This week I shared the evolution of my artist statement on my artist blog.

One of my observations on this process:

I am a better writer today than I was 10 years ago. I attribute this 100% to my blogging. I believe that writing about my art every week for my blog is the #1 best use of my art business/office time. Getting better at writing my artist statement is just one of many benefits. Look for an article on makebigart.com on the benefits of blogging soon.

Many people have written about the benefits of blogging. Here is my take. It’s about thinking big about your art and your marketing.

1. Sharing Authentically in Print

Sharing our inner thoughts isn’t something that we all come to naturally. The artist statement I mentioned above is for a series of work that explores the emotional barriers we use to keep people out. It feels safe to not let people too close.

Yet there are big benefits in writing about what really matters to you. Your writing is authentic. You connect with your reader on a deeper level and that connection is the start of a relationship with a supporter interested in you and your art.

This can lead to sales, articles written about your art, gallery representation, exhibits, etc. All of these and more have resulted from my 6 years of writing authentically about my art.

2. Sharing Authentically in Person

Learning to share authentically via your blog can feed into your ability to also speak about your art. Writing about the art is practice for talking about the art.

Once you have the words down in black and white, you are less likely to be at a loss for words when speaking.

The thought of giving an artist talk was terrifying for me until I started writing about my art. Now I love giving artists talks and sharing my thoughts on my art in person. Standing up in front of a group is still scary, but at least I know I have the right words to describe what I am thinking.

3. Promotes Growth

Creating art is an evolutionary process. Usually you don’t have all the answers upfront.

Through the self reflection gained in writing about your art, you gain a greater insight into what motivates and inspires your creativity. This leads to growth as you are then able to go deeper into your subject matter.

The evolution of my artist statement shared above is an example of this evolution. Many of those deeper insights came about as a result of writing about my art on my blog.

4. Give People Words to Talk about Your Art

Writing a blog gives people words to use to describe your artwork and to talk intelligently about your processes. Your work is now much less intimidating and they are much more likely to share it with someone else.

This is extremely valuable for helping art consultants, your gallerists and the press write about your art. Providing them with the phrases and vocabulary for your art makes their jobs much easier. You are likely to get more articles written about your work if you make it easy for someone to write about you.

5. Establish Yourself as an the Artist You Want To Be

Are you a serious artist? Are you funny? Are you approachable?

By writing a blog, you can establish yourself as the artist you want to be. Helpful, knowledgeable, educated, motivated, etc. Pick any words you like. Now establish yourself as the person you want to be by writing from that frame of mind.

This is where you get to think big and then become the authority you know you are.

6. Marketing

Writing about your art and what informs it; sharing photos of your art, inspiration, studio and processes: this is art marketing.

It is often said that collectors buys the artist as much as they buy the art. You have to share who you are for many people to want to purchase your art. Blogging allows you to do this with an international market.

As a bonus, blogging provides you with instant and easy SEO (search engine optimization – ie. showing up in google at the top). Using keywords and phrases is a key part of SEO and writing about your art is a natural way to associate your art with the phrases that best describe your art.

7. Community

Yes facebook also provides a community, but I feel that the community I have created in the blogging world is more substantial. We are writing and sharing on a much deeper level. It takes more time and thought to write a blog post, so I get a more authentic view into the writer’s world.

8. Helping and Teaching Others

Many artists want to contribute to their community. Blogging is an excellent way to do that. MakeBigArt is an example of exactly that.

How do you want to contribute? Think big – and then just go do it.

Wrap Up

One of the beauties of blogging is you don’t have to ask for permission to jump it. It’s free and it’s for everyone that would like to write.

How has blogging benefited your art career?

 
—lisa

Thinking Big about Art

 
PS. I invite you to become a fan of MakeBigArt on social media where I’ll be sharing additional tips and comments.
MakeBigArt fanpage
MakeBigArt on Twitter

In addition you can also find me here:

My Blog
On Twitter
Facebook Profile
Lisa Call – Textile Paintings Fan Page

Today’s post is a guest post by Kesha Bruce. I asked her to write about her thoughts on artists thinking big about their careers and this is her thoughtful response:
 

For the past 6 months my blog writing has focused on why and how artists can take control of their careers. My main argument is simple: If artists want to grow and expand their careers they absolutely need to take a much more hands-on approach to marketing and promoting the work they create. In other words, in order to be successful, artists need to be more DIY (Do-it-Yourself).

