Tag Archives: Social Media

5 Reasons Why a Blog Is Better Than a Website

April 13, 2011Uncategorizedblogging, branding, Social Media, WordPress.com, xoxo quiltsCYN@CYNWORKS.COM

Currently, I’m an admin on 28 blogs. That means I see in detail how 28 people are using their blogs to tell the world about their ambitions and their businesses. Okay, 2 of those blogs are actually mine (http://cynworks.com – where you are right now! – and http://xoxoquilts.com). So, taking that into consideration, I’m only looking at 26 other ways of thinking.

Still, I think that’s a decent sampling to be able to say without a shred of doubt, “a blog is better than a website.” In fact, I assumed this point of view was so obvious, I wasn’t even going to write about it… until I had my meeting with my business development group tonight and saw that two of the group’s members are still running a blog PLUS a website.

I just can’t get my mental arms around that. I mean… WHY? To understand this better, I thought it might be interesting to look at this in terms of business goals. Right? Surely, very few of us are narcissistic enough to just want an online temple to ourselves. We want a site to help us reach business goals like:

1. I want people to come to my site to see my (art) work.

A blog is custom-designed for the very purpose of creating traffic. The postings by date spark search engines to crawl your site for updates. Publishing your blog on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In add ways to draw more attention to your site.

Also, a blog is designed so that you can add galleries/portfolios as pages. There is zero reason to keep your portfolio on one site and your blog on another. Here’s a sample of how easy it is to integrate a gallery into a blog>> — be sure to click around and look at the drop-down menu for “gallery” to see how everything functions seamlessly.

2. I want to customize the look and feel of my site.

Blogs like those available from WordPress.com have over 90 FREE templates. Then you can add additional customization through a graphic you create for the header or adding widgets to the sidebars. You can also manage customization through the way you create and size the images that will be posted on your site. For instance, look at my xoxoquilts.com blog, based on the Coraline theme.

The header is a drawing created in Illustrator. Every time I add a new post, I size my images to be exactly the same dimensions and add the xoxoquilts.com logo to the bottom right, creating a sense of continuum throughout the different storylines.

The images on the right side are created in Illustrator and added as “widgets” which means they show up on every page of the site. They’re even set up so that if you click on an image, the embedded link can open in a new tab or window.

3. I want to manage the font style and size on my site.

I have to take a deep breath before addressing this. Really? I mean, really? If you think the font style is going to make or break your business, you cannot possibly be looking at the big picture. Add to that, most browsers (like Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox) are set up so that the person who owns the computer is choosing their preferred font when viewing a website. That’s right – you don’t necessarily even get to pick what font people see when looking at your site.

If you want to see how this works, go find the “Preferences/Content” part of menu in your browser. Mine is set to the default of Verdana, size 16.

And if you really care, you can actually choose some free customizations for fonts on WordPress.com using a product called typekit.com. If your computer is set so that you can see my custom font on this site, I’m using LFT Etica Display Web. I used it to test out the product. However, what I know is that people come to my site for good, honest, trustworthy information and maybe a touch of humor. They don’t come here to admire my fonts. Showcasing fonts is not my business model! Is it yours?

4. I want to control the information on my site.

This is really one of the best reasons to use a blog. They are super easy to learn how to use the dashboard for — much like using an email client like Outlook or Entourage or learning how to use all the stuff you can do on Facebook. You can’t break it! And though you can choose to pay someone to administer your blog, it’s really not necessary. It’s very easy to do yourself!

5. I want my site to represent me in a professional manner.

Okay, I do really get this. In a big way. I look at probably 15-20 new blogs every week. I like to cruise around the web and see what people are doing. And I’d agree that there are lots of messy blogs out there – poorly organized information, useless or outdated widgets, hard-to-figure-out purposes for pages and/or links, plus some really unappealing bios and bio photos. But you know what? I think these people behind these blogs would probably run sloppy “websites” too.

Having a clean, focused, meaningful site is not about the tool. It’s about the clarity of thought and the editing ability of the person who is behind the site. A blog is like a garden. It needs nurturing, trimming, and weeding.

To keep your potential customer’s attention, you need to give them a big wow every now and then.

