Regardless of what the solution looks like your success ultimately depends on how well you customize the message and the call to action for each market; and decide the story, point of view, and design.  Ask yourself: Who is going to tell the story of the artist and art?  Who is the main character in this story and what are their wants and intentions? What are the most compelling, credible and remarkable storyboards you can invent and fashion? 

An artist’s real competition is not the artists down the street but indifference.  Unlike a 24 hour coupon for a free haircut, a final cancellation notice for cable, or only a few hours to get a 30 day free test-drive of a new application, art requires a personal context in order to be useful.  In other words, no one has to do anything when they get an email or postcard invitation to an exhibition, music recital, or new play reading. 

In art you can go in and out of view at various moments depending on the levels of indifference, even when using a tactic which brought great success a week earlier. The more networks and platforms you can utilize and the more time and resources you can dedicate to preparation, maintenance and analysis, the more impact you can expect from attempts to reach a higher level of visibility.

An artist always needs to give people a really powerful and engaging reason to listen and only then will their visibility, sales and clients grow.  Do it in a manner unique to the artist and how they work, and it will remain relevant and vital for years.

First rule of driving more traffic to your site and web profile is make it fast and easy for people to turn into your lane.  Provide users ease of access to whatever destination or landing platform you want them to find and don’t demand more than one or two pieces of personal information if you are trying to register them.  Your platforms should all be web enhanced, contained, current, and secure.

Social media outreach is all about driving more traffic to a destination and/or sales portal.  Your attempts at getting more eyes and visits to your website, for example, can be easy to track, see results, and easy to stop, redirect or switch up your tactics. Plan your schedule of posts and develop triggers and incentives. Don't be shy about incentivizing click-throughs with actual give-aways and useful information.

Your tactics become clear once you start to define and segment your markets.  Your desire to grow your audience base gets objective and you start to get closer to your audience and customers because you begin to see them in a more personal way and learn how to speak to them more exclusively.

Defining and segmenting your markets will improve your in-house communication and thinking, will let you better customize your content design and messages, and will give your campaigns, mailings, and general dissemination of material and information a much more effective and cost-efficient result. 

"Regardless of what type of artist driven and like-minded collaborative venture you have going, make sure your creative community and working culture is entrepreneurial and strategic. Whether you are energizing  a co-working space, neighborhoods, cities. regions, or a group of dedicated people, a great mission is a sustainable one."  - David Kent, CEO, Artist in the room

I have decades of experience building collaborative ventures in the for profit and non-profit marketplaces, specializing in projects and programs designed for audience and cultural engagement with a targeted market.  I understand mission and vision driven interests and know how delicate they can be.  

I specialize in understanding the players and constituents, setting organizational parameters, defining leadership roles, and long-term planning.  I help focus on ramp-up investments and development strategies that will solidify commitments from your various constituents and decision makers.  And I design hands-on maps and blueprints for groups of investors, Trustees and artists with structured planning sessions, mission statement reviews, organizational infrastructure analysis, and short or long range planning.  

Increasing the number of good leads and contacts on your mailing list is only hard work if you make it hard.  Otherwise, it should be a natural part of how you move and think, like walking and breathing.

You always need good, and often better, lists of people who want to come to your program of events or your upcoming show or performance.  There is a particular strategy we use to collect and sort names and data, and then upload them to the proper mail lists, categories, and classes of contacts.

Sometimes, depending on how secluded you may be, purchasing a list will make a difference you can see immediately and save you the cost of getting people's permission to contact them.  However, most of the time you are capturing names, incentivizing people to share their addresses, and working away with our methods a little bit every week.   

Artist in the room has its own data base of 7,000 industry professionals, art collectors, dealers, curators, artists and more, who subscribe to news we send out, when we do.  When we have followers within driving distance of a particular event and with expressed interests for information on a particular type of art occurrence and experience, we send them personal invites to attend.

Feeling divided, inconsistent and ineffective in message and presence? I can align your work and aspirations with a coherent brand position where verbal and visual perspectives fit together and agree. Using a variety of channels and services, including websites, responsive customer policies, venue and display designs, signage, and evocative images and symbols, I can generate an accurate and consistent voice and representative presence for you or your organization in the public marketplace.  