Three huge reasons artist should be more DIY

1) DIY means Community
When artists work together they can create amazing events, exhibitions, and opportunities to promote their work. When my friend and fellow artist dreamed up the idea for opening our own gallery and producing our own events, we knew we would need help—so we turned to our other artist friends for help.

Other artists aren’t your competition. They are your greatest allies. Doing it yourself, doesn’t mean going it alone.

Working alone in your studio can be a lonely task. When you finally come up for air you’ll need the support of people who understand exactly why you do what you do. Every artist can benefit from being part of a network of friends and colleagues that truly understands the obstacles and concerns that other artists face.

Your network, your group of creative peers, are your greatest resource for finding and getting the information and support you need. Artists thrive in communities. Being a part of a community of artists means having a built in support system.

2) DIY means More Money
Let’s do what I like to call “art math”. Let’s say you have a gallery exhibition of 30 artworks, each priced at $3000. The gallery does a great job of marketing and selling the work for you and the show is a smash hit! In fact you sell every artwork in the exhibition. That means $90,000 in sales. YAY!

But wait. Subtract the gallery’s 50% fee they earned for working their butts off to sell your work. That leaves you with $45,000. Oh but wait. Subtract another 15% for taxes. And another 20% for expenses. That leaves you with around $30,000. And then remember that you only have a solo exhibition once every 3 years in that gallery, so divide that by 3. That leaves you $10,000 a
year to live on until your next solo exhibition. Congratulations!

Clearly you need to have other avenues of income if you’re going to survive. You can’t rely on one gallery, or even 3 for that matter, to bring in all of your income. If you really want a fatter bank account, you’ll have to do a pretty big share of the heavy lifting yourself–Especially in the beginning of your career.

3) DIY means Freedom and Opportunity
If you’re the one at the reigns of your career, that means you have complete control over what you make, how often you make it and when and where to show it. Isn’t that the goal?

Sure, it’s great when you find a gallery to sell your new work. But what if you aren’t working with a gallery? Or what if the gallery’s jam-packed exhibition schedule doesn’t have room for your work until 2014? Or worse yet, what if after waiting 2 years for your first solo exhibition, the gallery goes out of business a month before your exhibition is set to open?

Becoming more DIY means embracing the many new avenues that are available to exhibit and promote your art rather than relying one possibility.

Ultimately, when artists embrace the DIY mentality, it means they stop waiting to be “discovered”. It means that instead of waiting for opportunities, they go out and create opportunities for themselves.

Wrap Up

How have you taken control of your career?

To read Kesha’s weekly articles on art, art marketing, and creativity and to download a free copy of her guide “The 5 Step Art Career Make-Over” visit www.KeshaBrucestudio.com

• Part I – Permission Based Marketing
• Part II – Selecting Automated Mailing List Software
• Part III – Frequency of Newsletters – this article

Upcoming topics: formatting and templates, testing, content (what should you say), receiving newsletters (take control of your inbox), and more

Frequency

How often should you write and send an newsletter? As often as you have news to share.

If you have nothing to say, probably best not to bore your readers. Solution: get to your studio and do something.

For most artists, once a month or once a quarter seems to be about when we having something new to say. I know a few artists that send out bimonthly and even a few weekly newsletters.

There are no rules.

The Common Concern

If I send out a newsletter too often, I will annoy my readers.

I worried about this when I changed my quarterly newsletter into a monthly newsletter. I was sure dozens of people would unsubscribe and everyone would be unhappy.

Didn’t happen. Maybe 2 or 3 people dropped, but always more people join than those that drop so I have a steadily increasing readership.

As long as you have something interesting to say, write the newsletter and trust that your people want to hear from you.

Is it possible to send out too frequent of a newsletter? Probably. Depends on your readers and your newsletter. Once a week would be a challenge to make interesting but depending on your studio practice, it could be entirely reasonable.

