So, the new Facebook Pages for brands, businesses, and organizations with the love-it-or-hate love-it Timeline feature was announced last week and the permanent change is imminently upon us. For existing Facebook Pages, there is a preview and voluntary transition period to the new layout between now and March 29, 2012 and on March 30, 2012, all Pages will be migrated over.
 

As a small business owner or artist, you might be wondering what the new features are and how you can take advantage of them now to increase your visibility and reach among potential fans (ie. getting more “Likes”). We’re here to help! Many of the new Pages features will be allow you to create a cohesive and memorable brand experience for your users visiting your Page.

One of the most noticeable new features of Pages is the Cover Photo. Think of it like the cover of your portfolio or album art. This your chance to make a killer first impression on users visiting your Page.  You want to use a photo or even a collage that represents who you are and what you are about so that you can make an instant connection with your fans.
 

One thing to keep in mind is how the Cover Photo differs from your Profile Photo. The Profile Photo is essentially your avatar that represents you throughout Facebook. For example, when you comment on users’ personal profiles or other Pages, your Profile Photo is what will appear. The Cover Photo is only seen when users visit your Page.

Note: Check out Facebook’s Terms of Use for Pages. Facebook asks you not to use Cover Photos that include price or purchase information, contact information (that is what your About & Info sections are for!), or references to Facebook features (such as “Like”).

With the new Timeline feature, Facebook users have the ability to see how your business or artwork has developed and changed over time at their fingertips. Use this to your advantage by cleaning up your old posts and adding important events or milestones to your Timeline.
 

Milestones go back in time beyond the date when your Page was created, so use milestones to call attention to important events that have contributed to the success of your business or been instrumental in the development of your artwork. For example, create a milestone for when your business was founded or you started creating art. You can also create a milestone that commemorates the first dollar spent; the digital equivalent to the dollar in the picture frame in a brick-and-mortar store.  As an artist, you can showcase historically significant gallery events or concerts, ie. your first big break into the scene.
 

You can also associate photos with milestones, so make the most of your milestones by including a relevant and interesting photo so fans can visually connect with your story.

Pinned and Starred Posts: Take advantage of the new feature allowing you to pin posts to the top of your timeline for seven days to keep important updates visible so fans don’t miss them. This is a perfect way to transition from the “Landing Tab” in the old Facebook Pages layout. This is the first substantive content your fans will see from you – make it count! Also, starring posts allows posts to show up fullscreen (across both columns) so use it for posts you want to draw attention to on your timeline. This is great for smaller milestone events or announcements.
 

Custom View/App Icons: If you plan on keeping some of your static HTML pages when you switch over to the new Pages layout, be sure to take some time to create a custom icon for them when they show up in the views/apps area under the Cover Photo. Having custom icons will contribute to the overall cohesiveness of your Page. You can literally make these icons look anyway you choose (except they cannot be copyrighted by another person and they cannot contain indecent images) – get creative!
 

So, are you looking forward to the new Timeline for Pages? Dreading switching over? Want even more information on the new Facebook Pages and tips for how to use it effectively? Sign up for Behind the Scenes, our weekly newsletter, to get more details on what this new feature will mean for your page!

The newest member of our The Art of Social Media guides will be released later this month! The Art of Facebook will be filled with information and suggestions, created and curated exclusively for artists and arts organizations. We are also working furiously to include up-to-date information about the new Timeline feature!

Whether you’re an artist, a museum, a creative arts center, an arts department, a theatre, or Hollywood, social media can be an effective tool in your marketing scheme. Although Twitter and Facebook remain paramount, other lesser known social media platforms, like YouTube, Flickr, and FourSquare, offer unique advantages for users in the arts industry. Regardless of the platform, social media offers several distinct benefits to artists and others in the arts community.

Today is the last of a four-part series highlighting several key advantages social media has to offer individuals and companies involved in the arts. Today, we’re talking about “Getting It Right.” In this post we will introduce you to several arts based businesses that effectively use social media to market their events, activities, and overall organizations.

YouTube: Anaheim Ballet

In addition to updating their YouTube channel on a weekly basis to keep their community interested and informed, the Anaheim Ballet has also taken it a step further by customizing the design of their channel page – custom color scheme, avatar, and background all enhance the viewer experience.

Their frequent use of YouTube and advertisement of their YouTube page has led to over 50,000 subscribers and over 38 million video views. The Anaheim Ballet also takes advantage of Google’s non-profit partnership and uses YouTube as a fundraising tool. Finally, the Anaheim Ballet also uses YouTube’s playlist feature to compile videos based on common themes including dancer biographies and festival highlights, etc.

