Lesson 3

Getting press coverage is one of the most essential topics for an artist today

As we live in an oversaturated entertainment world, getting press will allow you to stay relevant -and interesting enough- for your audience. Press doesn’t only provide a unique distribution, more or less substantial, it establishes authority.

Authority is what you’re looking for when you’re not already well-known.

Even if you have solid education credentials, and maybe a few exhibitions before you, that doesn’t establish any authority per se. Unless you were noticed at a major international art fair, press is still the path to success for an artist today.

Even if social media totally changed the art game since the 2000s, they’re still not strong enough to obtain that authority. Given anyone can buy fake likes, or at least use Facebook/Google advertising, metrics don’t mean that much. If a very bad artist spends $10.000 in ads, he will be able to gain followers and social attention, but it won’t help regarding establishing authority -and, as a consequence, sales.

However, it’s not that difficult to get press nowadays.

As there are literally millions of different media outlets out there, in various forms (tv, radio, magazines, podcasts, blogs…) you can always find some of them that could be interested in what you’re doing now. Of course, they give strongly unequal results and relative authorities, but keep in mind you need those smallest outlets in order to have, later, major ones.

How do the media work?

Aside from current affairs, they’re looking for new and/or surprising talents. You don’t need to have dozens of quality artworks, and your followers count doesn’t mean that much. If you’re consistent, and are doing something seriously, you’ll be able to get some media’s attention quite easily.

How do you proceed?

As a matter of fact, journalists and editors’ emails are quite easy to find. They all come with the same kind of structure -e.g. “firstname.lastname@medianame.com”- and you can always try different variations to be sure you reach them. You can also use Google to check everything before you send any message. It’s a super, super easy task.

Anyone can contact any journalist, and you don’t need a publicist or a press officer to do so. If you know someone who can act as your agent/manager, that’s even better, but that’s absolutely not necessary. We recommend you use a classic but still very efficient email structure like:

“Hi, my name is Rachel Green, I’m a painter and I just read your interesting article about X topic. It happens that I recently finished a brand new series about Y and Z, and that could be of your interest. Do you mind if I send you a link to my portfolio? Feel free to let me know if you need any more info, I’ll be more than happy to answer you! Best, Rachel.”

See? It’s super easy, and believe it or not, as long as your message is short, straight-forward and polite, you have good chance of receiving an answer. And even if you don’t, that’s ok, as you always want to send this kind of message to 10 or 20 different people at the same time. With just one answer, you can have an article about something you do in the following weeks.

The problem is: most artists never do this.

As we already mentioned before, they often have big ego and don’t feel comfortable reaching to people they don’t know like this, with what we call “cold emails”. That’s such a pity. When you’re an up and coming artist, you should regularly do this to attract press’ attention, and get some articles about your work.

Most of the time, you won’t see immediate results.

Again, it’s ok. Given the world we live in, with dozens of social apps and lots of more important concerns for everyone, you won’t get signed to a major gallery just after you got a blog review. BUT, if you get press consistently, you progressively build that necessary authority, and one day, when you’ll contact a gallery, to submit your best work, they’ll be able to read things about you on Google. That’s how it works today.

Even the smallest blogs and press outlets can have, in the long run, a very strong impact on your authority. If you combine that with a solid social media strategy, the results can be quite quick.

But again, no one can do that part of the job for you. Keep in mind that the world doesn’t care about what you do, since you’re just another struggling artist like millions of others. It’s your mission to show how special and different your work is, in order to get people’s attention.

Our world is, in fact, full of new possibilities for artists. But they do have stronger competition. That’s why you should always think about multiple types of media when you want to promote something and get press: blogs, online magazines, print magazines, radio channels, tv channels, podcasts, etc. And you should always have multi-levels strategies: mainstream media, niche media, national outlets, local outlets, etc.

Don’t just use one level, always combine different ones to increase your success rate (success = press article, FYI).

The only question that you should ask yourself is: how often should I send those messages/press releases? There’s no unique answer, basically. You should try to get press EVERY TIME you have something new and substantial enough. Of course, if you don’t receive any answer from a said journalist, don’t spam them again the following week, but you can always send them additional requests several months later, for instance.

You must also clearly understand how the media work.

Journalists are constantly looking for fresh and interesting news/creations. Therefore, it can be hard to have someone’s attention immediately. It’s ok. You’re not Jeff Koons, so you should be able to adapt to a media’s own schedule. Again, put your ego aside.

To sum up:

1. Getting press coverage is still essential for an artist today
2. You should frequently be sending new info/materials to media outlets
3. It’s ok to contact journalists you don’t know as long as your message is relevant and short
4. You can follow them up on a regular basis, but don’t spam them
5. Keep in mind your ego is very often slowing the whole process.

You want to start establishing authority as an artist? Start today. Sending emails don’t cost any money.

Recap

Homework

For this lesson, you need to start contacting press outlets of your choice. If you’re not ready yet, you can start the process by doing a research in order to build a list of all the different media you’d like to contact later.

It can be: blogs, magazines, radio or tv channels, national or local media, podcasts, Instagram accounts, etc.

If you do the work seriously, you should have a list of at least 30 different media, with multiple levels (international, national, local…).

If you feel you’re ready, you can start contacting them with “cold emails” using the structure we mentioned in the lesson.