Publicize Your Art in 2012

Blogging, PR, Selling Art,

One of my clients sent me an email to let me know she’s having a retrospective of her art quilts shown at a local gallery. So exciting!  She asked me for a little advice about getting the word out there.  In just a few minutes, we had the makings of a PR campaign set up for her.

I thought I’d share it here… It’s a useful starting point to brainstorm almost any PR campaign.

Step One.  Plan ahead.  What are your personal goals for the exhibit? Number of visitors? Number of sales?  Capturing contact info?  Give yourself a running head start.

Let people know your retrospective is coming with enough time to make space on their calendars to see it.  Will they be able to buy art at the venue?  Get them primed to want to purchase.  If not able to buy, then get them thinking about a commission.  You might even add a page to your website about your commission work.

Step Two.  What exactly do you need to say?

Brainstorm the  things that people need/want to know, and then write your press release (as crisp & clearly as possible) and then use that info again and again, tweaking it to the style of each broadcast method you have.  Make sure to include:

  • Artist name & website
  • Number of pieces in the show
  • Time period of the work
  • 1-sentence synopsis of theme of show
  • Location of show
  • Dates of show
  • Cost/hours/how to see
  • Will their be an opening?  Meet the artist?
  • Pieces available for purchase
  • Any special donation or charity to receive portion of proceeds
  • Commissions available

Step Three.  Now, how will you tell them? Your promo should be:

  • On your blog
  • On your facebook
  • Tweeted on twitter
  • In your emails to friends/family
  • In a promotional email to all of your contacts
  • In your postcards/mailings
  • on the blog for your local SAQA (insert name of your guild or artist group)
  • promoted by national SAQA – Martha’s emails (insert name of your guild or artist group)
  • promoted by your local art groups and/or tourist groups
  • in a press release to your local papers
  • And…? how is this being publicized by the venue? Get involved and take advantage of their expertise

Remember that print pubs usually work ads & editorials 1 to 2 months ahead of publication dates.

The above list may not be all-inclusive, but it’s a great kickstart to any PR campaign.  I hope you have something exciting to publicize in 2012!

2012: Call It a Comeback!

Business Development, CYN WORKS,

Well, after a very lovely bit of hiatus that included enjoying early pregnancy, a day job at a nightclub, getting some sewing done, and holidays with friends and family, I’m back in the saddle at CYN WORKS!

If you’ve got a project you’d like to work on — from a website/blog revamp to a PR campaign to getting your social media in order — give me a shoutout. Contact me!

To read some of the nice things my clients said about me just a few weeks ago, check out my recently updated CLIENTS page.

I’m also getting back to a regular blogging schedule, so keep up by either signing up via email (link to the right side of this page) or by adding this blog to your RSS reader.

Looking forward to hearing what you’re working on for 2012!

 

Hiatus

Uncategorized

Welcome to CYN WORKS!

I am taking a small hiatus from branding and marketing strategy work. That means I’m not actively working to find new clients. However, if you have a special project you’d like to work on together, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

I love hearing from you and being a part of growing your business!

cynworks_AddressNumerology-13

Address Numerology

Branding, ,

I often walk this welcoming Claremont neighborhood on the Berkeley/Oakland border.

Yesterday, I found myself with camera in hand, looking for a pictoral story.


After a few general shots down the tree-lined streets, I keyed in on the unique ways the homeowners had decided to announce their street addresses.


It became clear to me that each home had its own brand that was being played out in the aesthetic choices – from font to placement to alignment.


Some were about clarity.


Some were clever.


Some appeared chosen by an architectural eye.


Some had never been informed of the diagonal layout “no no” in graphic design. Or chose to break the rule?


Some were blessed to have beautiful gates to keep them company.


Some had quirky, fun personalities.


Classic.


Temporary placeholders?

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Visual Marketing – Rockridge, Oakland, CA (2 of 2)

Branding, Business Development, , , , ,

…continued from Marketing, Taking It to the Streets in Rockridge…

It seems that in these Rockridge storefronts, the cool, “less is more” mantra of visual marketing has given way to the urgent, “I need to tell you something” text-heavy version of marketing.

