PR for artists is an essential tool for promoting and showcasing your artwork. Whether your pieces are displayed in a gallery, a public space, or as part of a traveling exhibition, utilizing effective PR strategies can help you reach the right audience and present your work in the most favorable way. It’s important to remember that the reception of your message, rather than the message itself, plays a crucial role in determining your level of recognition and success as an artist.
Simply put, public relations (PR) is the process of managing communication between an organization and its constituents. Public relations helps you to get the right message to the right people at the right time, resulting in a positive and memorable brand image. PR is primarily the business of persuasion. When you’re promoting works of art, you must persuade an audience, both inside and outside your usual circle of influence, to promote the art project, exhibition, idea, or accomplishments. Through the media, social media, and company-generated communications, public relations can be used to protect, enhance, or build reputations.
The importance of PR for artists
Generating positive publicity for your works of art is important if you want to reach a wide audience. Publicity is the act of communicating important information about your art to the media. In other words, publicity is the distribution of information to the general public through media and other forms of mass media. However, publicity is a result of an excellent public relations strategy in which marketers successfully provide favorable information to the media and other third-party outlets such as bloggers, vloggers, and podcasters. The overall communication message gains credibility as a result of the publicity. It gives people a reason to talk about the brand, which influences the effectiveness of viral and word-of-mouth marketing.
Publicity is regarded as an essential promotional tool in the art industry. Artists generally tend to entrust a publicist or PR professional with the task of generating and managing publicity for them. A PR professional will give you a public face by persuading the news media to create content about you in the most favorable light possible. This can be done in multiple ways, using press releases, networks, and digital media.
How partnering with media outreach professionals helps
A press release is a brief but impactful story written in a specific format to alert local media outlets to important newsworthy events or information. It could be about general news, events, a new show, auction items, or expert opinions on a specific topic. Secondly, to increase their client’s media coverage, public relations experts cultivate personal contacts by reaching out to their network and creating media lists to help their clients. Furthermore, in order to capture the target audience’s attention, PR professionals also employ digital marketing strategies such as social media marketing.
Every artist or creative professional who wants to be noticed should engage in public relations. The world is hungry for information and people want to know what the new masterpiece is. It’s true that the impact of traditional media platforms, such as newspapers and magazines, has been reduced. Be that as it may, these platforms have been replaced by many new ones, including internet radio shows, online publications, newsletters, social media, and blogs.
Situations where you need to engage PR for artists
You can use strategies in PR for artists to share news about your latest art project, or ideas that you’re working on. You can also make announcements for the following events: upcoming performances, exhibits, and events; the opening of a new art studio or retail outlet; your participation in or organizing a charity auction or sale; the awards or honors you have received; your collaboration with other people or businesses; activities or group in which you are actively involved in the community; your participation in panels and group discussions; and interviews and feature articles about you and your work.
Public relations has proven to be a crucial component in raising awareness in the art world. Doing public relations for artwork includes a slew of activities aimed at safeguarding your image as an artist and elevating your status.
The following are some of the ways public relations can help with promoting your work:
- Initiating communication between you and your potential audience and target customers
- Helping with media outreach efforts
- Initiating press interviews and involvement with nonprofits or charities
- Positioning you as a professional and talented person in your particular field
- Building connections with stakeholders such as customers, employees, critics, and the public
- Managing social media accounts and engagement
- Developing third-party promotion for your artwork and events
- Maintaining solid crisis management
Now that we have seen how PR can help in promoting you and your work, let us look at some tips to boost your PR efforts and build better relationships with journalists and media influencers.
1) Engage with your audiences
When you’re connecting with journalists, the first step is to get to know the journalists. You need to form relationships by engaging with their content. You should begin by leaving comments on articles that they have written. Explain why you enjoyed the article and share any knowledge or insights you have on the subject. To begin a professional relationship, you must include your actual name, company name, or the name of the person representing the company. This way, a journalist can reach you easily for further comments.
Given that so many people use social media platforms these days, any journalist or media professional worth their salt will use the same platforms to promote their work. You should start engaging with these people on social media by sharing or commenting on their posts. Additionally, you should initiate and join as many conversations as you can online and share content that you think the people you interact with will enjoy.
You must also create content that will attract the attention of media professionals, whether it is a succinct and creative email pitch or a well-written press release.
How Pressfarm can help with this
If this sounds like a handful, you should consider hiring the services of a PR firm like Pressfarm. The team of PR specialists, expert writers, and certified designers can help you create quality content that celebrates your art and sparks curiosity among both media outlets and the general public. More specifically, Pressfarm specializes in crafting press releases, email pitches, guest posts, and media kits that will help you make a memorable impression in your industry.
