Artists Online: The New Marketing Majority
An artist finishes a piece, except it isn’t done in oils or pencil. This piece was made editing a digital photograph in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. The artist then posts it for sale on Etsy and uploads it to her portfolio on Behance before advertising the piece to her followers on Instagram.
This is a snapshot of professional art in the 21st century. Gone are the days of the starving artist who must go from show to show to sell enough work to get by, or never sell any at all. The entire process from creation to the sale of the work lives online, and if people who like the artist’s work exist, they will find each other through Instagram popular pages, filtering through Etsy or the discovery of an artists personal site or blog. A common saying in the information and social tech conversation is that “the world is getting smaller”, but it surly seems that for artists, they are just getting bigger. Establishing a following via social media and selling work online is the new norm, but this is only the beginning of the shift for artists.
As tech continues to advance into new industries, the demand for art related skills will also rise. Content creators; artists, photographers and designers, are not only becoming a marketing asset, but are turning into marketers themselves. While jobs in graphic design are growing at an average rate, the demand for content creators and product designers in tech seems to exceed this immensely. Going to any tech event or meet up, it is not uncommon to find just as many designers and front end developers as full stack or back end programmers. And as far as the marketing utility goes, just look to the new celebrities born out of the internet. Vine, Youtube and Instagram stars represent the forefront of influencer marketing and attract eyeballs from to the photo and video content they put out. While artists individually will not likely be used in the same way, the content they create, in the forms of photos, digital designs and artwork, are becoming ammunition for marketing.
One of the biggest changes might be in the fact that artists seem to be getting more real world experience in business sooner than a lot of business students are. Young artists are creating online networks through social media and e commerce sites and learn what works and what doesn’t both in terms of the content they push and they way they push it. This change is by no means new, but it is only going to continue.
