Social Media Things I Have Learned...

Posting is my Pastime these days...

You would think posting on social media on a regular basis would be an easy task, but it's not. Not when you’re planning it as opposed to posting a spontaneous picture for fun. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Linked In, Pinterest and so on, is a lot to keep up with. Along this learning adventure I have been on, I have discovered great tools to help me achieve this with much less stress and I would like to share what I have found. (I'm smirking as I write about making posting less stressful, a millennial would be laughing at me right now.) 

Let me preface this by saying, to do what I wanted I needed to switch my Instagram and Pinterest accounts to business profiles, which was not a big deal. Another thing I need to mention is that some of these apps and programs are free and some have free-basic and paid-pro versions. I chose to upgrade a few of them to pro because they better suited my social media needs. (I'm smirking again as I write this, because, really, do I need to have social media needs? Life was much simpler before technology.)   

The first tool I love is Buffer. It is the program I am using for scheduling my posts across all my social media platforms. (I pay for a subscription, the free plan didn’t do everything I wanted it to.) There are other websites and apps that do this, but this one seemed easy enough to use. What I like about Buffer is its ability to directly post to a business Instagram account. Most just send you a reminder to manually post your content. Buffer has literally changed my whole outlook on posting daily, to be able to plan a week in advance and put posting on auto pilot is amazing. 

Two other great tools are LinkTree and Planoly, both for Instagram. You are allowed one link in your Instagram bio and if you use LinkTree, it brings you to a series of buttons you set up like a landing page that then link to everything you want it to, your other social media links, your website, portfolios, articles, whatever. Planoly helps you set up and visually plan and preview your next 9-10 Instagram posts. By doing this you can make sure you have a beautiful feed and the images flow well together. For example, you don't want to post two similar images or quotes next to each other. (Since writing this I discovered another app called “Unum” that helps plan your feed also, I’m going to try that out as well.)

Bit.ly is another great tool. It lets you shorten URL links for Twitter and other platforms where you are constrained by a small number of characters. This is a must if you want to add a url to your captions and posts. 

Animoto is a wonderful platform that allows you to create marketing videos easily. I decided to pay for a subscription to be able to get the most out of them. They have an amazing online community. I belong to their Facebook group and have found great tips on making videos and can see examples of what others have created for their own businesses. 

There’s still so much to learn and understand. I am still trying to figure out how to make hashtags and keywords work to my advantage, how to time my posts across all my platforms to get the most out of them. I am also debating between buying Facebook and Instagram ads or just keep doing what I’m doing and hope for an organic following. Planning, creating, posting, engaging... social media can be a full time business. I’m hoping it will be come more natural for me as time goes on and not feel like work!

There Aren't Enough Hours in the Day

It's not easy, but it's rewarding...

Something I have learned on my journey as an artist is that I am not good with sales, marketing and promoting myself and my artwork. Many creatives I believe struggle with these issues, and even though there are many online courses one can take on the subject, it's still very daunting. 

When I decided to publish my book, I knew I couldn't just self publish it on Amazon, and boom, the world would buy thousands of copies. If that were true, then my Etsy shop would have lots of orders everyday. Being creative isn't enough, you need to learn the skillset of selling yourself. If I didn't self publish my book and instead had a publisher do it, they would have at least taken on some of this load.

So a new journey began this summer, learning to promote "me," something very unfamiliar. The first thing I did was tweak all of my social media platforms to be visually in sync, banners, bios, images, etc. They were pretty good for the most part, I mean, I am a graphic designer, I should be able to master my own branding! I did the same with my printed materials, such as ordering new business cards, postcards, etc. 

The next part was very overwhelming, researching how to use social media properly. I used to post things from time to time, but with no consistency or pattern to it. I began delving into what to post, how many times a day, how to post for an audience and not for myself and so forth. This is literally a full time job and there aren't enough hours in the day. Now I understand why people hire other people to do this. I have found some valuable tools that helped a great deal with this process that I will talk about in a later post.

At the same time, I began researching who my target audience was, making lists of who to send marketing material to, designing graphics and snippets to post on social media, creating a social media schedule and hiring someone to help me with cover letters and press releases. I also decided to create a dedicated Facebook page, Twitter account and Instagram account specifically for the book, (which meant designing new branding banners), and buying the domain "TheABCsofNonConsent" to be redirected to my website if searched by someone. Whew, I'm exhausted, aren't you?

And if that wasn't enough I also started to think about how I would package the book when I sent copies to prospective customers, picking the right envelope color and designing colorful stickers for the front and back of the package. I also spent some time wondering if I should plan a giveaway to get reviews on Amazon that could I run after the book was published and what that might be.

Before any of this even happened, I forgot to mention that I had to learn how to self publish on Amazon by watching countless YouTube videos by other authors and reading through all of Amazon's marketing articles. If you're not feeling overwhelmed from reading this yet then maybe you have the marketing and business powers of a super hero. I am not there yet, but I am definitely earning my cape, and to my surprise, I am finding it all very interesting. If I can manage all this, me the shy artist who doesn't like to talk about herself, then anyone can!