THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman: Most artists think that they need to post more on social media to sell their art, especially since you’re getting such garbage advice that that’s exactly what you need to do. More reels, more photos, more content. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that many artists have built their entire marketing strategy around posting, and collectors don’t buy art because you posted something, they buy because they feel connected to the work and confident in the artist. So today, I’m going to show you the five types of content that actually lead to art sales. Now this is whether you share them through your emails, your social media doesn’t matter how you share them because this is what triggers collector psychology.
Speaker 2: It’s The Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to The Inspiration Place podcast, an Art World Insider podcast for artists by an artist, where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now, your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman: Welcome to the inspiration Place I Miriam Schulman your host and curator of inspiration. Now, in case we haven’t met yet, I’m author of Artpreneur The Step by Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living from Your Creativity, and founder of the Artist Incubator Program, where I’ve coached hundreds of artists to attract luxury art collectors. And that is what we’re sharing with you today. Now, before we dive in, if you’re an artist who wants practical strategies for attracting collectors and selling your work, not just growing your following, make sure you hit the subscribe button. Every week on this channel, I break down what actually works in the art market. Now let’s get into it. First, we do have to understand something. Artists think that content marketing is a brand new thing, but it’s not. Direct response marketers have been around for 100 years and this is what makes people buy. There’s a handful of psychological triggers that consistently drive action. In other words, drive sales, story, relationship, social proof, repetition and scarcity and these five psychological triggers. It’s what’s going to drive every single post or email that you ever send. Collectors are not that different from other kinds of buyers. They collect when they feel emotionally connected to the artwork. Confident in the artist and slightly afraid that they might miss out. So instead of asking what should I post? You should ask instead what kind of message moves someone closer to wanting to own the artwork? That’s the lens for everything we’re going to talk about today. Hey artists, if you’ve been following me and realize, okay, I’ve been posting, but I don’t actually have a strategy for attracting collectors.
Miriam Schulman: I want to invite you to something special. I’m hosting a live VIP experience in May, where I’ll walk you through exactly how to attract luxury collectors. In other words, high end art collectors, not just followers. Inside this experience, I’m giving you my luxury Collector attraction kit, which includes the exact language to use when talking about your art scripts for reaching out to collectors and designers, and simple ways to position your art so it feels reassuringly expensive. Not awkward, not salesy. This is the system behind everything I teach. You can learn more at SchulmanArt.com/VIP. All right, now let’s get into the first type of post that drives sales. So before we get into the five pieces of content you have to create. Quick question for you. When you share your artwork right now, who actually engages with it? Is it mostly other artists or collectors? Let me know in the chat. Post type number one. The meaning post. The first type of content that drives sales is meaning. This is where you share why the artwork even exists, what inspired it, what it represents. So I’ll tell you like how a lot of artists I work with get confused. Like one artist I worked with, she thought she needed to be talking about like, why Barnes or why large art? And I said, well, tell me about where this barn is. Is this in Vermont? She said, yes, and she grew up there.
Miriam Schulman: I was like, okay, that’s what you need to post. Not why. Barnes. We’re not trying to sell them. On why they want to own a barn painting. We want to connect them with your story of growing up in Vermont. Or maybe they can relate to that because they spent summers in Vermont. Those are the people who are going to be drawn to your artwork. So why does the artwork exist? What inspired it and what it represents? So remember, I say this over and over again. I want to drill it into your heads. Collectors buy meaning not medium. So here’s an example. Instead of new barn painting finished today, you might. Right. When I painted this piece, I kept thinking about the feeling of the warm sun in my hair and the straw between my toes. When I used to visit Grandma in Burlington, Vermont, see the difference? Or perhaps something like this. When I created this piece, I kept thinking about the feeling of standing near the ocean at dusk. That moment when everything feels quiet and the world is holding its breath. Suddenly, the collector is not looking at a painting anymore. They’re imagining themselves inside of the experience. And this works beautifully in email because it feels like a letter. And historically successful artists have always done this. Henri Matisse regularly wrote letters to one of his biggest collectors, Etta Cone, sharing stories about his paintings and what he was working on. So this wasn’t a newsletter, but really he was doing the same thing.
Miriam Schulman: He was building a connection by writing. So let me ask you this. When someone discovers your work for the first time, do they immediately understand why it matters? The artist behind the art collectors. Also by The artist. They want to feel like they know the person who made the work. So another powerful post type is simply sharing pieces of your life as an artist. For example, what is your studio look like? What is your sketchbook? What’s the music you paint to? Is your dog sitting next to you in the studio? What is the ritual you do before you start a painting? Do you wear an apron? Do you light a candle? Do you open the window for fresh air? These are the things collectors are very curious about. So I was talking to one of my artists about this, and I said, it’s kind of like when you go to an author talk, the author doesn’t talk about sentence structure or iambic pentameter. So in the same way, the artist shouldn’t be talking about, I mix cadmium red with cadmium yellow. You shouldn’t be talking about process like a tutorial. When you go to an author talk. The most frequently asked question of the writer is what is your writing ritual look like? What time do you write? How long do you write? What are your rituals around that? That’s what they’re most interested in. And they’re most interested in that about artists as well. Visual artists as well. So I want you to notice what this is not.
