The talks below by Jeremy Rikin got me thinking about the role of art in our culture and really the world. Rifkin’s has spent the past several years studying empathy and its relationship to our collective belief that humans are naturally aggressive. He challenges us to imagine using our consciousness  coupled with empathy to change the world. Our current level of connectedness allows us to see the entire human race as a family allowing us to eliminate the historic boundaries that kept us in constant battle and fear with non-believers. Instead of fighting over our respective “Truths” we can focus on our collective commonalities.

What does this have to do with art? A lot…think of what art does, it is a tool for extending our vision of the world and thereby challenging the status quo. We can reinforce an empathic view of humanity by doing what we do…think about it!

What do you think of Rifkin’s proposal? Do you see how you as an artist/creative can contribute? Leave a comment and share your thoughts…

Evidence of the Shift

The talk above was based on Rifkin’s talk at RSA, in it he goes into detail about the major shifts that our civilization has already experienced and what they mean for our future. His research has strongly indicated that recent events from the fall of the financial institutions two years ago to the earthquake in Haiti are presenting challenges to us to think differently about how we conduct our lives. The largest of those challenges are based on how we conduct business, our collective model for commerce.

It is my premise that artists are uniquely situated to lead us in new and creative ways to build a new model for commerce, one based on connection and caring for those we conduct business with. As artists we have an opportunity to demonstrate this simply by virtue of how we do business, most if not all of our business is conducted face to face with our buyers and in the process model a more personal non-transaction based way of sustaining ourselves by what we create.

The full talk below is rather long but well worth taking the time to watch and think about. Let’s talk … what are your thoughts?

Sorry…no related posts.

Last week Facebook released its much anticipated addition to the blossoming GPS based checkin applications. In light of that release I’ve decided to spend some time taking a look at why you need to care about location based services and more importantly their applicability to working artists.

While many of the applications are exclusively geared to smart phone ( iP0d touch included for this article) users, that fact should not deter their use by artists. Every indication is that Location Based Services (LBS) can become extremely useful tools for small businesses especially around their social media and connection strategies.

So, with special emphasis on usable features for artists I’m going to start with what these apps do and how their use potential can be adapted for artists. I’ll also dive into their limitations and finally strategies for using them effectively.

Smart phones started it all

As with most innovations, these apps sprang from another innovation that set the stage, they are all based on GPS technology but, and this is an important but, GPS in and of itself was not enough. The technology was based on finding a location or destination relative to your present location, it wasn’t until Smart Phones adopted the technology that  it became feasible for  businesses and people to use GPS as a way to communicate with others by letting them know they were very close by. You might say it enabled a sort of reverse use of GPS.

Initially launched as scavenger hunt styled social games and means for friends to find each other, it wasn’t long before savvy businesses realized how effective the smart phone tools could be for bringing customers to their doors. The really savvy businesses created connections with their followers from direct involvement at a personal level, the games were simply a visibility tool.

GPS enabled smart phones and LBS apps  are  perfect tool for artists’ visibility… until now it has been hard for artists to promote themselves through  links to  off-line venues. We’ve generally had to rely on old school methods using post cards, listing on web sites and word of mouth. Now, we have the ability to connect ourselves with a venue and use that relationship to bring people to us instead of hoping for a chance discovery.

So, with this in mind let’s take a look at the services, with attention to their use by artists who may or may not have access to a smart phone. While each LBS relies on users who posses smart phones, setting up your listing and using it to connect with your buyers,  does not universally require a smart phone.

Before we start…

While these services offer some very real opportunities, remember whether and how you decide to use them should originate from your business goals. More importantly, your visibility goals and specifically how LBS fit into your visibility strategy. I’ll cover goals and strategy after we get a look at the services and their potential uses for artists.

Even though these applications depend on users with GPS equipped smart phones or (iPod touch) one of my  prime considerations in reviewing them is their over all usefulness for artists especially for non-smart owners.

Yelp

Think of Yelp as an on line version of the yellow pages that includes, event listings, and much more detailed business listings. Businesses can list themselves if they have a base as in a store front or multiple locations and the listings offer users the hance to connect with businesses/events by leaving comments and ratings on the listing page.

Features

• Social Media connections are limited to customer reviews and rankings;
• Mobile apps for both iPhone and Android based smart phones;
• Search by key words and categories;
• Invite friends via e-mail;
• listings in other locations;
• Locations/venues linked via Google maps;
• Businesses/events can provide extensive information about themselves by way of their profile, and can be found by way of searches.

Artists Usefulness

• Review feature gives artists an opportunity to connect directly with their buyers;
• Business listing can increase search engines potential;
• Non-smart phone access via browser;
• Advance listing of sales venues;
• Extensive business description/profile;
• Photo upload;
• Wide visibility because of Yelp’s local focus.

Brightkite

As an LBS Brightkite does more than simply provide a way for people to check-in at a specific location, through its web site it also offers easy account set up and association with a specific geographic location. Users wishing to check in at a particular destination that matches your current location will see your listing among their check-in choices.

Features

• Create posts when you check-in or to share info, in the case of artists share info about your venue;
• Add favorite places or friends;
• Find friends at the same location;
• Mentions, very similar to Twitter re-tweets;
• Group texting, allows a group to carry on a conversation or simply notify each other of their location;
• Event set up and broadcast;
• Connection to social media.

Artist useabilabilty

• Browser set up and location association at any time;
• Access through web site at anytime to update your status;
• Photo upload at anytime for any location;
• Invite friends and associate them with your locations;
• Create events and associate them with your location and friends.

Foursquare

This application has become a highly popular “check-in” service that has also grown into a virtual “loyalty” card similar to the punch cards used by coffee shops. Starbucks is the most noted user offering discounts to customers who regularly check in.

Unlike Yelp and Brightkite businesses not automatically discovered via GPS need to submit their information to the folks at Foursquare in advance and await for approval before it is listed.

Features

• Add  and locate friends nearby;
• Wide array of add-on applications that help locate everything from friends to restrooms;
• Add tips about a place;
• Connects to Facebook and Twitter.

Artist friendliness

• Social media connection allows for friends to locate artists if their venue is listed;
• Not easy to have a venue listed if it is not found by GPS (which is the case for most art fairs);
• Primarily limited to smart phone users;
• Check in via web browser not possible;

Gowalla

Gowalla is similar in many ways to Foursquare differeing only in its ability to be used by businesses and event producers to set up tours or “trips”. Using this feature an art fair promoter could link promotions to attending artists by highlighting artists by medium, location etc. Many communities and non-profit arts organizations currently use Gowalla as a way to guide visitors to historic locations or artist studios.

Features

• Check-in via places;
• Place badges;
• Social media links;
• Photo uploads;
• Place claiming limited to actual checkin at the location;
• Place can be requested by contacting Gowalla’s customer support;
• Place lisitngs include Google map and web site links.