Sending a newsletter only a few times a year probably isn’t enough for your fans to remember who you are.

Schedule

One of the goals of a newsletter is to keep your name and your artwork in the forefront of our fans’ minds.

One way to do that is to set an expectation on when your newsletter will be delivered. Thursday at 10am or the 3rd tuesday of the month, etc.

When I started my newsletter it was sent “whenever I could get around to it” and I had a hard time keeping to any type of schedule. Now that I have more experience, I’m able to stay on a predictable time line and I email it on the 3rd wednesday of the month.

I find that the in addition to providing a repeatable experience for my readers, the schedule helps to stay on track and committed. Otherwise it’s too easy to say, “I’ll send it next week instead”, and then suddenly 5 weeks later realize I didn’t write and send the newsletter.

Best Time to Send

One of the most popular questions. You can research the answer yourself on google.

Although to summarize, generally tuesday or wednesday are recommended. Monday and Friday are less successful. It’s all related to the work week.

Wrap Up

We have shorter attention spans these days as there is always something new coming out. Don’t get forgotten by not sending frequently enough. Think big, write big, and believe that your fans want to hear from you.

How frequently do you send your newsletter? Do you use a schedule?

 
I invite you to become a fan of MakeBigArt on social media where I’ll be sharing additional tips and comments.
MakeBigArt fanpage
MakeBigArt on Twitter

In addition you can also find me here:

My Blog
On Twitter
Facebook Profile
Lisa Call – Textile Paintings Fan Page

 
—lisa

Thinking Big about Art

• Part I – Permission Based Marketing
• Part II – Selecting Automated Mailing List Software – this article

Upcoming topics: frequency and schedules, formatting and templates, testing, content (what should you say), receiving newsletters (take control of your inbox), and more

Software

Once you decide you want to send out an email newsletter for your artwork, one of the first questions you have to answer is “what software will I use to do this?”

As a software engineer, I would suggest that before selecting software, that you first make sure you understand what you are looking for. Just because a friend is using Super-Duper-Newsletter-Software, doesn’t mean it right for you.

A few questions to consider:
1) what do you need the software to do (these are your requirements)
2) how technical you are
3) how frequently will you be emailing
4) do you have other special needs (such as auto responders or support for multiple mailing lists or sublists or the need to import and export your mailing list)

For most artists the answer to these questions are about the same:

1) Requirements – I would like the software to do these things:
a) provide a way for people to easily subscribe and unsubscribe from the newsletter
b) provide a way to email out the newsletter so the recipient receives it (if the newsletter gets marked as spam, they won’t get it)
c) be easy to use
d) provide me with statistics on how many people read the newsletter
e) not be too expensive
f) provide support if I can’t figure out how the software works
g) your specific needs go here

2) How technical am I?
Only you can decide this

3) Frequency
Quarterly or Monthly or somewhere in that range is the most likely answer, although your needs might be different.

Research

Once you know what you need your software to do, it’s time for research. Google and your friends can supply you with a list of options.

Some of the most common choices for mailing list software:

1) Constant Contact – a leader in email marketing, well known brand, monthly plans
2) Mail Chimp – pay as you go or monthly plans, often free for typical artist’s needs
3) Vertical Response – pay as you go or monthly plans

In addition there are solutions you can install on your own webserver for those that answered “very” to question #2, ie these are the solutions for the tech geeks. These are not recommended if you don’t have a technical background:

1) php list – open source, lots of plugins, free
2) infinite responder – free, auto responders, claims to be simpler than php list

Have super big requirements? Need to integrate a shopping cart with your mailing list and have lots of autoresponders and an affiliates program (very very few artists will have these needs) some options for such big plans:

1) 1ShoppingCart
2) 1automationwiz

Ease of Use

While price and features are important, this is software you will be interacting with on a monthly or quarterly basis. It’s important you understand how to use it efficiently.

Most artists needs in mailing list software are pretty simple, so pretty all of the choices will fit your needs. Making ease of use an important factor.

I recommend signing up for a free trial at a couple of these and look them over.

It probably won’t take you long to figure out if you understand how to use the software. If you get stuck, look into their support forums, can you find answers to your questions?

