Social Media for Digital Artists

Guest Post by : @ricklipsett

Some time ago, my friend Joseph Garrahan told me that we should create a blog for our Digital Artists Collective: UNDOdigital. At the time I was somewhat unaware of the potential that Social Media had. I had a personal page in Facebook, and one in Myspace for UNDOdigital (which I almost never updated) but that was about it. I did not realize that Social Media could have such a positive impact (if managed well) on our Artists Collective.

Today, I can honestly say that social media works. After we created the blog, and posted a few articles, I was afraid that no one was reading. Our message was getting nowhere. The few that knew us were the only ones reading. I wanted to make sure more people knew what we were up to, so after much inner-battles, I opened up a Twitter account.

The rest came soon afterwards. As I write this, our Twitter @UNDODigital has 263 followers, our Facebook Page (Facebook.com/UNDOdigital) page shows 202 likes, plus the RSS followers of the blog (35), casual visitors, etc… I know that some of our Twitter followers also follow us on Facebook, but not all. Actually the majority of our Facebook fans are NOT on Twitter. This is without counting our YouTube followers or the people who have listened to our podcasts on Audiofarm(Audiofarm.org/UNDOdigital).

All this can be really overwhelming, I’m the first one to say it. It’s a full time job to keep up with all social media channels. I mean, not only do we add content to the blog, but we follow up through social media, email, word-of-mouth, etc…

By now, the usual person asks me: Is it worth it? What’s in it for you? Well, UNDOdigital is on its way to becoming Puerto Rico’s only/leading front for Digital Art. The more people we reach through our efforts, the closer that goal gets. Let’s say we wanted to invite people to one of our Art Shows. Normally, or rather, traditionally we would invest in some flyers and/or invitations. A catalog would also be on the works as well as many other print media to let people know of the event. We now, don’t have to kill a forest to let people know of us. Through our social sites, at the very least, 500 people (and counting) will know of it. Social media works by word-of-mouth, so you can be sure, many will re-tweet, re-send, forward, etc, etc…

Also if, say a few of our followers need to know something art-related, is more than likely that they will reach any of our 4 writers and start a conversation on the blog, or via any of the other social websites we participate in. This helps in posturing UNDOdigital as a knowledgeable community in our area of expertise: Art.

At first, we envisioned these efforts only to promote our shows. In the long run, we’ve seen how we can do more good, by promoting artists from our group and out of it, cultural/art related events, we share trends, give out wallpapers, talk about art topics, start discussions, interview artists, and so on. I guess you could say that we got in sync with what Social Media really is by accident, but we got there. We now, share like crazy.

Results. That is what you must be thinking now. Well internet is a very analytical medium. We, at UNDOdigital, know how many people have visited us, from where, which browser they use, which connection speed they use, how many links they clicked, which posts are they’re favorites, how many time our tweets have been clicked, and more. We have and know it all. This gives us complete control over what we achieve with these sites. Of course all of this is long term. After all, Social sites are like dating. And dating is a process.

About the Author

Rick Lipsett – http://www.ricklipsett.com is an Illustrator/Graphic Designer/Digital Artist. Co-Founder of UNDOdigital; Puertorican Digital Artists Community. Fan of blogs, social networks and Del Eses(http://myspace.com/deleses). You may find him on Twitter as: @ricklipsett.