A big wow means giving something personal, meaningful, insightful, or something they can’t find anywhere else. For some bloggers, this means contests. For some, it means insider information. For some, it means inspirational content or images.

What do you have that will make people want to know more about you and your business?

Update: Business Development Workshop @ New Pieces, Berkeley CA

March 22, 2011Uncategorizedbiz dev, branding, marketing, New Pieces Quilt Shop, selling, Social Media, xoxo quiltsCYN@CYNWORKS.COM

Tuesdays at New Pieces Quilt Store & Gallery in Berkeley, CA

March 2011
This business development group has really focused each of us on week-to-week accountability. My personal ambition within this group is to have a smooth launch of my xoxoquilts.com business.

Because of this group, I have developed an Etsy opening inventory, written a 5-point business plan, set up my marketing strategy, and calendared my goals to reach my May 2011 launch date. It’s certainly keeping me hopping.

It’s really motivating to be around people who are just as focused as you are, yet each person brings a different strength and energy to the group.

Here we are on March 15, 2011. Thank you Mary Risard @ New Pieces for the snapshot!

Our business development group is:

Lauri Clausen
Hip Simplicity
Hip Simplicity’s Wise Earth bags are made in the United States of 100% organic cotton, which is grown and milled in the United States.
www.HipSimplicity.com

Susan Henry
Quilt Artist
www.susanelaine.com
http://susanelainehenry.wordpress.com

Alice Beasley
I’ve been making fabric portraits in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1988
www.alicebeasley.com
http://alicebeasley.wordpress.com

Michele Garvin
Sjelly Bags

Claudia Comay
Fearless Art
Working with fabric since 1994, Ms. Comay is concerned with using fabric in a painterly manner and with depicting form and substance three dimensionally in a minimalist way, thus creating a new lexicon that bridges the world of textiles with the world of fine art and sculpture.
http://claudiacomay.wordpress.com

Cyn Long
xoxo quilts
Xoxo quilts are handmade quilts designed to celebrate love, friends, family, and life occasions.
http://www.xoxoquilts.com

Susan Simon
Artist Corner
artistcorner.co & artistcorner.biz

Julie Banfield
Vestimentos

Collecting Art: Maryanna Hoggatt

March 4, 2011Uncategorizedbranding, creativity, PR, selling, Social Media, strategyCYN@CYNWORKS.COM

Maryanna Hoggatt of Little Wolf blog

A week ago, I wrote a post about making your artwork collectible and posed 13 questions a buyer might ask in deciding to purchase your work.

My premise was, if you are an artist who is blogging, you can use your blog posts as a way to convey the answers to the things buyers are concerned about. For instance, question no. 10: Is this work collectible?

Perhaps my thoughts were inspired by my recent interactions with the Portland artist Maryanna Hoggatt, who writes the Little Wolf blog.

Maryanna draws… all of the time. She is an illustrator. She posts… a lot. As she says, “This blog is to provide a closer look at my process, including sketches, final works, and inspirations.”

The funny part is, I’ve never seen Maryanna in person. In fact, I discovered Maryanna and her work when I was working on a quilt of my own, and I needed some inspiration. I wanted to see how artists interpreted peonies into drawings or paintings.

<<<<I did a google image search and found this image.

It was dark and broody and full of mood. Totally NOT what I was looking for, but it captured me. I followed it to its blog – Maryanna’s Little Wolf blog – and have been a faithful follower ever since.

In January 2011, Maryanna had a show of her work at the Eastbank Commerce Center in Portland, OR.

In February 2011, she posted on her blog that she would be giving away one of her illustrations from the show. BINGO – the light went on for me. She was making her work collectible. She was working in a series. She was creating desire. She was making a commitment to her fanbase. Way cool! Of course, I commented on her blog in hopes of winning and getting to see her work close-up.

And I won!

Righ away, Maryanna sent me a nice note to let me know the package was on its way. Everything about her delivery reinforced her commitment to her craft. Look at the careful wrapping. Even my lady at my mailbox commented, “Oh, yes, look, it’s as if it was delivered to you personally by the pony express!”

The care in the packaging… The attention to detail in the addressing.

The protective packaging materials…

The letter/invoice that provides provenance… the wish/suggestion to have the illustration professionally framed.

