As an independent artist, self-promotion is necessary to getting your work out there and helping you find an audience. To some, it may feel uncomfortable and unnatural. But marketing your work is an essential part of being a successful artist. And honestly, it can end up being pretty fun and painless.
The Redbubble marketplace features as many independent artists as possible on the site, promos, the blog, and elsewhere. But with a community of over 600k artists (and growing), marketing for yourself is the best way to sell your work while building a supportive and passionate fanbase. Here are a couple of handy ways you can spread the word about your Artist shop.
- Sharing on Social Media
- Promotional Images
- Link to your portfolio from your own website or blog
- Posting to Facebook
- Tags
- Title and Work Description
Sharing on Social Media
Some artists have success using various social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. If you have discovered some inspiring artists on the Redbubble marketplace, check out what they’ve done with external marketing. They can be a great resource to tap into and learn from.
You can also add links to your profile page for various other websites - Flickr, Behance, Instagram, Dribbble, etc. Just enter these URLs in your Link to Other Sites page.
Promotional Images
With promotional images, sharing your awesome art is easy. Simply pick a template, use Adobe Photoshop to place your artwork into the template, and voila! You now have a lifestyle image ready to share on Tiktok, Pinterest, Insta, etc. Find more information, a how-to video, and a collection of templates on your promotional images page, or read about it on our blog. *Tip* When sharing add #findyourthing for maximum reach!
Link to your portfolio from your own website or blog
Have your own website or blog? You can connect it to your Artist shop by copy and pasting the embedded script to your site. This will display your designs and let your audience know they can purchase it.
Posting to Facebook
Adding a link to your work via Facebook is super easy. Here’s how it’s done:
- Copy the address of your Artist shop.
- Paste it as a status update to Facebook.
- Replace the Internet address with a charming message that lets your fans, friends, and family know that they should grab a few products featuring your work from your Artist shop. Be sure to let people know if there’s a sale going on, when possible.
- A preview of one of your works will appear in the box. Click through the arrows to find the design that best catches the eye of a potential customer.
- Click Post and wait for fortune and fame to come rolling in. Or some virtual pats on the back. Both are nice.
Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections. Users can add works that have the Pin It button to one of their own boards on Pinterest.
Actively sharing and promoting your products via social websites such as Pinterest can improve your sales. If Pinterest isn’t for you, you can opt-out by going into your account settings. Here’s how:
- Hover over your avatar, located on the top right of the page, and select Account Details.
- Once on the Account Details page, scroll to the heading Image Settings, and select the box titled Hide 'Pin It' button and prevent pinning on my works.
- Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page and the Pin It button will no longer be available for any of your works.
Tags
If Twitter or Instagram are your thing, you’ll know that tags are a great way for like-minded folks to discover and interact with your work. The same goes for Redbubble.
Have an image of a clever fish reflecting on the philosophy of life? Put yourself in your prospective customer’s shoes. Who are you trying to reach? What words will they use to find your design? How would you describe your image in just a few words? Ask yourself these questions and create a list of 5-10 keywords.
Your design could attract people interested in marine biology, philosophy, or hardcore fish fanatics. You never know. “Philosophical fish,” “School of fish,” “marine biology,” are some great descriptive keywords to start with.
Most importantly, do not abuse the tags section. For real. This is a bad idea. More tags does not necessarily mean more customers - that’s what self-promotion and social media is for. You can learn more about tag spamming here.
Also, keep things fresh. Take a look at your tags and ask yourself, how do I stand out from the thousands of other independent artists on the Redbubble marketplace? A search for “fish” will give you tons of artwork to sift through; a search for “philosophical fish” is more specific and weirdly meaningful to a potential customer.
The more specific you can be, the better.
Title and Work Description
Your customers might want some insight into the creation of your philosophical fish. Tell its story in your work title and your description.
Work titles and tags are automatically translated depending on the user browsing language (French, German, Spanish, and English!)
This gives your designs a better chance of ranking higher in search results in more locations, and can improve the experience for people viewing Redbubble in other languages.