Art Marketing Buzz

There are many ways to build your brand while marketing your art.  As fine artists we have a difficult time, like many others, trying to stand apart from everyone else.  Vocal artists have it even tougher…small acappella groups tougher even yet. I mean how do you separate yourself when you have the same music and the same parts to sing, or the same canvas and palette?  That is what makes an  artist an artist.  Check out this uber cool vid.  The vocalist do a great job of branding while adding some visual entertainment to a “audio” piece of art.

Voca People, A Lesson in Branding Art
 

let me know what you think.

There are a ton of things we can do that will build our brand.  Outlined below are a few basics that should be a given but truly are not that common.

1-Thank-you cards.  Yep, I know very boring.  But the bottom line is very few people do this.   Think for just a minute when was the last time you were sent a thank-you card for a purchase? So I have found the best way to do this is to send a thank-you about a week after you deliver your product or service. Handwritten is best.

Then a few days later follow up with a phone call.  Yep old fashioned talk-on-the phone communication. Thank-your client again and ask if everything arrived in good order (if you had to ship it).  If you hand delivered your masterpiece for a local or regional client ask if they are still happy with the placement of their piece.

A month after that follow up with another courtesy call making sure everything is ok and that there are no quality challenges.

These follow up touches are not a pitch fest to pimp your product or backend sales.  Do that through your regular content driven ezine, newsletter or blog.

Finally make sure you use permission base marketing to keep your client informed of upcoming projects and work in progress.

2-Elevator speech.  I have harped on this before as is it critical yet few people take advantage of this simple process.  When you have the opportunity to meet new people, a well thought out 30 second speech can speak volumes in presenting yourself as an artist.   Even in the professional high end sales ranks it amazes me how few people actually do this. So, write it, edit it, finalize it, practice it and present it.

Until next time.

Live-Love-Laugh

Wheeew…that has been an absolute drag.  What I am talking about is a snafu I ran into when I upgraded my WP software to 2.7.1.  Yikes.  I did a few things way to casually and it cost me 4 months of posts.  Here is what I did wrong.

1-I didn’t back up my current db right before I installed the upgrade.

2-I didn’t turn-off all of the plugins.

Yep so guess what happen?  When I upgraded I was no longer able to see the dashboard or the left panel which is where all of the admin stuff is.  I couldn’t just un-install and re-install because I had not backed up and would have lost all of the data. Nice.  So after hours and hours each week and literally months of trying to figure this out, I found the answer on a forum.  Yep.  Sadly I didn’t find it earlier.  My own fault as I must have looked at it 100 times over the last few months, kind of like moving the jelly in the fridge to find the jelly in the fridge….might be a guy thing.  No, better yet, lets use the ADD dyslexia thing.  Ha.  Bottom line, my own ding-dongness.  No biggie got it whipped in about 2 minutes when I figured out the “HOW”.  I figured out what to do and why much earlier, just couldn’t figure out how.  So there you have it. Stay tuned as I bring you up to speed on what is happening with Art Marketing Buzz and the Studio.

Tim