Wednesday, June 6, 2018

How to Make Friends and Influence Strangers

Last night I gave a talk on everything I know about social media…up to the point where I had to hand my slide show in (yes I still call it that) to the wonderful folks at Artists Archives of the Western Reserve.

Eternal Thanks to Mindy Tousley and Megan Alves and Theo Albano, whose efforts made sure the Social Media talk went without a hitch and who ran everything so beautifully for the opening of Szalay.Takács.SECRETS !

There’s still time to see the SECRETS show…its up through July 14th and totally worth the trip! See fabulous photos from the Opening Reception here and here by awesome photographer, Stuart Pearl.

As we all know, Social Media changes on a dime, and yesterdays algorithms might have allowed you to reach patrons and fans that todays algorithms don’t. And up until about six months ago, the word ”algorithm“ didn’t even came up in conversation…ever!

And, at the end of the talk I used the oldest media trick in the book to get you to come visit my blog for “the abridged transcript” of the talk…and here you are! 

I hope you’ll enjoy some of my other blog posts about paintings and projects. If you do, sign up to follow chickswithballsjudytakacs.blogspot.com
…over there on the right!

Enough taking advantage of your compromised position where you're eagerly awaiting the meat and potatoes of my talk last night…

so, without further ado…here’s the beef:






At my social media talk, I showed you some great website examples…
Then I showed you my facebook page…ask to be my friend, but send me a PM along with it, so I know who you are! 

I talked about branding yourself, deciding what your artist name really is and defining your identity via your profile page. I mentioned the dillema that some married women have about naming themselves on facebook. I wrote a blog about just this topic a few years back for the Portrait Society of America.

I showed a beautiful example of an artist who lives her brand and her brand is her life


I suggested googling yourself to see just who you appear to be “out there.”


HOT TIP When you link someone's website or blog on your blog or website, your image may appear when someone searches for that (possibly more famous) person…another way that cross-pollination works for you. 

I talked about being a good citizen of the social media world…just like you want to be a good citizen of the real world…respecting “my house my rules…your house your rules”  with each other's pages.

I talked about the pros and cons of having a business page

  • pro…it can be all art and business and searchable on the internet, your mini website on facebook
  • con…few people see it unless you pay for sponsored posts, and even those send your page to people who may not be the ones you want to market to.

I showed you my business pages…which I still maintain despite their limited reach.

I told you about Group pages and how you can use them to market and share your art activities to, and gave you some examples:

I stressed Cross-Polllination in Social Media…tagging, pasting in links referencing each other whenever you market…spreading the love back to yourself and to others.

I talked about Facebook Event pages…and showed you the Event page for the AAWR show, GRAPHIC that’s coming up after my show, Szalay.Takács.Secrets comes down July 14th. Predicting it will be awesome!


And then there was a whole lot about instagram. I referenced a social media expert who also has a lot to say about instagram, so much so that she’s writing a social media book. Her name is Megan Van Groll and her Social Media Expert website is:

She gave some good hashtag examples for instagram…but encouraged you to be creative and make up some of your own, mixing hashtags with huge reach (#art…366Million posts) where your post is buried, but lots of people go there and those with limited reach (#eggtempera…17K posts) where fewer people go, but your post is more likely to get noticed:
  • #art, #artist, #oilpainter #painting #workinprogress #WIP #contemporary realism #artistsoninstagram #Contemporaryart #juicypaint #artstudio #commission #onmyeasel
  • And some hashtags to target art collectors:
    #artcollector #artdealer #artcollection #artgallery #buyart #contemporaryartcollector    
  • HOTTIP from Megan Van Groll Always hashtag yourself if you're posting artwork… #yournamehere…someone may be searching for you via hashtag. And its also a good way to have a curated hashtag with your name on it.
  • Hashtag your location too …#clevelandartist
I talked about the curated instagram page, and how you can trim out the extraneous stuff after the fact so your page will be all art, or at least all gorgeous. After your post about your neice's graduation has collected family likes and comments, you can “archive” it from your page. Its not deleted, just hidden from the overall page…you can see it again when you look under “archived posts”

Here are some gorgeous curated instagram accounts to inspire you to trim the fat from yours. 


I’d be remiss in the social media expert business if I didn’t include mine…which, admittedly isn't as curated as I'd like, but peppering in kid pix is part of my brand too, so I'm not trimming too much of the fat.


Follow us all…some us may follow you back!

These two won’t though…check out their "following" statuses.

HOT TIP…Be sure to turn off “private account” for your instagram if you want people to see it

And if you want to obsess about who has unfollowed you…there's an app for that.


I also talked about Blogs…

Blogs…I just love blogs…realllly I do! Here's the reference I made for those of you who didn't get it when I said it aloud!

And I summed things up with some fun internet memes…which I’m sure you’ve seen, but maybe won't mind seeing again…because they're so true. 

Social media and the issue of privacy…



Social media and the issue of wasting time…



And, I closed my talk with a hook…in advertising, we call this a “call to action.”

“for more information go to…”



and I'm so thrilled to have lured you here, to my blog!

This is a hook you can use though…next time you have the opportunity…cross-pollination is what Social Media is all about!

Email me at judytakacs@me.com and I'll put you on my email list for my art comings and goings.

And, as a thank you for reading all the way to the end, when you email me, send me your home address too and I'll send you a Chicks with Balls Car sticker…along with a couple postcards and stuff too! I promise not to give your info to anyone else!

Thanks for coming to my talk…and I hope that you'll continue to join me in building the art world we want to live in! 




 

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