Artist friendliness

Because of the difficulty associated with listing a place Gowalla ranks low in usefulness to artists especially art fair artists. There is one exception, if an art fair promoter has listed their event a participating artist can then check-in, however, check-in is limited to smart phone users.

Loopt

This service/application is sort of a mashup of other services features, it allows you to set up places in advance, connect your frieinds to those places through invitation as well as providing a wide range of privacy features.

Features

• Link friends to your places;
• Add e-mail addresses of friends;
• Create a journal around your places and include maps, photos etc.
• Connect to social media;
• RSS feed;
• Widget available for use on blog or web site;

Artist Usability

• Advance set up of places via browser;
• Journal provides a means to provide information about your experience at an art fair for example as well upload photos. The journal also offers a way to build anticipation similar to a small social network.
• An easy way for artists to list their sales venues through Google maps and GPS all in advance of their attendance.
• The available widget gives artists a chance to link to their Loopt places from their blog or web site and in the process widen the scope of their visibility.

Facebook places

When Facebook launched its Places app it placed itself not only in the widening collection of LBSs it also set itself up in direct competition with Foursquare. However, despite its surface appearance as just another “check-in” toy, the simple fact that it links directly to your facebook account gives users  a big advantage.

That said there are limitations to its usefulness for artists mostly because of the application’s infancy. There are many rumors about pending feature releases that include link ups with other complimentary applications. At this point the primary limitation for artists is the absence of easy non-smart phone set up and check in. Currently, non-smartphone check-ins can be made via Facebook’s “touch” application, however, my own testing found that avenue not exactly user friendly.

At this point, I’ll hold off review of Facebook Places for the future, when it hopefully becomes more friendly.

Related posts:

1. A social media network formula for artists Because we don’t own store fronts and most of us…
2. What’s in your visibility tool bag? Remember, visibility depends on communications to be successful, and until…
3. An Artist’s Social Graph In a nut shell, social media/networking is both a communications…

The last installment began with  an examination of  the basics of search engines, how they work and more importantly, their role in your visibility level . We stuck mainly to what goes on when someone searches for you and what you as an artist can do to help ensure you are among the results the searcher sees.

While this segment is intended for practical use it is important to remember that SEO is fundamentally more art than science, because in reality very few actually know the inner workings of search engine operation.

Now, is the time for the practical side, some basic, things you can do to help your work show up in search results.

1. Attract search crawlers

As I mentioned earlier, crawlers highly favor new content when indexing, so the more your content changes the more likely you will continue to be indexed. This doesn’t mean you need to ditch your static gallery site, it does mean if you want to significantly raise your visibility to search engines you will need to start using a blog.

Keep your blog as your hub and simply link to your static gallery from your blog by way of your navigation menu.

2. Create quality, original content

If you are a handmade jeweler and you are competing with all other jewelers (including big boxes) the more your content emphasizes your uniqueness the better your chances of being found. That original content also needs to be interesting enough to attract attention in order to improve ranking.

For example, include regular posts on your blog that refer to your work, your sales venues and post monthly discussions of new work. another example, is to feature people who own your work. show and describe how they use it.

3. Relate Content to your brand

Your content should be related to what you do, and how you want to be perceived, it should provide an insight into  your uniqueness. This means you’ll the more you share about your vision and your work it be easier to include the words and phrases you want searchers to use when looking for what you have. This tactic goes a long way in solidifying the connection between you, your vision and what you make and the position of you as a brand in the minds of potential buyers.

As an artist you are your brand for the simple reason your work comes from who you are, it projects your vision into the world. The more you emphasize those elements the better position you’ll have in potential buyer’s minds.

4. Make your site easy to index

When using images always, always title the image using key words relevant to the content it is found in. Search engines don’t “see” images they only see text, so if your image has a title of “DSC124.jpg” the search engine hasn’t a clue what to do with it, so it moves on. On the other hand if you label the image “ blue cloisonné pendent necklace with gold chain” and the article it is in is all about that necklace or cloisonné necklaces you make, the image will be linked to the text, increasing the page’s index status.

In addition to renaming the image you can further enhance the value of that image by placing the new name or slightly different but relevant name in the “alt tag” of the image. This tag is often available in SEO oriented Wordpress plug-ins, it was originally intended for use by early browsers to indicate the presence of an image in case the computer being used was not capable of rendering the image.

The same goes for embedded video, so when you title a video do so with key words that connect the video to the content it relates to.

When labeling images and videos increase the label’s power by beginning the title with a key word or phrase. The closer that key word is to the beginning of the title the more it will contribute to your ranking. Using the example above, label the cloisonne’ pendent by making “cloisonne” the first word and “gold” the second followed by “necklace”

5. Create accessible content

This refers to content the search engines actually “see” as opposed to what human readers see. Making your site accessible means increasing its’ crawlability by using HTML tags, page titles,headers etc. So, using a hierarchy of content headings will help, those headings are read as HTML title tags, your primary headline is an H1 tag and subsequent sub heads are h2,h3,h4 etc. Search engines read and rank them in that order of importance, they’re also more likely to rank a page higher if it has good subtitle structure. If you limit your post or content to only a headline, your page will likely be ranked lower than if it contains many subject relevant sub-heads.

Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you need to do any coding, just know that good subject header hierarchy helps recognize original quality content. The code takes care of itself all you need to do is write to include headings.

6. Focus each page on one subject

Everything on a page from heading hierarchy to images should reference and support one subject. If you’re talking about Altered serving bowls then the title should read “Altered serving bowls.…” and the main focus of the page should concentrate on the subject of altered serving bowls.

This doesn’t mean you can’t talk about altered pitchers but try to relate the two around the primary subject of altering pots.

7. Use internal links

Include links ( called internal links) on the page to related parts in your site, maybe links to your artists statement, your about page or your home page. They can also be links to pages that relate in some way to the subject of your current post. Word Press handles this task easily through any one of several plug-ins that find and insert these internal links automatically.

An example of “automatic” internal links is  the “related posts” listing below this post, which was generated using a WordPress plug in.

8. Pay attention to and use permalinks

These are the actual page titles as they appear in your browser and are used by blogging platforms, they can be fine tuned very easily in Wordpress and many other frameworks. Don’t change the relationship of that title to your site’s URL because it will make finding that page more difficult.

A best practice is to use the following sequence:

http://www.your site.com/page-title/date

The sequence above helps readers identify the page they are on and makes page indexing easier because the page title comes after the URL. Another important reason for this is that this format insures that you page title will most always show up in the browser address bar.

9. Make your links count

As mentioned before, not only are links important their quality also plays a key role in your ranking. They represent votes of confidence by the linking site, the link shows that the link originator trusts your content and wants to share it with others.

But…just any old link doesn’t do much, what matters is the authority or importance of the linking site in the universe of what you’re subject is. Popularity is indicated by the number of links and trust indicated by the quality of the link.  A link to your pottery site from your Uncle Joe’s site about cigars doesn’t help you, but if your Uncle Joe was a professor of Ceramics at Yale or Harvard, the link would swell in importance.

