Blogging for Artists Part 1 – Why It’s Important
(Illustration by Melanie Matthews)
What follows is Part 1 of the Blogging for Artists series, which will explore the ways that Illustrators and other creative professionals can use a blog to promote themselves and build a better business.
Are you an aspiring or professional artist?
Do you blog?
Blogging is becoming increasingly popular for artists, art reps, design firms, and other creative professionals as a means of communicating, connecting, and promoting themselves to the outside world.
If you’re not blogging, or aren’t really clear about why it’s important, there are many reasons reasons to consider making it a regular part of your creative life, and your business.
Why should you blog?
There are many benefits of starting and running a blog online. Some of them speak to your creative side, and some of them can have a positive impact on your business. Here are some examples of ways that you can take advantage of this increasingly popular format.
Promoting Yourself
One of the greatest benefits of running a blog is that you can promote your latest work and achievements. As mentioned in Part 5 of 7 Elements of an Effective Portfolio Website, your blog is the place to keep your audience up to date on what is happening with your business, as opposed to your static website, which typically only shows your fine-tuned portfolio and basic information.
You can use your blog to make announcements when you create new work, when you are interviewed or featured in a publication, when you receive an award, or any other exciting developments.
While social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are great ways to promote yourself, your blog offers a much more controlled environment where you can tell your story in words and pictures.
Building Your Brand
If it’s done right, your blog can be a cohesive extension of your portfolio website, featuring elements of your brand such as your logo, Illustrations, and anything else that helps to build and communicate your brand.
While your portfolio should carry most of the burden of introducing yourself to potential clients, your blog can take things further by telling them who you are, how you think, what inspires you, and what makes you tick.
Presenting Yourself as an Expert
Your blog is also an ideal place to show your audience that you are an expert in your field through articles, tutorials, process posts, etc. Giving Art Directors and other potential clients an inside look at you and your business can do a lot to help them to understand why you might be the best person for the job.
Connecting with the Community
All the benefits above can also help you to connect with your fellow Illustrators by inspiring dialogue and sharing ideas and inspiration. Many relationships have been built by an artist stumbling across something they find interesting on another artist’s blog.
Providing a Creative Outlet
Your blog can also be a great place to explore personal projects, self-assignments, other activities that lie outside of the formal atmosphere of your portfolio website. In addition, you can utilize your blog to try out new ideas and experiments in a more casual way.
(Update: You can now read Part 2 – What to Blog here and Part 3 – Getting Subscribers here.)
Do you blog? What are some ways that you benefit from blogging? Please share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
Special thanks to Melanie Matthews for providing the artwork for this post.
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Related Posts:
- Blogging for Artists Part 2 – What to Blog
- Blogging for Artists Part 3 – Getting Subscribers
- 7 Elements of an Effective Portfolio Website Part 5 – The Blog
- Promotion 101 for Artists
- How to Make the Most of the Online Art Community
Stay up-to-date with future Illustration resources via email, Facebook, and Twitter.
Great post Thomas. A good way to get clients to see your blog is to put a link in your signature area of your emails (along with your website, which you should always have there anyway). Many times I’ve been out or on the phone with clients and they have brought up a story from my blog because they’ve clicked on the link directly from our emails, rather then finding it linked on the site. Its a great way to show clients your personality!
Thanks Mike. That’s a great point. It’s just as important to promote your blog as it is to create content for it, otherwise no one will ever find it.
Strange how when you need something these things pop up. Imagine FX (issue 61) also has an article about blogs as well as this appearing just as I was thinking about starting one up.
I do not that have the talent that many of you guys here have but I am determined to solve that :) . My blog which can be found here http://chibijanine.blogspot.com/ is charting my self study (unable to go to collage due to cost and being a stay at home mum for my son) to become a better artist.
When I have gone from complete novice to pro (positive thinking here guys and gals) I will create another blog as a show case piece.
Part of my self study programme is listen to your excellent podcast Thomas as I find them insightful to a an ever changing business that is begining to interest me.
Thank you for your efforts and I look forward to future insights you provide.
Janine
Thanks Janine. I help this series helps you to run an even better blog. Here’s a link to part 2:
http://escapefromillustrationisland.com/2010/08/26/blogging-for-artists-part-2-what-to-blog/
Hi Janine
I loved your post; I can relate to you in that I am an “artist”, self taught, have never been to college for similar and other reasons than you and at home although again, for different reasons than you. The outcome however of all of that is as I said before, similar.