With a little research and a list of requirements, you can usually pick your software fairly easily.

Feeling panicky or stuck? Just pick something and go with it. Make a decision and move forward. Spend just an hour or 2 making a decision at the most as you can change your mind very easily later on. Mailing list data is easily exported and imported into different software (although if you think you might switch, confirm the software allows you to export the list. The usual format for this export will be a csv file).

I currently use php list for my studio newsletter and so I don’t have first hand experience with the paid services. Again, I only recommend this option for those that are more technical, as it isn’t the easiest to install, its a challenge to upgrade, and its not the most intuitive to use either. I’m considering switching to infinite responder but haven’t researched it yet.

Why Can’t I Just Use Regular Email?

You can, but I don’t recommend it. If you go this route here are some things to consider:

1) You will need to manage the list of email addresses yourself. You either have to have people email you to subscribe or provide your own form for people to join up, and then manually maintain that list.

Same for unsubscribe, people have to email you to unsubscribe.

There is free software by arial that will help with subscriptions, but for unsubscribe, you are on your own. To send email with this option, you download the list of email address to use as needed, they do not provide mailing software, just software to help you gather up the list of addresses.

2) You have to send email using regular email. This may not seem like a big deal but please keep in mind that you should never put the email addresses on the To or CC line. People get very unhappy when other people can see their email address. Privacy is important.

Your options? Send emails one at a time or put the emails on the BCC line (blind carbon copy). The problem with the BCC lines is that email with large BCC lines are marked as spam, so the recipient might never see the email.

3) This is not thinking BIG. I believe in making decisions from where I want to be, not where I am at the moment. At the moment it might seem like you will only have 20 or 30 people on your list, so there is no reason to get fancy with automated software.

But what about in 2 years when your art really takes off and you’ve now got 500 people on your list. Can you still maintain that manually?

Where are you going? Play that game. The BIG one.

Wrap Up

Think Big – set up some automated software to help you email your newsletter professionally.

Do you have experience with automated mailing list software? Recommendations? Please share below.

 
I invite you to become a fan of MakeBigArt on social media where I’ll be sharing additional tips and comments.
MakeBigArt fanpage
MakeBigArt on Twitter

In addition you can also find me here:

My Blog
On Twitter
Facebook Profile
Lisa Call – Textile Paintings Fan Page

 
—lisa

Thinking Big about Art

I have decided to devote the month of February (and maybe into March if I have enough to say) to email newsletters.

Artists are often told they need to have one and I agree they can be very valuable tools to get your artwork and big ideas out into the world so I’m going to share my thoughts and opinions about artist newsletters over the next few weeks.

Permission Based Marketing

Permission Based Marketing is a term coined by Seth Godin and simply put means: never put anyone on your email mailing list unless they gave you explicit permission to do so.

This doesn’t mean you met them at a party and they gave you a business card. Nope – that person did not give you permission to send them your newsletter.

This doesn’t mean all your relatives and artist friends that you’ve known for years, so of course, they won’t mind. Nope – they might mind. So don’t put them on there unless you ask them first.

This doesn’t mean the person that sent you email saying they liked your artwork. Nope – they just like your art – maybe they don’t like your writing – let them decide.

Definitely tell these folks about the newsletter, but then leave it to them to subscribe if interested.

Permission based marketing means the only people that go on your list are the people that understand that if they sign up, they will be getting email from you about your artwork on a regular basis.

Targeted List

The purpose of permission based marketing, beyond not annoying people with unwanted emails, is that your list becomes a targeted list of people that have clearly stated they care what you have to say.

Instead of shouting to thousands, who might potentially be interested, you are engaged in a more personal conversation with those that are truly interested.

When I started my newsletter mailing list, I wanted to do the permission based marketing so I didn’t add anyone I knew. I didn’t even email them and tell them I was starting a list. It was pretty scary because I worried noone would care and noone would signup.

I let people know about my upcoming newsletter by writing about it on my blog. I ended up writing about it for a year before I sent my first newsletter as it took me quite a while to figure out what to say in my newsletter.

