The world has become too creative and many people offer goods for sale; even if this is creative work and even high art, today there is significantly more of it than there are people wishing to buy it. If there is no consumer, then there is no market either. One-off deals are not considered a market; demand must be constant, and it forms the vector of the industry's development. With the arrival of the virus crisis, it has become unreasonable to deny that the professional careers of artists and the way we present ourselves to the world and share our work have perhaps changed irreversibly because of COVID-19. One of the biggest questions: how will artists and creators adapt? How can the consumer find out about you and become interested in your product.
No matter what stage of your career you are at, networking will continue to influence a person's professional growth in addition to their skills and experience. In the end, one of the best ways to grow your client base, attract more freelancers and establish strong cooperation is building networks and using new connections.
"Networking is a relationship formed through shared stories and experiences. It is about building human connections, and not simply satisfying some need." - J. Kelly Hoey
It is unreasonable to deny that our professional career and the way we present ourselves to the world and share our work have perhaps changed irreversibly because of COVID-19. One of the biggest questions: how will artists and creators adapt? No matter what stage of your career you are at, networking will continue to influence a person's professional growth in addition to their skills and experience. In the end, one of the best ways to grow your client base, attract more freelancers and establish strong cooperation is building networks and using new connections.
Over the past twenty years, as we have witnessed the growth of digital media, our connections have undoubtedly grown. It has never been so easy to communicate with anyone from anywhere in the world. However, it can be difficult to understand how to build these relationships in a fully digital space. All of this, combined with the obvious obstacles thrown at us by the coronavirus and social distancing, can make the process of building connections even more daunting.
So how do we develop genuine connections in this digital age? Here are a few strategies that will help you maintain communication with the artistic community and beyond.
Go beyond fellow artists
One of the golden rules of networking is not to overthink it. The more diverse and the larger your network, the better. So do not communicate only with fellow artists — think outside the box. Find these potential connections on social networks by searching on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and other places for like-minded people who, in your opinion, will bring benefit to you and to your network of contacts. One of the best ways to interact with people is to be sincere with your audience: interact meaningfully and honestly, ask relevant questions. Present your creative work, write articles about your experience, about the creative process. Share information in live streams on the networks — content is everything when it comes to gaining a consumer.
Think locally
Today, when more and more people work from home, you have more opportunities than ever to communicate with people from your local community. Again, Facebook groups are excellent for communicating with residents in your immediate vicinity. We also recommend the Breakfast app; it will help you meet interesting people who live nearby. A similar app is Next Door, which works on a similar principle for those living in Europe and North America. Even if the people you communicate with do not belong to the same field of activity or industry as you, communicating with people located near you is an excellent opportunity to get a different view of your problem from someone from another industry. And as soon as the social distancing measures are eased, you may even be able to meet over a cup of coffee and strike up new acquaintances.
Do the work
There is no point in combining all these networking efforts if you do not have marketing tools ready to demonstrate your work. Make sure that you have a professional business card and, most importantly, an online portfolio. Potential clients must be able to find you on the Internet, and when they do, you need to be sure that you have made every effort by creating a well-composed portfolio.
Present yourself on art e-commerce platforms.
It is absolutely necessary to place your works on contemporary art platforms, such as our www.codeky.art, to present your works and your name-brand. The regular visitors of our platform, who are attracted by online advertising tools, will give you the possibility of a constant presence in search engines, where there is a huge number of consumers searching every day for unique goods. Perhaps they are searching for exactly your creative work. Besides a permanent online exhibition, you will get an online manager ready to advise buyers and sell your creative work 24/7. Such platforms will be able to sell your goods not only for ordinary currency but also for cryptocurrency.
Within the framework of such a transaction on the platform itself, using blockchain, you will be able to conclude contracts which in the future will make up the online provenance of your work. This is the principle of the currently popular NFT service, which issues tokens (contracts) for each unique transaction with a buyer; or you can purchase such a token yourself — it will be a unique "imprint" of your work on the internet!