Be careful and exact when you select press for your area.  You want accurate information and images to tie in with your brand and positioning and the press can put a rock in that shoe, even with good reviews.  There are many kinds of press, print and online, including: arts, crafts and antique magazines; to news, lifestyle and ethnic publications; print, radio, television; online forums and blogs; and every other media outlet where the arts, luxury goods and travel are covered.  Press and media strategies work best if you can make personal contact once they have received their materials and show them you appreciate their work by offering to help with more information, seats, sessions, and other less publicly accessible information. 

Building a relationship with press and media professionals will help you find media outlets that will be genuinely interested in your story, work or event because you begin to understand where your art form, as an example, is of great interest to a media outlet, or how your media type, your region, or your personal story will come to interest their readers.

We have a large, general press directory as part of our data base, and more importantly, over a two dozen regional press directories we have developed over the past decade, and continue to expand, including:  Tucson, AZ; Chattanooga, TN; Philadelphia, PA; Dallas, TX; Atlanta, GA;  Fort Lauderdale, Miami and the Florida Keys, FL; Boston and suburbs, MA; Hanover, N.H., Burlington, Vt., Portland and south coastal Maine; Albany and Buffalo, N.Y.; Madison, WI;  Providence, RI; Hudson River region, N.Y.; Santa Barbara, CA; Portland, OR;  Charlotte, NC; and Lexington, KY.  

I take the angst out of deal-making for you, make it easier to set competitive prices, propose less traditional commercial  arrangements, close a deal, or interact with a new buyer or institutional spokesperson.  

I serve as Temporary Agent or Manager for you, negotiate on your behalf, manage the details, and finalize any deal or transaction, including the sale of art to an individual buyer, a corporate purchase of your work, gallery or museum representation and acquisition, merchandise licensing, and sponsorship solicitation.  

My goal is to always close the deal as quickly and productively as possible so that you can get to work, get paid, and be on your way to a new working relationship. In the end you get to focus on the art and related challenges and your clients are professionally served and happy.

Consider current and past buyers as the V.I.P. part of your customer portfolio and focus your time on existing and previous buyers.  Develop a separate and personal communication strategy to engage them by exclusively sharing special news, lesser-known services, private incentives, and gatherings and receptions.  

Find a method for follow-up calls, contact, and keeping fastidious notes within your CRM.  Existing customers can be fanatically loyal, repeat buyers, and the best referral service you could ever dream about having if you remain loyal to them.

Websites, blogs, and social media platforms build communities around them through the use of comments, trackbacks and ping backs. Successfully ramping up these digital broadcast venues requires that you generate a regular and consistent flow of thoughtful, intelligent conversation.  Think twice a day, 3-4 days a week minimum if you want to see an increase in revenues.

At Artist in the room we pride ourselves on finding the social platform that will work for you by simply helping you appreciate why you would use a specific social platform or service and who it is for.  In addition, we teach you the follower etiquette of a social application you need to learn in order to understand what users to these sites expect.  A good social media broadcast, like a good publication or letter, prompts action, has a decent LOC (life of content), easy to use infographics, and a pipeline for low cost virality.

At this time, we offer strong practices and planning for: You Tube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Vimeo, and Pinterest.  Our hashtag and follower management utilities currently includes: Google Analytics, Instatag, InstaFollow, Hubspot, Klout, PinReach, and InstaCap.

Artists are similar to innovators and scientists exploring and examining parts of what may be a new type of wholeness. What is great about artists is that they are ready to play at experimentation and rather than just producing a solution from the experiments themselves, the playing can become the solution itself. 

At Artist in the room, we understand how experimentation is a necessary solution for artists trying to gain more traction with an idea or process.  We will help support the need to try new things, encourage it, and treat its gains as valuable and needed resources.  

In the beginning we work to assess and establish the creative, operational and resource limitations; the as-is conditions.  You have to know normal before you can break normal and we use a variety of methods at the start of any job to verify and clarify information. Being prepared is critical for a flexible business approach and we rely on research, data analysis, and cash flow projections to keep us primed and ready. 

As early on as possible we want a good draft of a timeline, budget, sales capabilities and a starting strategy to define and segment markets and audiences. This allows us to generate feasible, new revenue opportunities that best match the artist's ambitions.

Through direct, face to face conversations and sharing of relevant materials, files and narratives, I start my long journey learning to identify, source and understand an artist's thoughts, intentions, facts, perceptions and creative habits and  preferences.  Together we learn to study, conceive and value the benefits of well-informed, comparative analysis between options and risks and build a plan of action you can afford to implement, maintain, and evolve.

Every entrepreneur has to have an exit plan; a time and way out of a failed investment.  You want to live and fight another day.  The only way to establish an exit plan is to have a budget and a schedule that goes everywhere you go.

Form a budget which allocates talent, labor, materials, and costs, and allows you to classify revenue, gross sales margins, or make after the fact classifications from unexpected expenditures and revenue and you have a reliable and up to date navigation and exit warning system built right in to the day to day decision-making process.  

Likewise, pitch perfect scheduling gives you time to pivot and go in another direction when it is needed.  Scheduling, in conjunction with budgeting, is the best way to keep things organized and on mission.  When you can schedule and plan contracted hours with clearly defined areas of responsibilities for all administrative aspects of an artistic venture, including the regular upkeep for such things as responding to comments, editing descriptions, and using meta-tags, you will eliminate daily bottlenecks, remain current and flexible, and keep all lanes in an out unobstructed.

We offer three hour private and group sessions where, for example, an artist will learn: how to use Twitter and what hashtags really are; how to elevate their LinkedIn presence and community; or what's actually needed to start a creative zone with other artists, businesses and organizations. 

Sessions currently include basic classes on:
LinkedIn; Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Mail List Management, Mail Chimp, Google Analytics, Forging relationships with Interior Designers, Corporate Collectors, Facebook [events and invites], Printed Press, Online Press, Blogging, Email campaigns, Budgeting and Quickbooks, Asana Team and Project Management, self-publishing and books on demand, crowd-funding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and scheduling and team and collaborative planning apps.

When your website is less an asset and more a reminder of the professional gap between your work and your online presence it is time to get help.  We help you choose and set up the design, architecture, images, e-commerce modules, profiles, information, blog and creative statements you need to rise up and match your current ambitions.  I work with many website platforms including Square Space, Word Press, Array, and IM Creator, and I am always prepared to investigate and consider other options that are equal in use, delivery, security, and design.

Design and implement creative marketing and promotional campaigns across as many networks and platforms that you can afford, maintain and track.

Create buying triggers around your art, such as desire and curiosity, and likewise triggers around incentives like exclusivity, urgency and involvement.  All are formidable ways to drive new traffic to a website or landing page and give people a good reason to follow your activities.

If you want to focus and make the very best of your dollars and time you need to see the returns from your actions and make sure they are doing what you believe they are.  For example do you know: if mobile traffic is up, where the new visitors are coming from, how high your bounce rate is, who is making return visits, and are they sharing or referring others?

It is important to be patient, disciplined, well informed and aware that information analysis across web managers, inventory platforms and various utilities like media trackers or Google Analytics test and measure the effectiveness of actions that can easily go unseen.  Don't disregard the impact information analysis can have when it is correct and equally when it is faulty.  Remain diligent and conscientious about the data you enter and you create good grounds for decisions, not just options.

Nothing feels more frustrating and incapacitating as a redundant, out of date, and poorly integrated set of system resources.  I prepare assessments of your digital acuity and presence, as well as a detailed analysis of your current software and on-line platforms, along with appropriate upgrades and installation of newly integrated and implemented assets and collaborative applications.  I use products that are easy to learn and in addition, I remain a free form of support as we tune up your competence and skills on any programs or applications we migrate in.

When you develop and prepare stories, headlines, hashtags, pins and arresting images for the public and the press, Art becomes news that can keep being news.

Providing people with an authentic account of who you are and what you create helps keep narrative details about your discoveries purposeful, persuasive and compelling. Whether it’s an email marketing strategy, a PR Campaign, a new website, or the documentation of a multi-year project or exhibit, you need to develop a persuasive message which can build your business, elevate and refine your creative proposition, and improve your bottom line.  Good news can reach a wide audience all by itself.