Uncle Joe’s status as a renowned professor at a prestigious university  helps because his link could possibly generate links from other renowned potters back to your site, thereby adding to your popularity and trust. Links from a highly trustworthy site hold more weight  because  trustworthy sites tend to be linked to other trustworthy sites.

Also,  Uncle Joe’s renown in the clay community may often carry more weight than just a link from Harvard or Yale.

Finally, links having the most value happen organically they come from relevant and high quality content and given freely by the linking site/domain. Together with the other factors above organic links can contribute more to ranking and find ability than those created intentionally by you.

Stay up to date with this series follow the links below:

• The Summer of Love and the hippie-dippy business model
• The Age of Confusion
• What I learned from Alice, a Cruciverbalist and Sputnik
• Your visibility Tool Kit
• The Heart of Your Business
• A social graph for artists
• SEO for Artists
  

Related posts:

1. SEO for artists Unlike, major brands who only want traffic when there is…
2. Marketing Monday: What’s all the twitter about? Did you know that the first report and photo on…
3. What’s in your visibility tool bag? Remember, visibility depends on communications to be successful, and until…

Over the last few installment I’ve focused on the use of social media as a tool to bring people to your Hub, the operative word being “bring ”  by using social media networks as a way to increase the depth of your exposure. The depth I’m talking about is the extent to which your network, both personal and work, overlap with your friends/connections.

So,  recalling the Social Graph videos I introduced a couple of weeks ago, you’ll remember the point was to show the extent of our connections both business and personal, because in today’s world they more often than not overlap. So, for example, I have worked to build that overlap with my Facebook account.

Many of my photographer friends are also fans of both my photography page and The ARTISTScenter. This overlap gives me more connection possibilities by giving any particular contact of mine exposure to my network and visa versa. So the better the overlap the better the exposure, with my exposure being driven by my overall visibility strategy of increasing exposure and connection possibilities with visually creative people.

Having well placed overlapping networks  is one of the key factors in being found by the people who get what we have to offer. That said, the uniqueness of today’s networks also means, while any given person we connect with may not choose to go any deeper. The possibility that someone in the multitude of networks we are attached to will chose to learn more about us, increases relative to extent our networks overlap . Consequently, we can focus our message more so that it is seen by those our work is for.

Finally, your search engine visibility is aided by network overlap by increasing the number of times you and your work show up. For example, search engines search and index Facebook Pages but they do not index Profile pages. The more activity you can generate on your Fan page, even as simple as a regular feed up date from your blog, the more your brand ( you) will be indexed by search engines. All of this translates to increased findability  due to greater exposure of all things related to you and your work, from searches that include  your key words and phrases related to your work.

Artists and search engines

Unlike, major brands who only want traffic when there is a good chance you’ll buy, artists on the other hand want  both buyers and repeat visitors who will share their discovery with others. As artists, our ability to achieve repeat sales is directly linked to the quality of our connections, i.e. our transparency and authority in everything related to what we make. A key part of our visibility strategy  should be positioning ourselves and our work at the top of potential buyers mental lists. That position must include other elements than our name, we need to also be highly positioned by the problems our work solves, i.e. the words and terms most likely used to search for solutions we provide.

Search engine queries related to the problem we solve will help bring new people to our hub where our goal is to give them a reason to return and bring their friends. The work focused on improving our potential for inclusion in the results of searches is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)  includes everything related to building a strategy that gives us visibility to our specific group of potential buyers.

Being found…or not

Search engines index information based on what they find when they “crawl” the web looking for new content. If they don’t detect a change in content for a particular page, they don’t index it. This means that whether or not your pages or site get indexed is directly related to the freshness of the content found, old content signals the crawlers to move on.

Moreover, the accuracy and relevance of what we get back from a search depends on the detail we enter and more importantly how finely tuned  web sites and sources are relative to their own content. The more key words and phrases related to that content present within a source the more likely the source is to be included in any particular search. So, as a web site owner, the more references to your work that occur within your pages the more potential for being listed in a search result. Let’s take a closer look at the key elements to landing in a list of search results by checking out some of the criteria we need to meet.

A search engine uses two major criteria to find and give you the best results:

• The most relevant and  useful to your query
• Ranked by order of importance or perceived value

In the early days of the web, it was enough for a site to simply have relevant words  on a page, because search engines didn’t go  that deep into a site. Our demands for more precise results evolved into the algorithms we have now, all still built around relevance and importance. Search engines basically attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff and then rank the results according to the two factors above.

To help them determine ranking, search engines have developed complex formulas to help us find stuff and help those competing for our attention get found.  Those factors are called ranking factors, things a site needs to have in order to rank high.  In order of importance the top five generally are:

Keyword focused anchor text linking to the site from other sites

This means that the actual coded link (below) tells both the browser and the search engine where the link points to. So if Sue wants to end up high on the list of results her link text needs to be as specific as possible.

The easiest way to help this happen is to make sure the link from the page listing all of the necklaces to this particular set is titled like the anchor text above. Any links from that page would automatically contain that anchor text.

External link Popularity as measured by quantity and quality

While links count, just any old link doesn’t count as much as a link coming from a site that already holds a high popularity ranking. The example below is a graph of links to my photography sites, the size of the “bubble” indicates the quality of  the linking sites. As you can see, the largest is Facebook, followed by the ARTISTScenter. It is also obvious that I haven’t spent much time developing quality links for my photography sites ( I’m having to much fun here).

Diversity of the link sources

Besides being popular the links to a site need to come from many sources, the more diverse the links the more they count in final ranking. Going back to the diagram above you can see that I have a moderate amount of diversity, clicking on each of the sub nodes reveals another level of links. A closer look shows that a couple of the larger nodes are spam sites which don’t help my diversity.

Key word use in title tags

This is the page title as it appears in the url window of your browser. The closer to the start of the title your key words are the more effective they are in ranking. To illustrate this, I copied the title from “An Artist’s Social Graph” post, of a couple of weeks ago, into Google, the result was #2, #3 and #4 placement on the  search page, entering simply “artists social graph” put the listing in the top spot.  The use of the key word phrase “artist’s social graph” is what resulted in the high placement, because they were the first words in the title, simply having the word “An” first was enough to drop the results to #2 position.

Trustworthiness of the liked page

Generally this means that the page content containing the link is what matters when considering “trustworthiness”. So, receiving a link from the home page of the highest authority site in your industry is far more important than receiving a link from a home page about my dog, unless of course my site is considered to be of high authority among sites about dogs

Now that you know how search engines work and how they determine where you fit amongst all the other sites and pages that address the same subject matter, you’ll be able to better understand what to do when. The next parts of this series will aimed at what you need to do as artists to improve your visibility to search engines.

