. A social media strategy that stays the course and engages real people, not bots is the goal. If someone new follows you, take the time to check out their profile and follow back if it makes sense. You also want to see if they are a real person and immediately eliminate any suspect accounts. Believe that possibilities exist and open your mind to opportunities. A closed mind can deflect chances to grow your career. Get creative with how you take chances. Hell, we started a print magazine during a pandemic. Get your ideas flowing and put them to work. Crazy ideas are sometimes game changers.

VIDEO CONTENT

Take advantage of using video content to catch people’s attention. Reels are gold these days as this is the way that you can reach an audience outside of your immediate network. Adding music to your reels also increases your exposure. Using video reels casts a much wider net that increases your visibility far more than any other method. We think Instagram’s new goal is to compete more with tik-tok, so static images, which it used to be known for are getting less bang for your effort. You can use 3rd party apps to help you create reels. We suggest investing some time in the learning curve if you aren’t already creating video content. (Full disclosure, if you see a sucky reel up on Juniper Rag social, let me just tell you right now, Payal did not post it. It was me. It’s the only way you learn, right? All the pretty ones are Payal’s doing. Half the time, I call her in a panic to fix my crazy mess. Teamwork at its finest.) Seriously, keeping up with the latest and greatest can feel overwhelming, but your efforts, leveraged with strategy and diligence, can contribute to a lucrative income in selling your art. Of course, we are assuming you are doing all of the other necessary things needed to build your actual book of business. Recording buyers’ contact information, building an email list, announcing shows, using newsletters and keeping up with the business of being an artist should be a priority.

REDUCE STRESS BY SCHEDULING

Creative content is meaningful to your online presence but we know juggling it all can become overwhelming. Break it down. Dedicate a certain amount of time per day to address these needs. We recommend using a post planning dashboard to help cut the amount of time you spend. As Atelier, our marketing company, we use Hubspot and Meta Business Planner, which just got a bit more confusing with their update. In the last couple weeks, Meta turned our back-end lives upside down. Don’t get me started.

Great quality content is key to having an engaging online presence. Pay attention to the quality of your images and the message you send to your viewers. Any time that you are creating work, cleaning up, or in your studio, you can use this as an opportunity to create content. Is a messy studio keeping you from making content? That is content. Start talking. The trials and tribulations of being an artist are gold and engaging. Being true to yourself, you will find that people will engage more with you. It is the people that are authentic and honest that earn back the following that will inspire them in return, so your content matters. Your intent is to build a following of people that admire your work and over time, make purchases and build relationships. Invest in any comment people leave you. Their effort to connect with you should not be ignored. Get right up in there and engage.

To strategize your entire marketing mission, when you are about to release new work, try developing anticipation by creating a series of work and announcing a “drop” day. If you have a following and already sell art online, bolster the momentum and excitement by properly announcing when new work will be available and that it has sold.

Juniper Rag artists who share content with us get much more traffic to their pages, and higher results gaining new followers and making sales.

CREATE A MARKETING VISION

Art marketing is not as easy as creating the work. Build your network of interest to begin. If you are interested in growing your art business, you must think of connecting outside of your bubble. Cast your line outside of your immediate geographical area. Follow galleries and local art organizations in other towns. Answer calls for art in other places. Learn about galleries that are interested in work that is similar to your own. Follow artists that have similar styles and see who they follow. Dig down and find the right connections that will benefit your inspiration and help you grow your network. Stay focused and do not let the multitude of “things” and saturation of images coming at you on social media overwhelm you. Create a list of attainable goals and one by one, cross them off. For instance, your goals can be to grow your social media following to X this year, have a show in X town by a given date, or sell $100,000 worth of art by a certain time frame. With each goal you set, create a roadmap of milestones that help you achieve the result you are looking for. For instance, if you would like to grow your following, you can do that a few different ways. By interacting with others on social in comments, you will be seen as a reliable voice and responder and motivate others to see who you are. This creates thought leadership. By participating in calls-for-art, your work gets in front of new eyes locally and virtually. You can even launch a marketing campaign to drive these calls-to-action (CTA), driving followers, website traffic, adding names on email newsletters. These are all CTAs that drive your business. Once you build your following, stay connected through regular posting on your social media.

Every day, be diligent in your practice and create a schedule for daily maintenance for your plan. Juniper Rag was created during the pandemic to assist artists in reaching new audiences. We have seen major growth for our artists before our eyes in just one year. The artists that embrace the virtual space between them and success see growth almost immediately. Use your networks and actively commit to these relationships as you would in person. When that happens, your world opens up.

Distance is nothing in the virtual world.

The Juniper Rag community makes the world smaller and the art community that surrounds you much more diverse. A simple call for art can lead you, in-person 3000 miles across the country with 60 pieces of sculpture in your Prius to CUSP, gorgeous seaside gallery in Provincetown, like Julia C R Gray did this spring. Our opportunities can also lead to new friendship bonds and business relationships that can last a lifetime. Another example of reaching across borders is Christopher Jeauhn Bayne, who answered a call for our Elevation exhibition from Vienna. Bayne brings his stunning 2D work to life with augmented reality that uses the Artvive app.

Evolution of Eden | Christopher Jeauhn Bayne, Vienna

We are not successful lighting a fire under every artist to use social media that submits to Juniper Rag. Over the year we have seen a few embers and some infernos! We wager to guess that 85% of artists that submit to us have social media accounts, which we do check, of these 50% of people actively post. We try to encourage growth and teach the value. The remaining 25% of artists are social super stars that engage with us constantly and benefit greatly through their efforts. Then, there are about 3-5% of artists are master social media users, who we keep on speed dial, and who we have formed amazing reciprocal relationships. Work to get in that 25-to-rock star set. These are the invested artists that know what it takes to use a FREE platform to leverage their success. We have also inspired a few incredible artists go from not having any social media presence to BAM, a vibrant and interactive powerhouse pages within months. Good social is a game changer. Now, so many more people can see their art and learn about them as artists. Not everyone wants to be in front of a camera, in fact, balancing that aspect is important. If we go to your social and every photo is a person, it is really hard to see the art. Focus on the art and speckle in a few.

Juniper Rag promises to support our artists’ efforts by posting your art, responding to tagged posts and sharing your content. Even more, we want to hear your success stories! Let us know how Juniper Rag has connected you to success. We can share that after Origin, where an artist was seen, a patron did a studio visit to select a piece. They left with 3. After selling a painting at Origin, an artist submitted to our next call, Artists on Fire, submitting 6 paintings. Within a month of the show, all 6 were sold. Another artist barely made the drop off for Artists on Fire, but communicated with us and got them in. All 3 pieces sold to the same buyer. We sold 14 pieces at the Artists on Fire show and 17 at Origin. Artists are selling work on our ART MARKET too. Help us track the good vibes happening around your relationship with Juniper Rag. It keeps us smiling to hear.

Send us a note, subject line “good vibes”: info@juniperrag.com

CREATIVE SERVICES: Connect with us. We also do marketing consultations for artists who would like to learn more about creating a professional package when submitting to shows and to create dynamic social media strategies. Learn more here.

CALL FOR ART: for our autumn VIRTUAL EXHIBITION called DARKNESS. Learn more here. Call closes October 1.