Reaching Beyond Your Front Door

A few months ago I lived in a city with 4.5 million people.  I now live in a rural community of 16,000.  I’ve spent the past 2 years working with artists from across Ontario, and without fail each of them believes they’d be better off if they were showing their work somewhere else.  Small town Ontario artists have told me they “need to be in Toronto”, and large city artists have told me that they’d be better off being “a big fish in a small pond.”

I believe both are right.  In order to be successful, you need to have your feet in both worlds.

You need to build a strong audience for your work in the place you choose to live.  Be creative and seek out places and spaces where your work will be welcomed.  Engage your audience and ask them to participate in your growth by spreading the word about your work.  Build a community to support your work.

And you need to reach out beyond where you live in order to expand and grow.  No matter where you are and how large and diverse the population is, at some point you will reach a saturation point.  You may continue to sell work, or to fill halls, but sometimes you’re expected to repeat the same work over and over again.  Which can stunt your creative growth and make your career feel like just another job.

One way to do that, to reach out beyond your front door and test the market elsewhere, is to use social media as a marketing tool and as a tool for testing the creative waters.  There are hundreds of tools out there that are free to use.  Why not give them a try?

Over the course of this blog, I will be talking a lot about social media and encouraging you to give it a try. We’ll start with the very basics and take small steps.  One or two techniques for you to try at a time.  And tips for how to use the time you put into social media marketing effectively.

Step 1?  If you haven’t done so, sign up for a Facebook account and a Twitter account.  Facebook has 250 million active users worldwide.  And while it’s nearly impossible to get accurate numbers from Twitter, it is growing faster than any  other social media outlet.  These two will give you the most widespread and diverse audience for the work that you do.

OK.  Go.  I’ll check with you tomorrow.