I’m thrilled to add this to my growing collection of work from up and coming artists. Maryanna, I’m so glad I virtually met you!

The illustration is lovely and will be framed and cherished!

Blogging Better: Categories and Tags

February 28, 2011Uncategorizedblogging, graphics, icons, New Pieces Quilt Shop, Social Media, widgets, WordPress.comCYN@CYNWORKS.COM

We talked a lot about categories, tags, and how to incorporate them into widgets in our advanced blogging workshop that took place on Tuesday afternoons at New Pieces Quilt Shop and Gallery in Berkeley, CA.

After all, if you’ve committed to posting an article per week, by the end of a year, you will have a full library of 50+ meaningful articles. Posting these in date order is a valuable PR tool, drawing people to your site on a regular basis. But how can you create even more value out of the time and thought put into writing a good post?

The first plan is to create an indexed library of your posts using categories and tags. I’ll show you how. Then I’ll show you where they appear on a WordPress.com blog, and then I’ll refer you to another blogger who I think has made a marvelous integration of her artistry and blog function.

How to Categorize and Tag

My thinking on this has been that categories and tags in blogging could be compared to the index of a recipe book. The category would be a general subject, like “chicken.” The tags would then list all the ways a chicken could be cooked, like “soup,” “fried,” “baked,” or “salad” and connect the reader to the page of the book where that particular recipe (article) is located.

Chicken
Baked_______________ p 420
Fried________________ p 306
Salad________________ p 12
Soup________________ p 153

To carry on the cookbook metaphor in your blogging, each time you write a post about chicken, you would select the category “chicken” and select the tag appropriate to the style of cooking before you publish.

Benefits of Categories and Tags

The first place your readers benefit from this organization is in a Category cloud or Tag cloud, assuming you add those widgets to your WordPress.com site. If you want to see this in real-life action, scroll down to the very bottom of my blog, and you’ll see my Category and Tag clouds in the footer.

The second benefit is that some search engines crawl your site for categories and tags. This technique of crawling seems to change every time I read a new article about SEO. If you want to know today’s Google standards, check out Google’s webmaster tools.

The third benefit – and I really think this is the long-range benefit to aspire to – is that you can start creating indexed links on your site to the collected articles under a single tag.

For instance, I’ve written several posts with the tag “New Pieces Quilt Shop.” If I click in my tag cloud on the term “New Pieces Quilt Shop,” a page with all relevant posts is generated: http://cynworks.com/tag/new-pieces-quilt-shop/

I now have a URL that I can use to link to that “library” of posts. I could use it in many ways, such as:

Within the text of a page as a text link
As a link from the main menu (using “custom menu” functions)
As a link from a widget on the sidebar

A blog that I think does the last option particularly well is bigBANG studio.

Look at the lovely little icons she has put in her widgets. She’s also included text headers that explain where those icons link to.

Now, she’s on a different system, so I believe what WordPress.com calls a “tag,” her system is calling a “label.” But the effect is the same difference. If you click on the icon she’s calling “Painting Posts,” you will arrive at a URL designed to “search/label/work.” Pretty nifty, right?

Certainly, that indexing of your articles is worth the effort of thinking through defining a few key categories and 5-10 frequently used tags, right?

Social Media Gets Facetime: Etsy, Craft Fair & xoxo quilts!

February 17, 2011Uncategorizedbranding, etsy, Social Media, xoxo quiltsCYN@CYNWORKS.COM

I had a crazy, fun, busy, crazy weekend! Lots of stuff was going on in San Francisco’s East Bay that relates to seeing art, selling art, and talking about art!

Social Media Breakfast East Bay @ Westside Cafe in Berkeley

Friday morning, I attended the Social Media Breakfast of the East Bay, which was hosted by Lithium @ the Westside Bakery Cafe, 2570 9th St, Berkeley. The food alone was enough reason to go! The baked goods were hearty and full of tasty, natural ingredients, and there was tons of fresh fruit like pineapples, kiwis, and berries.

