I talk about how and why I now have transcriptions under many of my video posts.

Transcription Services.

My first Thursday Video! Hope you like it.

A few things you might want to have on your to-do list if you want to market your art:

Related:
Video Monday 14: Press Releases and Blog Strategies

This post came out of my discussions with Kathryn about her artist clients’ needs for social media promotion. I talk about a few key things artists and small businesses should have at the ready: Press releases and blogging guidelines and content plans. Well written releases are a crucial part of getting word of mouth attention, and your blog guides will help you maintain consistency with your overall blog story.

I expand on all of this in my guest post over at KathrynJennex.com. Please check it out!

Transcript:
Sings: Video Monday, video Monday, it’s a Monday so here’s a video!

So today on Video Monday I thought I’d talk a little bit more about how artists and small businesses can do their marketing online. I group those two together, I guess I should explain why I’m often talking about artists and small businesses in the same sentence. I know there are huge differences between those two in most cases, or at least in many. But I do think there are a lot of very similar things about each of those groups that makes their marketing a little bit similar.

They’re small production, or at least limited production, usually targeted at niche markets, and word of mouth is their bread and butter. That’s what’s going to make their business successful at least when they’re starting out. so that’s why I think a lot of the same marketing techniques apply between both artists and just small businesses.

So what I want to talk about today is the few things that I’ve been working on. My friend Kathryn has a few artist clients and small businesses that she’s helping out, and we’ve had a lot of discussions together about you know what, what these people need right off the bat to get that word of mouth going. So I wanted to talk about two of those key things.

And the first one you know, it sounds simple, but it’s press releases. And I just want to talk about what you should be doing if you have a new product, or if you have a new piece that’s been commissioned or is being announced, make sure you have a press release for that. So write a press release, write the formal press release or have someone do it for you, and make sure you include high res images (links) and put that release, send it out to any media outlets that you have the contact information for, that you think it would be relevant for. Blogs as well, not just the traditional ones, and post that press release as a blog post. Make sure again, hi-res images (as links, not attachments).

Not only that, include also a second document or a second post that just breaks out the basic facts, figures, quotes, and just the images. That way if the blog or the other media outlet wants to write the article themselves, not just copy and paste your press release, just give them what they need so that they do that without having to dig through the press release.

Of course if the press release is written well than that very important information should be surfaced you know, close to the top, so they can just get it, the meat of it. But it’s always good to include both those options for them. And again, high res images. That’s very important.

The second thing is you know, make sure that you have a really good blogging outline. Like guidelines for content coming up and guidelines for just how each post should be written. Because lets face it, if you’re an artist or you’re running a small business you don’t have time, or at least if your business is going well at all you probably don’t have time to be sitting down, every week figuring out, okay, I’m going to take a couple hours on my Monday morning to figure out what the blog post should be today. You probably don’t have that kind of time.

Again, either take the time, or have someone do it for you, which might be the better solution in a lot of cases, and figure out what your content plan is going to be. So ten weeks in advance I know what each post is going to be about. Of course things can come up, of course new product releases etc, other news that might work themselves in there, but figure out if you’re, if you need a post every Monday, every Tuesday, if that’s what you’ve decided, you should be able to look at your content plan and say okay. ‘I’ve got five to ten bullet points of what this post needs to cover, how it’s going to relate to my overall story of my blog, what the content should be, and what offer, you know, what value I’m providing to my readers.’

That way you’re never stuck. You’re never spending so much time trying to figure it out. And what the guidelines do is tell you okay, every post needs to tick off these points.
-This is how it relates to the overall story and explain what the overall story of the blog is.
-This is what the content should be, how is this going to relate to the story, and the offer is every post should, you know, relate back to this general offer. So my blog is about helping people do XYZ, my blog is about teaching people this, or it’s sending people this type of information so make sure that everything has that.

And again just other guidelines for consistency so that you can have multiple authors. That’s something you’re allowed to do. If you’re running a small business, you’re allowed, other employees can be writing the blog, it doesn’t have to be all on you. And if you’ve got a content plan and you’ve got guidelines, you allow for other people’s unique perspectives, but you’re always maintaining the important bits of consistency, so that your readers are always wanting to come back, even if it’s a different author next week.

So that’s Video Monday everyone, thanks bye.

What does your art say about the people who buy it?

If you want people to buy your art and hang it in their apartments, houses, office reception areas, corner offices, and so on, you should be able to explain what owning that piece of art says about the person who bought it.

If someone has a party and pulls out some organic, locally brewed beer from their fridge to serve to guests, that says something about that host.

If people arrive and the host is playing 30s jazz on the stereo, that says something about her.

If she has your art hanging on her wall, what does it say about her?

