when social interaction is art promotion

Chris gave me this login so long ago and I haven’t got round to writing a blog post because I’ve been busy, so I’m going to put that right now.

Sometimes it seems that you just can’t find the time to do all the promotion that your artwork deserves.  Sometimes you’re too busy working on the artwork itself, often it’s the demands of your day job, family or friends.

As part of my online activities I run my own blog about promoting artwork, a discussion forum about art, music & writing, and of course my own web galleries (and galleries for various friends on the same site).

Sometimes the promotion seems to use up all the time I need to actually make artwork!

So one of the best promotion tools I have—one which doesn’t take much time and doesn’t even feel like work— is adding meaningful and constructive comments to other art blogs (and non-art blogs too).

Not “Nice post.  By the way, check out my art!!”, but a well-thought-out response to the blog post you’re commenting on.  Don’t even think of it as promotion - it’s just social interaction.

Every blogger (myself included) will always check out the link of every person who comments intelligently on their blog posts.  You don’t need to draw attention to it, or even mention that you’re an artist - just respond to blog posts that you find interesting.

Many blog readers will also check out the links of commenters on blogs if the comment is well written and relevant.

What you can’t do is speed-up the process: no pre-written comments that you can cut and paste into multiple blogs (that’s just spam), no hastily typed-out thoughtless comments in order to reach your self-allotted target of comments.

Social interaction—conversation—is the best form of marketing. And the less you think of it as marketing, the better.

Paul.