Outreach is everything you do to actively reach people. You might think of this as marketing, and that’s close enough.
It starts with your email list, which is the only audience you actually own. Everything on social media is rented. Platforms change, accounts get restricted, algorithms shift. The people who have asked to be on your list are yours.
So the first question is simple: is that list growing, shrinking, or stagnant, and do you know why?
Social media is part of outreach too, even though you don’t own it. I include it in your broader list because these are people who have opted to follow you.
Is your platform of choice, and that’s Instagram for most artists, working for you or are you working for it? What might you lose if you decreased your activity there or removed it from your to-do list altogether?
In-person networking belongs in this zone as well, and it’s the piece artists most consistently undervalue. We just get so comfortable at home and in the studio.
When did you last put yourself in a room where collectors, collaborators, or the right connections were present? Being seen in your community, building the kind of recognition that can’t happen on a screen is valuable outreach work, and it compounds over time.
And then there’s personal outreach: the one-to-one contact that we don’t get around to because it requires real attention. Writing personally to a gallery, following up with a collector, reaching out to someone you’ve been meaning to contact for months.
It’s high-touch by definition. It’s also the most direct form of reach available to you, and the one that tends to make the biggest difference.