Welcome to the Art Industry Insider, bringing you tips and tricks on how to run your art business, increase sales and boost productivity, with ideas for marketing, advertising and more. This month I will be discussing some exciting software applications to help you run your business, ultimately giving you more time at the easel. In the past, various assistants, graphic designers and writers may have needed to be hired to help manage your art business. These days there are extremely clever software programs and apps that you can learn, quite easily, to manage your own business. We have mentioned some of these apps before, but their new versions have made them even easier to incorporate into your business.

Canva
Launched in 2013, Canva is an online design and publishing tool with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere. It works very well on your phone or computer. In the past, you may have needed to hire a graphic designer to make some great elements for marketing, but now with Canva, and its many beautiful templates, it’s easy to fill in with your own art and text to make great social media posts, nice letterheads to clients and more. There is a free version you can start with to get your footing. There’s also a new background generator that can help place your art in a room to show clients potential looks. If you need a logo for your art business, this program has a special logo builder as well. You can even create a portfolio of your work just by uploading images into an existing animated template. Artists primarily use it to create exciting social media posts with templated graphics that can help with your branding and look.

Later
Having a hard time keeping up with your social media posts and establishing your presence online, while still trying to paint? Later is a social media management platform that works across all major social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. This software program pre-schedules your posts weeks in advance, which can be especially useful if you have an upcoming show and want to make weekly posts about it. It has features such as a drag-and-drop calendar interface and a media library to store all your photos.

This program also has a free trial so you make sure it’s right for you. I often use this if I have a new “campaign” to market my new collection of work, or if I have an upcoming show and want to plan posts to run once a week until the show opens.

Microsoft 365 with Co-Pilot
Seems odd perhaps to talk about an office suite program when you are running your art business, but the new Microsoft 365 can be very helpful. Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel are often used in the daily running of your small business, as well as communicating with your gallery, editors, artists or clients. It now has an additional element called Co-Pilot that can help make tasks quicker and easier, like helping write press releases and important emails, or suggesting design ideas for newsletters or email blasts, among other tasks.

There are a variety of subscription options, which can be reviewed in depth on Microsoft’s website.

These are just a few examples of how modern technology can really help to make the tasks of running your art business easier and more efficient, allowing for more time at the easel. The costs of running a business have also gone down due to these affordable assistants. Assume you’ll be spending around $50 to $100 a month on all these programs to help you. Of course, don’t forget the costs of these programs each month could be expense write-offs for you at the end of the year, as standard operation costs of your small business.  —