As I was doing some clean up work on the blog I happened to notice the 5th tip was no where to be found. I never posted it. So here is the last piece of the 5 tips. This plugin is most likely the most important one. Once this is up and running it makes a huge difference specific to on page optimization if you use it properly.

All in One SEO Pack

This is one of my favorite plugins and the first one I use when optimizing a new blog. This plugin puts some extra fields in the posting area for you to fill out.

Features:

• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• You can change the post title on each article
• Autogenerate keyword rich descriptions of posts
• Setup meta tags and descriptions for the home page

Download Here

There are several posts about art marketing with twitter located on this blog. One way integrate your WP blog and your twitter account is a piece with this plugin by Alex King. It works very well and is simple enough even I can use it. (for us non-techies) You can pull your tweets into your blog as well as creating new tweets on blog posts from within WordPress. This is a great way to leverage your time.

By choosing a few settings to add your twitter username and password you can notify your twitter friends when you have a new blog post.

Features:

• Automatically create tweets from your blog posts
• Create blog posts from your tweets

There are a few areas in beta right now. The experiments are daily and weekly digests from your posts.

Download it a twitter tools

Onlywire autosubmit plugin

This is a very cool plugin. It allows you to submit to many social bookmarking sites all at once, from one place. This will ensure you get your content syndicated; it is a very efficient way to market your art.  http://www.onlywire.com is a free service*.

*The service is free if you include a link-back to the onlywire site. If you do not want to provide a link, you need to pay for the premium version, which is $2.99/month.

Download  onlywire

link to  http://www.onlywire.com/

Sometimes marketing my art is a real drag. The tips in this short series are fun, effective and easily implemented. So WP plugin number two is…

digg digg

At the time of this writing digg digg supports Digg, Reddit, dzone and Yahoo Buzz. This plugin makes it easy for your readers to submit your articles to major social bookmarking sites.

There are no code change requirements to integrate it to your template.

Features: From the digg digg site. You can chose to

• Display at Home page
• Display at Static page
• Display at Post Page
• Display at Category Page
• Display at Archive Page

Download Here

Following are some cool tools to help get some traffic to your blog. They are for WordPress users. The first tip can make a huge difference in getting organic search engine traffic. In marketing your art more eyeballs viewing portrait art, abstract piece or latest oil painting will translate to more sales. So here we go.

1) XML Sitemap Generator

What is a sitemap and how does it help me with art marketing? Sitemaps are one of the best ways for webmasters to let a search engines know there are pages on their sites available for crawling. Basically, a Sitemap is an XML file. That file will list the URLs  and some metadata about each URL. The metadata may include when the site it was last updated, the URL’s relevancy to the rest of the site and how often the site changes. This information helps the crawl the site more efficiently and intelligently.

The way pages are located by the web crawlers is by referral. New pages are discovered from links within the site and from links in other sites.

The XML site plugin generates a dynamic site from each blog post which facilitates a faster crawl rate from the major search engines

Features: These are copied from the XML Generator Site

• Available in many languages
• Generates automatically a sitemap for all types of WordPress pages
• Calculates a priority for each post, based on the number of comments
• Notifies Ask.com, Google, Bing and YAHOO about changes via ping
• Includes a WordPress filter for other plugins which can add their pages to the sitemap
• Generates a static XML file as well as a zipped version

Download Here

My new friend and artist Bruce Burkholder sent this article and information to me via email. I tried to track it and it looks like it comes from the Washington Post. It is a perfect example though of perception, which also leads then to target market.

If over 2,000 people went by Joshua Bell and only a few people took the time to look, listen, comment or drop some dollars how then can somone actually “make-it” with less talent than one of the most gifted musicians ever? Marketing to the proper audience. Guaranteed that if the 2,000 people that went by him were the same that purchased tickets to his sold out concert…this out come would have been different.

Great lesson. Check it out.

Washington Post image

Marketing your art is tough, twitter is a great tool to help in the art marketing process. If you have followed my twitter posts or anyone elses, you know that there are a number of third party applications that will help organize the twitter side of your art marketing plan. Tweet deck is one of my favorite for a variety of reasons but primarily because I can leverage my time using it. Following is a 20 minute video that will show you some basics in using tweetdeck. Send us your comments. Art Marketing-Setup Tweet Deck Video The above link is the highest quality and will require the free quicktime plugin. If you have trouble or you prefer to watch the video here you can simply watch it below.

Art Marketing With Twitter-Tweetdeck set up part 1

Art Marketing With Twitter-Tweetdeck set up part 2

Business Owners fail because they
Lack vision and strategy to realize it
Lack system for marketing or sales
Lack system to monetize the client base
Try to do too many things at once (I am totally guilty of that)
No plan to invest profits for growth
Caught up in the day to day
Do everything as-hoc and no systems
Don’t create or stick to action plans

Do any of these apply to you? How many?

There are a few areas in that list that I am guilty of. Its great news that they have discovered some common denominators of business failure, now that I know what I am looking at I can go the opposite direction.