We were invited to make announcements, so I piped up about the Etsy sale happening in the neighborhood. When I checked in on facebook, I was reminded that every time you go out of the house, you might be part of someone else’s photo op! In my two grey sweaters and puffy vest with my serious face, I just don’t hold a candle against the friendly appeal of hep guy in the beret! Shel Israel spoke on the future social media, and the conversation veered into internet privacy. Hmmm…

If you get a chance to catch the breakfast when Katy Keim from Lithium speaks, go! She closed the meeting with remarks about what happens NOW, now that everyone is using social media, what’s the next part of the dialog between commerce and social?

SF Etsy Team Sale in Berkeley

After the breakfast, I hit up the SF Etsy Valentine’s Sale at 10th and Gilman. I was really curious to see the people of the Etsy shops IRL. I guess the same thing I love about the Etsy vibe is the same thing that tweaks at my marketing heart. It’s supergrass roots, so sometimes it’s just gonna be very home-garage-sale looking. The signs anyway. They’re intriguing because they’re made by hand. Yet, they don’t really prepare you for the $3500 price tag on some of the art. It’s a branding mishmash, and sometimes in the spirit of spontaneity, you just have to go with it, I think.

I ran into my friend from the East Bay Modern Quilt Guild who sews under the name KTseams, and I just missed her modeling one of the vintage dresses… darn! Thank goodness, the seller took photos>>

Valentine’s Craft Sale & Flea Market @ Oxford School, Berkeley

Still in this crazy weekend… made it over to the fundraiser for the Oxford School. I went to pick up some homemade sweets for the Saturday night reception. Plus, I wanted to drop by and see Stacey Sharman, whose Peppermint Pinwheel quilts, I just covet. The surprise of the flea market-style sale? Fat quarters priced at 50 cents, and even as I was picking out all the stripes and graphic prints, the nice lady dropped the price to 25 cents per quarter. Well, you know, I had to get $3.25 worth! Steal!

xoxoquilts.com >> Show @ Creative Framing & Gallery, Oakland

Saturday night was the reception for the Group “Sweets” show @ Creative Framing & Gallery. My Spinning quilts were featured on one wall, and my Bodega Bird looked great with some of the sculptured birds in the group showing. I met lots of artists, their friends, and local business people from the Woodminster neighborhood. Heather Piazza, owner, is a special lady. For more/bigger photos, check out the post on my xoxoquilts.com blog>>

Ready to join forces and sell your art? Live in the Bay Area?

February 4, 2011Uncategorizedbiz dev, branding, CYN WORKS, etsy, Facebook, New Pieces Quilt Shop, PR, selling, Social Media, strategy, TwitterCYN@CYNWORKS.COM

Then this is a must-attend opportunity for you!

Join us for a series of 4 strategy sessions about PR and selling, specifically for artists who are ready to show and sell their work.

Branding and Selling Your Art – Strategy Workshop (4 weeks)

@ New Pieces Quilt Store and Gallery
MARCH 2011 – Tuesdays… see details below*
Facilitated by Cyn Long ←— that’s me
www.CynWorks.com and www.xoxoquilts.com

If you have a product, a brand, and a web presence (or are in development on these) and want to brainstorm on the most effective ways to sell your art, these sessions are for you!

Some of it will be fast-paced. You’ll want to be internet savvy.
Some of it will be in-depth. You’ll want to take notes, do research, and share your findings.
The benefit? Other people will be sharing their research, saving you hours and hours of time figuring things out for yourself.

Plus, you’ll have 9 other creative brains focused on the same concerns at the same time… powerful camaraderie!

Bring:

Your laptop (wireless internet is available)
A sample of your product in its packaging
Ideas you have about PR (success and failure stories are both welcome!)

Some of the topics on the 4-week agenda include:

Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
Etsy
Social media breakfasts
Kickstart.com start-up funding
Building a database of buyers/influences
Constant Contact
In-person networking
How do I get people to my blog/website?
How do I get them to purchase online?
And… please bring your ideas to the table!

March 8, 15, 22, 29, 2011
Tuesdays, 4-6 PM
You must commit to being at all 4 sessions
Cost: $40/includes all 4 sessions
Maximum of 10 people
Sign up by calling New Pieces 510-527-6779

*4 spots have already been claimed, so sign up soon if you can!