Stay up to date with this series follow the links below:

• The Summer of Love and the hippie-dippy business model
• The Age of Confusion
• What I learned from Alice, a Cruciverbalist and Sputnik
• Your visibility Tool Kit
• The Heart of Your Business
• A social graph for artists
  

Related posts:

1. SEO for artists 9 key tactics If you are a handmade jeweler and you are competing…
2. What’s in your visibility tool bag? Remember, visibility depends on communications to be successful, and until…
3. A social media network formula for artists Because we don’t own store fronts and most of us…

By now you should have an understanding of the purpose of having visibility element in your overall art marketing strategy and the importance of visibility to artists in particular.

Because we don’t own store fronts and most of us are the only people employed in our business ‚we need to have some way that brings people to whatever venue we sell our stuff  out of. Moreover, we really don’t want just any person, we want those who get what our work is all about, because they are the ones who will ultimately return to own more of our stuff and bring other liked minded buyers.

The last two installments of this series addressed the importance of having a virtual Hub and that its’ purpose and functions were to serve as:

• Communications center
• Networking center
• Activity center
• Navigation center

Each function provids ways to find, identify, help and guide potential buyers to the work that best meets their needs. However, those buyers need to come from somewhere, and the primary purpose of our blog/hub is to generate messages that, get the attention of buyers looking for what we have to offer. However, just sending out messages with no strategy just repeats the old “hope marketing”.  Social media/networks offer the best way to fine tune our efforts  to spread the word about our work. While there are many to chose from,  the networks offering the best potential for finding and guiding potential buyers back to our hub, are Facebook and Twitter. Both of these networks offer the greatest reach potential available, because they overlap with many other networks in the same manner as the ripples of our skipping rock. The previous chapter illustrated the multitude of connections possible the two videos showing the connections generated by my use of Facebook and Twitter, by dynamically graphing the overlapping nature of these networks and their almost infinite combinations and possibilities.

There are a few other social networks/media that can provide assistance in both supporting your Facebook and Twitter networks, serving as tools for reaching other networks as well as working quite well from within your hub. Let’s take a look at them…

Flickr

Flickr, although, initially a photo sharing network which now includes many other visual artists is also a social network of its’ own. Like most networks, flickr also can  link your feed to Facebook and Twitter networks.

Because of its’ function as visual art site, it has also become a highly favored source for art directors and buyers seeking visual art of all levels. Upgrading to a Pro account ( a  whopping $25.00/year) will put you closer to the art director/art buyer circle and give you more tools to connect to other networks.

Finally, Flickr can also serve as an additional selling venue focused on a different niche of buyers than your other venues.

YouTube

Without a doubt one of the best tools to support your hub, and connect with different niche networks you might not be able to other wise reach. YouTube also connects very well with Facebook and can connect to Twitter rather seamlessly, video is perhaps one of the best ways to make an impact with your message whether it is demonstrating a technique or just describing a gallery show or sales venue.

Because YouTube can connect to a wide variety of networks and can be embedded in not only your blog but also a wide range of other media, it is an excellent tool to expand your reach and ultimately increase the potential of your message becoming viral. However, its’ success really depends on how you feel about talking to a video camera, if you’re like me, you want to practice some to see if it suites you.

Deviant Art

This network is primarily a place for visual artists and designers, like Flickr it is also a place visited by art directors and art buyers. Also like Flickr it plays well with other social networks especially Facebook and Twitter.

Because of the creative community  of “Deviants”, as they call themselves, an account will get you a gallery, non-branded web site along with a group of very creative and fun artists to network with.

Linked in

I generally don’t recommend Linked in as a social network platform for artists because it is designed to be used primarily as a corporate business networking platform. It offers limited ability to serve visual artists with the possible exception of making potential connections with corporate execs responsible for buying and placing art within their corporate offices.

Location based services (LBS)

This is a category of social network that has emerged with the growth of smart phones enhanced with GPS. Currently, the primary ones are Yelp, Foursquare, Brightkite and Gowalla. Originally designed as games similar to scavenger hunts, these services offer working artists wonderful tools for bringing potential buyers to their gallery show, art crawls and art fairs.

The use of these services is still much in the early adaptor phase and a recent experiment I conducted in conjunction with an  art fair yielded small but great results for the artists using them. As more and more users switch to smart phones expect to see more ways these services can be adopted by artists.

All of these services offer options for connection to both Facebook and Twitter giving you the artists, the ability to check in at a gallery or fair and remind friends of your show by location. I’ll be addressing these services in more detail as I test their applicability for artists.

Making the connections

The next step is connecting your hub to social networks, a good way to think of how these connections work is to remember the last time you skipped a stone across the water. Often, the stone doesn’t take a straight path as it bounces over the water  sending out ripples of concentric circles each time it splashes the water’s surface eventually dissipating once the stone losses its momentum.  Imagine several hundred people around the water’s edge, each skipping their own stone. If they all skip their stones simultaneously many of the ripples will over lap sometimes more some time less.

Now consider your self and all the other stone skippers,  hubs and the stone as your message, the place each stone lands represents an entry point into a network. Each concentric ripple is your message moving through that network with the diameter representing your messages reach. Overlapping ripples represent a common point of connection with other rock skippers. In this case Facebook and Twitter are the first landing spots of your skipping rock .

In order to achieve the best reach and overlap,we need to have a good skipping stone, a good strong throw that includes good technique and the best position relative to the other stone skippers. Since the spread of ripples shrinks as the stone losses momentum we want to make the first skips generate the largest number of rings to increase our overlap with those produced by other stone skippers.

The mechanics of it all

Remember our goal here is to create a system that will spread our message and allow us the maximum reach possible. Using a blog as our hub our next step is to find a way to connect our blog posts (our message) to Facebook and Twitter and any other networks we discover. Because we are using a Blog as our hub, we have a ready made “pipeline” to carry our messages to other networks, that pipeline is our RSS feed.

The actual mechanics of connection between our hub and Facebook and Twitter is going to depend on our blogging platform. This is where Facebook works well, because it allows us to add our RSS feed to our profile and fan pages. Using the Notes tab in our profile we can send our feed directly to Facebook, so each time we publish on our blog, that post/message goes to Facebook via RSS, and shows up both in the Notes tab and our Wall. As a result the message is visible to our Facebook network and anyone else depending on how we have set up our account.

I’ll be addressing Facebook strategies in a later series, so for the sake of this series I’m only considering the connection between our hub and our networks. Another way to get our message to Facebook is by using Twitter, this avenue however, is dependent on our blogging platform’s ability to connect to Twitter. If you use Wordpress there are any number of plug-ins that work to connect your posts to Twitter, and it is this flexibility that makes Wordpress a more workable platform than many others.

Now that we have your hub hooked up with Facebook and Twitter as well as other smaller networks the next adventure is exploring the world of search engines and discovering how to optimize all your Internet presence to bring specific niche’s of people to your hub’s front door.

