Marketing Art Online

Posting Ratios

June 3, 2013 by owfotografik 0 Comments

My rule of thumb is this.
When you are considering promoting yourself with Social Media, Use the 75 – 25 approach.

75% of the time you should spend building your following on social media. The more followers you have the more you will get exposure for your work. If you are constantly just promoting yourself and trying to sell your work people will tune out and disengage.

Put more time into engaging with people and not just trying to sell to them.
Once you have engaged with them then let them know casually that you have work to offer…. 25%

Engaging Your Audience, Featured Contributors, General Advice, Omaste Witkowski, Promotion Fatigue Syndrome

Sharing Work from FAA to Social Media

June 3, 2013 by owfotografik 0 Comments

Many of the discussion threads here at FAA are automatic. Fav, vote, copy and paste a comment. Takes seconds and you move on. Some people don’t even bother to do that, they just post their link and move on.
This group is different and in order to be different we need to think differently. Instead of automatic and copy and paste we need to be engaging and effective. This takes thought and you have to care. Think about what you like about the art you are sharing. Color, texture, composition, unique quality a, b or c. ex: I can’t have never seen a landscape done “this way” and I really enjoy it for “this reason”…. Use Hashtags and keywords that describe the work and make it more likely to be found by a person via a search engine.
Don’t just share your work, share in it.
Think about these 2 things when you are posting links to your work and to the work of others:

1. If you were their PAID Marketing/Advertising person what would you say about this work that would make others want to purchase it.
2. If you were getting a commission to sell it how would you describe it?

In order for Social Media Marketing to really be effective we have to love what we share.

Art Sales Websites, Engaging Your Audience, Featured Contributors, Fine Art America, General Advice, Omaste Witkowski, Social Media Websites

Auto Sharing Buttons on FAA

June 3, 2013 by owfotografik 0 Comments

When we use the buttons to share work, modify the text that is default. Any time we see the words sell or sale in these posts I think it puts people off a bit. They know we sell our work. Sharing our work is how I try to come across.
For example when you use the Facebook button it adds the “prints and posters for sale” into the box. I delete these words so that people want to click the link to look at the work not click it because they feel like they have to Buy. They are more likely to click.
On the Twitter button it says “I uploaded new artwork for sale”. I delete this line. use this many characters to say What a great green capture, or Daily find for Green art. etc. Then add tags at the end of the post that are #green #art #etc…
The less generic any of these postings look the more likely people will be engaged by them.

– Omaste Witkowski

Art Sales Websites, Blogging - Wordpress, Tumblr and More, Engaging Your Audience, Facebook, Featured Contributors, Fine Art America, General Advice, Google+, Omaste Witkowski, Pinterest, Social Media Websites, Twitter

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Marketing Advice from a Pro Agency

June 3, 2013 by owfotografik 0 Comments

Some advice from Crown Social http://crownsocial.com/ a social media agency

“Pay attention to the audience to which you post stuff on social media.
Be real and be non-promotional and know who you are trying to target.

Start Instagram and Vine accounts. The more of these social media accounts you have the better Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Vine and Snap Chat are both super fun, but really new to the game so they really hit younger demographics. Not many people are doing campaigns with them yet, but it could be a fun way to get engagement.
Pinterest is a great platform to focus on.

If you are trying to gain traction with your brand then reach out to influencers in a non-promotional way. Casually liking their stuff or leaving comments on their posts. Once you have built up a relationship, introduce your product.
If you are trying to sell your products its always interesting to look at case studies of who is doing it right. Social commerce is growing a lot and I know Pinterest is great for that. Etsy might also be good to be on.

I don’t know if you run facebook ads, but if you do, creating multiple ads and testing what imagery and copy runs best and then refining from there is best practice. People typically relate more to ads with people in them, tho I know that’s not your main subject matter.

Also, if you can fine a create way to get their email address, email blast are typically the best way to cut through all the social media white wash. I think FB only serves up like 30% of user generated content, so often it is lost in the mix.

Also, taking a look at your analytics is a good idea. I know there are some good tools for social analytic online, but most of them cost a pretty penny. It just depends on how serious you want to be about it 🙂
There’s no good free tumblr or pinterest analytics tool. Simplymeasured.com has some decent freebies for facebook, twitter, and instagram. The best free facebook analytics are the ones that facebook already provides. Twitter requires a lot of different tools for good free analytics: followerwonk, twittercounter, and tweetstats are some of my favorites.”