By the time I sent my first newsletter in 2008, I had over 200 people on my mailing list. People that asked me to send them email, that were welcoming me into their inbox. I attracted that targeted group of people by providing quality content on my blog and creating artwork that appealed to my fans.

Abundance

To this day some of my closest friends are still not on my mailing list. A fairly significant number of my collectors aren’t on the list either.

This used to bother me, I’d think I should tell them to sign up, or make an exception to my permission based marketing ideals. But slowly I got over it and no longer feel I should add them.

I find that if I trust in abundance, that my list grows faster than if I get all wound up about who is and is not on my mailing list. It’s about thinking BIG and knowing, trusting, that the people that need to be on your list, are on your list.

It’s also about providing great content so you attract those people and that once there, they remain on the list.

Less than 3 years after sending my first newsletter, I now have over 700 subscribers to my studio newsletter. Each of them has subscribed to the list by choice.

The Unread and Unwanted

Say you do add a bunch of friends and family to your mailing list because permission based marketing isn’t for you.

No doubt many of them will be thrilled to hear from you and embrace the newsletter.

What about the rest? You’ve now put them in a difficult position, some people are very picky about their email inboxes. If they unsubscribed, they know they will hurt your feelings. So are they just stuck with the newsletter? Probably.

But chances are they won’t read it if they don’t want it. That’s why we have delete buttons.

All those folks on your list that don’t want to be there, but feel stuck, yep, they are probably not reading it. So what is the point of sending it to them in the first place?

Respect your friendships and relationships and stick with permission based marketing.

Wrap Up

Think Big – trust that your message will reach your target market and embrace permission based marketing for your email newsletter.

 
I invite you to become a fan of MakeBigArt on social media where I’ll be sharing additional tips and comments.
MakeBigArt fanpage
MakeBigArt on Twitter

In addition you can also find me here:

My Blog
On Twitter
Facebook Profile
Lisa Call – Textile Paintings Fan Page

 
—lisa

Thinking Big about Art

Do you have the new facebook profile?

Do you have a facebook fanpage (or like page or community page or whatever you want to call it) for your artwork?

With the new profiles on facebook, there is an opportunity to promote your fanpage from your profile, by setting it as your employer.

On my profile page, shown below, if I click on Lisa Call – Textile Art in my profile (circled in red), it will bring up my fan page.

 
When I checked a bunch of my artist and entrepreneur type friends, they had a similar job appear on their profile (artist or owner at Their Company Name), but when I clicked on the company name link it brought up an empty community page and not their fan page. Not very useful.

Step by Step Instructions

1. Go to your fanpage. Find the name of your page (see below circled in red). Mine is Lisa Call – Textile Paintings. Remember exactly what it says.

[Or make this easier Copy the text: you do this by first highlighting the text with your mouse and then in windows: type + C, or with mac: type + C].

2. Go to your profile. Click on edit profile (in box in red below):

3. Select Education and Work (see in red below):

4. In the box for employer name (see in red below), type in the name of your fan page exactly as it was on your fan page.

[Or if you copied the text you can now paste it: in windows: type + V, or with mac: type + S].

5. Then hit enter. Facebook should then find your fan page and give you some boxes to add in the rest of your employment information. Give yourself a title, add in anything else you’d like, then click Add Job.

You can tell facebook found your page because the image from your page will appear above the info box.

6. View your profile and test out the link.

Note that only the top most of your “jobs” will appear on your wall so make sure to add this entry last.

Also note that even if you didn’t switch to the new profile, all of us that did – we see your profile in the new format.

Wrap Up

This change takes only a few minutes and adds a link to your artwork for all your friends to see.

All those old high school classmates would love to see your artwork. Think big and share it with them.

 
I invite you to become a fan of MakeBigArt on social media where I’ll be sharing additional tips and comments.
MakeBigArt fanpage
MakeBigArt on Twitter

In addition you can also find me here:

My Blog
On Twitter
Facebook Profile
Lisa Call – Textile Paintings Fan Page

 
—lisa

Thinking Big about Art

In the internet marketing world there is a rule that prices should end in a 7. Looking for an ebook or information product? Chances are the price will end in a 7.

We’re all used to prices end in a 9 in the retail world – such as $19.99.