Stay up to date with this series follow the links below:

• The Summer of Love and the hippie-dippy business model
• The Age of Confusion
• What I learned from Alice, a Cruciverbalist and Sputnik
• Your visibility Tool Kit
• The Heart of Your Business
• A social graph for artists
  

Related posts:

1. An Artist’s Social Graph In a nut shell, social media/networking is both a communications…
2. Marketing Monday: Building your Mothership After you have a clear vision of your art business…
3. Marketing Monday: Twitter strategizing rehash Strategic summary or where are we going again? When we…

If you can remember the pre-GPS , pre-Mapquest or Google maps days you know how frustrating it was to try to find where ever it was you were going especially if that place changed locations…without telling you where they moved to. I remember those days well, navigating more by instinct than anything else.

Luckily, things have changed, at least in the brick and mortar world because of GPS . However, the same is not all that true for the on-line world. Far to many businesses approach their web presence like they did their brick and mortar store front, using advertising, direct mail and generally what has come to be called “Hope Marketing”. “Hope Marketing” is similar to playing blindfolded darts… a toss and a hope of hitting the target.

So, not being prone to change,  small businesses have approached the on-line world, by taking the same actions over and over and expecting different results. When they experience the same results,  they give up,  chalking their failure up to the internet being a toy not worthy of adult use. Their failure illustrates the absence of a  wider and deeper field of view…they actually need to search out and engage potential buyers, instead of the easier option of blind hope.

If you remember last week I said that your HUB is the most important part of your internet presence, it is where people come to buy from, interact with and generally check you out. So not starting here would be a strategic error, because building a network  before or in place of a hub soon becomes a web of interconnectedness  that doesn’t bring folks back to you, and by back to you I mean a central place that is associated with you and you alone.

For example,  having an Etsy shop, or a Big Cartel shop or  any of the several other options doesn’t qualify, because  it does not have  a way to guide your potential buyers to a central decision making point…your home base. As a result, you can waste valuable time and resources that will not serve potential buyers well, by denying them the opportunity to make an informed choice.

So  your HUB, and all of its’ components is there to receive and guide potential buyers coming from your networks.

Caveat alert :

If you are  not interested in repeat buyers, what I’ve just outlined may not work for you, but if you are trying to build a network of collectors then pay attention.

Back to our program..

Last week I mentioned that  blogs work so well because they are both easy to use and search engine friendly. The other and probably more important reason is, they give you the chance to interact with potential buyers in much the same way as if you had a brick and mortar store front. And, like a store front that interaction occurs within your brand, adding more credibility and trust to you, and in turn elevating  your position in the minds of your buyers.

That about finishes up the Hub bucket, let’s move on to the Social media one next.

The web you spin or what’s up with the social graph

In a nut shell, social media/networking is both a communications conduit and a way to let people out in the world know you have something they might be interested in. It is also more than that, it is your key to building trust and in turn relationships with like minded people. Social networks/media are the best way  to share your work and your brand with potential buyers and point them them back to your Hub. So for social media to really be useful you’ll need to think of it as a way to:

• Find your ideal buyers
• Connect with them so they can get to know, like and trust you
• Disclose to the greater world that have some pretty enticing solutions to common problems.
• Let them know how they can explore your work in all of its’ glory, by showing them the way back to your hub so they can make their own decisions regarding your work.

The social media/networking bucket

The graphic above represents my social network on Facebook as of 7–31-10. The orange, red and turquoise clusters represent my primary connections with photographers, the dark blue cluster represents a mix of connections mostly clients, potential future clients etc. the scattered purple cluster represents artists connected to this blog. The loose small clusters and single names represent single or very limited interconnectedness.

While there are many social media/networking tools available today, there are really only two that work best to  connect to your Hub and  distribute information to and from your hub and your network. Those two are, Facebook and Twitter, both allow you to multiply your message to a magnitude never before experienced. Moreover, when working in conjunction with your Hub they offer you the ability to not only be seen by more people, but also experience a higher potential for finding and engaging  those looking for what you have to offer.

The critical point here is to know the difference between just reaching many people and  reaching and engaging  the right people. The old add men approach was gambling, their bets were their adds, winning or losing depended on the ad’s ability grab our attention and convince and convince us we needed whatever it was they were advertising. Today, the goal is not to convince, instead the objective is to find those people who are looking for the solution you offer, then engage them in ways that empower them to take a look at you and  in the end make their own decisions. And that’s where your hub is important, it helps people you’ve found through social networks know just how well you meet their needs, no convincing needed.

The video below shows interactively how my network on Facebook looks, it was created using touch graph for facebook. The link will take you to the application on Facebook, enter your info and you’ll get to see how far and deep your network connections are. The clusters show common interests and likes, each time I mouse over a friend their connections are highlighted showing how my connection to her also connects me to her friends.  This depth gives us far greater knowledge about our entire network of connections than has ever been available. Using this information we can see the common links around shared interests and values among those in our network, making it easier for us to find the buyers best suited for what we have to offer. While social networks don’t provide guarantees they do significantly reduce the risks previously associated with selling our work.

Now that we have that down let’s look at the two prime candidates.

Facebook

With 500 million users, Facebook is a great tool for artists to meet the criteria mentioned above, so long as it is not used exclusively as your hub. Using Facebook as a hub limits your ability to build connections outside of Facebook’s gates and more importantly, does not meet the requirements of a Hub I talked about in the last installment of this series.

That said, it is entirely up to you, just know the limitations you are putting on your business. So long as Facebook or for that matter any tool, meets the needs of your business then use it as long as it works. Every tool has its’ purpose and ignoring that purpose also results in less than optimal outcomes…so make your decisions with your eyes wide open.

Twitter, tweets and twaddle

Twitter’s evolution has gone from a collective “WTF?” to a heavily used tool for building strong networks, due largely to its’ simplicity. It has also helped re-humanize how businesses connect with their  buyers  and in that context it is a tool that should not be ignored… and no it is not about what I had for breakfast.

Twitter’s utility lies in the complexity and resulting reach of the networks its’ savvy users can create. If you have a thousand followers and each of your followers has a thousand, and their followers have a similar amount…you can see how far your message can reach. More importantly, if you have focused on followers who fit your niche market the vastness of your resulting network has even more power to help you find the people your work was meant for.

The reach achievable by Twitter, is not yet there for Facebook primarily because Facebook’s closed nature and internal limits  on users. However, while Facebook could function as a hub Twitter fails that test.

The video below is a dynamic representation of my Twitter connections, watch as i click on individual profile photos and see how their network expands revealing even more complexity for the network. I used Twitter Friends Browser to illustrate the network, click the link and give it a try.

Furthermore, the time required to build a strong network on Twitter, at least in my experience, is not as much as non-believers would have you believe. Twitter can be successfully used to carry your message from your Hub to your network and back with little effort.

