In the modern age, having an online profile is a key factor in success. It opens a world of opportunities to businesses – big and small. For this article, we will be focusing on how to raise your online profile, as an artist.
So – what is an ‘online profile’? It is how you present yourself online.
Being able to raise your online profile and get your art into the eyes and hearts of more people is crucial for awareness and for sales. To do this you have to have an online profile in the first place. In this article, we will assume you already have some sort of online profile and will concentrate on things you could do to improve it.
Collaborate with other sources
Collaboration online is a big opportunity to increase awareness of your artwork, gain online authority and create those all-important backlinks! A couple of top tips when collaborating with others, from a technical point of view, would be to provide trackable links if possible so you can clearly see in your analytics where it has come from and what value they are bringing to you. You should try to ensure that the link text (The text that people will click to get from the other website to yours) is truly clear on where you are taking them and not just ‘click here.’ A good example of this could be if you want to let people know your exhibition dates use: ‘see Joe Blog’s exhibition dates’.
Google have a handy guide to creating trackable links too.
You can contact other websites/artists directly to see if they would be interested in collaborating or sharing your content or you can simply put high quality content out there with an open invitation to share it. You do lose some control that way, but you may find that the effort of reaching out surpasses your time allocated to marketing.
Compare your output with your ‘competitors’
In the digital world it is important to have a look at our competitors to ensure we are not behind the times. A competitor does not just mean someone who is doing exactly what you are doing; it means a website that is targeting the same audience as you are.
You could do this by doing a monthly website comparison of your competitors key landing pages with similar pages to your own. If you have an SEO tool such as SEMrush you could compare their keywords, traffic, authority, and visibility with your own. They also give you tips on what you can do improve. Alternatively, you can use the performance section of Google Search Console to explore and see your search keywords and rankings for free.
You can also go into your social media profile’s insights (such as Facebook). This will show you how many followers/subscribers your competitors have in comparison to you, how much they are posting in a week and how well their audience is engaging with them. This information will help you when choosing your own content to post because you will see what works best for your audience.
Create interactive content
Interactive content is anything that evokes engagement from your audience. This will not only give you someone to talk to in this lonely digital world, but it will also signal the search and social media algorithms (who love engagement) and they will prioritise you.
This type of content can be difficult to see the immediate benefit of as it is time consuming and hard to track – however it is known to be a key for lead generation and gaining that all important customer loyalty.
Interactive content ideas include competitions, quizzes, polls, infographics, events, awards, or tools such as online colour wheels.
Promote yourself with targeted ads
If you have the budget, the best way to raise your online profile initially is with targeted advertising on search and social platforms. The algorithms make it so those that pay are always going to get the best visual spots and priorities.
To make the most of these platforms, unfortunately, the advice would be an essay by itself, however – in short, start with a small budget, design your audience based on your audience profile and lookalike audiences and be prepared to tweak and edit your ads constantly for best results.
Track your progress with analytical tools
There are a wide range of tools available to track your online success, including Google Analytics, Facebook analytics, Instagram analytics, Google Search Console etc. It is important to utilise these tools by becoming familiar with your traffic, revenue, and any other key metrics you might deem important so that you can know your base and tag your campaigns in these profiles so that you can track the success of each of your changes.
For example, if you spend 5 hours on content for your website but over a few months it gets no traffic, that will tell you that you need to promote it more via socials, emails, or other marketing techniques for it to really have been worth the investment of your time.
If using email marketing, use them to inform and nurture their interest
If your audience has trusted you with their email, whether through a purchase or organic interest, it is important to make sure the emails they receive are in line with their expectations. We all receive so many ecommerce emails now it is easy to be ignored, unsubscribed and unopened. You need to build loyalty with your customers by providing them with quality information and content that they believe they should expect from you – and if you wish to up-sell yourself in them, do so in a delicate worked-in way.
Using this tool to increase your traffic will all work towards raising your online profile as it shows direct, engaged interest in your content – this in turn should help with your website authority and your overall view from search.
Catch up with our recent seminar on email marketing for artists for more advice on building and nurturing an email list.
Encourage reviews online
Finally, online reviews are excellent for raising your online profile. The complimentary reviews increase the trust for you online and how you respond and interact with any bad reviews tells people a lot about who you are too. To get reviews you can email opted in customers asking for a review, you could have a link on your website, or you could ask them in person at an event for example.
Raising and building your online presence might seem scary but by taking a few steps mentioned above you can grow and reach a wider audience, targeted at your specialist area, and increase the likelihood of conversion as well as artist awareness.
