blog.mandymarksteiner.com
BLOG.MANDYMARKSTEINER.COM
How to write an artist statement
As you begin writing your bio or artist statement, it's natural to wonder "Where should I begin?" To answer that question, imagine where the document is going to end up once it's written. Hopefully, if your artwork is in a gallery, or if your artist statement is being sent out as part of a media kit, it will end up in the hands of a journalist who is about to write a story.
Even though that writer probably loves to write about and discuss art at great length, you have to realize that their biggest wish is to get the story done as quickly as possible. So as they look at your artist statement, they're hoping to find something that will make their job easier.
Increase your chances of being quoted or featured
Provide some numerical facts about your life and your work. Facts like dates, heights and weights of some of your favorite pieces, the amount of time it takes to complete your work, how many colors of paint you typically use, how many pieces have you made, and how long did it take before you got noticed. Many artists make the mistake of writing a long, dreamy paragraph without any real information to take hold of. By including solid facts, you will stand out.
Describe your process. If your work includes a step-by-step process, like the lost wax method, write it out in detail. People love to find out how things are made, and it might provide an entire story or sidebar about you.
Include photos that are ready to be submitted. Whether your artist statement is on your website or you send a hardcopy, be sure to include high quality pictures that a writer is allowed to use. Make sure people know that they have permission to use them.
Give information about any special equipment you have. Do you use sustainable paints? Do you find knick-knacks in the bar parking lot that make their way into your collages? Is that real gold? Did you weave that fabric by hand? The materials you use are interesting details that people want to know. It also might be what makes your work stand apart and gives it value.
How did you choose your medium? I never get tired of telling the story of how artists chose their medium. There's always a wonderful AHA moment, and plenty of tactile details. Think about how you settled on your medium of choice, and tell the story from the beginning.
Use your imagination, be yourself, and give them something they can use!
Put your marketing ideas to the test
If your promotional efforts don't seem to be going anywhere, try changing one thing at a time and watch for improvement. If your promotions are going well, you can still make more money,
and find more profits by finding small ways to improve your message.
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Create your own outlet for your business news
Recently I told a client that if their press release didn't get in the paper I would give their money back.
I was so sure of myself, and the editor told me it would go in, that I had no problem giving the guarantee. You can imagine my frustration when the paper came out and only a small paragraph was used and I had to give the refund.
It's disappointing when you try to use an article to build your business, and only a small portion, or none of it, gets used. But it's not a journalist's job to help businesses succeed... in fact, it would be unethical for them to pull strings or make promises on the pages that they print. The only way you can guarantee that your message will appear in a newspaper or magazine is to buy ad space. Does that mean that you should give up writing, or paying for other people to write, articles about your business? Absolutely not!
Articles help you keep people informed and interested in your business and products and help you establish yourself as an expert. Rather than rely on editors to put the article in the paper, you need to give yourself an outlet for publishing them, and letting others know that they're out there.
The simplest way to do this is to add a blog to your business website, or create a blog on Blogger or Word Press that you can connect to your blog. Once the blog is set up, start using it to make announcements about new employees, new products and special events.
If you haven't already set up a profile on Facebook or Linkedin, now is the time to start. Once you have your account set up you'll be amazed at how fast you will make friends. You can send out an invitation using the contacts in your inbox, browse through people in your hometown, your high school or your college. Once you make some friends then the site will start suggesting people for you.
Every time you put an article on your blog, or on your website, cut and paste the link, or use the share tool if you have it, and post the link on your Facebook, Linked in and Twitter accounts. The people who have friended you are also the people who care about you. Some of them will click on the link and read the article.
Every business should attempt to get articles published in their local and regional papers as often as possible. But don't rely on it. Publish the articles online on your own website as well.
How to get customers to come to you
Inbound Marketing; Get Found Using Google, social media and blogs, is a book that I would recommend to anyone who has a business. Your customers are getting better at blocking out advertising messages that interrupt their lives. It's easy to filter out advertising emails, throw away your junk mail unopened, and barely glance at ads in a newspaper or online.
But when the same customer is searching for information on a product or service, they are in an entirely different state of mind. If your company provides useful information, you will be seen as a trusted resource. Customers will come to you, whether they're ready to buy or not.
Authors Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah lays out how to start an inbound marketing campaign in an approachable and systematic way. Each chapter explains a different piece to the puzzle of how to attract people to your business on the web: Creating content, using blogs, optimizing your site for search engines, using social media, and then converting all these prospects into leads.
