You may be interested to know, that art degree you paid upwards of $100K for is more valuable than your parents may have lead you to believe. In addition to a deep understanding of visual culture and an addiction to black coffee and the words "aesthetic" and "ephemeral", a degree in the arts doubles as a study in business and marketing.
Now, this won't get you a job or any level of professional recognition in those fields, it may not even get you a job in your own field. (Unless you are applying to Procter & Gamble, who apparently is looking for, what former global marketing executive Jim Stengel calls, "business artists".) However, this knowledge and skillset can prove invaluable when it comes to artists maintaining ownership and control over their content. Because when it comes down to it, art really is about business.
This concept is not new, I am certainly not the first person to have the epiphany that the over 2 million people with art degrees living in the United States learned more applicable and coveted skills in school than just painting and hypothetical pondering. For years people have been drawing the connection between the unique way of thinking and problem solving acquired through an arts education, and the growing need for organizations to be more innovative and creative. To those organizations I say, hire an artist. Better yet, hire a millennial artist whose understanding of social media and the connecting power of the internet is almost innate.
Social media has changed the game for countless industries, the least of which is how we market and communicate with our publics. The art world is no exception. When released from the safe confines of higher-ed, trained artists are expected to know how to get their work out there. Visibility is key, it is livelihood. If you ask an artist these days to see their business card, they will likely first show you their Instagram. When they do finally handover their card, you will surely find links to their website, Tumblr, and other social media outlets. For so long, in order to be coined a "successful artist" you needed to be picked up and pimped out by a gallery. Notable gallery representation meant legitimacy, but it mostly meant you had someone to promote you to the right people through narrow and curated channels. This is no longer the case. It is an open market game now.
However, like with all things that seem too good to be true, social media platforms do have some downsides for artists especially. While the art that hangs in a gallery proclaims to be about continuously pushing boundaries and thinking outside the box, some social media platforms enforce strict rules on what content is allowed to be shown. Artists can often find themselves stuck between the sterile white cube that is blue-chip galleries, and the content controlled white box that is Instagram.
Censorship on platforms like Instagram and Facebook provide an annoying hurdle for artists producing provocative work. Digital artist @scientwehst creates "brazenly-feminine digital collages" who's erotic and suggestive subject matter often challenges the policies of social media platforms like Instagram, a primary source for sharing her work. When asked about the platform's benefits in an interview with PRØHBTD she responded, "The advantages: visibility, accessibility, and virality. The disadvantages: visibility, accessibility, and virality."
And it is not just contemporary art that gets shut down, photographs of century-old works of art that hang in prestigious museums are also at the mercy of appropriate content algorithms that scan social media outlets for a bare butt or exposed boob.
Despite its obvious limitations, social media and online visibility has flung the door open for artists to be the masters and marketers of their own destiny and freed them from their dependence on the gallery-industrial-complex. But while these online platforms may be new, artists have processed the skills to think outside the box and creatively solve problems since the dawn of the profession, they just now have the means to make you pay attention.