Is Social Media Important to Businesses in the Arts?

Today I had to take my total piece of crap PC to the doctor. I re-booted it so I could get a tad quicker response time while working on a painting. When I tried to re-start it the overgrown lummox decided to rebel…it would not re-start and thought it funny to throw a FATAL ERROR message up. No biggie, I was looking for a new doorstop for the studio anyway. Ok, so I decided to let it live and took it to my good friend Brian who is a pc doc. When I dropped it off his mom was there and was watching a video on Youtube. The musicgeek in me liked the video but the business geek in me freaked when I saw it had almost 8 million views. So I decided I would follow up and write about it. Here ya go.

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Most of you know I live in the great plains, Nebraska to be exact. Last year I heard some hoopla about a band that was coming here to play. Seems that they choose to fly United and the ground crew had a blast heaving guitars around. In the melee they broke a very expensive guitar. As I heard the story I thought of that awesome scene in Ace Ventura where Jim Carrey is playing soccer with a UPS package. Anyway, Dave Carroll is the artist that had the unfortunate issues with United.

Dave decided he would keep his viewing audience in the loop of how the whole thing played out in terms of having to deal with a major company and encouraging them to take some responsibility.

Below is the first video. Check it out and then lets look at some things.

I love this story for a variety of reasons. First most of us can relate to it because we have all had something happen with a big company or at least someone we know has. We all have experienced the arrogance of a company that refuses to hear our issue. The other thing I love is there is a underdog component to the whole thing. I always cheer for the underdog. Big company vs one person, US Govt vs private citizen all of that is intriguing to us and we tend to root for the little guy.

What I want to point out with this video though is the volume of traffic it has produced. It went viral. Between this first vid, the other two produced by David Carroll and all of the spin offs it is over 10 MILLION views. Wow. That is 10 million votes FOR David and a gaggle of people who empathize and most likely wont be traveling United, not to mention they (United) totally look like schmucks.

One of my mentors in marketing is Dan Kennedy. He calls large corporate structures big dumb companies. I wish I had thought of that because it is true in so many cases. How hard would it have been to have systems in place that would allow the management on the ground in the location of the incident to make a decision…the right decision? How much less money would it have cost United?

The point is this, if you are a business owner social media can be your friend or it can really work against you. What is cool is that social media is the embodiment of capitalism and free enterprise. As clients we vote with our dollars. The more we like a companies products or services the more we vote….and talk. No longer is communication from companies one way. It is a very distinctive two-way conversation with a client base. We as clients have a say in the process. If customer service is an issue and we first try the most amenable and judicious route without success, we now have options that are stronger that a mild passing complaint at a soccer game or bridge party. Be careful here though because if you dont personally do the right thing in trying to work out an issue with a company it can make you look like a ding-a-ling. In other words be fair in your approach and try to get it worked out before you slam someone. Once it is out there in cyberspace you cant take it back.

As a business owner we have the opportunity to see what people say, unbiased and stripped of sugar coating. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it heals because people are people. Overall though, it gives us the opportunity to discover challenges we might not have known to exist. Then, we have a chance to fix those issues and move on to the next level.

As a small business owner if you are not involved with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc you should seriously get on board. The conversation about you is out there, you might as well hear what is being said.

You can hit Youtube and see the other two vids in the series. David’s career has been positively affected by his brilliant videos and dealing smartly with a big dumb company in the public’s view.

How can you sell more digital art?

Learn reason your prospects whip out there plastic and BUY NOW!

Well we already know that people buy on emotion not logic, at least most people. If you have a prospect that is asking a bunch of technical questions and already knows the stats from Wilhelm Research on  your giclee prints….they MIGHT be a techie that buys on logic. That would be a rarity though.

But what gets the emotional wheels turning in a prospect to start with? Ok, here is the secret. Ready? Your prospects buy from you when they believe doing so will enhance their self image in some way.  It will serve you greatly to see how your product or service can be a vehicle for which your prospects can envision a better self.  Sound hinky right?

You might think its mumbo jumbo but the simple fact is the more you can help your prospects to visualize that expanded sense of self-worth by owning your product, the more sales you’ll make. It’s that simple. You can check out Maxwell Maltz  and his 1960 classic Psycho-Cypernetics or Dr Robert Cialdini and his popular book on persuasion and marketing, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion for an in depth study that will serve your company well.

So how is this done? Well as artist we don’t spend much time on developing sales copy, an USP, an elevator speech or heaven forbid… a scripted sales system. Spending time in this area for most artists is boring. It is critical to your success though.  By properly developing and implementing those three pieces alone you could potentially double your sales in 2010.

We will put together a few articles on how to best accomplish these tasks.

