Artists - Promote your work with a Slideshow

Hi All - It's been a busy week and I've been a slacker getting the Tom Kbrink Illustration Blog updated.   But what can you do...busy is a good thing.

Something that came up recently for me is putting together presentations or slideshows.  I never dreamed I'd be getting back into the presentation business, but I'll take it.  So here's how it happened.  I'm a member of the Artists Marketing Resources (AMR) group on Linked In, where we decided to put a slideshow together to promote group member artwork.  Being one of the group managers and having plenty of experience, I volunteered to help.  So I dusted off the old presentation skills, fired up Power Point and rolled up my sleeves.  As a result, we (the AMR group managers), put together a slideshow presentation featuring the work of our group members.  We soon found the show went over very well.  They even let an old illustrator like me in the show (most of the work was Fine Art).

Slide from the AMR slideshow featuring my personal logo artwork and info about the piece

So, you may ask...why put together a slideshow?  What do I do with it?  For artists its a great way to display your work(illustration portfolio or fine art collections), and share it.  A well done slideshow can be portable enough for email, and can also be shared on social media sites (I was told recently there's 54 major sites - and it's growing).

The great thing about social media is there are so many ways of getting the work out there; here are a few examples of what we did.  First, I posted the show on the Slideshare website and linked it to my Linked In profile (so people visiting my profile can view it). Check it out:  http://slidesha.re/hNfGTq   In that location, I can share the link/URL with anyone I wish or post it on other social media venues.  I can email the URL to prospective clients also and give them easy access to my work.  One of the great advantages is that I can put together a taste of my work or highlight a certain collection in a slideshow and share it with the world, without having to set up an entire web site.

Screen snapshot of our slideshow in the Slideshare program.

A friend and colleague of mine Marie Kazalia is an artist, who also represents artists and helps them market their work.  We worked together on the AMR artist slideshow.  Seeing the potential in this media, she and I recently started offering professional slide presentations to artists thru her web site:  http://transmediartistmarketing.org/wordpress/artist-cddvd-services/     This service is an inexpensive and can be an easy way for an artist to share their work, without a lot of expense.  Ultimately it offers a lot of flexibility in marketing their own work as well.

So dust off that copy of Power Point, or hire someone like Marie or me and get your work out there - there's 50 million people out there waiting to see your stuff!!
Until next time...have a great one,
Tom