These are examples of psychological pricing, which is a theory that certain prices have a psychological impact.

The idea is the marketer wants the consumer to respond on an emotional, rather than rational basis. It’s about leveraging the buyer’s ego and self image. The general assumption is price is an indication of quality and the goal with psychological pricing is to exploit that as much as possible.

Prices ending in 99 indicate low prices and signal “this is a value”. There are several studies that have been done around using prices ending in a 9 to increase sales. This technique works, and it works well. (A google search on psychological pricing yields some interesting reading).

It’s harder to find any concrete information about the now ubiquitous 7 used in internet marketing but give it a few years and I suspect some will appear. There are theories that 7 is the most friendly number so it will increase sales but I was unable to find any definitive answers on why 7 would be superior to the use of 9 (except a sketchy looking ebook that cost $47 that I was able to resist). Some say that 7 and 9 work equally well when pricing and by using a 7 internet marketers leave $2 (or $.02) on the table on every transaction.

Odd Pricing and Art

Few artists price their work to end in odd numbers.

Given the standard of odd prices, using even prices is also essentially psychological pricing.

Nordstroms uses even prices as an indication of their quality and sophistication. They stand out in the retail world as different.

I price my work in even numbers. Work that is $5000 is $5000, not $4900. My ACEOs are priced at $40 not $39. I do this for the same reason Nordstroms does – to indicate the product I am selling is a unique one of a kind piece of art.

[ACEO stands for “art cards, editions and originals”. Originally known as ATC, Artist Trading Card, and are traded between artists. When sold to the public they are referred to as ACEOs. The primary rule for an ACEO or ATC is they be 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ – the size of a trading card. They are created in many different mediums and are collectible, trade able and affordable art for everyone.]

Leveraging Psychological Pricing

As an interesting study it might be fun to lower the price for 6 months to $39 and see what effect this has on sales and perceived quality. If it increases sales by 10% the loss in $1 income on each ACEO I would still come out ahead in terms of sales. This is easy to measure as I know the rate at which I sell ACEOs today.

Where would I be in terms of perception of the quality of my artwork? That would be harder to study as I’m not exactly sure how to measure this. My gut feeling is that the perceived quality of my art would not be hurt by this small change as odd pricing is a standard and my prices are high enough to distinguish my artwork as most ACEOs sell for $10-$20 range.

As artists we should not be afraid of trying out new pricing ideas. There are no rules that say we much price with even prices. There is much we can learn about marketing if we get over our need to be special and study how other people sell their goods and services.

Wrap Up

Pricing is notoriously a difficult subject for artists as we tend to identify emotionally with our art. Spending the time to research pricing strategies, such as psychological pricing, can help us to overcome the emotion and make better choices with our pricing.

Over time I’ll be visiting several pricing strategies on MakeBigArt.com because an informed artist is an empowered artist.

 
Do you use odd pricing / psychological pricing with your artwork? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

 
I invite you to become a fan of MakeBigArt on facebook:
MakeBigArt.com fanpage

In addition you can also find me here:

My Blog
On Twitter
Facebook Profile
Lisa Call – Textile Paintings Fan Page

 
—lisa
Thinking Big about Art

Lisa Call – Textile Art – My Fan Page on Facebook

What is a Facebook Profile?

Before you can decide if you need a fan page let’s go over some basics of facebook profiles and fan pages.

When you first sign up on facebook you create a user profile. User profiles are for individuals only and each individual can only have 1 facebook profile, or so say the facebook terms of service and there’s a lot of evidence that they fairly strictly enforce those rules (a google search will turn up many incidences of facebook disabling accounts).

The facebook profile is the normal thing you see where you have a wall on your profile tab and you see your friends updates in the newsfeed on the home tab. When we “friend” someone with our profile it is by mutual agreement that we can see each others profiles and updates. I can’t see your profile if you don’t want to be my friend.

This is where we all talk about our cats and dogs and what we had for breakfast and the world is a better place as a result.

What is a Fan Page?

A fan page is a facebook page for businesses, institutions, organizations and people that have fans, ie public figures, writers, musicians, artists, etc. Basically anything that isn’t a person just looking to chat with friends. Technically they are really just called pages (vs profiles) but we seem to all call them fan pages.