Twitter: The Museum of Modern Art in New York

MoMA boasts over 800,000 followers and posts regularly, yet not too often. MoMA uses Twitter effectively to not only market its own artwork and events, but also to actively engage in its community of followers and other Twitter users. MoMA regularly tweets about special events or exhibits, posting photos from inside the museum and of the artwork. In addition to self-promotion, MoMA contributes to the art conversation on twitter by retweeting other art center’s tweets, responding to questions posed by visitors or artists, and encouraging dialogue among followers by posting questions of its own. Finally, MoMA acts as a mouthpiece for key industry news posted on other traditional news sources.

Flickr – The Belkin Art Gallery

The Belkin Art Gallery’s Flickr group serves not only as a way to provide additional information about the gallery, but it also allows members of the group to post their own images from the Belkin Art Gallery. This encourages visitors to the Belkin Art Gallery to build a community among themselves, focused on the Belkin Art Gallery and its pieces. For a small art gallery like the Belkin, Flickr is a great free way to promote events and exhibits and allows visitors to do most of the promotion themselves.

Whether you’re an artist, a museum, a creative arts center, an arts department, a theatre, or Hollywood, social media can be an effective tool in your marketing scheme. Although Twitter and Facebook remain paramount, other lesser known social media platforms, like YouTube, Flickr, and FourSquare, offer unique advantages for users in the arts industry. Regardless of the platform, social media offers several distinct benefits to artists and others in the arts community.

Today is the third of a four-part series highlighting several key advantages social media offer to individuals and companies involved in the arts. Today, we’re talking about Increasing Your E-Commerce Opportunities.

Once you’ve taken the steps to increase your exposure through social media and build a community of fans through fostering relationships, leverage the increased profile and your fans with e-commerce opportunities. In essence, leveraging e-commerce through social media means ensuring that your products (whether works of art, performances, or events) are advertised online as well.

If you’re not already, you should be selling your products or events online! Through a simple online gallery or e-ticketing system, you can exponentially grow your profits and potential audience. Once you have your online gallery or e-ticketing setup, use your social media community to advertise and spread the buzz about your work!

Tweet the addition of new items to your store. Form a virtual “street team” with a hashtag and encourage your followers to spread the word about an upcoming concert. Use Facebook and Foursquare to create deals and discounts for potential customers (If a customer likes your Facebook page, give them free shipping! If someone checks into an event, they receive $2 off admission or a free t-shirt).

You can also use social media to conduct contests to promote new events or your new book. Have a new installation coming to your museum? Encourage fans to create a video of why they should win a set of free passes to preview or opening night. Ask fans to tweet about your newest album for a chance to win one for free. Hold a drawing for a discounted membership among fans of your Facebook page.

Your social media fans are crazy about the work you do. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t like your page or follow you. Use that devotion to encourage ticket sales or purchases! Even if your fans aren’t able to purchase what you’re offering or attend your next event, the chances that they will refer them to their friends are high. Don’t miss out on that opportunity.

Be sure and check back for Part 4 of The Art of Social Media – Getting It Right.

Whether you’re an artist, a museum, a creative arts center, an arts department, a theatre, or Hollywood, social media can be an effective tool in your marketing scheme. Although Twitter and Facebook remain paramount, other lesser-known social media platforms, like YouTube, Flickr, and FourSquare, offer unique advantages for users in the arts industry. Regardless of the platform, social media offers several distinct benefits to artists and others in the arts community.

Today is the second of a four-part series highlighting several key advantages Social Media offer to individuals and companies involved in the arts. Today, we’re talking about Building Your Community through social media.

Social media can not only help you advertise your art but also help you meet other people, creating art, experiencing art, reviewing and critiquing art, as well as learning about art. We don’t have to tell you that this is an important part of building your online community. Building a community allows you to both influence and be influenced by other artists and individuals in the art industry. It also allows you to share ideas and collaborate to create new art.

Social media can help foster the development of that community. At its basic form, social media is about connecting like-minded people. People who follow you on Twitter or like your Facebook Page or follow your Flickr and YouTube pages do so because they have something in common with you. It’s important to leverage social media to take advantage of that! Use social media to gather these individuals together.

You can also use social media to engage your community. Introduce a weekly chat about art on Twitter with a special hashtag. Or create a hashtag for gallery or museum events and encourage visitors to tweet their impressions using the hashtag. Ask questions on your Facebook page where followers can answer them in the comments. Run a contest on YouTube or Flickr to encourage fans and followers to create their own art and post it as a response to your videos or photos.