I haven’t yet looked at your blog but will do so very soon
Yours Linda
http://www.artbylinda.wordpdress.com
Thank you for your comment, I had a quick look at you site. I really like your collage pieces. They are viberant and unique.
I wish you continuing sucess in your creativity.
Be well Janine
I have a blog, however I don’t think I use it as effectively as I could to promote myself. I share it mostly with friends and EDM group, but not other areas that could be more financially lucrative.
Lots of good information in this post. I think I will start by including my blog link with my e-mails and anything else I put out on the Internet.
http://tactilblog.blogspot.com/
This is a good post. I’ve had a blog for a while http://patriarchproduction.com but I’ve been struggling for the past year or so trying to figure out exactly what to do with it. I’m not looking for freelance work but I do try to get into community involvement. It’s tricky, especially since I’ve mostly been writing during that time and I’m very conscious of both protecting my unfinished ideas and I like to keep as much of a story secret until you read or watch it as possible, but I’ve kinda gotta show something to generate interest… it’s not quite as easy as saying “It’s a new Indiana Jones movie” and leaving it at that lol
I’ve been considering writing more technical articles and tutorials on thoughts I have and sharing more of my process without giving away too many actual details of what I’m doing before I’m ready, although I also think it’s important to have a clear audience… I don’t want to scare potential readers away by filling it with technical tutorials for Gimp or a 3d art program for instance that they’re never going to use because they’re just a writer… that may not be as much of a problem for a strictly artist, but someone like myself that dabbles in a lot of different things it’s a little challenging how to figure out how to not alienate a particular group over another that I want to reach out to.
Up until recently I only had the blog, but last month I got a Twitter account and I’ve started writing for a couple other sites Associatedcontent.com and another blog more geared toward film reviews/movie theory I may start posting to and I think that kind of has helped clarify the real purpose for my main blog as really just a good place to get to know my personality and my generic thoughts. So I hope to start using it more for that. I guess the lesson I’ve learned that I would recommend others do is to make sure you have outlets online for all the different audiences or types of interests you have so that your blog can really be about you and you don’t have to necessarily worry about releasing a tutorial and whether or not it will turn one group of people off or not…
I look at those things (tutorials/articles) as products just like a story or animation or piece of artwork, even if they just are telling my opinion on something, if they sorta fall into a place where they target only a specific target audience I try and find an outlet for that outside my main blog… but I’m still experimenting, so I’m just playing things by ear really.
Looking forward to Part 2!
Thanks Mikhail. Here’s a link to Part 2, which will hopefully help to give you some ideas about what to use your blog for. Cheers!
http://escapefromillustrationisland.com/2010/08/26/blogging-for-artists-part-2-what-to-blog/
Thanks Mikhail. Here’s a link to Part 2, which will hopefully help to give you some ideas about what to use your blog for. Cheers!
http://escapefromillustrationisland.com/2010/08/26/blogging-for-artists-part-2-what-to-blog/
Of the readers here, do you think having a blog connected to your main portfolio site is more effective than having a separate blog account on something like Blogger? I would think the former, but it’s not the easiest thing to put together…been messing with a WordPress template for the past two weeks on and off, and I still can’t get things like I want them!
My portfolio site is linked to my blog and I have had traffic go from one to the other. WordPress is kind of a pain at first, but I really like it general ease of formatting, especially with thunbnails, compared to blogger. I still haven’t mastered WordPress, but I’m slowly getting there.
WordPress does indeed take some getting used to, but in my opinion that’s because there’s so much you can do with it, and more every day.
Hello Jim. In my opinion, if you can manage to integrate your blog and your website you will be much better off, because blogs tend to get more traffic (if you update them regularly with new posts) then static websites. As I mentioned in a previous comment, WordPress does take some time to master, but that’s because there are so many features and options. Stick with it, and I think you’ll be happy.
My wife Stephanie Dawn Burke and I are both artists, and we both blog. However, we don’t use it to talk about ourselves and our own work very much. Rather, we think of it as a critical art writing practice, balancing our studio and teaching practices.