As you can see from the photo above the fan page looks pretty much just like a profile page. Except there is no “home” page where you can see your fans’ updates. There is just the fanpage, which is the wall.

How a fan page is different than a regular user profile:

• Facebook pages are public. This means search engines can index it (ie more people might be able to find you via google – never a bad thing I would think). It means people not on facebook can see it.
• You can track metrics on pages. Things like pageviews, photo views, etc.
• You can create a discussion board on a fan page and you can create events (like facebook groups).
• You can create social advertising for your fan page. This means you can pay money to have your fan page appear in facebook ads, targeted to your selected demographic.
• When someone becomes a fan of your page, you still can not see their profile. It is a one way sharing. To see their profile they have to become your friend instead.
• You can have multiple pages but you are limited to a single profile.

One bummer is that when people comment on a fan page it does not appear in the notification feed. So you have to go and check your fanpage for comments. This is a bit annoying so just remember to check your fanpage to see if you have comments.

How I use my Profile and Fan Page

I use my facebook profile to talk about what it’s like to be an artist. The day to day stuff happening in my life. Some of it is directly art related (studio goals, misc art adventures) and some of it is not so much because I’m more than just an artist. Although because I use facebook mostly for art I don’t use it for super personal things.

[If I wanted to put family photos on facebook but still keep a more professional image I could use permissions and lists and only let my family and close personal friends see those updates. I might do a tutorial on how to do that later if there is interest.]

Mostly I use my profile to build a community to support me in my day to life adventures as an artist and a software engineer. My facebook page was the first time my work friends and colleagues were introduced in more detail to the whole me. I don’t talk about art and mindsets much at work so it was a bit weird at first to write about those things knowing the people at work were reading them. Now everyone at work knows I’m an artist also so it’s pretty cool.

Recently I’ve been posting about my efforts at improving my health. In April and May I was on a quest to do yoga 21 days in a row without a break. The encouragement (and accountability) from my friends was a huge help.

Some of this off topic stuff some my art fans love to read and some people not so much, as they just want to see the art and read about art.

So enter the fan page. Here is where I write about my art more. I kinda view it as a mini blog for people that have proclaimed to love my art (and a big thank you to all of you that have done so!) My status updates on my fanpage appear in my fans’ newsfeeds along with the updates from their friends.

In this way I have something for everyone: Become my friend to see the whole me, become my fan to enjoy my art. And even better: do both!

It is About You

Chris Brogan has deleted his facebook fan page. His single comment was

Because it’s not about me.

With my artwork, it is about me. And your artwork is probably about you.

Art History is a history of individuals. It’ll always be about us. Although interestingly, by creating the fan page I feel a bit the opposite of what Chris is saying.

Now with a fanpage people can enjoy my art without having to read about my efforts to go 21 days with eating refined sugar (which I completed today – it was super easy).

It is about me – I’m keeping my page.

Fine Print

And finally, here’s a little tidbit in the fine print of the facebook terms of service that might help you decide if you want to create a fan page.

All personal site features, such as friending and messaging, are also for personal use only and may not be used for professional promotion. If you add a user as a friend, for example, this person will be invited to be a friend of your profile and not your Page. Using personal site features for professional promotion, or creating unauthorized Pages, may result in your account being warned or disabled.

Technically, if you sell art from your regular user profile, or even promote it, you could be in violation of these facebook rules, which they seem to take rather serious.

Now What?

If this has you thinking you need a fan page – what next?

You can click here to create one: Make a Fan Page

Coming soon will be a tutorial on creating a fanpage (I recommend you click on artist or other public figure on that first page) and how to find it from your profile. Today’s post was getting too long to cover everything so stay tuned if you need more information before jumping in.

I invite you to friend me and become my fan at:

Lisa Call Facebook Profile
Lisa Call – Textile Paintings Fan Page

as a bonus – I’ve created a fanpage for MakeBigArt.com also. I’ll be adding the discussion board to this fanpage in the future so we can have a conversation about thinking big about our art. You can become a fan here:

MakeBigArt.com fanpage

 
—lisa
Thinking Big about Art