Sometimes it is good to have a formula to help remember what you need to do especially when you are starting something unfamiliar. Over the years a simple formula evolved to help measure the effectiveness of marketing efforts
So, as I was looking through Arts/Craft Show application deadlines online, I found the application for the “Buyer’s Market of American Craft” (BMAC) at the Philadelphia Convention Center.
As in everything we have covered so far, revisit your business goals because the extent of those goals will determine what you do at this stage. Be honest and don’t expect your self to reach rock star levels with out the investment of time and skill building. Also, don’t consider yourself a failure if you decide to limit your growth to your own pace, there’s noting wrong knowing and practicing what you know works best for you.
Remember two things:
* Waiting for perfection will just keep you waiting;
* The best strategy as set forth by Seth Godin is to “fire, aim, aim” or more precisely don’t expect to hit a bulls eye your first time around actually, it may take several times making adjustments before you hit your mark.
Note: This was originally posted Tuesday 2/9/10 but taken down due to code conflicts that were effecting the site’s performance. I’ve fixed the bugs so these outstanding TED talks could be available to you.
The following TED talks occurred last year, they talk mostly about change and the shift we are all feeling. More importantly they also offer insights into the depth of the shift and possibly if you listen carefully glimpses into what our possibilities can be. We are lucky to be living in the time because history is being made to the scale of significance as the printing press, electricity and the telephone. Each speaker provides a different point of view from a different vantage point of the same thing.
Yes, I have a lovely group of followers and buyers who have found my work via Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, my Blog and my website. Most of them keep up with my work either through Facebook or my Blog, and some have subscribed to my shop (Art4Sale) newsletter.
My marketing journey has not been as well planned as I would have hoped or advocate. However, I did write down some SMART goals of what I wished to achieve, and wrote a loose business plan, which I need to update. Having done some business courses, the skills and tools I learnt from those have stood me in good stead, particularly when it comes to planning, marketing and measuring performance.
Clearly defining my style and authentic voice and writing my artist’s statement were so closely linked that they actually became one large goal. Since I was terrified about writing my statement, having made several very lame attempts previously I called in professional help for this one too.
There are so many ways to invite people to share your journey on the internet. My website has an RSS feed that people can subscribe to and then they will receive alerts every time I add something new there. Then there’s my daily painting blog, readers can subscribe and get the daily post in their inbox, there’s also a new blogger feature in the sidebar that allows people to actually become a “follower” of my blog.
After you have your flag flying and folks are seeing it they have to know whether the flag is worth hunting down.…people won’t buy your stuff if they can’t tell whether it works for them. That’s the job of our find ability thing. Here we are worried about making sure we are bringing the right […]
This site is the labor of love of a seasoned self taught 63 year old geekzer who cut his teeth on punch cards, fortran and main frame computers all the while designing, drawing and photographing . [read more…}
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