Delivering added value to art lovers via your words.

It is human nature to desire added value for the exchange of money, including art collectors. When someone buys your art, for example, it is a purchase that is more than just the physical artifact. The collector is buying into a conversation.

The conversation begins between the art and the artist.

Art buyers also become part of an ongoing conversation about the work. Communications only exist with input from all parties otherwise they derail into pointless monologues.

Daily blogging provides intrinsic value to art buyers.

One way an artist can enable and enrich long, lively and mutually beneficial conversations is through the simple act of writing. This is most easily achieved by blogging and posting daily.

Every buyer should obviously be on your mailing list. To keep them engaged, you should continue to deliver what first attracted them to your work. This is most easily and best done when you extend the conversation about your art through your blog.

1. Clarity and understanding.

A large part of that attraction for buyers is insight, clarity and understanding. The insight into their lives that your art has given them, and then the added benefit of growing and nurturing that insight.

2. Enhance their knowledge.

Tell them the things that boosts their knowing. Let them in on things about you, your creative urges, your thinking mind that all goes into creating that process from which they have derived their valued piece. It's letting them in on the story, allowing them to feel that warm glow of being part of an elite club—an exclusive group of collectors of your art.

3. Give them stories to share.

Find ways to continue to give your buyers a story that they can share, because they will want to share it. They will want to tell those people who stop to inquire as to the origin of the piece in their front hall, or proudly standing centre stage on their sitting room mantelpiece. They will speak of where it came from, of the quirks of the artist and his motivations for producing such a piece.

They will know all this—because you have told them via your blog posts.

Your words will become part of their daily ritual, so much so that they will feel a pang of disappointment if you don't show up in their inbox.

4. Stories build and extend sales of your art.

In the telling of the story, other people become intrigued, because everyone loves a story. They too will want to share in that story, and the best way to do this is - to buy a piece of art from you of course!

So you're building your sales but, above all, you're providing that extra value that everyone who buy a piece of art is in some undeniable way buying a piece of the artist as well. You're in control of what you give and in doing so; you give generously.

5. Daily blogging locks in your sales and reverberates with buyers in intangible ways.

You keep the link with your buyers alive and give them that invaluable reassurance that they were wise in their purchase. You also keep the story alive in their heart's mind, which is true value-added.

Publisher's Note:

This guest post is written by Irish artist Jimmy Kelly.

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