Get Your Online Portfolio Noticed - Promoting Yourself Through Social Media
Well done, you’ve created a website. Now it’s time to get your work out there. Even if you’ve kitted out your site with good SEO, it’ll be a small number of people that miraculously stumble upon your site through Google Search.
Now you have to share your work with the ideal social media accounts. This blog post will go through the social media accounts that best apply to a medical artist.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN, WATCH THIS VIDEO
The big game-changer for me was when I saw this talk by Michael Cuffe, who helps people grow their sites and art careers. What he's saying seems so obvious but I think it helped that he's packaged it nicely in this presentation along with real-world examples.
Academy of Art University's Tips for Building Your Art Career on Social Media >
RESOURCES TO HELP YOU WITH SELF PROMOTION AS AN ARTIST
After seeing's Michael's talk it helped me in my research into the world of self promotion. Below are some of the resources that I go to time and time again to read.
Google Small Business Youtube Channel
A dedicated Youtube channel to help small business owners promote their work.
Dear Art Director
I like this because it's comments from real art directors working giving their honest opinions about a variety of topics. The questions from the readers are great as some of them reflect my own thoughts as I've developed my site.
Creative Boom Tips
What started off as a small blog from one talented lady has now grown into an incredible resource for freelance artists. So many great articles to read about freelancing. Here is one particular article about self promotion.
Client from Hell Freelance Podcast
I'm sure most of you get some giggles (and sympathy groans) from the Clients from Hell website. What's fantastic is that the creator also has a super useful podcast where he talks with other successful freelance artists about how they work and promote themselves. Worth a listen.
Being Boss Podcast
What Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon have done is pretty unique, they've created this warm and inviting network of creative entrepreneurs through their weekly podcasts. They interview various freelance creatives as well as touch on more serious business issues that some of us (myself included) tend to avoid.
NOW THAT YOU HAVE THESE RESOURCES AT YOUR FINGERTIPS, LET'S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT HOW YOU CAN UTILIZE SOCIAL MEDIA TO PROMOTE YOURSELF.
SELF PROMO TOOL 1 - FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE (NOT PROFILE)
Facebook is the most easiest platform for promoting your work. It also has easy scheduling and tracking tools and allows others be your 'fans' without having to share your personal FB profiles with people.
Facebook fan pages are good for
Increasing your brand awareness
Figuring out what content is successful
free form of self promotion
FACEBOOK INSIGHTS (ANALYTICS)
Facebook analytics allows you to see the activity on your page.
How I use Facebook insights:
Track when my audience is online
Schedule posts weeks in advance (great for when you're going on holiday)
See what content is popular
Link to my other social media accounts
Increase traffic to my portfolio by linking back to my website
HOW TO USE FACEBOOK PAGES
Set up page and create some posts before you invite people to like your page.
Figure out when your audience is most active and schedule posts for the date and time
Begin off by posting once every two weeks and then move onto 1 post per week
Using FB insights to figure out what kind of posts are popular with your audience.
Do more of those posts.
Respond to your comments.
FACEBOOK FURTHER READING
Managing a Page
Growing Your Audience
Facebook for Small Business
10 ways to Grow Your Business with Facebook
FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM, LET'S BE FRIENDS
SELF PROMO TOOL 2 -INSTAGRAM
What's great about Instagram is that it's all visual and it's good for showing your process. It's also a great way of connecting with other artists and your fans and is another free form of self promotion.
HERE'S HOW I USE INSTAGRAM AS A FORM OF SELF PROMOTION:
Show daily work-in-progress (wip) shots of recent projects
Post images that might not go in final Portfolio page or of my side projects
Post images the reflect my personality
Promote finished projects by posting highlighted/closeup images
Call back to website for ‘further reading’
Organise image series with themes to promote illustrative look-and-feel
Connect with other medical illustrators and artists you admire
HOW TO POST ON INSTAGRAM
Postyour work in progress and final pieces
Post Photoshop layer breakdown videos
Post images and videos of your day-to-day
Post daily (1 to 3 a day ok)
Use hashtags: common ones #medicalillustration, #wip, #sciart,
Organise your images to go along with your other social medial posts
Put images that look visually similar
Like and follow other people’s work you admire
INSTAGRAM FURTHER READING
CONNECT WITH ME ON TWITTER
SELF PROMO TOOL 2 -TWITTER
Twitter is good for sharing your work and any of your news. In turn it allows you to connect with others as well as keep up to date with relevant events. It's also another free form of self promotion.
HERE'S HOW YOU CAN USE TWITTER AS A FORM OF SELF PROMOTION
Link with other social media accounts
Promote finished projects by posting links to your website for ‘Read More’ options
Share your visual and non visual work like blog posts, articles and useful resources
Follow pharmaceutical companies (potential leads)
Follow medical and non medical studios (potential freelance work)
Connect with other medical illustrators and artists you admire (potential collaborations and also work)
TIP: Twitter compresses banner images. If the file type is a jpeg, you will see a lot of artifacting. Use PNGs saved for web for your Twitter banners instead.
HOW TO USE TWITTER FOR SELF PROMOTION
Follow some sugested Tweeting guidelines
Tweets with images or gifs get more clicks
Retweet stuff you find interesting
Use hashtags: common ones #medicalillustration, #sciart
Organise your images to go along with your other social medial posts
Use Tweetdeck to schedule your posts
Engage with other users/studios
TWITTER FURTHER READING
Twitter Analytics
Twitter for Small Business
20 Essential Twitter Rules You’ve Probably Never Heard
Beginner’s Guide to Advertising your services on Twitter…
