YOU 2.0 The New Killer App

The past Mar­ket­ing Mon­day post gave some in depth infor­ma­tion and sug­ges­tions about twit­ter and how the whole social net­work­ing thing fits together. What fol­lows are some more thoughts and guide­lines to help you start sort­ing things out.

The key and absolute most impor­tant thing to remem­ber is that you are wit­ness­ing a liv­ing exam­ple of evo­lu­tion dri­ven by our need to con­nect, to com­mu­ni­cate on what­ever level we need and to be able to do so by choice. The evo­lu­tion is not pretty, and is most def­i­nitely not lin­ear and will not pro­duce a  cure all, fix all, super-duper whizbang app that mag­i­cally makes our world into what we want it to be. That app instead is look­ing more and more like us because it reflects our ever chang­ing desires to be social, to con­nect with other humans. And because we are that app it will never stop chang­ing, it will evolve as we evolve, chang­ing it’s iden­tity as our needs change. A fad it will not be, because WE are not a fad.

So what’s an artist to do? Well the sim­ple answer is another ques­tion …do you want to con­tinue being an artist? If you do, you will need to adapt your­self and your busi­ness by re-tooling, rethink­ing, and re-visioning on a con­tin­ual basis.  What we do is uniquely social and per­sonal and our suc­cess depends on how well we adapt and learn to build our con­nec­tions. With this in mind what fol­lows are some things you must do, tools you must have and thoughts you must hold to help you adapt and grow.

Actions you must take…

• Deter­mine your net­work readi­ness –iden­tify your own readi­ness to build your system-what do you need to learn? How can you learn it? Where can you learn it? Are there ways you can get started that will not require a PhD ?
• Iden­tify your net­works — where are they geo­graph­i­cally? who are they made up of?
• Iden­tify your vision for your net­works — each of your net­works will likely be dif­fer­ent — Know what that dif­fer­ence is and how you can tap into it. How will a mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial rela­tion­ship with that net­work look for you?
• Iden­tify the sta­tus of your net­works — do you have the tools to start build­ing the net­work? E-mail list, what are their com­mu­ni­ca­tions tools. You may need to use a com­bi­na­tion of tac­tics for those you have a con­nec­tion point and those you don’t. Use  e-mails when you can and old school ana­log meth­ods for those you are not elec­tron­i­cally con­nected to.
• Iden­tify key con­tacts in each net­work — They should have and know how to use e-mail, they prefer­ably will be inter­net savvy and have the abil­ity to reach out to oth­ers who enjoy your work.

Tools you must have…

• Your blog - as men­tioned ear­lier your blog is the mother ship of your net­work, build it nur­ture it and make it a place your net­work wants to come back to.
• A place and way to sell your work on-line — There are a lot of choices from Etsy to Art­fire to Zaz­zle depend­ing on what you make, find a place that works for you. In the begin­ning choose a place that is ready for you to move into, and pro­vides you with all the tools you need to show your work, and process tran­sc­tions with min­i­mal sweat on your part.
• Tools to talk to your net­work — E-mail, Face­book and Twit­ter and all the ancil­lary tools that sup­port their effec­tive use. Be pre­pared to add mobile tools as well. Think of these tools the same way you think of your phone…most impor­tantly focus on being human.
• Tools to seg­ment your net­work — Find and use the tools avail­able and emerg­ing to group your net­work accord­ing to your vision. Some of these tools are just becom­ing avail­able and many are yet to be discovered.

Thoughts you must have…

• A clear vision of your busi­ness and where you want to be and how you will get there.
• Will­ing­ness to shed your fears and an open­ness to change
• A deep know­ing that you are in charge of your des­tiny, that what you think deter­mines what you attract into your life and ulti­mately your business.
• Your buy­ers are your friends ready and will­ing to sup­port you.
• A con­fi­dence in the value of your work.
• The strong belief that just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come, suc­cess doesn’t hap­pen overnight.
• Not every­body is going to want what you have to offer, it is up to you to define you are best suited to serve and then do what it takes to attract them.
• A deep under­stand­ing of the val­ues and sto­ries your work evokes and that the com­bi­na­tion of the two are key to your success.
• Suc­cess is not a guar­an­tee all the tools in the world and all the strate­gies and tac­tics avail­able can­not guar­an­tee con­tin­ued suc­cess unless you know how to use them
• You will have ups and downs and it is how you han­dle the downs that deter­mine your success.