The Business of Art: The Essential Importance of Building Visibility

Like it or not, one of the most important aspects of being an artist or having an art gallery is the daily routine of "building visibility." Whereas it is nice to think we are in the creativity business... that pesky word "business" is still there.

Truthfully, the visibility issue applies to all business in one way or another... but in this instance, we'll just stick to the art business.

What Do We Mean by "Building Visibility?"

It would be nice to think that we could just create something-- or open an art gallery-- and people spontaneously show up to buy our wares. Assuming, of course, that one of our objectives is to sell our art.

Unfortunately, that's almost never how it works.

When we first opened our doors here at the Red Dragonfly Gallery, it was pretty much to the sound of... crickets chirping.

Becoming known and developing a following was all about a never-ending process of building visibility, and we continue to do so, even though it has been a long time since we started. Many who read this are already familiar with this process in a very different sense-- as we publish our content here on Steemit, we are also trying to be as "visible" as possible so people will find our creations.

Being an artist or having a gallery in physical space is not all that different!

Local Visibility

When you have a physical product like a painting, or pottery, or sculpture, our initial attention goes towards our local town, city or region.

The most obvious-- but typically also the most expensive-- way to build visibility in our local communities is through advertising. 

However, advertising in the traditional sense is not as effective as it once was, given that most people these days get their information from the web... not a local newspaper. And once upon a time, your ad in the yellow pages could be your most valuable way to promote a business... but who even gets a phone book, these days?

In the case of our gallery, we've reduced our advertising to the local newspaper's monthly "calendar of events" ahead of the day that features our monthly city wide "Gallery Walk" on the first Saturday of every month.

So how else can you increase your local visibility?

Sponsorships can actually be a surprisingly effective tool. We currently are a co-sponsor of several local arts initiatives, including the local School for the Arts. In exchange for periodically accepting work from the School to hang on our walls, we get our name featured fairly prominently in the School's catalogs and brochures, and we are mentioned as a "patron" during their special events. 

Our gallery happens to be in a tourist area, and we have found one of the few effective forms of advertising to be to offer gift vouchers in connection with the many festivals we have in town, during the summer months. Although it can be somewhat expensive, as well, advertising in select festival programs has also proven fairly effective.

You might wonder why advertising to the visitor trade is more effective than the local newspaper... the answer is that when people are away from home and on vacation, they tend to spend less time worrying about daily life, and buying something you like from a place far from home creates more of a sense of "immediacy" than when you live locally and can return to make your purchases at any time. 

This past summer, we also had information cards printed and had them placed in the "visitor information" racks at the local tourist information center. That was also quite effective.

Another good way to build visibility-- and it's free-- is to send a press release to your local paper every time you're having an event (if you're a gallery) or suggest (repeatedly!) that your art might make an interesting "color story" in the newspaper's arts section-- if you are an artist. This is especially useful in smaller towns and areas where actual "news" is scarce, and the editorial staff is always looking for something to put in the paper.

Virtual Visibility

Of course, in this day and age, Social Media plays an increasingly important role in building visibility.

One of the challenges in promoting actual "physical" work-- or a local art gallery-- through social media is that you're typically putting effort into reaching the entire world, when your actual brick-and-mortar customer base is only a tiny fraction of that. 

In our case, we've found that one of the keys to success is making sure all our local print and event advertising includes links to our social media accounts. The key is to build a following of social media users who tend to be "more local" than your general population. 

One of the things to be mindful of here, is to simply pause and think about how people use the web to find things in their area.

Lots of folks use Google Maps, and one of the things you can do is "claim" your business or art studio with Google, after which it will always show up when someone is searching maps for certain things. And this is completely free. Another way to build visibility-- also free-- is to claim your gallery or studio with Yelp-- a lot of people use Yelp to find things.

Before there was Steemit, all we had was a Facebook page and our twitter account. One of the few saving graces of Facebook is the ability to target ads to people in your local areas, and to reach out to people "by interest." This enabled us to build a good core of prospects from the very beginning. Today, our Facebook page has slightly over 2500 followers, which is not bad for a small local business.

Twitter never did very much for us, except as an attention getting around events and openings.

Steemit as Part of the Visibility Picture

The addition of Steemit has given us an extra dimension in the form of a blog... that actually works more like a free-standing series of articles.

So far, the biggest benefit we have gotten from this community is a chance to get in contact with other artists, and an unexpected secondary source of income... which might prove essential during the lean months of the year.

If you're an artist, that particular feature can actually serve you as an alternative to sponsor sites like Patreon, in that you can eventually build a modest income from exposing your art here, but fellow Steemians can support you simply through upvotes, without having to open their pocketbooks-- which is a unique opportunity.

In 2018, we are hoping to make Steemit a more integrated part of our visibility campaign. This would include encouraging more of our artists to join Steemit to show their art, and doing what we can to train some of the more "adventurous" members of our clientele to join Steemit and "Vote for Art" as a way to support artists and galleries at no cost to themselves.

More details of our 2018 Roadmap will be published in the weeks ahead!

Thank you for reading! Red Dragonfly is a proud member of the @sndbox creative initiative.

The Red Dragonfly is an independent alternative art gallery located in Port Townsend, WA; showcasing edgy and unique contemporary art & handmade crafts by local and worldwide artists. All images are our own, unless otherwise credited. Where applicable, artist images used with permission.