The Art Of Business: Why You Should Promote Your Creative Work

By Christine Sloan Stoddard

You may know it's important to promote your creative work or you may not. (If you don't, start Googling and start learning!) Either way, this may be hard, emotionally, for you to do as a creative person and that's normal. Many writers and artists in the digital age find promoting their work via social media and other means embarrassing. They're 1. afraid of people's reactions (like artistic critique or personal judgment), 2. think it looks braggy or desperate, and/or 3. worry about the time commitment involved with adequately promoting their work.

​Here's a quick counter to each of those points:

​​1. We've all read books, watched movies, gone to museums, seen plays, and listened to albums we didn't like. Not everyone is going to like your work. If you've taken a creative writing workshop or art critique class, you probably already have first-hand knowledge of this. It's important to dedicate time to what you make, as well as faith in it—and stand up for it. But also cut yourself some slack. Not everything you write/make is going to be a masterpiece and that's fine. It doesn't mean it's not worth making and can't find its audience. Every piece is a part of your creative journey toward practicing and improving your craft.

2. While it's true that humility is not the name of the game in social media, there are ways to post that don't just make it look like you're bragging. And I'll back up for a second: You deserve to celebrate your accomplishments and take up space. Girls are often not socialized to do this to the extent that boys are and, thus, women often feel shame for drawing "too much" attention to themselves. Some cultures discourage "too much" individual attention in general. It's okay to be too much; you're always going to be too much for some people, anyway. And who cares what they think? There are ways to post about your work while expressing gratitude, imparting knowledge, or making people laugh. Try one of these tactics with teaser text.

3. Promotion does take time. This is just a fact. I don't encourage you to spend more time promoting than making. Balance is important and, in my opinion, it should always be in favor of your work. Some people advise you spend as much time promoting as you do making, but I personally find that exhausting and a bit overkill. It's wiser to be strategic; your time is valuable and it can be hard enough to find time for your creative work as it is. It will take some trial and error to develop a promotional strategy for your work, but start by thinking about things like who your audience is (or your best guess), which platform(s) you like best, what blogger or press connections you may already have, etc.

Show your creative work AND yourself some love and start promoting!