Want to know how to put social media/networking together with your hub? I’ll cover that in the next installment…

Stay up to date with this series follow the links below:

• The Summer of Love and the hippie-dippy business model
• The Age of Confusion
• What I learned from Alice, a Cruciverbalist and Sputnik
• Your visibility Tool Kit
• The Heart of Your Business
  

Related posts:

1. A social media network formula for artists Because we don’t own store fronts and most of us…
2. Marketing Monday: Twitter strategizing rehash Strategic summary or where are we going again? When we…
3. What’s in your visibility tool bag? Remember, visibility depends on communications to be successful, and until…

Last week’s chapter showed us the three general buckets of tools that we can choose from when we set out on our quest for increased visibility, however, that alone is not enough to help you chose the right tool for the right job. While, it isn’t within the scope of this series to dive into the depths of what does what when, we can get a good understanding of how each tool functions. So just like hammers come in many shapes and purposes they are all made to pound stuff into something else. The same can be said of each of the three buckets of tools:

• Social media both helps people find you and helps you listen to them, so it is a tool for two way communications.
• Your virtual hub is your buyers’ go to place for everything related to you and your art business…it is your mother ship. Your virtual hub is a tool for processing information obtained from social media, giving it a form that embodies your vision.
• Search Engines bring potential buyers who aren’t necessarily looking for you but are looking for solutions within a broader context. Search engine tools help you, help the right potential buyers identify you as the solution to their problem.

Let’s move closer

Now that we have three buckets of tools and we kinda know what each bucket is used for let’s go a little closer and look at each tool. I’m going to start with the most important bucket, your hub, because without it the other buckets really have no point in the context of your business.

Your Virtual Hub

The fundamental purpose of a Virtual Hub is to have a central “place” or “headquarters” for everything related to you and your stuff. Your virtual hub doesn’t necessarily need to be one singular place, it can be a collection of places with a central theme and that theme would be you. Think of it as a central hub with satellite locations each providing a different view of you.

With the hub image in your mind let’s take a look at what the Hub needs to do. It needs to be your:

• Communications  Center–This the place from which from which all messages to both your existing buyers and potential buyers emanate. Those messages include announcements of new work, of show venues, sales, anything that has to do with bringing people to you or helping them find you.

• Networking Center –The place people come to learn more about you and the place you can interact with them. This is the place where people come to connect with you and the place you welcome them into your world. Most importantly your networking center does not limit you to an arbitrary set of potential buyers.

• Activity Center- The place where you share your process with buyers and potential buyers, the place where you share your muse. It differs from a gallery space by virtue of its’ lack of formality. Here you might share videos of how you do the magic you do, you might also hold contests that help you engage more with your clientele.

• Navigation Center- This is the place that distributes your potential buyers to your venues so they may see and buy your work. Here is where you direct people looking for a particular style and price category of your work. So, people looking for your any level of your work can easily find that work because you’re directing them in the right direction from here. Think of it as version of the “you are here” maps found in large department stores. The navigation center also guides buyers and potential buyers when you sell in different geographic locations like art fairs. It makes sure you are found through use of mobile tools that let your network find you using mobile phones.

The heart of your virtual hub

The areas I described above by no means represent all of the possibilities for your hub, they do however, represent a framework around which to design your hub. Moreover, your hub framework needs to be flexible and adaptable to changes in both technology and market behavior.

The best best candidate to serve as the heart of your hub is the ubiquitous blog. The blog framework allows you to meet all the criteria for a hub listed above in addition to extreme ease of use. Today’s blog software is the tool of choice for anyone wishing to build a web presence simply because the software has the most flexibility and adaptability to date.

One of the primary reasons blogs work as hubs is they are extremely friendly to search engines by making regular content changes easy. As I’ll discuss later, regularly changing content is one of the key factors in improving your visibility through search engines. Other key factors include being able to utilize the vast array of tools in the search engine bucket, the most important of which is Search Engine Optimizations or SEO.

There are generally two categories of blog frameworks available today, they are:

Service based

Examples of this category are Google’s Blogger and Blog spot framework, and Type Pad by Six Apart. Blogger/Blog Spot are free and the most highly used by artists. Blogs hosted by services are at a major disadvantage for a host of reasons not the least of which is limiting their ability to meet the requirements as a hub.

Some of those disadvantages include:

• A lack of control and ownership over content by the blogger herself. The service is free to change and limit how the content is presented at will. Depending the individual terms of service the service provider may also be free to use the contents of blogs using its’ service without limit.
• Extremely limited customization possibilities reducing the blogger’s ability to stand out.
• Lack of tools or freedom to optimize the blog for search engines.

Self hosted

This category includes all blogs that are “free standing” and not part of a service. These blogs reside on their own server and are owned by the blogger herself. WordPress blogs are by far the most heavily used for no other reason than their simplicity and ease of set up and use. Because WordPress is open source it also has an vast community of developers who off almost an infinite number of themes that allow WordPress sites to to be morphed into sites that are often mistaken for the static web sites of old.

One of the key advantages of self hosted sites over service hosted ones is  their  ease of customization and their SEO friendliness. That SEO friendliness gives artists  the best and easiest way to be found in web searches by giving artists the ability to finely tune how they want to be found on the internet.

More to come..

The next installment of this series will complete out examination of the Hub bucket and move on to look more closely at the Social Media bucket.

Stay up to date with this series follow the links below:

• The Summer of Love and the hippie-dippy business model
• The Age of Confusion
• What I learned from Alice, a Cruciverbalist and Sputnik
• Your visibility Tool Kit
  

Related posts:

1. What’s in your visibility tool bag? Remember, visibility depends on communications to be successful, and until…
2. SEO for artists Unlike, major brands who only want traffic when there is…
3. SEO for artists 9 key tactics If you are a handmade jeweler and you are competing…

Instead of talking about strategy this week I’m going to focus on tools and then move into strategy. Before we can come close to talking about strategy we have to first know what tools are available and how we can best use them. Then when we start building a visibility strategy we’ll be more able to easily choose the tools that match the way we want our business to go. The Mindmap diagram below is a visual representation of how visibility tools fit into

Remember, visibility depends on communications to be successful, and until now communications tools have been extremely limited and largely ineffective for small businesses. Also remember that communications tools for small businesses have mostly been one way, little if any interaction between consumer and business was possible.

Today, however, we can choose (emphasis on choose) any combination of on-line and off-line tools to help the right people find and converse with us. Because of the wide diversity of tools we also can make our choices according to how we want our businesses to grow. To begin let’s take a look at on-line tools.

On-line

An on-line presence can and should be built to match your business/marketing goals to ensure  your visibility strategy is successful. Your on-line visibility goals should include:

• Being found in many more ways than through your name. Not everyone knows or associates the kind of work they like with your name, an online presence offers that ability by allowing you to become associated with not only your medium but also your style and vision. Searchers online will be able to find you if you can be linked to key terms important to you and your business.

• Eliminating geographic barriers in order to build networks that compliment and reinforce
  your sales venues. The right tools applied to the right venue can produce repeat sales over the long term.