This info is so new, it’s not even on the New Pieces web schedule yet… but the workshop is a go, so call to sign up.

Social Media and My Job

December 15, 2010Uncategorizedblogging, CYN WORKS, Facebook, Linked In, Social Media, strategy, TwitterCYN@CYNWORKS.COM

My job as a branding strategist is to help my clients get really clear on what they are selling and then to help them find new customers and increase loyalty from existing customers. That is the bare bones mission of CYN WORKS.

I meet most of my clients through my interest in (okay, honestly, “obsession with”) fabric and sewing. I meet my clients through guilds, associations, classes, field trips, sewing groups, online critique groups, friends, and referrals. The thing I love most about CYN WORKS is that it enables me to interact with creative people on a very honest and personal level. We collaborate on the language and the images that define their service or product. Often, my clients become good friends, perhaps because we are enamored with the same ideas – creativity, invention, and mastery of a skill. We work really hard and we laugh a lot.

In our work, there is a real passion about pushing one’s personal boundaries. I insist that my clients use social media. There is usually a learning curve. The tools aren’t always intuitive, they’re crowded with tons of excess information, and using them feels like it takes time away from the business of running the business. On top of learning how to use the tools, my clients don’t always want to spend 3-5 hours a week of intense creative energy coming up with fresh ideas to talk about on their blog, Facebook, Twitter, or Linked In.

Tough, right? So here are the reasons to use it anyway. In fact, I’ll intersperse images/links to people who are social media studs/stars!

Social media is a way of communicating. Primarily, it IS “social.” It’s about sharing ideas, connecting, chatting, and being a good listener.

It’s a bar without the late nights, dirty bathrooms, or hangovers.
The object is to create a place for a dialog between you and someone you want a relationship with.
Through social media, you may be talking to a prospective client, a curator, a collector, or maybe another artist or professional you’d like to collaborate with.

So with all the benefits, why do I still get drag from clients?

What I’m realizing is, there is a disconnect between people who have a natural affinity for social media and those who do not. People who have an affinity (like me) usually have histories of working in PR back in the old-school “press release / newspaper / beg-a-journalist-to-write-a-positive-sentence-about-your-company-and-its-products” era. My marketing team used to sweat over crafting the perfect 300-word press release, then call the local papers, mags & biz journals to convince the editors that our news was absolutely beneficial to the community and not simply self-serving.

We would spin any event – a sale, a new employee, a new product, a training seminar, helping a neighbor, a donation to a charity, participation in someone else’s charity – just to get some press coverage with our name in the paper. It was brutal. Sometimes it was humiliating. We’d spend hours to get a mention, and then the paper would misquote us or misspell a key participant’s name. Monday mornings at the office brought a sort of dread – what could have gone wrong? It seemed sometimes there was more planning for CYA than celebration.

Entrepreneurs who don’t have a natural affinity for social media are usually the folks who didn’t have to think about PR or advertising in their past careers. They usually worked in operations roles, focused on making the company fiscally sound, the product exceptional, and the growth scalable. These people are very often project- and finance-oriented. So when they start their own businesses, they’re not accustomed to having to create a new sales pitch every day.

Because that’s what social media requires. It means looking at your product and coming up with a new “wow,” a new angle on how it benefits the consumer, every day.

You have to be enthusiastic.
You have to be fresh.
Your message works best when it brings in an element of fun.

And social media has this modernist slant on commerce that you have to sell without selling. Yes, it’s okay to broadcast a very special offer to your very special customers. But if every message comes on sales pitch, your consumers are going to turn you off, unfollow you, and delete you from their Facebook favorites.

The tools are expanding exponentially and always changing. A new way of communicating is invented, tested, attracts participants, becomes oversaturated, and gets discarded as it is devoured by the next new thing. It’s exciting to figure out how to use these tools to share your business’s message with people who might help you grow!

In fact, an article I wrote about using social media to grow one’s art business was published in the most recent Studio Art Quilt Association (SAQA) Journal. Want to read it? Download the PDF here!

And in the meantime, ask yourself:

Am I using all of the tools available to help my business grow?
Am I embracing social media or am I getting tripped up in hesitations of my own invention?
If I don’t embrace social media, what methods will I use to get the publicity I need for my business?