It stands to reason that if I work on improving in those areas I will improve my chances of success. So I will begin tweak my business plan and make sure that;

I have a vision and strategy to realize it (done)
Have a system for marketing and sales (done)
Have a system to monetize the client base (needs more work)
Focus on what I do best (needs work)
Re-visit my plan to invest profits for growth (done)
Not get caught up in day to day (continuous improvement)
Systematize even more, no ad hoc (done)
Stick to the action plan within my business plan that I worked so hard to put together.

As I looked very hard at my business plan and my strategic plan I compared it against the above list and another five things that every sustainable business must have;

1-A strong value proposition is the beginning. That leads to strong/premium pricing which then leads to strong margins.
2-A lead generation program that provides new leads and business opportunities on a continual basis.
3-A consistent, cost-effective way to convert leads to clients
4-A way to fully monetize customers. A system developed to extract lifetime value from a client instead of selling to only once.
5-Be efficient and effective so people perform at the highest levels.

In the next few posts I want to focus on compounding, recognizing that small changes compounded, leads to big results.

Here are some area we will look at closely. These small changes listed below.

1-increase our gross margin by 15 percent
2-a 15% growth in the amount of money each customer spends with you
3-increasing our leads or the number of business opportunities by 15%.
4- increase your conversion rate by 15%
5-increase by 15% how much you get done

If we can do these things our business will double. Next post we will address how increasing our margin by just 15% can change things drastically. Its not as hard as one might think. Come see yourself.

I overheard her loud complaints while I was standing in another artists booth space.  As a bonified art and marketing geek I make it my point to check out as many spaces as possible when I go to any kind of art show.  My ADD style of perusing had not yet brought me to her doorstep so I deliberately walked across to her booth so I could check out her work. (this is like a bad horror movie…you may see where this is going)

As I moved over and entered her space I didnt even get  any eye contact. Not a smile a nod or a hello. Not a sneer, leer or even a snort. It was as if I didnt even exist. No love. Wierd, I was the only one in there at the time.  After the cursory guy-type breath and pit check I decided I was clean and worked up the courage to approach her.  Her work was really nice…very unique.

My question uttered forth, much like that of a school boy asking the new girls name. It was simple really, “Do you have prints available?” (I knew based on the original prices that a print would be a more likley purchase for me) My skin crawled as lady Godiva turned from her interior design magazine and set her stoney gaze in my direction. I felt I would lose bladder control as the velocity from her shriek-like answer threatened to tear my geek-glasses from my face. “I ONLY DO ORIGINALS!” Yikes! Stop,drop and roll man. I was out the doorway frantically searching for my wife and kids so I could save them.

C’mon. I hope she likes rice and beans sans beans cuz she aint selling no work that-a-way. Yep. True story by the way. Check this out though, first at a street show, expo or fair you cant control the environment or the type of person who comes in to see you. Variety is the spice of life here. Dont cha think it might make sense to leave the nicest high-end work at home? Use some prints, small sketches and less expensive stuff if your trying to drive sales.

In my opinion, the best way to treat shows that you dont get to control the enviornment, is as an entry to your marketing funnel.  Showcase a high-end piece or two but try to cover your expenses with less expensive work.  Use the opportunity as a marketing venue to start the ever-so-important relationship. Ask them questions about themselves, engage in the art of conversation.  Art lovers enjoy talking with artists. You are the heros. Read Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and apply that information in an authentic manor. Be sure to have a point of collection via cards or clipboard so you can market to them down the road. (That should be the number one goal of most street shows or fairs).

You will find that you have more fun, make more sells on the spot and more opportunities for larger sells down the road.

Let me know what you think.

Twitter, like much of social networking is about numbers.  Quality and target is important but you need numbers, here’s why….the more followers you have the more likely that one of your tweets will be re-tweeted. Obviously if you have been following some of this Twitter stuff you know that you need to be providing good, interesting and relevant content first, that is the first thing to increase the chances of a re-tweet and not boring your followers to death.

A quick way to increase the number of followers is to follow people that you find interesting or that you share a common passion with.  I tend to follow artist and internet marketers…the two things I have passion for and do for a living.  Once you begin to start following these folks, many of them will follow you back if  they see you also have an interest in something that they like or do.  You can use the search tool in twitter or better yet, use tweet deck and the search tool there to really focus on your target market.

Another thing that will help is to have an appealing background for your page.  Have something that you put together yourself to be totally unique.  Link to your blogor website or a squeeze page with an opt-in for your free product. If you need a free background here are some free ones  http://www.tweetbacks.com/

Another cool tool I have talked about very little is the “Viral Tweet Generator”.  This is a piece of software basically that lets people send out a tweet about a site or or product that they want to promote.  It can be done with one click of the mouse and then they are taken to a special download page where they can get a free gift from your own site.  I dont have it set up for me personally as I just found out about it in the last few days.  Here is a free copy http://viralurl.com/ebooks4u/viraltweet

So there you have it…a few more fun tips.

until next time-

Tim