Fill Your “Content Buckets” to Prep for Aggressive Online PR Campaign
Aug 4th, 2008 by A
Being a self-employed artist means conducting business in a way that other successful self-employed people do. I already know that you’re mastering your art form - whatever that may be. Now, are you ready to master the modern marvel of online marketing?
This article assumes you have a basic set of skills with regard to preparing images for the web, and a strong desire to learn and use the basic principles of online guerrilla marketing to let the world know who you are and how they can find and buy your art. Great. Let’s get to the meat and potatoes - preparing content BEFORE you go crazy and sign up for every conceivable online social network you can find.
CONTENT BUCKETS
“Content Buckets” help you easily populate your profile pages on social networks, as well as assist you with other online promotions (eg. listings on: Craigslist, sites for local news organizations, PORT <in Portland OR>and other art blogs, etc.) . Below I’ll give you a brief outline of the content you want to include in your “master” text file. If you’re interested, I have a worksheet I can send to you - just sign up for one of our newsletters and I’ll get it to you pronto.
Content Buckets and the Information They Contain
Create a text file that contains the following buckets of information that is used on almost any social networking site you join. Create a master file containing the types of information below, and then just copy and paste in to any of the social network profiles you create.
Headline [that describes you and your art form]
Brainstorm a few headlines. Think about each of the social networking sites you want to promote yourself/work and POS on, and write headlines that would appeal to the folks on that particular service, while maintaining your personality in each.
About Me
This is the bit where you really want to be revealing about who you are as an artist, and what your current body of work represents. Don’t be long winded – unless you’re an amazing writer. Best to get right to the heart of what people ant to really know – what motivates you, why you do what you do as an artist.
I’d Like to Meet
Don’t be shy about asking for collectors, admirers, like-minded artists in corss genres to collaborate with, etc. Again, be frank, open and honest – without being desperate.
Interests
Bring this back to your work rather than subjects that may not relate to your work. Think about the things that inform you, your artistry, your innovations and creativity.
Music
Do you get inspired by music? Great! Write about it, include your favorites. Your fans want to know about the things that influence you, guide you, keep you on your path as an artist. The same goes for Movies: Television: Books:
Heroes
Artistic influencers? Social leaders? Your ancestors? Parents? Again, think about the folks who bring meaning to your work.
Exhibit / Professional Experience
This includes both resume types of information AND exhibition experience.
Blogging / Posting
Create an Editorial Calendar telling an ongoing story leading up to Open Studios. If you were to publish stories weekly on Saturdays, beginning next week, your calendar dates would look like this:
DATE | TOPIC TO WRITE ABOUT
Aug 9 |Six to Eight Word sentence describing the article topic.
Article Title
Story Notes/Synopsis: Two to three sentences that tells you, and late the reader, what the article is about
Tags [keywords and key phrases]
Aug 16 |Six to Eight Word sentence describing the article topic.
Article Title
Story Notes/Synopsis: Two to three sentences that tells you, and late the reader, what the article is about
Tags [keywords and key phrases]
And so on…
Images
Prepare images for posting on the web. Create several different sizes of your artwork, and headshot – a thumbnail, small and medium sized images. Thumbnail sizes vary from network to network, but in general if you have a 150 pixel by 150 pixel image you’ll be able to post on most networks. Keep your small images to no larger than a 350 pixel width, and medium image to no more than a 700 pixel width.
Write CAPTIONS for every image in a CAPTIONS file. Name your image files in a manner that matches your captions so it will be quick to match them when you are posting to the web.
CREATE AN “ONLINE PROMOTIONS” FOLDER
On your desktop, include all these prepared pieces of information in a folder. Give the folder a name that will be meaningful to you, like ONLINE PROMOTIONS. Save all your editorial work as unformatted TEXT files.
Now, when you go out to sign up for your favorite online social networks all you’ll need to do is copy and paste the basic information from this file, tweak it for each site (or not!), and voila! you are across the web.
The next thing to do is to create an Editorial Calendar for your primary Blog, and you’ll have a good part of your online promotions tactics in motion!
REMEMBER: If you want a more thorough guideline for this process, sign up for one of the Working Artists newsletters [sign-up box is at the top-left of the blog], and I’ll send you a WORD and a PDF worksheet to guide you through this process.