We both write about the Chicago art gallery scene for Art Talk Chicago, which my wife runs. We have several recurring columns, including The Snack Report (in which I write about the refreshments served by the galleries), the Red Dot Report (in which we write about what works have sold in Chicago recently), and Monday Morning Quarterback (in which we review the work we saw each weekend). We also occasionally write full reviews of individual shows, and publish articles by other writers we know.
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/art-talk-chicago/
We also both write occasionally for Chicago Art Magazine; typically I write articles on various Chicago art related subjects, and Stephanie is the managing editor.
http://chicagoartmagazine.com/
Stephanie also runs The Gallery Crawl And So Much More, which is primarily just a comprehensive listing of all the openings coming up each week in Chicago.
http://thegallerycrawlandsomuchmore.blogspot.com/
My website: http://www.jeriahhildwine.com
My wife’s website: http://www.stephaniedawnburke.com
Thanks for sharing the links, Jeriah. It’s great when you can use blogging to go outside just promoting yourself, but rather add to the online conversations about art in general.
I’m happy to say that I use my blog (which is a part of my website, because, Jim, I think having a blog connected to my main portfolio site is more effective than having a separate blog account on something like Blogger). I write about myself, about my new work, what motivates me and so on. BUT, I share the blog mainly with family and friends and only now began to share it with my Linkedin contacts…So this is time to do some changes here. Thank you for the advice. And if we are already into it, here is the link to my post from yesterday:
http://www.inbalturshalom.com/inbals-blog.html
Cheers,
Inbal
Thanks for joining the conversation. I completely agree that the best scenario is to have your blog integrated with your main website. That way, your portfolio can enjoy the same traffic that your regularly updated blog does. I would also second your point about sharing or promoting your blog with others. It’s one thing to write blog posts, but it’s another to make sure other people see it.
I started a blog a little over two years ago as a bit of a PR tool (http://leightonhubbell-blog.com), and it has evolved dramatically into much more than I had originally intended. And that is something that should be kept in mind, the blog will evolve with you and your audience.
You may have certain goals or aspirations on the outset, but depending on how your audience responds and how you grow as a blogger, the direction can change a bit. It’s kind of a work in progress, and that’s OK.
Originally, I just shared completed work and awards announcements, etc. Then, I started writing articles about different projects and creative issues. Well, it has blossomed into a significant branding tool and has increased my visibility immensely (well over 3000%).
Now, whenever an appropriate article is written, I post it on my LinkedIn groups and my Facebook fan page which feeds on to my Twitter account. This increases traffic to my website and gives me something to showcase on my bi-monthly promotional e-mails. It’s all a big cycle to increase awareness and drive site traffic.
Yes, it has taken up some time to get to this point. But, I look at the time I used to spend putting self-promotion pieces together and all the labor involved and it is working out to be close to the same. I have also learned some valuable information about how to build and maintain a website, which is worth its weight in gold in today’s market.
I have a new connection to my audience – some of which I had never known about. With my visibility on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, I get a chance to have interesting dialogue about my work, work issues and design and illustration in general.
It does take some discipline and time, but if I had to do it over again – I certainly would.
Great point, Leighton. One great thing about blogging is that you can get feedback from your audience and then cater your posts to fit their needs and interests. A good blog evolves over time to stay fresh and interesting. I also like what you’re saying about connecting with your audience. You never get that kind of bond with your static portfolio website. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Hello Thomas,
Blogging has been wonderful for my business and has helped me to express and promote my work.
I love sharing with readers my artsy news and happenings! And get many emails from them.
My blog speaks for me and my work at all times.
~ Gabriela ~
Thanks for your comment, Gabriela. Those are all great reasons to blog about your business. If you can keep it relevant and interesting, it’s a win-win for both you and your audience. Cheers.
Hello! I have been painting for about 40 years now but have only recently set up a pop-up gallery in our house which opens on Sundays. Last year I set up a blog, where I either talk about my work or all the fun and frustrations of setting up and running Ted Coney’s Family Portraits.
I always link my blog to the web-site and Twitter and have recently started a Facebook page. My film, which visitors see when they arrive at the house and introduces my work, has been divided up into four and has just gone on YouTube. It would be good to have a few comments!
Ted
Very informative…will look forward to Part 2.
Oops…I see in the comments there is already a part 2. Will go check it out. I just started blogging for the first time ever last February and I can see a big difference in how my name as an artist is growing by leaps and bounds. It’s fun too. Thanks for the info!