Your email mailing list, website and social networking activity (if any) will be the easiest and cheapest way to keep in touch with your audience of interested people.

Many sophisticated, open source online mailing list tools exist, for free, which you can use if you're technically minded enough, and can even integrate into your website.  This becomes useful when your list becomes large enough that an email programme can't send them all in one go.

Most email programmes (including Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail, as well as email servers that come with your website) have spam detection software and limits to the number of e-mails you can send in a 24hr period, and their help pages will tell you what those limits are.  It's important not to send too many, or your account may be deactivated or deleted.

Popular free online email tools and an explanation on how they work can be found on Wikipedia.

The very ease of sending emails has two distinct disadvantages, however, which it's important to bear in mind:

1. It is very easy to delete an email without reading it properly
2. It is very easy to send emails to your list too frequently, which alienates and irritates your audience

Never, ever sign people up to your mailing list without their permission.  If you want to add someone to your list who you don't know, email them first to see if they'd like to be included, let them know how often they can expect an email and reassure them that you won't pass on their details to anyone else.  You can tell them about any other ways they can get updates about you as well, on social networking sites or Twitter.

Remember:

• It's better to have the attention of people who are actually interested in your work
• People who have not chosen to sign up to your list will probably just be irritated by the extra email
• If your first impression is irritating, you will reduce your chances of making a good impression when you finally meet someone if they remember your name from a 'spam' email
• Sending unsolicited emails can clog up legitimate emails in the inboxes of people you are trying to impress - and breaking someone's email account is not impressive!

Send email mailouts only when appropriate, and only when you have major news.  Try not to send more than one per month; you can use Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites for more frequent updates, if you use it already.  As a general rule - if you already use social networking sites, try to use it also to tell people about your work.  If you don't, it might be more trouble than it's worth, so make sure you have enough time to keep these updated without adding too much to your existing workload.  Again, as with email, do not try to gather people on these networks who have not expressed an interest in joining.

Read these posts on How to make the most of Twitter and How to build a great reputation on Twitter, posted on the Creative Boom website.

See the two videos below for a guide to social media, introducing benefits of using Twitter and Facebook for artists. Videos co-produced by Charlotte Frost and Jared Schiller for a-n The Artists Information Company.  

As your email database becomes more 'business' and less friends check with the Data Protection Act to see if you need to register.

• self promotion
• social media
• websites
• legal