In addition to creating this content, the experts at Pressfarm can help you distribute it widely, placing it in front of the right target audiences. Pressfarm shares this content with respected media outlets, startup directories, and professional networks. In this way, Pressfarm can boost your online visibility and ensure your target audience finds you through organic searches.
Finally, as a Pressfarm client, you get access to a database of 1 million+ journalists, bloggers, and influencers who can help you share your art with the world. If looking for the best contacts to reach out to seems like too much work, simply enlist the services of Pressfarm’s Account Executive who can build custom media lists containing the best media contacts in the art industry.
With a PR package from Pressfarm, you can put your art in the limelight where it belongs.
2) Nurture every reply
It’s critical to understand that no journalistic relationship comes with a guarantee of media coverage. It’s still crucial to keep trying to build a relationship, regardless of whether the response is positive or negative. To make this happen, every time a journalist accepts a pitch or publishes a press release from you, you should send them a thank you email to comment on what they liked about the piece they wrote. You should also mention that you are happy to contribute to future stories as an industry expert.
On the other hand, receiving a rejection response to your pitch or press release can be demoralizing. Even so, the very fact that the journalist has spared time to say “thanks, but no thanks” is a positive thing. This is an indication that the journalist is, at the very least, open to hearing from you again in the future. Once you initiate this two-way conversation with a journalist, you can build on it later on. It’s also a good idea to judge the tone of the response to see if sending a follow-up email is appropriate.
3) Keep the conversation going
It is critical to keep the conversation going once you’ve established a relationship with a media professional. This ensures that when it’s time to pitch something, your name is familiar to this person. In order to keep a conversation going, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. First and foremost, you should use email for communication rather than social media because emails are far more personable. Secondly, you should communicate with media professionals once a month at the very least. Your emails should contain critical information even when you’re not pitching a story.
For example, you can share insights on the news stories this person is covering, or simply ask them what stories they’re working on at the moment. Finally, it is essential to exercise patience. If you do not receive many responses to your pitches, do not send the journalists a barrage of follow-up emails that will annoy them or damage the relationship. If you don’t hear back, it may be time to move on and concentrate on developing relationships with other journalists.
4) Network at events and host your own
When it comes to PR for artists, nothing beats the power of a face-to-face introduction. Attending industry events is the best way to do this. Before the event, it’s a good idea to look through the attendee list by name to see who’s relevant to you and who the best reporters to network with would be. It is beneficial to get familiar with each reporter’s most recent work so that you can bring it up in conversation. Most events have applications for speaker and workshop roles on their websites. Getting a speaking part and being featured in a show can significantly raise your profile as an artist, in addition to generating net revenue.
You can also organize events like workshops, round-table discussions, and hackathons. These are fantastic ways to build and connect with a thriving community. More importantly, you can use these to entice journalists to attend by offering them spots on judging panels or speaking opportunities.
5) Be respectful of their time
Journalists and media professionals are busy people. They are not just sitting around waiting for a new story to come across their desk. For this reason, you need to be respectful of their time. Do not add to the pressure they’re under, even if you’re eager to get your story out there. If you keep bombarding a media professional with emails, they will have less motivation to create a positive story about you. Following up is good, but do so in moderation and spread your follow-up emails out so that the journalist has room to breathe.
On a personal and professional level, journalists are already under a lot of stress. As a result, it’s critical to strike a balance between communicating with them and persuading them to write an article and bombarding them with emails. The latter will only add to their already stressful lives.
Furthermore, it is critical not to send them irrelevant emails that have no bearing on their writing or the topics they are interested in. While you may be extending an olive branch, a journalist may interpret it as a sign of being overly needy or bothersome.
6) Treat an email from a media professional with respect
We all receive many emails and newsletters in our inboxes, many of which we did not sign up for. It can be aggravating when a journalist finds themselves signed up to your mailing list simply because they replied to one email pitch. To avoid an awkward situation where media professionals ask to be removed from your email list, it is best to ask for their permission first.
7) Establish connections
We cannot stress the importance of making connections enough. If you approach your media outreach with patience and warmth, journalists will remember you and they will go beyond writing a good story about you. In fact, they will be happy to help in different ways. For example, many of them will introduce you to people from their network, forward you emails about job opportunities, and invite you to industry events.
Conclusion
While good artwork can sell itself, the right PR strategy can put it in front of a wide audience and generate a buzz for any upcoming projects you have. Partnering with the right people and using PR for artists effectively will also help you make a dramatic impression in your industry and stand out from other artists.