Hugh Macleod calls the statements that these things make about the person who purchased them and what they reveal “social markers.” He says that if you can’t identify how your product (or your art) is a social marker, you should give up.

I’m saying that you should be able to articulate, if you intend to sell your work, why it’s unique, what it says about the purchaser, and why anyone should care in less than three sentences.

Once you can identify what your work says about the people who buy it, you can figure out how you should write your blog, who your audience should be, and how you can connect with them.

This is pretty much step number one.

It’s not just about what your work means to you, it’s what your work says about the people willing to give you money for it.

By describing what it says about you in your blog or marketing pieces, it adds meaning to the work that someone else can take and have it mean something to them.

Basically, art is like a child. The artist, or parent, has all these deep personal feelings about the child. Why they love them, why they want the best for them, and there’s a rich and important history behind the creation of that child.

Now imagine you had to write a resume for that child so that she could get a job. Suddenly all that history, all those feelings have to be distilled, and in some cases dismissed, in favour of figuring out why anyone else should care.

I walk through a few of the first steps to making a marketing plan.

Read more about Social Objects or “Social Markers.”

More about a “Purpose-Idea.”

Transcript:
Sings: Video Monday, video Monday, it’s a Monday so here’s a video!

So today I thought I would briefly talk about obviously what I’ve been talking about most of the time these days is if you’re an artist and you’re trying to market yourself more, specifically online what you can do about that.

So that can be kind of a daunting task to say day one, I’m going to start marketing myself. So it’s a lot easier to kind of break it up into more manageable chunks. So I think on this Video Monday I’ll quickly go through just a few of what those steps can be, and maybe next week I’ll give you some more specific examples so this one doesn’t go too long.

Step One, identify your key markets. So who are the people that you want to be promoting yourself to first of all. This is usually one group of people is the type of person or type of industry or the type of gallery that has either purchased your work before, or seems most interested in it already. So you wanna continue to build upon those interests, continue to build upon those sales.

The second group of people is just, those people who you think you’ve got a shot at. This is the growth area that you suspect is going to start happening. If I can make a few sales, and get myself out to this group of people a little bit, this is going to be where it takes off. So that would be your second group of key markets. And of course there could be more, but those are two major ones to focus on first of all.

The Second step is key messages. Okay, so now I’ve figured out who the specific places are, the specific people or the specific type of you know, demographic I’m going after, what messages are they going to be most receptive to? Is it that this work, if you display this painting in your office it’ll tell your employees, it’ll tell your potential clients what kind of business you are. It’ll help, they’ll be conversation pieces for you, as you know, Hugh Macleod or Mark Earls would talk about, these are the social objects, or this kind of demonstrates the purpose-idea of our business. This is the kind of thing we’re going after, these are the types of conversations we have.

And then basically after that you’ve got your markets, your messages, how do you get yourself out there to them? Is it you need to start writing this type of blog post. You need to make a social media news release, to talk about the sale you already made. If you’ve sold a piece to this type of business, make sure those other businesses in that sector know about it. If they want to be like that business maybe they’ll come to you too.

So that’s Video Monday, thanks everyone!

View it!

Transcript:
Sings: Video Monday, video Monday, it’s a Monday so here’s a video!

So today I thought I’d do just a very quick post about having something to sell. So we’ve talked about, and specifically about artists again, we’ve talked about having a story that people can really buy into. Something they can keep coming back and discovering new things about. Something they feel something emotional towards.

So these people, and I’m sure you’ve experienced it on the things that you read regularly, or the authors you really enjoy, the writers you really like, eventually you get to the point where you’ve bought into their story and you want to buy a piece of it. You wish there was some souvenir that you could actually have. And it can sometimes be frustrating if there’s a blog you love, but they don’t have a book, they don’t have a t-shirt, they don’t have anything that I can actually own part of. It can be a little frustrating.

So I thought I’d talk briefly about how obviously if you’re an artist people have bought into your story, your journey, being able to actually buy your art on your website is going to be kind of obvious. But if you’re someone else and you’ve just got a story that people really enjoy, there are three pretty good reasons to have something on your site that people can buy.

The first one is, and Seth Godin calls books souvenirs of ideas. Ideas are free. You’re giving them out for free on your blog all the time people want to have a souvenir of it. So what this means is, if someone actually owns something in the physical world that’s related to the ideas that you’ve been distributing on your blog it kind of takes your ideas and moves them into the real world. Where people can share a book with someone sooner than they can share a blog with someone who doesn’t read blogs regularly.That book sitting on your desk at work is now as Hugh Macleod would call a social object. Something that you can have a conversation about easier than you can have a conversation with a co-worker who doesn’t read blogs about those ideas.

