Introducing BYOP

Published on November 05, 2009 by Christy Tennant

As the Director of Public Relations (PR) for International Arts Movement, I have received a fair amount of inquiries via email and personal contact from artists within the global IAM community who are at a loss when it comes to promotion for their art. Many artists - most, in my experience - are ill at ease with the idea of self-promotion. Yet the bottom line is that promotion is vital for any artist to achieve an audience beyond friends and family. In rare cases, artists are able to hire PR firms or consultants to do their promotion, which lifts the burden somewhat from the artist (though still not entirely). However, that is not the case for most of us. Authors, musicians, painters, filmmakers, and others need publicity, and often the burden for that publicity falls to the artist.

I am not only in charge of Public Relations for IAM; as an artist, I have had to work through this myself. How do I legitimately promote myself, without becoming self-absorbed or self-important? This is an important thing to wrestle through, especially when humility is a core value. Can one be both humble and self-promotional?

The answer is, yes, not only can we be, but we must be. Otherwise, how will the world be able to receive the gift of art we have to offer?

I will periodically post things on this blog that I have learned from working in public relations for years, in both official and unofficial capacities. I have worked for large corporations with entire departments devoted to PR and communications, and I've worked as a consultant for freelance artists. At the end of the day, I believe that you can have a strong PR machine on a very low budget. It just takes a little time and direction.

One more thing: spend some time browsing the PR/marketing/advertising books and blogs that are available, and you will soon find that there are many different approaches and opinions on what is best the best way to approach PR. I'm sure that some will disagree with some of the advice I give here, which is fine; for that reason, I'm also enabling comments on this blog. Please add your own two cents from what you have learned.

Together, we will help one another get the word out.