Social media is no joke especially for artists. I have seen
artists create HUGE online presence for themselves through twitter, facebook, youtube
and ning. 2 artists who stand out beyond most others are Gary Reef and Jared Knight,
add to this mix a variety of mixed media artists like Suzi Blu, Tam “willowing”,
and the Moores and suddenly you have 
opened the doors to artists who have learned how to use blogs, youtube,
facebook, twitter and ning to create massive audiences for their art.

Through these social media sites these artists sell online
classes, in person workshops, have regular chats, hell I think Jared Knight
posts more TwitVids of anyone I’ve EVER followed combined, link to Etsy shops.
Think Jessica Doyle who sells prints of her original works, does a large amount
of illustration work and sells her originals via Etsy and blogs and buzzes on a
regular basis.

Artists can’t stick their head in the sand about social
media it’s here and it can make a HUGE presence for the artist, boost sales and
make sales in ways you may never have thought of before. When I leave the
workforce in 2011 to pursue my Grad School dream I hope that at least partially
I’ll support myself via my social networking sites and Ning.

Why am I on this rant? Earlier today I posited the question
MassArt VS RISD for my grad school. I posted this via FB and Twitter. When I
posted it to FB I had a group of RISD grads chanting RISD! RISD! RISD! While,
one lone MassArt undergrad said she loved it there. (She was also my former
student whom I sent to MassArt and continue to be friends with.) Now with FB
you could say it’s biased by my friends list, I have more RISD grads on my list
than MassArt grads. Thinking of this I posted the same thing to twitter. This
is where it gets interesting.

Within minutes of the posting I had a host of interesting
answers from several people across the country. Some of my regular twitter
friends* commented and of them, every single one said the same thing RISD.
Within a half hour I had a faculty member tweet at me RISD. I made a tongue in
cheek comment and he tweeted back at me. (you see this is how TWITTER works.**)
By the time I got home a former RISD student had tweeted at me. Get this: not
one comment from MassArt, period.

So I searched for MassArt while posting the question, is
MassArt on twitter, do they check for the tweets that mention them? I found
MassArt and followed them. A couple hours later they responded, asking me what
I was looking for. I wanted to tweet back at them; you kind of missed the point
and the boat.

My thought for the day is that if an artist isn’t on social media
pimping their work they are MISSING the boat and the point just like MassArt
did today. If an artist doesn’t blog, facebook or tweet they should. The same
for institutions like colleges and universities. Every institution SHOULD have
a social media person checking FB, twitter, etc every couple hours for people
like me positing questions to the masses. Then they should interact.***

*By regular twitter friends I mean people I regularly tweet
with, chat with and maybe have even DM or emailed. These are people I “know”
better than the average people I follow.

** Twitter works by building relationships 140 characters at
a time. Your fans/followers can see into your brain one little nugget at a
time. You up the ante every time you tweet back at them. When this RISD faculty
member tweeted at me, I followed him. He gets it.

***You all know I work for a massive multinational company. They watch their tweets, they watch facebook, they google themselves multiple times daily so they are on top of the social networks. If someone tweets something positive they are on top of it, if negative the same. It's an amazing thing. It's not just one person either. They have a network of marketing people keeping an eye on this and reporting into a central person who will then take an official stance on a subject.  When was the last time you googled your own name? When was the last time you did a twit search for your name, no hash tags, no @? Take a few minutes and search for yourself, see what people say, then respond. This is HOW social networking WORKS. IF you aren't on top of it, you are missing the point and you SHOULD continue to stick your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist.