Why I love Twitter: 4 Good Reasons Why Your Art Business Needs Twitter
I must confess it took me a long time to warm up to Twitter. As an outsider Twitter looked like a tool for idle chit-chat. Really…who cares “what I’m up to?”
However, marketing guru’s started focussing their emphasis on how Twitter is a cost-effective tool for promoting sales events and building an audience. Always on the look out for cost effective marketing ideas, I started to wonder—How could Twitter help visual artists?
This past fall, I decided to dedicate 30 minutes a day to building my relationship with Twitter. Even though our relationship is relatively new, I can say without a doubt that I’m crushing on Twitter.
In this post I’ll share my findings and talk about how artists can use Twitter to grow their art business and cultivate new professional relationships.
Why I love Twitter
• Twitter was so easy to set up—Finally something I could set up without the help of my IT man. I was out there sharing news and gaining valuable information within my first hour!
• I’m getting regular feedback from artists, interior designers, following major galleries, hearing about art contests and artist submissions and reading feeds from leading art writers, collectors and magazines from all over the world—I have never felt so connected.
• I also love getting tweets from business writers and marketing mentors who notify me about new articles on their blogs, Youtube tutorials and links to other professionals I would never have found. I can browse the Tweets from several different writers at one time, then click through only on the stories that interest me.
Let me introduce you to Twitter
Twitter is a form of micro-blogging where anyone can instantly share messages of up to 140 characters. These messages, or Tweets, are available for reading by anyone interested in them. Twitter users subscribe to message (news) feeds by “following” an account (call sign). The @ sign before a name signifies an account name—ours is @fidelisart. Our followers receive our news messages in their “timeline”—a feed of all the accounts they have subscribed to.
Learn more about how Twitter works in this video: “Twitter in Plain English”
You may remember from a previous FAP post that I’m a fan of marketing & PR guru, David Meerman Scott. He tells the story about when his skeptic family confronted him at Christmas to explain why he used Twitter. He went to the source and Tweeted out the question. Read his interesting post “48 Ways to Explain Twitter to Skeptics” that shares what the Twittersphere sent back.
4 Good Reasons Why Your Art Business Needs Twitter
Artists need Twitter. As an art business you can use Twitter to quickly share information, gather market news and insights, and build relationships with people who care about your art. In our art business we’re focussing our Tweeter efforts on:
1. Sharing information: Immediately share current exhibitions, upcoming exhibitions, workshops, studio events. Third party Twitter User software (such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite) also let you “pre-schedule” announcements.
2. Building a list of followers. Twitter is fantastic for finding new and potential customers. I can learn about my followers by researching their Twitter profile. Twitter helps me sort them by their artistic preference or style—this allows me to communicate with them directly when I know we have something I think they will like or would like t hear about.
3. Collaborating and education with other like-minded artists and art professionals has been incredibly valuable. I really like that I can browse many Twitter feeds at one time, often getting advance warning about an event that we could participate.
4. Saving time. Twitter integrates with several other of our social media and can be done from anywhere. For example, I can tweet a short note about my art business from my iphone from anywhere in the world. In my phone, I use a third party app, that then posts my feed to our Twitter page, our Facebook Page and to our blog/website.
Get to Know Twitter Better – Articles Specifically for Artists
List of Artist’s Who Tweet (one of many)
Even though Twitter and I are still in the honeymoon phase, I can see that our relationship has lots of room for growth and that Twitter is not a passing phase—it’s here to stay. I realize that your time is very precious and encourage you to think of Twitter as a PR tool that works with your overall marketing effort. It only takes 10-30 mins a day.
To-date Twitter is the most effective, real-time way to drive the world to your art, whether it’s a physical show, your dealer or your website.
I hope you’ll consider spending some time getting to know Twitter, let me know what you think by taking our new Fidelis Poll.
And please look us up next time you are on Twitter, our Twitter handle is “@fidelisart“.