• Diversifying your income sources by providing a wider range of choice for generating additional and focused income streams from your work. An online presence that matches your strategies can offer a wider variety of opportunities and venues to sell your work and be visible.

• Building a network of buyers and supporters that can reinforce and compliment your off-line efforts. On their own off line visibility tactics are likely to be even less effective now because they have more noise to compete with, the same is true for online tactics.

Tools

There are lots of tools available and there will be more and more coming. In order to simplify things I’ve divided them into three groups based on how they can be used  today. Some tools will overlap, others can be used alone or in combination, in general their use in most cases, is limited only by our imagination. The three major groups are:

Social Media

The core of Social media is building networks for people individually or as groups to connect, for the purpose of interacting and sharing information. Connections are already present in our communities, they play major roles in what we do, what we value and who we hang out with. Social Media simply amps up our ability to be more selective in those connections and in turn consciously  build them into a network we can experience first hand.

• Included in this group are: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, friend feed, RSS feed, Yelp, foursquare, etc.

Virtual  hub

Virtual hub is a broad term I coined to describe you and your place on the internet, it is your virtual home or business headquarters. That home can be a web site that allows users to see and or buy your work, it can also be a place users can get to know you much in the same way you get to know your favorite neighborhood business. It is where people come to check in, to see what you’re up to, what you’re doing etc.

New to the virtual hub concept is the means to build mobile hubs that both support your web site or blog and your off-line presence as well. The rise of GPS based tools now gives artists the opportunity to increase face time with buyers enriching those connections.

• This group includes: web site, blog, yelp, foursquare etc

Search Engines

Search engines provide the path or connection point for potential buyers to find you, they are in many ways no different than the Yellow Pages. They differ from Yellow pages in that your business doesn’t automatically get listed, and your relative visibility is linked to your ability to meet their criteria and follow their rules.

Meeting search engine criteria and using those criteria to increase visibility is what SEO is all about. Optimizing your web presence is like having a day-glo glove increase your chance of being seen when you put your hand up. Your ability to be seen amongst all the other noise competing for attention depends heavily on what you can do improve your chances of being found when you put your hand up. While you don’t need to be an expert you do need to know what it takes to be found regularly by search engines.

• This group includes : Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google, Bing, and other search utilities

What gets used when?

The tools in each of these groups can work independently however, just like most tool sets they can also work effectively in combination depending on the problem we are faced with. Our choice of combinations is driven by our  visibility strategy.

So, for example, until recently Facebook’s  use as a network building tool while effective at the same time it was limited by its’ closed membership model. Facebook’s  closed system limited it’s usefulness as visibility tool to only Facebook active members.

However, Facebook’s recent changes in its’ model appear to be eliminating the closed model. The proliferation of “Like” buttons give “outsiders” an opportunity to link themselves with small businesses and individuals. Facebook’s change in the way its’ “Fan” pages work allows them to be indexed by search engines which also help it as a useful visibility tool.

Related posts:

1. The heart of your art business The fundamental purpose of a Virtual Hub is to have…
2. SEO for artists Unlike, major brands who only want traffic when there is…
3. Location Based Services: more than games? As with most innovations these apps sprang from another innovation…

Ever wonder  why we (artists) are so resistant to being visible and hide the very things that make us who we are?

Over the 4th of July weekend I was taught a lesson by two unlikely characters and a Russian satellite. The lesson came after I watched two movies that surprised me in their connection to the issue of visibility. The first movie was All About Steve starring Sandra Bullock and the other was Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp. At first glance, there appears to be little connecting these two movies to the issue that can send anyone with a creative hair on their body, scurrying for the closest hole.  That issue is visibility, the fine art of standing out, of letting your uniqueness all hang out all over. Looking beyond the surface, both movies examine the issues of identity in general and more importantly identity as it has to do with accepting our own uniqueness in the face of mounting external pressure.

Sandra Bullock plays brilliant woman, a cruciverbalist, who’s job is to create crossword puzzles for the local newspaper. To say that she is quirky would be an understatement, but her character lived a lifelong struggle trying to be normal instead of being herself.

Alice was also engaged in a struggle with the whole normal issue. While her father constantly reminded her of the value in her uniqueness, his death left her without the reaffirming support she was used to. Faced with extreme cultural pressure to conform by marrying a person she hardly knew, she chose to chase after the white rabbit wearing a dinner jacket.

I was struck by how similar both the characters and the stories. The issues of uniqueness in the face of growing pressure to conform is at the root of today’s artists’ struggle with visibility. More importantly, both took me back to a time I had yet to sort out, the launch of Sputnik and fall of artistic vision as a cultural value.

How the launch of Sputnik sent many into hiding

Many of us remember the conflicting messages we received as our creative juices started showing themselves. The pressure to conform to cultural norms and give up our passion for creating was so strong that more than a few resigned to accepting creativity as something only useful as a hobby.

The launch of Sputnik, and the resultant emphasis on science not only ignored the importance of creative expression, it also drove quite few to wonder what was wrong with us. Many, myself included, who were highly visual people were dubbed as not gifted because we didn’t posses a natural aptitude for adding 2+2  and coming out with 4. Our natural aptitude for seeing and translating that vision into a form the world could enjoy was eventually stored away only to surface in a safe and ridicule free environment.

Our ability to find like minded souls was gravely limited by the communications tools available at the time, fortunately times have changed. We are no longer need to hide out, we now have amazing tools at our finger tips that will give us almost immediate access to literally thousands of people who have the opportunity to enjoy our creative vision. We can find and connect with them in ways never imagined when Sputnik launched.

Despite the plethora of new tools we remain reluctant to show ourselves let alone publicly acknowledge our own uniqueness. As artists we need to challenge ourselves to come out of hiding and share the joy and passion for creating we have hidden away.

Stepping back for a moment

While I’m outlining the steps to visibility, I also recognize that visibility is not easy for most. With that in mind I urge you to remember that things take time, shinning a light on ourselves will feel risky and it won’t be easy. You will feel uncomfortable and likely hesitant because of your past experiences, just remember, your uniqueness and your presence is needed now more than ever before. Remember Alice and her discoveries!

Before we continue, let’s review some things about your business. Assuming you  want to sell your work, the very least you’ll need to have an understanding of what it is you are selling and who it is made for. You’ll also need to know, how and were, they would buy stuff like you make.

Once, we have an image of that person, we can then proceed to learn, where this person can be found, what’s important to her, her shopping habits and preferences. Collecting this information is critical to preparing our initial strategic plan for becoming visible, it will help focus our energy in the best possible way.

A word of Caution

As in everything we do, it is important to do it as consciously as possible, so with that in mind remember that the level of visibility you seek to establish has to fit  you and your plans for your business. The outcome you experience will be in direct proportion to the effort you invest. So if you need to implement your visibility tactics one step at a time for what ever reason, do so consciously, no one is sitting in judgment of the pace you accomplish your goals.

