Presenting at Utah Watercolor Society - Social Media for Artists

Last night I had to opportunity to speak to the members of the Utah Watercolor Society (UWS) about using various social media platforms to promote and market your artwork and yourself as an artist. What a great experience for me and such a fun night! 

Of course, in all the effort to get my presentation set up, my iPad set up to record a video of my presentation (which, unfortunately stopped recording after 5 minutes - I'll have to figure that out), and getting ready to speak...I didn't think to take a "selfie" with myself and the group of wonderful UWS members who attended the meeting.  DUH! Very UN-social of me! So, I will be depending on the photos taken by others who were in attendance. (Thank you!)

What makes me a social media expert? I'm not, really. Just a user who has been blogging, Facebooking, Twittering, and Pinteresting for a while to promote my artwork. I just happen to have a little bit more knowledge and a little bit more experience than many of those who attended. So, I said I would be willing to share what I have learned to the group. Luckily, I had a lot of positive feedback, so I will presume it went well! :)

I have been fortunate to have the opportunity recently to attend some social media training sessions and also listen to a webinar on the subject of various social media and how they are used both in the professional media business world and the art business world. Add to that the 5+ years I have spent learning (through much trial and error) the various platforms that I currently use in my artistic endeavors, and then a fair amount of internet research on the different platforms, and I was able to compile a decent deck of information for the UWS April member meeting...all boiled down into a 90 minute presentation!

The bulk of the information included in my presentation is compiled from other sources (online and otherwise), and I have tried my best to give source credit on each page. Additionally, I added a page of useful links (some of which were also sources), and tried to include several visual examples throughout. (We are artists after all! Visual creatures are we!!) I also made a few copies of one of my LinkedIn blog posts which was relevant to the presentation for distribution for those who were interested.

Overall, it was a great exercise in public speaking for me and I learned even more about using Social Media than I had previously gleaned from training and webinars. As they say, if you really want to learn something, you should try to teach it to others. So true! And there is still so much more left to learn. :)


Click here to view my LinkedIn blog post What Do You Want To Achieve With Your Social Media?

Click here to view my Social Media for Artists presentation (or click the pic below). I hope you might find some of the info useful and welcome your comments or feedback or suggestions.

Special thanks to marketing and social media gurus Tracey McCormack, Bill Carmody, Stefan Lubinski, Barney Davey, and Lori McNee for useful tidbits of information about various social media platforms! (And, of course, to Google, for making research about any topic easily accessible with a few mouse clicks!)

Thank you to Catherine Darling Hostetter, Colleen Reynolds, Kristi Grussendorf, and Brienne Brown for allowing me to use your Social Media images in the presentation! 

Special thanks also to Sherry Meidell and Julie Ickes for taking photos during the presentation (and for allowing me to use them for this blog post)!

And a big thank you to the awesome members of the Utah Watercolor Society who attended the meeting, asked great questions, and gave me very kind feedback afterwards. I enjoyed the evening immensely because of you!

Images sources are from public domain. Copyright belongs to respective photographers/designers.

As always, thank YOU for stopping by my blog!