Making Yourself Discoverable as a Creative

Your success as a creative—an artist, designer, craft maker, tarot reader, or similar—depends more on your ability to find an audience than it does on how good you are. Essentially, unless you practice a unique art or craft, there are countless other equally talented people doing what you do. Your ideal audience or customer base is likely spoiled for choice. To stand out, you’ll need to make yourself discoverable—which requires serious marketing chops.

A Spacious Place offers a creating connectivity course to take your creative business to new heights. Learn critical skills that help you shine, from interpersonal relationship management to out-of-the-box thinking to create better. In this mini-guide, we offer expert suggestions on how you can make yourself findable as a creative:

Get serious by—constantly—putting yourself out there

First and foremost, persistently put yourself out there. Share your creations, don’t be shy, and just focus on tooting your own horn a little, even if you aren’t feeling as confident as you could be. If you create music or art, you could share song snippets or pictures that you’re proud of. If you sell a service, share a video of a session in action. Set up profiles on leading social media channels. Have a website, blog, or podcast. Focus on communicating who you are. Keep doing it long-term, until you build up a solid repository that will act as a portfolio cum audience magnet for years to come. 

Create a brand identity

A brand identity is more than a logo or product, says bynder—it’s the general impression you leave on your consumers and what differentiates you from the competition. All the most successful creatives on the planet, from singers like Taylor Swift to artists like Takashi Murakami, focus on their branding. It’s what makes them memorable and enables them to form an emotional bond with their followers. As a creative, figure out what’s at the heart of your offering. Then turn it into your identity and let it accompany you everywhere. 

Have a website or a blog

Your website or blog can be an enormously useful asset. Not only does it allow people to get to know you, but it can help you establish yourself as an authority in your niche. Depending on your line of work, you could even sell your creations directly on your site. Lastly, your site could automatically attract customers from search engines. Make sure your website looks beautiful, and follow SEO best practices to increase your search rankings.

Use high-quality images or videos

Human brains are wired to be responsive to images, reports Canva. A high-quality picture or video gives customers an in-depth look at what you do, heightens the user experience, and makes you seem more professional and reliable. Your online promotional content should always be accompanied by a high-quality snap.  

Cross-promote

Cross-promotion is having another creative promote you in exchange for you promoting them. This can be a highly beneficial strategy. You get access to a ready-made user base. Furthermore, the association with a respected creative can be good for your reputation. For the best results, make sure you pick a creative in a complementary but non-competing niche.  

Be practical and set up your own business

If you’re serious about making money from your creative skills, you would do well to set up a lifestyle business or similar. It’s only when you treat what you do like a business will you make money from it. Start by making a business plan, which is a document covering all the practicalities of doing business and being profitable. It will allow you to figure out essential specifics on becoming commercially viable, from market research and product development to sales and customer engagement.

Use an invoicing software to stay in control of your finances

Invoicing software is an essential accompaniment for your business. It will allow you to keep accurate books, figure out your profit margin, and make it simpler for customers to pay you. Always choose software for invoicing with online payment support, notifications for customer invoice views and payments, and the ability to schedule invoicing for recurring payments.

Conclusion

Don’t forget to believe in yourself. Inject enthusiasm and confidence in everything you do. Self-belief can be a very attractive quality to have and will shine through your creations. If you value your offerings and take pride in your work, your creations are bound to fly off the shelves.