Building toward a strategy

In order to be as successful as we  would like, our ultimate goal and out come should be a well developed strategy for becoming visible. Given our business goals, the most workable strategy will be built upon and enhance those goals. However, there is some methodology here that can cut through willy-nilly wondering and random trial and error stuff  saving you time and most importantly blood sweat and a lot of tears.

Over the next installments of this series we’re going to look at the stepping stones needed to build a strategic path that can be responsive to changes in your business model, because let’s face it nothing. We’re going to first look closely at the details of five key factors necessary to building a successful strategy, they’ll include:

• Matching your personality and style, discovering and using both;
• Making the best use of your values and artistic vision;
• Using what you learn and know about the first two elements above to enhance your business goals;

Next we’ll examine the best tools available to increase visibility and how each can be used in ways that compliment your business goals and time commitments. This portion will cover both on-line and off-line visibility tools from the “must have no matter what” to the “if you want extra oomph” tools. We’ll also examine why you should care about search engines and what to do to attract their attention.

Finally, we’ll put it all together to illustrate what a typical strategy would like given different business goals.

Stay up to date on this series…click the links below to go back in time.

• The Sumer of Love and the Rise and Fall of the Hippie-Dippy business model
• The Age of Confusion

Related posts:

1. What’s in your visibility tool bag? Remember, visibility depends on communications to be successful, and until…
2. The heart of your art business The fundamental purpose of a Virtual Hub is to have…

That life and business are changing at the speed of light is obviously a gross understatement, just when we feel like we have managed to get a firm grip, keep our heads above water to take a few breaths, a new wave comes along and drags us out into the surf. However, this process of struggling to get a foot hold in the face of change is not new,  that period between getting a foot hold and only to  lose it again, is  an integral part of any cultural change. That period of time when we start to lose our grip and when we are swept away, is a transition period that overlaps the old on one end and the new on the other. In the middle is a state of continual testing and adoption, which provides the feedback and basis for further adaptation and growth. In short, it is how we evolve, learn and adapt, it is also a period of chaos as we once again try to figure out which end is up so we can start breathing.

As I mentioned previously, the new breed of artist emerging onto the scene, has already begun the adaptation phase I just mentioned, by coming equipped with a basic knowledge of technology and its’ promise as a tool for their growth and sustainability. However, despite their head start, the new breed, is also a captive of the transition period of change because the pace of change quickly adds more need for learning as time progresses. Consequently, there is not a strong sense of direction as to how to actually use the continually evolving new tools nor a clear idea of where to begin. That is why I call this the Age of Confusion.

Confusion

We know that the shift from traditional advertising and marketing to a more personable pace of engagement and relationship is upon us. The key problems with engagement are, first, by definition it is two way and second, it assumes certain level of selectivity. Two way engagement means we need to be open to feedback and we are willing to learn from it. The new breed of artist gets that engagement and selectivity are important to her ability to sustain herself with her work. However,  our current concept of  two way engagement is based on comfort, an acceptance of where we are instead of where we want to be. We tend to engage people living in the same comfort level as us, because we haven’t first taken the challenge of understanding who we are and what we want. Instead we end up repeating the steps over and over while expecting different outcomes with each iteration, and after while we find feel as if we are spinning in circles.

To stop the spinning  we need to accept that our sole purpose as artists and business people is to first understand that our values and our vision are what matter ( something we carry over from that hippie-dippy business model). The way we sustain our business and brand is by making our values and vision stand out…making them visible to the right people.

Visibility was not something the hippie-dippy artists understood, nor more importantly, did they have the tools to help them understand. Their model of showing up was primarily based on rejection of the dominant alternative…spending massive amounts of money in the hope someone will chose what you have to offer.

Now that we have the tools to help us become visible, we can begin to calm the confusion by learning what the tools are and how best to use them. Most importantly, how we can combine them with the values of community, engagement and connection or as I like to call them the Honestly Nice Quotient.

Decisions, decisions…

Before deciding to be visible, however, we really need to step back and take a long look at what we want visibility to do for us and just how visible we want to be. Jumping in Willy-nilly and signing up for anything and everything that looks like it might shine a light on us can really take us on down a rabbit hole, distracting us from acting on our goals.

Of course all of this visibility stuff assumes we already have a decent idea of who we want to be visible to and where those folks hang out. Just being visible is not good enough, we need to be highly visible for those people our stuff is designed for, which assumes we already know who those people are. If we don’t know our buyers inside and out we really are flying blind in any attempts to be visible. So, let’s take a quick look at two important questions that need asking very early on.

Why be visible?

Well…duh?? But it isn’t as simple as the question seems. Sure we want to be seen so we can sell our stuff, but that alone is not going to get us very far. First take a look at yourself…your personality, behaviors and preferences. So, if you are really, really shy then the thought of stepping out into the limelight could very well make your hair stand on end. Knowing your personality and your preferences for engagement will help you figure out your first steps and whatever you need to be comfortable in the process. Then using your comfort level as a base line you begin, at your own pace, to test new ways of engagement that bring out the best of who you are, which will in turn lead to more of the folks your work is meant for finding you.

What’s the return?

OK..we’ve decided to stand out, and once again we need to ask and answer a question, what do we expect from becoming more visible? Particularly, what is the return we want? Obviously, we want people  who might like our stuff to find us and buy some of it, but beyond that is it a one time purchase, repeat sales, a network of word of mouth that we ultimately want?

So we need to get handle on what a satisfactory return would look like for us, not someone else and not a generic one either. Admittedly, our highest priority is to be visible to our ideal buyer,  those we’ve identified as the most accessible. However, we also need to  consider our work preferences, because the more visible we become the higher the likelihood that more people will find us causing us to work ever harder. If we don’t understand and accept our work life preferences we could easily end up hating what we do because we’ve lost our work/life balance.

What a good general return might look like:

• You’ll learn about who likes what because your interaction with them  will help you learn. Your use of that information for the benefit of your buyer is what will eventually turn into word of mouth.
• You’ll increase your connections and those connections will be visible through the growing network you create. You become an interesting person worth knowing and buying from.
• Your trust quotient will grow in direct proportion with your visibility, reinforced by the quality of your network. The result is what we call social proof or validation of your experience and authenticity.

The return illustrated above is only one form of return, one that is based on a desire to learn about buyers and in so doing begin building community which in this case, implies strong connections and a visible network. The final return is driven by the need for visible authenticity, that others see who you are and agree to let others know how much they like you.

Next week I’ll share with you what I learned from Sandra Bullock about visibility ‚why we seem to fight it so much and how we can overcome our resistance.

This series is about visibility, why it is important, what our self imposed barriers are and how to become as visible as your business model permits. You can stay up to date by clicking on the links below:

• The Summer of Love and the rise and fall of the hippie-dippy business model

Related posts:

1. What’s in your visibility tool bag? Remember, visibility depends on communications to be successful, and until…
2. What does your art business really look like? How and if we chose to build trust with our…
3. One more letter for artists One of the barriers artists have traditionally experienced was the…