Miriam Schulman: It’s not a tutorial. Collectors do not need to know how to mix cadmium red, but they love feeling like they’re getting a glimpse behind the curtain. Because collecting art is also about identity. People love saying, I know the artist who made that. Think about the last few things that you shared or you posted. So either emails or social media. Did this content help someone feel like they got to know you better, or were they just pictures of your finished art? Post number three. The evolution post. This one is subtle. Process posts do get lots of engagement from other artists, but not necessarily collectors. But there’s a version of this that works extremely well and that’s the evolution post. Instead of teaching technique, you show the transformation of the artwork. For example, let’s say it was a carousel post. Stage one early stage. Second slide. Halfway through. Third slide. Final piece. Or those could be three different posts. Or they can be three different emails. And it doesn’t have to be war. You can do all of that. Share it in email. Share it on social media. Chances are, people aren’t opening every single one of your emails, and they’re definitely not seeing every single one of your posts. Now, collectors love watching something become itself. I know I do. I love watching room makeovers. I love watching that whole process happen, that whole behind the scenes. But it’s not that I need to know how it’s done, it’s that I like watching the evolution.
Miriam Schulman: It’s like a makeover. Now, Matisse also did this. Matisse would send Etta Cone pictures of the art in progress, so I can’t remember off the top of my head if he sent her Polaroid pictures. I know they did have. Not necessarily Polaroid, but whatever they had back then, they did have some photography. When Matisse was doing his work. But he might have created small sketches for her that kind of showed what the artwork was going to look like. So he did this and it absolutely led to collection. There’s a reason why. Eta Cohen, who was so Uber wealthy, her family, the Cohen family. They supplied the cotton for World War One uniforms as well as Levi jeans. So, yeah, a lot of money. She could have afforded any kind of art she wanted, but at the end of her life, she had collected over 700 matisses and only 100 Picasso’s. Not because Picasso’s were more expensive back then. That’s not the reason, but because she had a relationship with Matisse. Matisse cultivated that relationship, and that’s why she bought more of Matisse’s art than Picasso. And like I said, she was so wealthy she could have had any artwork she wanted. And this isn’t about Matisse teaching ETA, how he created his blue nude or whatever it was that she collected from them. It’s about storytelling through transformation. Host number four. This is the FOMO post. All right. Here’s another question for you. When one of your pieces sells, do you actually talk about it publicly or do you quietly move on to the next painting because you have several opportunities? Every time something sells to talk about it, and that’s one of the biggest mistakes artists make, is not talking about those sales and not talking about it often enough.
Miriam Schulman: They just quietly mark something as sold and move on. Or they’re afraid it’s bragging. I’m not sure if that’s you. Write down why you’re afraid to talk about something that’s sold or afraid about your talk about your accomplishments. Sold artwork is incredibly powerful. It is the FOMO engine that keeps on giving because sold art creates social proof. So let’s talk about examples of this. A red dot on the wall. Packing the painting. A collector holding it at an art fair or an installation photo in the collector’s home. Psychologically, this signals something very important. People want your art. And when collectors see that other people are buying it, it increases their confidence in you. And it’s the same reason why restaurants with long lines attract more customers. Post number five multiple reasons to talk about the same exact artwork. Yeah, this is the one that surprises artists the most. And this goes back to what we were talking about earlier with direct response marketing is you need repetition, you need repetition. They think, oh, they need more content, like different content. No, no you don’t. You need more angles about the same artwork. So instead of showing an artwork once, you can create multiple pieces of content from one artwork. So let me give you ten different angles.
Miriam Schulman: You have the inspiration story, you have detail shots, you have the work in progress stages, you have the finished artwork, you have a framed version, you have the artwork installed in a room. You have scale reference, packaging, it for shipment, a solid announcement, and the collector installation. You see how that works. One artwork can easily generate ten pieces of content. Collectors rarely buy something the first time they see it. It is a truism in marketing that you usually need eight touchpoints before someone decides to make a purchase. So not just in the art world, in all purchasing decisions. They buy after multiple exposures. So ask yourself, how many times does someone usually see your artwork before you move on and start sharing about another artwork? This is exactly where most artists get stuck. You’re creating, you’re posting, but you don’t have a clear system for turning that visibility into actual sales. So that’s why I created the VIP bootcamp experience, because it’s not about posting more. It’s about understanding how art collectors think and how to position your work so it feels valuable before they ever ask the price. Inside this VIP experience, you’ll also get my Luxury Collector attraction kit, so you will all know exactly what to say in emails, inquiries and conversations with potential buyers. If you want help putting all of this into action, you can join me live in May. Go to SchulmanArt.com/VIP. Now let’s talk about what to stop posting. The biggest time waster I see artists posting is this.
Miriam Schulman: Finish this today. No story. No meaning, no context, no invitation. Just a photo and a title. Maybe the size. And that’s the kind of email or post that might get likes. Maybe, but rarely leads to sales because it doesn’t help the collector imagine the art in their life. Okay, my friend, if this episode is making you realize, oh my gosh, I’ve been posting randomly like random acts of marketing instead of communicating strategically, then let’s work on this together inside my artist bootcamp. Now I do the Artist bootcamp live three times a year, and there’s a live bootcamp coming up in May. You can learn more at SchulmanArt.com/bootcamp and then we can meet. But before you go, make sure you hit the subscribe because next week we’re diving into something every artist needs to understand. In the first 30s of seeing your art, collectors are already making a decision not about whether they like the art, but whether it feels worth it, worth the price, worth the space on their wall, worth being part of their collection, and that decision has a lot less to do with talent, and a lot more to do with how your work is positioned. Next week, I’m breaking down exactly how collectors make that judgment and how artists are accidentally sabotaging it. So if you don’t want to miss out, hit the subscribe. And if you like this type of content, give it a thumbs up. I’ll see you same time, same place next week. Until then, stay inspired. Bye for now.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on facebook at facebook.com/SchulmanArt on Instagram at @SchulmanArt and of course on SchulmanArt.com.
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