Digital Painting Success in 2010, 3 Must Have Elements

I just got back from Denver. While digital painting was not possible, a nice drive and 4 hours each way was  spent on business reflection and planning for next year.

With my digital recorder at my side I compiled a ton of notes. Here are some of the things I reflected on from this year and some thoughts regarding next year. Surprisingly, there is not much here specific to learning more digital painting or digital art technique. (Could I be shooting myself in the foot by saying that?)

1-The successful businesses from 2009 had a few things in common; trust (garnered from transparency), a mindset of abundance as opposed to scarcity, a long term plan, and personal branding. A few companies and brands throughout the year abused our trust. Will they recover? Perhaps, but certainly the doors have opened in a few cases for new players to grab some market share.

2-Businesses that seemed to grow in 2009 were focused on problem solving, companies that provided real solutions to very real issues in their area of expertise.  By establishing an answer-centric business model, growth companies remained connected with their client and prospect base in meaningful ways instead of focusing on sucking money out of ones pocket. Those companies still profited handsomely they just had the proper intention; clients can see and feel that.

3-Cheating doesn’t work. Celebrities, corporate mucky mucks, athletes and small business owners alike provided the press with great headline material because of unethical or immoral ploys that were revealed. We as clients and consumers just want someone we can trust and that is accountable to what they say. Simple right? I always thought so.

4-People love simple.  A focus that is a foot wide and a mile deep makes sense. (The most difficult for us ADD type A folks) Companies that provided a simple step by step solution to a narrow but significant problem won. My business reflects that as well. In 2009 the most sought after products and services were my most basic.

5-The best gold and diamonds are deep and take work to get to. By focusing on your current client base, developing a great back-end strategy, then over delivering you can strengthen your relationships. Relationships make the difference between a client and a rabid fan.

So, with that reflection let’s take a peak at 3 things you business must have for growth next year. 2010 is gonna ROCK!

1-Focus on relationships. You have heard me say it a million times that people buy from people they Know-Like-and Trust. I can’t take credit for coming up with that, it is in every marketing book I have read.  So our task is to stand out from the crowd by connecting with the challenges our client have and delivering a solution that is easy to understand and implement.

2-Multiple streams of income. We need to be especially diligent in putting together multiple streams of income moving forward. Just as it prudent to diversify on the investment side, I think it is even more important to develop those other income streams. Be creative and figure out ways to tap into your current knowledge base and develop income outside of where your current paycheck comes from. (We have a few good ideas we will share in 2010)

3-Develop your referral or affiliate program. Many times business owners don’t take the time to strategically implement this programming. Done properly you can utilize an affiliate program to take some of the marketing pressure off of you. Having some others to work with makes a more fun and prosperous environment and will allow you to focus on how to serve and support your primary customers even more.

Implementation of these key elements in 2010 will have a positive effect on your mental well being as well as you balance sheet! til next time. Live, love and laugh. Tim

Digital Painting SEO Keywords part two

Finding Keywords for your art business is really not hard now days. It is actually kind of fun. There are many free keyword research tools, here are a few you can use: Google’s Wonder Wheel, Keyword Tool, Google Insights, Wordtracker’s Lab tools; and my favorite Market Samurai.

If you are going the free route, check them out and compare the results. I use the paid version of Market Samurai and it the best software investment I have made, including the digital painting software and digital imaging software like Corel Painter, Photoshop (Adobe Master Collection), Paint Shop Pro…you get the idea.

Market Samurai cost 149.00 and I use it daily for all kinds of task’s related to running my online art and information businesses. You can get a free trial at the link listed above and once your trial expires you still can you the three tools specific to keyword research, those are; rank tracker, keyword research and SEO Competition.

The best bet to learn how to find your unique keywords for your digital paintings, portrait commissions, pet portraits or whatever, is to get your free trial from Market Samurai. After you download it go through their video’s on keyword research. I can tell you I have personally spent 1,000’s of dollars for courses to learn this. Many of those courses did not have as good of training as the video series.

One thing I will talk about here that is not in the videos is what is called Geo-targeting. Most artist and digital photographers especially want to dominate their local market first and then spread from there.

To do this is really not all that difficult with your blog. With your flash website…maybe impossible. Lets say one of your studio’s primary target markets is heirloom children’s portraiture. You find a few keywords that support that and one of them is “Childrens Photography”

You can see below that there are 325 searches daily for this keyword and there are 205,000 competing pages.

Now if you live in Arizona and used “Children’s Photography Phoenix” it will narrow the searches to …not many. The good news is also narrows the competition, usually to 0. So you will begin to capture the traffic from the “local” group of potential buyers looking for Children’s Photography.

Next up-what do we do with these crazy keywords anyway?

Here is a video on using wordtracker. NOTE!!! This has music, if you are at work turn down the volume first, he he he.