The Creative Life

BIO:

Maria Brito is an award-winning New York-based contemporary art advisor, entrepreneur, author, and curator. Her bestselling book “How Creativity Rules The World” was published by HarperCollins Leadership in March 2022. In 2015 Brito was selected by Complex Magazine as one of the 20 Power Players in the Art World and in 2020 she was named by ARTNEWS as one of the visionaries who gets to shape the art world.

Venezuela-born, Ms. Brito is the creative force behind Maria Brito, a platform integrating contemporary art, fashion, and design. She’s a Harvard grad who has earned her stripes as an art advisor, interior designer, product designer, book author, and blogger. Her clients include celebrities, CEOs, and creatives in the fashion and advertising industry, and her projects have been featured extensively in myriad national and international publications.

Q+A:

When did you know that you wanted to be a blogger? When I felt it was important to relay my message to the world in an unfiltered way, exactly the way I wanted to do it.

What advice would you give someone trying to cut through the noise to establish their voice among the many blogs that are out there? To be very unique and to work hard at editing, creating, and having the best images possible. There’s too much out there and you have to be very distinctive to gain an audience.

What SEO tips can you pass along to someone who is trying to gain followers, subscribers, page views? This one is tough because SEO changes constantly. Google has put more and more emphasis on the quality of the websites and also that they must be validated through social media. Being consistent with keywords and tags is always very helpful too. And make sure your blog is attributed to you in the Google Authorship section of Google+.

Many bloggers relied on banner advertising to monetize their content, but those days seem to be over. What other sources of revenue should a blogger pursue or consider? How much of this is dependent on having a huge following? I think excellent and unique content is always ripe for native advertisement.

Some bloggers set out to make money by monetizing the actual content on the blog,  while others use blogging as a platform to gain followers that will lead to a publishing deal or developing and selling a lifestyle brand. What was your goal when you started? Has that changed? I have always had a business that provides services and now products – so we have always had something tangible to sell. Blogging is a creative endeavor that makes all of us who participate in it genuinely happy.

I am most proud of… My husband and my kids and the family we have built together.

My favorite business book is… The Path Redefined by Lauren Bias.

A woman who inspires me is… Gwyneth Paltrow.

The key to balancing it all is… To accept once and for all that there’s no balance.

The most important thing I have learned so far… To remain flexible and to really keep yourself on your toes on every front, from services to new products to social media. Change is the norm.

Check out Maria’s her new book, How Creativity Rules the World: The Art and Business of Turning Your Ideas Into Gold.