Great Conversation About Social Media For Artists

Over on Skinny Artist there is a great conversation happening around social media, how much time you spend on it and whether it has helped you as an artist.

I love reading what other artists who are participating in social media have to say about it. And there have been some great thoughts posted.

I predominately use Facebook and Twitter for my social media needs. And two other sites that are social but where I do not interact for  direct conversation are Flickr and Pinterest.

I currently have a love affair with Pinterest. It is so very visual and it fills that feminine aspect of my personality with content like fashion and home decor, art, style and design.

But back to the more traditional forms of social media, my favorite places are Facebook and Twitter. I actually started using Twitter first. Twitter was originally filled with early adopters such as web designers and developers. And I joined up pretty early. I didn’t use it much at all.

I’ve never been big on talking tech and had no interest in getting involved in that conversation. It was what I did for a career, but not what I wanted to spend Friday nights chatting about. Perhaps that comes from the fact that I was a working manager and was drained by deadlines and projects. It was the last thing I wanted to think or talk about. I did enjoy reading the updates and posts of others in my industry, but maybe I just wasn’t as passionate about it as they were.

It wasn’t until I began painting that I realized how many artists there were to talk with and share experiences with on Twitter. The community feeling there has been overwhelming with such a positive group of people. Many of them are fine art folks, predominately drawing and painting. Call me crazy but I never thought I would find that community so welcoming.

I actually started using Facebook to connect with family and personal friends. Yet I found it allowed me to connect with many mixed-media artists that I knew from previous online groups, email lists and such. People I had not talked to in years. And so my Facebook community is largely artists now too. They are artists of a different kind from the ones I communicate with on Twitter. Mixed-media artists are a huge mashup of types of folks… a lot like the art we create.

What I wanted to really talk a bit about here is the promotional and business side of these two communities. I promote (not as often as I should) on both Twitter and Facebook. My first online sale was on Twitter. I was thrilled and pleased since I hadn’t thought about it happening.

I have also made sales on Facebook including direct contact from galleries interested in representing my art.

For me using too many sites, or sites that don’t really catch on with me, would be a bad thing. Social media does require participation. If you have collectors or other artists trying to communicate with you in a community and you do not respond, in my opinion, it would be worse than not having an account/profile there at all. This is the same advice I give to business contacts and employers. Play where your clients are, but only if you are going to commit to it.

One of the worst situations I came upon was a business that had launched a Facebook page but didn’t have any specific person assigned to monitor it. What started with a single fan asking a question turned into several posts directly on the page with fans talking about how this company never responded to them. This conversation spanned several months with no response from the company. I handled that immediately after I was hired, and folks were then assigned to monitor the pages and be accountable to get answers back to fans and resolve customer service issues. But it didn’t look good that it had been left to go on. Not good at all.

So if you do join a community, but you find it isn’t for you, do not just leave that profile there blowing in the wind. Either delete the account, or make an effort to monitor it, at the very least.

As an artist I concentrate on the communities that seem to bring me the most satisfaction. Either with ease of use, the community itself, or some other reason. And since I am there and sharing with other artists and promoting them, I do enjoy promoting my own art as well.

Speaking of which… I do have the above bag available for purchase. I am in the planning stages for another fun tote in an entirely new design. I am excited about the new, smaller floral design for this new bag.