This excursion got me thinking, Do all the words slow me down and beckon me to engage, or do they create a messy, untidy storefront that sends me to the next shop?  And mostly, it got me thinking, Who is doing this best?  And what can I learn from these leaders to help my clients in their businesses?

Bella Vita gives us a creative S A L E and reminds us that they have been voted Best of Oakland with the text on their magazine-provided brochures.

Arellano goes for the “part of the establishment” approach by telling us they’ve been 20 years in Rockridge – impressive. Longer than I’ve been anywhere!

I can see pop-up signs in the windows behind these moms. I gotta move in for a better view!

redhound uses a crisp font on a small paper format to remind us that they’re more than product – they offer classes and help pet owners with licensing their pets.

Tootsies seems to have a whole lot to say — from promoting a long-wearing nail polish to one of my favorite text window pop-ups — we’re hiring. Yeah! That’s good news, right?

Fenton MacLaren and Rockridge Furniture & Design both seemed pretty skilled at the feature/benefit aspect of using text in the storefront.

I’ve been stopping to look at this vignette for at least three weeks.

I’m not in the market for colorful, metal furniture, but if I were, this (Rockridge Furniture & Design) would be my spot. I love the playfulness of the window, and I think the editorial “conceived in the Eiffel Tower Age” tag appeals to those who want a sense of history and culture to accompany their lifestyle purchases.

I thought I’d end with a shot of this Picnic in the Street poster, hanging in Market Hall. You can tell from the effort put into developing the event, the local merchant participation, and even the design of the artwork that creating a sense of community is important to the people who have their livelihoods based in Rockridge.

It’s this kind of engaged passion that sells during tough times.  Anyone can ride a boom.  But only the strongest and most creative will prosper and thrive in the busts.

cynworks_RockridgeMarketing-13

Marketing – Taking It to the Streets in Rockridge, Oakland, CA (1 of 2)

Branding, Business Development, , , ,

I moved to San Francisco in 2001, during the dot-com boom.  I squeezed into a postage stamp-sized studio apartment in the Inner Sunset (code name for “very foggy SF ‘hood”), and I worked @ a cool internet job doing web development and cultivating content for a massive website.  When the dot-com went bust, so did my company, and I jumped on the next bandwagon – real estate!  A great opportunity in real estate marketing took me to the East Bay, and I relocated to Oakland in a groovy little neighborhood called Rockridge.

Since then, I’ve moved across the country and back, landing in Walnut Creek, CA, an even more suburban environment 25 miles east of SF.  It’s warm and friendly, but I can’t help but find my way back to Rockridge at least once a week, mostly to keep an eye on how the artsy, free-spirited yet civic-minded entrepreneurs are faring in the post real-estate bust era.  (Do I have that right?  Are we really past the bust?)

What really strikes me is how the storefronts seem to mimic the world of the internet. Check out my snapshots, and you’ll see what I mean. Everywhere I looked today, I saw “pop up ads” – little flyers or signs stuck in windows that used text to explain the features and benefits of buying from a certain merchant or a certain product line or even individual products.

This letter to the neighborhood is in a shop that used to be Crossroads Trading and now is going to be a giftshop under the Nathan & Co brand. Notice how they really promote their localness?

Pegasus Books, an East Bay-based bookseller, fills a window with a huge poster promoting eating, sleeping, and reading local!

Crush, a clothing store, is talking straight internet – “like us on facebook” and “follow us on twitter“!

Bittersweet gets artsy with chalkboard signage.

Uhmmm, did you see this? I think Bittersweet invented a whole new time of year! Milkshake season! Yum!  I think I’d like to see that marketing concept carried to the next level.

Does this count? Books already have text, and the way these are displayed, I did want to slow down for a better look.  Diesel is certainly an independent bookseller, but there’s not exactly any pop-up local/interactive promotion in this window.

