Description:
This is a hands-on, interactive workshop designed to help illustrators balance their creative work with effective self-promotion that suits their own goals, personality, budget, and time constraints. This deep dive into marketing covers essential tools for getting both your art and books noticed. The workshop also delves into the current social media landscape, providing best practices for marketing and post-conference strategies to boost your presence and visibility in the industry. You’ll leave with tools and marketing strategies specifically for you, your goals, and your time constraints.
Skill Level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced):
Intermediate. Pre-published and published.
Prerequisites and Advance Preparation:
This Creative Lab will be most worthwhile and productive for those who already have some kind of online presence (a website or online portfolio, and at least one social media platform). Both pre-published and published illustrators are welcome. Published illustrators are encouraged to bring a hardcopy of the book they are most interested in promoting.
Schedule:
- Introduction (5 min)
- Time constraints and solutions (5 min)
- Prioritizing goals (10 min)
- Self-analysis: marketing strengths, different approaches (10 min)
- Areas of growth, Debbie shares her own process, how to prioritize (15 min)
- Small-group discussion: identifying priority areas of growth, brainstorming help (15 min)
- Networking, finding community (15 min)
- Break: Coffee/snack/stretch/bathroom break (10 min)
- Social media, websites, other platforms (30 min)
- Getting your art noticed (20 min)
- Getting your books noticed (20 min)
- Wrap-up, final Q&A (15 min)
- Finishing post-conference to-do lists (5 min)
Objectives:
Participants will:
- Learn strategies for separating business from creative time in order to protect the latter.
- Identify their own personal brand, what helps set their work apart.
- Take their general goal(s) and break them down into specific, actionable goals.
- Analyze their strengths and areas of growth in terms of self-promotion and marketing.
- Collaborate with colleagues to improve areas of growth.
- Identify specific networking goals and brainstorm strategies to achieve these.
- Learn about the current social media landscape, pros and cons of different platforms.
- Create time management strategies.
- Identify promotion strategies for different types of books and situations.
- Make a post-workshop marketing to-do list to guide next steps after the conference.
