Art Heroes Radio

How to use video to promote your art online and in galleries, a conversation with Lori McNee

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Art Heroes Review (in production)

Lori McNee is a professional, nationally recognized working artist & blogger. On her popular art blog, FineArtTips.com, Lori shares her unique artistic perspective, art tips and art business, and Social Media advice for her fellow artists.  Lori currently ranks as one of the "Most Influential Artists" on Twitter. Thanks to Social Media, Lori is also a television hostess for the resort television station, Plum TV.

We had originally planned to do a two part show focusing on video marketing for artists as well as selling art on Facebook, but decided that Facebook would need more than half a show to cover. As a result, this week's show is shorter than usual but extremely targeted on using video to promote art.

We used Lori's bullet list from her post How Artists Can Use YouTube Video to Improve Marketing as a starting point, but included quite a bit of other materials as well.

Why artists have an unfair advantage at internet marketing, a conversation with Mark McGuinness

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Art Heroes Review (in production)

We are living at a time of unprecedented opportunity for artists and creative professionals— Mark McGuiness, poet, creative coach and editor of Lateral Action, explains why artists are uniquely suited to succeed online.

Content marketing is king on the web, and artists/creatives are content creation specialists. Artists have an unfair advantage over all the frozen peas producers who are now having to become media companies.

The less your content looks like advertising, the better it functions as advertising. People are more likely to link to it and share it. Artists are the specialists at producing original content that people actually want, and this gives us an advantage even over traditional marketers.

We can build our own platform to sell our own stuff (the sexiest route), or partner with organizations to create content that helps sell their stuff (as Hugh MacLeod did with English Cut and Stormhoek).

Creating original, engaging, remarkable images, sounds, text, music or video is what you do best. You're already a one-person media company. Even if you hate the very idea of marketing, you should know that when it comes to Internet marketing, your creativity gives you an unfair advantage.

The competitive advantage of hiring artists, A conversation with Chris Ashworth

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Art Heroes Review (in production)

Christopher Ashworth makes software and theater in Baltimore, Maryland. His QLab software makes it simple to create rich multimedia designs for live performances and installations. Qlab has been used in high schools, colleges, Tony awards winning productions and the live audience and broadcast audio for the 2010 Olympic medal ceremonies. The diversity of venues is partly due to some really interesting ways that Chris has found to make his work accessible to a broad range of price points.

When I read Chris Ashworth's post My Competitive Advantage: I Hire Artists, I knew I had to get him on Art Heroes— he has stuff to say that you, as artists, should hear. His passion impressed me as much as his thinking.

Then I read Chris' post My 2 Bucks on Pricing on why he raised the price of his software by 500% at the request of his existing customers. Let me repeat that— His customers told him he wasn't charging them enough. Why? They wanted to continue using QLab and they wanted Chris to be able to sustain his business so he'd be there for them. Yeah, artists could learn from that too.

How to get your art into galleries, a conversation with Clint Watson

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Art Heroes Review (in production)

One of the most common questions I hear from artists is "How do I get my work into galleries?" The myth of being discovered is a wonderful bedtime story, but it provides little practical advice for how to get your work shown now.

As former director of a national gallery and creator of the portfoilio site, Fine Art Studio Online, Clint Watson has a great deal of experience to draw from on both sides of the gallery submission process. Clint's number one answer to how to get galleries to look at your work will probably surprise you. Learn which rules you can break and which rules you should break when submitting to galleries.

In this conversation Clint and I discuss:

• How to research galleries.
• How to find a gallery that is a good fit for your art.
• How should you approach gallery owners?
• What to include in a proposal to a new gallery and what not to worry about.
• Common mistakes artists make when dealing with galleries.
• What to expect from a gallery in terms of support and marketing.
• How to effectively split marketing tasks with a gallery.
• How to address selling your work directly when you also show in galleries.
• How to protect yourself with a gallery contract and what items should be spelled out.