Heading up College, I noticed there was a large banner hanging outside of Cafe Rustica.

Hmmm… what’s the message here? They deliver? Their chicken is free range? I can tell you from my own experience, they serve up some delicious food. Wonder if they felt it was too editorial to tell you that the chicken melts in your mouth or that people have been known to drive from SF just to grab one of their Salsiccia pizzas to go?

I have more to share from the creative merchants on College in Rockridge…

to be continued… check in for tomorrow’s post!

Thank YOU, Constant Contact!!

Branding, Business Development,

Look at the surprise that came in my mailbox yesterday!

A $75, no-strings-attached, gift card from Constant Contact! Wow, what a nice way of thanking me for referring my clients to them!
Truth is, I would refer my clients to Constant Contact if there were no incentive whatsoever. Here are just a few things I love about their promotional email system:

  1. Emails are easy to custom format to highlight YOUR business’s features.
  2. You can see a report of who opened your email and when!
  3. You can track the individual links in each email, so you know which topics appeal to your readers.
  4. People can sign up for your newsletter online!
  5. People can unsubscribe and you automatically are set up to follow all legal spamming guidelines.
  6. Emails can be written at any time and calendared to go out on a regular schedule.
  7. Super affordable!

So, if Constant Contact is sending me such a nice gift to say thank you for referring my clients to them, it got me to thinking… have I said thank you enough lately to the people who refer business to me?  Have you?

Let’s make sure we do… this week!

When Your Clients Are Doing Great Things…

Blogging, Selling Art,

When your clients are doing great things, you want to brag on them!

Jenny Lyon, Quilt Skipper,and I have been working together for about a year now.  I’ve supported her as she developed her personal brand, her website, and her freemotion quilting teaching career.  She’s a ball of energy and a ton of fun!

So it was NO surprise at all to me when I got this email a few days ago (shared with permission) about her adventures at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach:

From the desk of Jenny Lyon:

Long Beach went fabulously!

Saturday Night Sampler had 26 presenters in a large room, each with a design board behind an 8-foot table, 16 chairs in front. Participants paid $25 and got a booklet with one-pagers from each presenter.  Participants could flow freely throughout the room.

First time through, 8 ladies rushed up to me — their first choice! I had a total of maybe 12 first time through. From then on, all chairs filled plus bystanders.

Questions/comments included:

  • Where is this written-is there a book?
  • Do you do lectures?
  • How can I find out more about this?

Aside from Cyn: And here’s the best part… I’m so proud!

THEY ASKED ME TO TEACH NEXT YEAR-DIRECTLY ASKED-JUST LIKE I WANTED THEM TO!!!

THANK YOU! We started this a year ago, I think, and you have been my rudder, steering me clear of lost or misguided efforts and pointing me in the right direction. Long Beach would not have been this success without your guidance and expertise. It has been tremendously helpful to me to know you would let me know if it’s not that great, or, if it’s something I need to pursue. Marketing/branding-I had no clue! You rock!

To see more about Jenny’s success at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, check out her blog!

WordPress.com Twenty-Eleven Theme – deal breaker?

Blogging, , , , ,

As promised, I did some WordPress.com exploration on my blogs.  One of the changes I had in mind was to convert my XOXOQUILTS.COM from the Coraline theme to the Twenty-Eleven theme.  At first, I loved it!

  • The font is sexy.
  • The header is crisp.
  • The large image (1000 x 288 ) for the header – great real estate for unique images for each page and/or blog post!

How Twenty-Eleven appears as a blog – AWESOME!

I got everything set up and was really loving it, when I came to what I must admit is a deal breaker.

Individual blog posts do not have a template that allows for the widgets (images and links) to appear in the sidebar. They only show up when on the “blog” page, as shown above.

But when on an individual post (like what someone might see if they follow the link to the blog from facebook or Google Reader), the whole page is blank, except for the images and text of the specific article.

How Tweny-Eleven appears as an individual post – BLEAK.