Technically, I am fluent in a variety of design, social media, data and inventory management applications; gallery|collector software; and e-commerce,  organizational, communication and web platforms and tools, including:

Square Space |  IM Creator | WordPress | Array |Mail Chimp |  Constant Contact | Asana | Fluid Surveys | Jot Form | Issu | Photoshop |  InDesign | Premier Pro | Light Room | Array | Google Docs | Google Analytics | Wordpress | Square Space | IM Creator | Mail Chimp |  Asana |Constant Contact | Fluid Surveys | Jot Form |Issu | Photoshop | InDesign | Premier Pro |Light Room | Google Docs | Kickstarter| Indiegogo | Quickbooks | Facebook |  Instagram |  Pinterest | Artsystems | Managed Gallery

Good research is invaluable and having a practiced and proven process for establishing search terms and limits in order to search and find relevant contacts and opportunities for your work and artistic occurrence can be the difference between expanding your presence and never getting out of the box to start. 

Search limits are mostly geographic boundaries and search terms are usually divided by the levels of research you are prepared to dig down to capture and can include any person or entity from professional associations and related commercial or educational entities to B2B opportunities to religious organizations and programming.  Using a search optimizer application we developed allows us to set search parameters and capture key names and titles, along with emails and phone numbers. 

SEO (Search Optimization) practices, when done correctly, utilizing trending tags and subject titles, can make a significant difference in less than three months but requires patience, perseverance, regular analysis, fine-tuning, and consistency.

Documenting a process for its experimental, teaching, and creative value can generate new audiences and opportunities. Chances to widen the understanding of the work you are producing is a potent addition to the dialogue, critical interpretation and legacy of you or your organization's art.  Producing material ways for others to follow and interact is always an effective educational and promotional device. 

Many artists overlook forget how curious most people are with how an artist creates and constructs their "magic" and documenting the unique strengths, science and skills an artist employs creating and finalizing their art, incites a feeling of relevance and validity among a viewing public, like infographics are excellent promotional tools on Instagram, for example. 

I make videos in both short and long form formats, from under a minute to three or six minutes in length.  What I make is intended for viewing at exhibitions, installments, or shows; as well as mobile placement on channels, websites and social media sites. 

Publishing books and printed materials are an excellent way to raise your visibility and extend the critical conversation around you and your organization's work.  In some cases, they can have commercial value but are always excellent calling cards, door openers, and visual and narrative records of an artist's presence. 

I design and edit all kinds of publications, books and printed materials for artists, galleries, collectors, donors and trade shows.  I create softcover portfolios and catalogs as well as softcover and hardcover books. I work seamlessly with Adobe In-Design, Photoshop and Illustrator to create beautiful, customized materials.  All books and larger catalogs can be on-demand, self-published, or a digital flip-through.

Click here and be linked to the design and publishing business I operate for art collectors.

When you feel stuck, hesitant or alone with your work picking up the phone and talking to a professional who understands the realities of your limits, can ask the right questions, clarify answers or mixed signals, and identify issues you could be overlooking is a good way to accelerate your plans and actions.  I can help you locate and address the areas most in need of immediate consideration and support and customize effective, action oriented ways to address the problems.

Phone sessions also help you commit and schedule a time to come to the table, articulate your thoughts, stop to appreciate the critical realities, test and re-examine new information and assess new opportunities.  Phone sessions work particularly well as a weekly or monthly scheduled "staff meeting" depending where you are with deadlines and timetables.  I come to the phone fully prepared with an agenda, updates, reports and relevant news.  We start each staff meeting the way we start everything: by confirming where we are and how we know we are succeeding.

30 Minute Call:
In a well prepared thirty minute call you can talk out the strength of the story behind your work and your creative ambitions, and even discuss issues related to improving productivity, such as: time and organizational administration, scheduling, home-studio or office practices, employee and vendor management, system challenges, messaging, and contract negotiations.

Thirty minutes is also a good amount of time to deal with an immediate issue requiring resolution, get a second opinion on options, or examine alternative opportunities and directions.

One Hour Call:
An hour conversation affords more time for someone seriously  interested in clarifying goals, understanding how their business is unique, developing sustainable skills to drive the business further, and building an analytic process which allows them to test before they leap.  It is also good for discussing work culture concerns, segmenting markets, and trustee, partner or staffing realities.

If you are within a one 50 mile driving radius I can come to you for an on-site meeting instead of a phone call.