Engaging Your Audience, Featured Contributors, General Advice, Omaste Witkowski

Search engine optimization, social-media

Promotion Fatigue Syndrome

June 3, 2013 by owfotografik 0 Comments

Ok…I have been learning a lot in the last 2 weeks on FAA and Etsy and everywhere else….based on what I am seeing…I believe we will all encounter “promotion fatigue” soon if we do not do certain things to prevent it.
What is “promotion fatigue”? It is when we promote the same people and/or images over and over to the same people on social media. It includes over-pinning and over-tweeting.
Once it sets in….your hits will start going down and that means less sales potential.

Solutions:

You MUST be actively gaining more followers…I am getting about 25 a day on Pinterest now and about 20 on Twitter…you need “fresh people” daily….you will lose followers if they get tired of seeing the same stuff all the time….and if you aren’t actively acquiring more….no hits.
Promoting 6 images at a time is too much and will lead to “promotion fatigue” very soon.
Throw in pins/tweets NOT about art throughout the day…quotes on Twitter….room designs on Pinterest. People have a short attention span…a zillion images of art and photography and guess what…they unfollow you…they are bored. So we need to only re-pin and re-tweet non art/photography stuff MOST of the time…throw in some of ours now and again.
Space your pinning and tweeting out…do some at say 8 am…then some more at 10 am….12 am…2 pm….never more than 4 – 5 pins/tweets at a time. (I am screwing up here too and changing my strategy)….so if the threads stay as is…promote 6..I will do 2 at 8 am…2 at 10 am…2 at 2 pm…you get the picture. I may change the times up as needed…but the will be SPACED out!
Take a day off every week from promoting ….for me it will be Sunday….

Featured Contributors, General Advice, Promotion Fatigue Syndrome, Sharon Cummings, Social Media Websites

Fatigue, Online Communities, Sharon Cummings, Social network

Featured Contributors, General Advice, Laura Carter, Social Media Websites

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Featured Contributors, General Advice, Sharon Cummings, Social Media Websites

Sharon Cummings

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Portfolio Management

June 3, 2013 by owfotografik 0 Comments

I am starting today with Microsoft Word, to organize my portfolio.

I have a word document with the name of each of my galleries on FAA. I have keywords that I use for each GALLERY that are a basis for the piece and the same for each piece in the gallery. I copy and paste these keywords when I upload new artwork. I also have basic descriptions that I start with for each upload. Again copy and Paste.

What I am starting to do today is have a word document for each PICTURE. This is named as the name of the piece. I am copying and pasting back from FAA the keywords I used and the description I used. This way I have a written record of all of this information by piece.

I am now adding #hastags to this word document and when I am going to post links in the discussion threads I will copy and paste these hashtags into my comment with my link. Then you can just copy and paste my hashtags when you post for me. Helps you, and helps me.
I also have these hashtags on hand when I am promoting myself along with the keyword and description all in one place. Easier for me.

1. Descriptions should be long and include your name, where the photograph is (location or description) your creative process, your contact info, etc.
2. Use your descriptions to come up with your keywords. If you are desperate just copy and paste individual words from your description as keywords. Also use Microstock or other keyword tool.
3. Hashtags, use your keywords to come up with your hastags, as you can see all three of these elements should build from each other.

When you post to Stumble you have the option for keywords and description, Google+ is description and hashtags, Twitter is mostly hashtags, little description, Facebook is more just description, Pinterest is description and hashtags, Tumblr is description and hashtags.

So if you have all of these sites and each one is a little different to post to, and you have a word document as easy reference, it is much easier to do. You now also have a very nice portfolio with all of this information together.

– Omaste Witkowski

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Omaste Witkowski, Portfolio

Gaining Relevant & Qualified Twitter Followers

June 3, 2013 by owfotografik 0 Comments

On Twitter…I find a big hitter artist…like Matt LeBlanc for instance…who has thousands of followers…I then hand pick people from his list that look like average folks and not other artists or big businesses…I look for people who are FOLLOWING more than they have followers…numbers under 1000….regular looking folks…not artists or businesses…and I follow them…then every 48 hours, I go to http://www.justunfollow.com and I get rid of anyone who didn’t follow me back. So on a Thursday night I will go and follow 100 people and then Saturday night I go to http://www.justunfollow.com and remove dead weight. I don’t do any following in the interim. After I unfollow on that Saturday night, I go and follow 100 more people from a big hitter…then Monday night I unfollow again…You can unfollow 25 for free…but that wasn’t enough for me…so I am paying the 10 a month for unlimited……you can have 2 accounts for that 10.00 a months…so it’s super cheap for me at 5.00 a month.- Sharon Cummings