After I’d set everything up, I really hated to go backwards.  I sought out the experiences of other users on the WordPress.com forum and on the WordPress.com Facebook page.

No one had a better solution – or even a realistic workaround.  The reasoning was given as “faster load time,” which is fair enough, but outside the scope of my publishing concerns.  At least, I don’t think there are quilting revolutionaries running around the streets using my latest quilt posts to determine sewing location, timing, and strategy!  Gosh, I almost wish there were!

So… I know I can be guilty of grabbing onto a small detail and wrestling with it until it becomes a major issue.   I decided rather than to keep poking at the problem, I’d let it rest over the weekend and see if I could live with the blank post template.

And you know what happened?  Over the weekend, KTSeams wrote a post on the East Bay Modern Quilt Guild blog linking back to a post on my blog.  Awesome, right?

But when someone followed the link, all they got was my one article… no widgets, no list of other blogs I follow, no suggestion to follow XOXO QUILTS via RSS, join me on Facebook, see images on Flickr, or join my mailing list.  What if I wanted to promote an Etsy shop??

Even the links to earlier posts, rather than using the titles I so carefully craft, simply say “previous” and “next,” as if caught in some modernist, non-specific database trap.

Without those blogging and social media tools, my blog posts are less-than-viral and more like an unsigned letter that accidentally shows up in your mailbox.  There’s no trail or path to let you know how to have an ongoing relationship with me or better yet, my quilts.

Interestingly enough, this has all taken me back to using the Twenty Ten theme, the default WordPress.com theme published in 2010.  It has all of the functionality I’m seeking, minus a little real estate for the header image, less sexy font, and I don’t quite like the way the name of the site and the tag line are written at the top.  But I can live with the aesthetic shortcomings if the function is right on.

So, I guess I’d call my test run of Twenty Eleven a research project and a lesson that can hopefully help others.  And there is good news.  I started monkeying around with the categories for posts, and I’m finding really exciting ways to incorporate that functionality into indexing my site.

Stay tuned… I’ll share more details soon!  Or if you want a sneak preview, head over to XOXOQUILTS.COM and check out the menu dropdown for +2011 QUILTS.  Let your mouse hover over the text on the menu as you explore.  Pretty cool, right?

More Blogging Tricks…!

Blogging, Business Development, CYN WORKS,

I’ve started a list of some new WordPress.com tools that I want to incorporate into my blogs. I’ll be adding them over the summer, and I’ll post about them here.  I think they’re pretty nifty tricks that will add a lot of benefits with baseline effort.

Summer 2011 WordPress.com Goals

  1. Switch my xoxoquilts.com blog from the Coraline theme to the new 2011 WordPress theme.  I’ve really liked Coraline, especially because it allows for two columns for widgets.  But I’m ready for a change, and I think the larger image space of the WordPress 2011 will enhance the way I can showcase my quilts.  I’ve already switched my client sample site over to 2011.  What do you think of the new header style?  Larger image!
  2. I also want to get more adventurous with the indexing capability provided by using categories and tags in blog posts.  Last week I blogged about having 13 quilt projects underway.  Over the weekend, I started envisioning how I could index (categorize) those quilts by name, creating an archive of all posts related to each quilt in an easy-to-access link.  Stay tuned… it’s easier to show than explain.  Plus, once you see it, I think you’re gonna want to do it too!
  3. Google calendars!  I’ve added this to a client’s site to manage their class schedule.  The site is in beta, so take a sneak preview here!  Oh, and actually, you can see how “categories” can be managed right on the Ashland Quiltz website — click on one of the widgets on the right of the calendar, like “Our Customers” to see how that brings up posts about their very creative customers!

I think that’s enough to keep me busy for a minute.  If you have any other great WordPress.com ideas that I should be using, please share!  I still can’t believe this platform is FREE!!!

Oh, and if you live in the Bay Area and keep a blog, we still have 2 spots in our “Making Your Blog Professional” workshop on June 21!