In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares advice on how to make your social media posts more interesting than others, and smart ways to get your work into an art gallery.

Click Here to Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 38

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads
In the Art Marketing Minute I answer your art marketing questions email them to me, [email protected] By the way, that’s a good place to go for lots of art marketing tips. So here’s a question from Justin in Eclair Wisconsin, who says I’m pretty active on Facebook, especially in artists groups. I also have Twitter and Instagram, which I barely use, but My question is, how do I make my posts more interesting than anyone else’s?

Well, Justin, congratulations. That’s a brilliant question you should be asking yourself, we all should. But first, let me ask you why you care. Now, I know you’re not here to answer. But you could get noticed by yelling fire in a movie theater, which by the way isn’t legal. But getting attention isn’t always what you want. You know, it’s the old thing that you know, you put in a print ad sex now that I’ve got your attention, well let people get turned off by that kind of thing. So first, you need a strategy. What are you trying to accomplish? Why do you want people to pay attention to you? What do you what do you hope to have happen? Do you want them to look at your artwork? Do you want them to know your name? Do you want them to buy art? And if it’s about branding, that’s one thing. But keep in mind that the people you’re talking to is kind of like singing to the choir. Right? Most artists have most of their followers, friends etc. are not necessarily people are going to buy paintings from them, which is a big problem if that’s what you’re trying to do. If it’s not what you’re trying to do, it’s a great, great situation. So know what you’re trying to do. And then make sure you have an audience of the people you need, which is a little tougher. So here’s another way to answer the question, though, or here’s answering your question. First, the most important thing in any communication, any speech, any ad, any email and a subject line, the most important thing in anything, is the first thing out of your mouth. If I walk onto a stage, and I say, Hello, my name is Eric Rhoads. I’ve already lost him. But if I say, today, I’m going to tell you how you can take. I’m going to tell you how you can put $50,000 in your pocket by the end of next week. I’m gonna have everybody’s attention right now. I got to live up to that. I got to tell them the truth. I got to tell them something is get their attention. But you’ve got to have something compelling. So we call that a headline and a headline is used to draw people in. And if you don’t have a headline, they’re not going to get drawn in headlines make up about 80% of the success of an ad of an email of a subject line opening the email. And that is everything. So I have spent years reading books, studying headlines, go into webinars, going to seminars, working with consultants, I have worked with some of the best headline people in the world to learn and grow and teach you and I can I can teach you some of that stuff. Probably at the plein air convention. I could do that. Anyway, you’ve got to grab attention and curiosity, but you got to do it in a in a way that is appropriate is tasteful is ethical. And also you’ve got to get their attention fast. After the headline, what’s the next most important thing? Well, it’s the next most important thing you talk about or say So you draw them in with a headline, then you ask you have a sentence or you ask a question that draws them in further, then you go a little further and a little further and a little further. Now there’s other ways you can do it. Like in my Sunday coffee, I do a little different approach. It’s a much softer approach. But I’m I’m trying to create a much softer approach in that environment. So I don’t do these, these real big time attention getting headlines there. Sometimes I do, but not often. So anyway, great images also make a great difference. You know, people are drawn to really, really good, interesting, compelling images. And of course, what we just learned in the plein air podcast about how the eye is drawn to certain things. That is something that in the Dan Hill podcast, that’s something you’d really like, that will help you.

Okay, this next question comes from Todd who says, You said that reaching out to galleries is a bad idea to make you look desperate.

I agree. Being a Canadian trying to gain a foothold in the USA market. How do I go about gaining gallery representation and gaining an audience? If nobody knows me? Well, by the way, Todd is really good painter. So hi, Todd. Here’s what I would tell you. First off, it doesn’t matter if you’re a US citizen or from New Zealand or from Canada. Getting into a gallery is tough no matter how you slice it, and it’s not going to be necessarily a disadvantage for you one way or the other. The number one question I devote most of my time to in art marketing is this gallery question. How do I get in? You see galleries are inundated with artists submissions. So my rule is to Zig when others zag you know, everybody is emailing galleries, they hate that most of them, not all of them. They they’re getting emails. They’re getting up unsolicited packages, sometimes they’re getting unsolicited paintings in the mail, they got to open them up, they got to look at them, they got to put them back. They got to mail them back. They hate that. That’s really annoying. So what can you do that’s different, you know, just showing up to the door with a handful of paintings. That’s annoying. You know, you’re there in the middle of their day. They’re busy, maybe not right now, but normally, and so be different, do something else no one else is doing now I believe the best way is to be introduced in or get somebody to recommend you. But I also think that you want them to follow you and be tracking you without them knowing that you’ve made them do that. Now that’s a very stealth kind of thing. I talk a lot about that in some of my books and videos. But essentially, one of the ways to do that is by leaving intelligent comments on their social media. If they’re posting something, don’t go Hey, look at me, hey, look at me, call me do this with me. You know, just write a nice intelligent comment and it If they see you on there enough, don’t go too much. It’s it’d be the equivalent over over texting somebody, just, you know, being there on occasion and say something smart. And then eventually somebody go, Hmm, this person smart. I wonder who they are. And they click on your thing. And they go, Oh, I think I’ll follow them. Oh, nice artwork. Well, I think I’ll keep track of it. Scott Jones told me one time that he has a dummy email address, and he uses it to keep track of artists and to see what they’re up to. And you know, usually when you first tune in that, you know, they don’t have a good portfolio, they maybe do one out of 10 good paintings. And so you keep an eye on these artists over the three, four or five years to see if they get better, they get consistent and so on. And then if they do, you know, they might be tracking you quietly and secretly. So that’s something. Remember people want to do business with successful people. It’s the old rule of you know, how do I get successful? How do they wanted me to be successful, but how do I get successful and the answer is easier than most realized. galleries You’re drawn to big names, they want the best artists, they want the artists with the big names who are going to sell the most art, the ones who are in the most demand. And the best way to get a big name is to advertise. Now you can spend a lifetime doing shows and getting recognition and and all of that other stuff, getting articles about you. And that’s really important, you should do that. But the problem is that even if you let’s say there were five art magazines, you probably can’t get in all five of them in the same year, because they don’t want to do the same thing everybody else did. And they’re not going to get one story a year. You’re not going to get one story sometimes every two or three years, unless it’s paid for play. And that’s when when magazines are selling their articles, which is a no no as far as I’m concerned. But people do it all the time. Anyway, the idea here is you want to be seen and recognized and so buy ads, and you could buy ads and we have found and research has supported the fact that people think that ad campaigns content in an art magazine is equally as good as article content because they’re there to look at beautiful paintings. And so your ad is getting you seen more and more and more and more, the more you repeat it, the more you’re seeing, the more your name grows, the more that other people start talking about you, the more you get invited into other places. And so advertising is fast, editorial is slow. So I think that this is a really great strategy. I’ve used it my whole life and it’s very effective. And it’s a great way to get noticed a lot and get things done fast. And of course, galleries will be drawn to people who are supporting themselves in advertising because they’re going hey, this, this person believes in themselves. I’m going to watch what they do and plus they’re seeing your work and they’re starting to like your work. Next thing you know you get invited in. Also once you’ve built your brand, you can command higher prices and that just continues to grow, the more your brand grows. Hope this helps. Anyway, that was the art marketing minute.
Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

Remember to Submit Your Question: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.