One of the primary challenges art gallery owners talk to me about is how to find new art collectors. With more buyers online, content marketing is one of the most effective strategies for getting noticed by collectors. The humble blog continues to be a big part of an art gallery’s content marketing success. Establishing a blog could be an excellent tool for attracting new collectors to your gallery.
In this article, I want to talk about exactly how blogging is important to your gallery’s ability to generate new leads for your artist’s work and why having an active blog should be in your art gallery marketing mix.
There are four primary ways blogging helps your art gallery generate leads:
- A gallery blog drives prospective online art buyers to your website to learn about you and gallery artists and engage with a well-placed call to action.
- It helps your art gallery’s SEO in a big way.
- An art gallery’s blog provides additional value to art collectors through educational content that enables them to connect with your artists in new and meaningful ways.
- A blog allows you to demonstrate your expertise and authority, which helps nurture trust in a buyer’s mind.
Let’s look at each of these four benefits a little closer, so you can see how best to use a blog to find new art collectors for your gallery business.
Increases Online Traffic to Your Gallery Website
The goal of all your marketing efforts is to generate leads and get them to take the next step towards acquiring a piece of art. Right?
A blog gives you another layer of content to host on your gallery’s website to share on other marketing channels like social media or your newsletter. On your website is where leads can take action. Readers are more likely to share a blog post they found interesting with friends.
With a blog, you can share snippets or teasers about the post’s topic and what a reader will gain from clicking over to your website to read the whole post. Once on your site, encourage engagement. That can be adding links to other relevant pages on your site or placing a call to action to join your mailing list, follow the gallery on Instagram, request more information, etc.
A blog is an opportunity to share fresh, insightful information with your followers and mailing list on your other marketing channels to encourage leads to begin their customer journey with your gallery.
Increase Artist Visibility Online and Improve Gallery SEO Rankings
An art gallery blog is a powerful tool that can help increase your visibility online by improving your SEO. Having more content-rich pages on your website tells search engines that your website has a lot of value for relevant search inquiries. It also strengthens your ability to use keywords, such as your artist’s name or niche in the art market.
Once you have selected a topic to write a blog post on, consider how someone might type a search into Google or Bing on this topic. That will become your keyword focus for the post.
To optimize your gallery’s blog posts for SEO, focus on a single longtail keyword phrase (two or more words), such as “abstract painting artist john doe”. Once you have your keyword phrase, include it in:
- your headline
- the URL of your blog page
- 2-3 times within the post itself
In your headline, try to include the full longtail keyword within the first 60 characters, if possible. This number of characters is what you see in search results. Your headline can be longer, of course, but you want to try to catch the eye of a prospective lead searching online. Search engines also look at URLs for keywords as part of how they rank results, so your longtail keyword should be included there as well.
Increases Value your Art Gallery Provides Collectors
A blog is a perfect way for collectors and leads who are just discovering your gallery or an artist you represent to get better acquainted with what you offer. Value can be found reading fascinating stories about a technique the artist is experimenting with or about how an artist was inspired.
Your gallery’s blog posts can be more in-depth on a topic than you might include other places on the website. Discussing a single work of art, for example, vs. a body of work as a whole. You could also select a particular aspect of an artist’s career and elaborate on it, such as an artist residency or trip that influenced their work.
The artwork that one chooses to collect is so personal and individual, your gallery’s blogs can contribute to them seeing how a piece fits into their collection, home, and lives.
The specificity can help prospective art buyers quickly form a connection to what you’re talking about in the post. Personal connection is a critical first step towards a purchase.
Focus on creating blog posts that provide value through educational and entertaining content. Look for ways you can extend value further by providing internal links to other related material on your gallery’s website. Remember your creating a journey.
You want to keep people on your site as long as possible. The more time readers spend on your site exploring, the more likely they are to engage and progress through the sales cycle.
Highlights Gallery’s Art Market Expertise
You know that when investing in fine-art, buyers want to feel they are in good hands with a gallerist who has expertise and integrity. A blog helps you demonstrate those qualities.
An art gallery blog gives you a vehicle to showcase what makes your gallery program significant. It allows you to share your voice and perspective on a variety of topics. You can share your passion for your artists in a format that is not threatening to someone who may be intimidated by art galleries.
Allow your artists to post as guest bloggers as well. Sharing their expertise in the process of how they create their art in their own words brings additional value to readers. You can do the same with your vendors or other guest bloggers if appropriate too. Variety is best.
Having your artists participate in your gallery blog can also help create a more intimate experience for your readers. Not to mention taking some of the workload off your shoulders.
To the Point 
Incorporating a blog into your art gallery marketing strategy is a perfect way to help you find new art collectors and nurture a productive relationship. You can repurpose the content you create in many different ways; on social media, your newsletters, show packages, etc.
Your art gallery’s blog shouldn’t be too promotional, as that risks putting people off. Map out a variety of topics you could write about. Consider the questions you commonly get from gallery sales leads now for inspiration. Try to make at least half your blog posts evergreen, meaning not time-dependent. Doing so allows you to repurpose those posts over and over again as your audience grows.
Continuously generating new sales leads for your gallery business is the lifeblood of future success for both you and your artists. A blog is an economical marketing tool to find new art collectors.
You might enjoy these articles as well.
How to Create a Simple and Smart Art Gallery Marketing Plan
How to Create an Art Buyer’s Journey to Increase Sales and Loyalty
Excellent! I am looking for a blogger. Any suggestions? Thank you!
Myriam
Hi Myriam,
As blogs are a place to demonstrate your expertise, I think it is best if posts are written by a gallery associate who is intimately familiar with the gallery program, artists and niche market. Having said that…. If you have access to content such as interviews, videos, articles, etc. than a good virtual assistant could take those resources and use them to write new, original content. You want someone who knows how to write for the web and how to incorporate your keywords properly.
I find writing about art takes experience and knowledge about the subject. Sometimes hiring a virtual assistant to help make take longer to explain everything than if you just wrote the post yourself. It really depends on how good your resources information is and of course how good the writer is.
I can’t wait to read your blog!! I love your niche in the art market and will be excited to learn more.