Another reason, obviously it just, it gives you something you can make some money off of. The likelihood that most of us are going to get rich by selling an e-book on our blogs is pretty low, but it’s something.

And I would say another really strong reason is it makes your readers more attached to you. They are less likely to stop reading a blog that they own a piece of, they own the book, they own the t-shirt, then they are to someone that they haven’t given money to.

So those are just a couple of reasons to have something on your blog to sell. Whether it’s an e-book, a real book or a t-shirt, that sort of thing, and you can come up with better ideas than I can about what those things should be.

So all that said you might be wondering, so Joel, you have a blog that people read and you have nothing on your site that people can actually buy. So, an obvious caveat to this whole thing is that writing something worth people paying money for is really hard and it takes a long time. So I haven’t got to that place yet, so if you want to get to that place I suggest you start pretty soon, because it’s going to take awhile.

So that’s Video Monday, thanks everyone.

Behold!

Transcript:
Sings: Video Monday, video Monday, it’s a Monday so here’s a video!

So I know I’ve been talking a lot about the story, content, offer blog format but this whole kind of idea and formula fascinates me, so I’m probably going to talk about it a lot. I tend to talk possibly too much about the things that fascinate me, but there you go.

Specifically about the context, the story part, but the context that gets baked into these things that make it more interesting. And I was thinking about this today because… I have the Futurama animated show on DVDs and I watch it a lot because it’s my favorite show, so I guess that makes sense. But there was an episode on that wasn’t that great. There frankly were lots of episodes of that show that aren’t terrific. Some of them are just not funny. It’s a comedy and there are episodes that there’s nothing funny in them.

But why do I still watch them? Why do I watch the episodes that aren’t so great still? And it is the context, it’s the characters. Even if what the characters are saying isn’t terribly funny this episode, the fact that I get to spend a little bit more time with those characters is interesting. I just like to do that.

So you know, if you’re a blogger, like lifestyle bloggers have this advantage to some extent that because we know so much about them, because there is context there and we are familiar with these characters, even if they write a post that’s not particularly interesting, there can be just complete minutia that isn’t terribly compelling, we’re learning a little bit more about this person and we’re getting to spend a little bit more time with them and that’s okay, that’s good enough.

So I just wanted to kind of, and maybe we can have some discussion about this in the comments about how it’s not so terrifically difficult to do if you are that kind of… if you’re an Apple TV ad, you have a lot of time, in 15-30 second increments, and you have a medium that allows you to kind of show more of a character. You know, build in more context to these things. So that even if a specific Apple ad isn’t terrifically funny, you know the characters, you enjoy spending time with them, and there’s a big advantage to that.

But if you’re just doing you know, a marketing blog, or a corporate blog or something like that, how do you bake in context to that? How do you reveal a little bit more of yourself into that? How do you make it more compelling if what’s being said isn’t always you know, great, interesting, insightful stuff, why would someone still want to read it?

And a lot of that just is revealing a bit more of yourself, having interesting, having stability to them. There’s something about them you can always expect. Okay, what he or she is writing this time isn’t awesome, but there’s a familiarity there. There’s something that will always make you interested to read it even if what’s being said isn’t brilliant every time.

So I’m not sure then if what you’re writing isn’t terribly not interesting, how do you make it a little bit more, how do you bake in context? How do you get that problem solved? So maybe Video Mondays in the future will talk about that, maybe the posts throughout the week. Anyway, that’s Video Monday, bye.

To get people to care about your blog they have to not care at all about your “blog.” And they shouldn’t. Just words on a page, after all. They need to care about things much more interesting than that.

Those things are:

The story. The content. The offer.

I’m going to run through what each of these pieces mean, specifically, and hopefully provide a few examples that make sense.

I’m not certain this is perfect. And this mostly applies to blogs that have a key person or character behind them.

The Story
The story is the overall narrative of your blog. It’s the lens through which your readers view your work and share it with others.

Is your blog about limiting your net carbon impact on the planet? Then the story is your journey, your struggle, your experiences. Conflicts, crises, resolutions, successes, and so on.

Is your blog personal, talking about what happens in your daily life? Then you are the story. What’s happened to you before, what’s going on right now, and how that affects what you do and write about.

It’s like a novel. The individual pages are the content (see below), and they build upon or draw from the story (what’s happened before, what you know about the characters, etc.), but the two are somehow separate pieces of the same book.

The story of your blog is, well, the “point.” What do you care about and why are you writing in the first place?

The Content
Each post (or podcast episode, or vlog, or whatever) either builds upon or draws from the story. It fuels the greater conversation about your blog.

This is the stuff you write everyday, that you control. Ideally, each of these contain their own stories that play off of the grander story of the blog.

