All about Tags

Artlook, Tags

One of the biggest challenges facing anyone using a database to keep track of information is how to mark each individual record in such a way as to make it easy to find and group in future.
As well as categories and sub categories,  Artlook for Artists lets you use TAGS.  A tag can be applied to both Contact and Inventory records and they can be used in searches or to create Groupings. What’s more you can have an unlimited number of tags attached to each record.

Keeping track of your contacts …..

So why would you use tags with Contact records?  They can help personalise the relationship between you, the artist, and your collectors.

  • Do they like seascapes, or do they always go for landscapes?
  • Do they commission or buy from your exhibitions?
  • Do they buy off the easel?
  • Do they buy paintings for birthday presents?
  • What style of framing do they go for?

Each one of these ‘attributes’ could be defined by a Tag. Once the Tag has been attached to the Contact record you not only have a really clear visual idea of this person, but you also have the means of grouping together all similar contact records so that you can do a mail out. Targeting people very specifically is hugely effective. If you have someone who only buys landscapes from you and you bombard them with information about seascapes they are going to quickly lose interest, but giving people information which you know is going to be of interest is a winning formula!

The more information that you can gather about your contacts and collectors the more you can make their relationship with you important, you will be their favourite artist, the one they always think of first when they are in art buying mode!

Tagging artwork records …..

Here’s where planning ahead really pays off. Think about your work and the various ways in which an individual piece could be described …  it could be the colour, subject matter, price bracket, still life, portrait, interior, seascape, landscape, cloud study, teapot, vase …..  The more descriptive Tags that you use with a record the easier it will be to find.  For example, all records with ‘Green’ and ‘Gouache Painting’ can be found instantly using the search functions … once you have found them create a new Grouping, make it a Website Gallery and hey presto you have got a new ‘Green’ gallery of works on your website!
This is also when the tags that you have for your contacts might prove useful, you could match a painting with a contact who only buys green, gouache paintings to go with their newly decorated living room! A tag is like the index in a book, you go there to find things.

If I was going to tag this picture, instead of writing a descriptive sentence…’bright, impressionist style oil painting of a wheelbarrow in the sunshine outside a greenhouse, lots of old pots and garden muddle with an old car just visible inside the greenhouse’ I might tag it with: greenhouse, garden, pots, bright, impressionist, green, car, gardening.

Tagging is like everything, the more that you do it the easier it becomes and as you build your index of tags you will be creating collections with no effort at all!

Sarah

About Sarah

Sarah Wimperis is a professional artist and illustrator and also works for Artlook in Client Support and as our Artist Ambassador. Sarah's Artlook website is here.