Social media can also be a goldmine for collaboration. Use Twitter to find other artists interested in your genre or medium and work together to create new art. Find other galleries on Facebook and co-sponsor events. In different locations? Sponsor an event “across the nation” to encourage art-lovers from all over to get involved on a single day in their local communities. Team up with other museums to offer special deals through Foursquare (better yet, create a badge!).

The bottom line is Build A Community! Too often people and companies get caught up in pushing information in social media. It’s important to take time and build relationships with your community.

Be sure and check back for Part 3 of The Art of Social Media – Increasing Your E-Commerce Opportunities.

Whether you’re an artist, a museum, a creative arts center, an arts department, a theatre, or Hollywood, social media can be an effective tool in your marketing scheme. Although Twitter and Facebook remain paramount, other lesser-known social media platforms, like YouTube, Flickr, and Foursquare, offer unique advantages for users in the arts industry. Regardless of the platform, social media offers several distinct benefits to artists and others in the arts community.

Today is the first of a four-part series highlighting several key advantages social media offer to individuals and companies involved in the arts. We begin with the amazing Free Advertising Potential in social media.

One of the great things about social media is the cost – it’s free! Given the start-up cost of using social media, the benefits of using social media to extend your presence beyond the gallery and paper advertisements are endless. Any time you advertise using traditional marketing material (flyers, word of mouth, newspaper adverts, or television commercials), you should also be using social media.

One advantage of social media is that the information is pushed to users who want to receive it. Your Twitter followers, for example, want information specifically about you or your business; otherwise they wouldn’t have followed you. We call these people your “art”-ience – people who are interested in the art you provide, rather than art in general. This is an important distinction. They want to hear about the art you are providing. When people are interested in what you are advertising, it’s almost not even advertising anymore! It’s more like, “Hey friends! I’m having a party and you’re invited!”

Finally, the referral potential of social media is exponential! This is for one simple reason: it’s super easy to refer people. On sites like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr, and YouTube, referrals usually take the form of a re-share of the information. This is normally as easy as a click of a button. Whether your followers are re-tweeting your tweets, sharing your Facebook updates, “favoriting” your Flickr photos, checking into your Foursquare events, or posting your YouTube videos, most can do so in 5 seconds or less. When it’s so easy for your followers to refer their friends to your products and events, they are more likely to do it!

Be sure and check back for Part 2 of The Art of Social Media – Building Your Community.

Want to take your Twitter use to the next level? If you’re new to Twitter or just not getting the results you want, the following tips will help you get the most of the time spent building your brand in the Twit-o-sphere.

1. Develop a game-plan.

Having a game-plan takes the guesswork out of preparing your tweets every time you sit down at the keyboard. To start developing your game-plan, identify several categories of tweets you want to make regularly, ie new blog posts, helpful blog posts by other people in your field, weekly questions to engage your community, and personal tweets.

2. Schedule your tweets.

Scheduling your tweets can help you implement your game-plan. The basic idea is to spread out the content your provide to your followers. By scheduling tweets at spaced-out intervals, you can make sure you don’t flood your followers’ twitter feeds and take advantage of high-traffic times in various time-zones.

3. Set aside time in your schedule.

Setting aside 15 minutes in morning and 15 minutes in the evening to dedicate to Twitter is important to make sure you don’t become invisible on your follower’s Twitter feeds. During this time, you should check your own Twitter feed, re-tweet relevant information and cool blog posts, and check @replies and mentions, and monitor your new followers (check our their profiles and decide whether to follow them in return). In the toddler-years of Twitter use (ie. you don’t have a lot of followers), you want to be actively engaging the followers you have to keep them interested and bring you one step closer to being internet famous.

4. Monitor tweets about you and your keywords.

Set up saved searches about keywords and hashtags that relevant to you or your business to help you know when you mentioned by other users.

5. Use monitoring tools.

Monitor saved searches about keywords and hashtags using third-party apps. Many third-party apps allow you to receive notifications when a keyword or hashtag is used in a tweet.

6. Use Twitter on a mobile device.

Put Twitter on your phone, iPad, computer, etc. There are many third-party apps so pick one that appeals to you and tweet periodically about what you or your business is up to. Find yourself spending all day on Twitter? Tip – set up tweets by text or email to allow you to update without letting yourself get sucked into the Twit-o-sphere.

7. Link your blog and Twitter accounts.

Keep things convenient! Use plugins (WordPress has many) to automatically tweet your blog posts when they are posted and to bring your Twitter feed into your blog (ie. through the sidebar) so that all relevant information about what you’re doing is in one place for your readers.

Have your own tip for improving Twitter efficiency? Mention it in the comments below!