When someone reads a post, or shares it, or talks about it, or feels something because of it, it’s all done through the lens of the greater story. The posts themselves are the content, the story is the context, and they combine to fuel the conversation and help sell the offers.

The Offer
This is the Why Should Anyone Give a Shit? part. When someone reads your blog, what do they get out of it? What can they get out of it? Are you literally selling something they might want to purchase? Or are you teaching them something valuable?

In the case of the No Impact Man, maybe you’re just making them feel like they’re better people for caring. That’s pretty huge by itself.

You can have more than one offer, or sell, too. Hugh, for instance, sells marketing knowledge, keys to creativity, and he literally sells stuff. They all offer you, the reader, something big in return for caring about the blog.

The Combination
So it’s in figuring out all these parts and having them work together smoothly that leads to an interesting formula for producing something worth caring about. This sort of combination is what fuels interesting conversations. Gets people talking about your blog, and you, and why anyone should care.

I think.

So if you’ve got the drive to write, or are tasked with maintaining a blog for your company, you might want to try working out what each of these pieces will be for you, and see what happens.

Examples
J-Money’s thetypingmakesmesoundbusy.com: The story is Jelisa’s life. We know she’s kind of broke, loves running, and has had plenty of hilarious dating misadventures. And she’s trying to get more professional writing work. The content are her posts about what goes on in her life. If she talks about running, or writing, it builds upon what we already know about how she feels about those. The offer is that her posts are hilarious, they give you something to chuckle at. And you can hire her to write for you if you want.

Hugh Macleod’s gapingvoid.com: The story is Hugh living in Alpine, Texas, doing some futile marketing and making awesome artwork after having been a traditional ad man for 10 years. The content are his cartoons and marketing insights (often the same thing). The offer is learning about marketing, inspiration, what you can buy from him (plus many more things).

vegandad.blogspot.com: Story – A, well, vegan dad who wants his family to be healthy and eat great food. He’s got a few boys and a brand new vegan daughter, and he wants to share the cool food he makes for them with other vegans. Content – Amazing recipes. They’re usually fairly simple because we know from the overall story that he’s a busy guy. Offer – Great recipes that you can try yourself. And you get to learn that no matter how busy you might be, you can always find time to eat right and cook great food.

Jesse Thorn’s maximumfun.org: Story — Jesse Thorn, 28, is living his dream of hosting a public radio show (and podcasts), despite the odds (it doesn’t really make him much money). He struggles, he finds success, and you’re on the journey with him of living his dream. Content — The episodes and blog posts themselves. The things he creates and controls. Each episode of his show or podcasts are framed by the fact that he’s young, fairly broke, but having a huge amount of fun interviewing his heroes and hanging out with his friends. Offers — His shows are hilarious and informative, he asks for donations to support his work, and you feel like you’re part of an exclusive club of awesome.

So what do you think?

So I’m helping a friend get a little more social with the marketing of his art. And some of the advice I’ve been giving him is that the best blogs tell stories.

They give you something to follow and care about, not just something to return to. The best blogs aren’t easily replaced by another blog talking about the same thing. They make a stronger connection than that. And they tell you that, by reading this blog, you’re doing something. You’re learning, you’re laughing, you’re getting closer to where you want to be, or closer to someone you want to be like. Or someone you just plain like.

So my artist friend is going to take this approach with his blog. It’s going to be about what they don’t tell you in art school. Namely, how to actually make money. It’s just not something that comes up.

It’s going to follow the story of a man trying to figure out how to make money from art. By reading his blog you’ll be following his story. Oh, and you’ll be learning about what works and what doesn’t if you’re an artist. Or if you’re not, you’ll learn about how you could be one. It tells you that if you read enough of his blog you could quit your shitty day job and take up that artistic endeavour you’ve always dreamed about. It tells you that by reading this blog you’re getting a little bit closer to it everyday.

The No Impact Man blog is the very compelling story of someone trying to do the right thing. And it tells you that, by reading this blog, you’re learning about how you can do the right thing, too. In fact, you’re doing the right thing right now by reading it. You’re a better person than the people that don’t read it.

Chris Brogan’s blog isn’t about marketing, it’s a lifestyle blog. It tells you that by reading about Chris, and by learning from Chris, you’re becoming a little bit more like him. You could be just like him one day if you keep reading his blog every day. If you’re a mid-level manager at your company and you read Chris’s blog, you’re reading it because it tells you that you could do the sort of thing he does where you work.

So what about my blog? What’s the story, what’s the point?

I don’t rightly know. Still working that out. Maybe a 20-something working in a fun but flawed industry trying to make sense of it all? Maybe. I don’t know.