They give specific to-do lists throughout the book, so you feel more motivated to act on this important information.
Organize based on what's important to you
When Gail Medrick came over to organize my office (and my life), some of her ideas got me excited.... like her idea to transform the triangular closet under the stairs from a junk heap to a kiddie fort for my son. I couldn't wait to get started! But other ideas gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.... She insisted that I create a budget.
I mean, I just wanted to know where to put the inbox and the shredder. But she was asking about my budget (which, frankly, doesn't exist) and about how many companies I pay money to each month, and whether I have a savings plan. Honestly, I wasn't planning on working on those things, and the more questions she asked that I couldn't answer, the more I broke into a cold sweat.
She was touching on a major weakness. One that, if whacked from the right angle, will knock me to my knees. I wasn't sure if I was up to overcoming this particular weakness either. I mean, how can I possibly learn to keep track of all this stuff? And even if I can, will there be room for anything else in my brain?
Just as I was thinking those things I met Brian Korzec, another organizational consultant. He is certified by the Focusing Institute at the University of Chicago. "What I do is based on being true to yourself," he said. "When you do that everything else falls into place."
According to Korzec you start by asking yourself what it is that you want out of life. From there you organize your things and your time to make it happen.
When I thought about it that way, even the dreaded budget had a purpose. It went from a needless display of self-control to a way to reach my dreams.
Like the dream of going on a fun vacation: Since my husband and I have been married, we've travelled a lot, but our trips are always for the purpose of going to a wedding or a funeral. It's depressing because after all that flying around there's no money left over for a vacation - just for the purpose of traveling and exploring.
Armed with a purpose, I was able to go through pages and pages of bank statements to find out where all of our money was going. Yeah, we spend too much eating out and we're not efficient with our groceries. But the good news is that by being just a little more disciplined we'll easily be able to find the money for our vacation.
And you know what? I didn't have to get too wrapped up in it or get a brain transplant like I thought I would. I just set aside a little more time to deal with issues like budgets and files and whatnot, and move on. And the sick feeling in my stomach is totally gone!
How organizing your life can boost your creativity
I have never considered myself to be a naturally organized person. Instead I pride myself in being a chaotic creative type.
But still, whenever my organization gets truly out of control, I can't help but panic.... Frantic questions begin to race through my head, like: Is there a bill buried under there that I forgot to pay? Is there a client that I need to get in touch with. Have I missed a deadline? Has my housecleaner thrown away my interview notes?
Having piles instead of files is not only stressful, but it can make it impossible to be creative.
A few months ago I noticed that I wasn't able to be as productive as I wanted because every time I wanted to work on something I had to go looking for something. My disorganization was a product of deeply learned bad habits, and I needed help to break them.
I called Gail Medrick, an organization consultant based in Los Alamos who specializes in setting up offices tailored to the way people think: For the past two years I have been balancing my freelance writing with being a stay-at-home mom. I'll duck into a coffeehouse when my son takes a nap to get some writing done, or work on a project when he's in preschool in the morning.
When Gail arrived at my house I showed her around. My problem isn't a lack of space or having too much clutter (my house has big closets) but I don't have a system for putting papers that helps me function and be successful. I have a beautiful roll-top desk in the living room that I never used. The computer doesn't work, and the desk top was usually covered in papers. My filing cabinet is stuffed in the back of the crawl space under the stairs, under all the ski equipment and piles of memorabilia.
I explained to her that I have a laptop, so its not like I need to sit somewhere specific. But I still need to be able to find things.
She gave me a list of things to buy, like filing cabinets, baskets, a shredder, staplers, stamps and desktop organizers. I obediently got everything on the list and set my office up like she suggested. It's still not perfect, but I've already noticed a big difference in how I get things done. When mail comes in, I know what to do with it - what to keep, what to throw away.
But what helped me more is setting up a file drawer with a hanging file for each of my clients. I have additional files for potential clients and people that I want to hire. In the front is a "pending projects" folder and I have separate folders for each project that has a deadline.
I know, this seems dismally basic. I've worked in many types of offices where I've had to maintain a file system. But those were already set up and someone was there to tell me to put this here and that there. When it was my own work, it just never made sense how to do it, so I ended up with a frustrating mess.
This is how I know that being organized will help me to be creative: A couple of weeks after my files were set up with the pending folder and the client folders, I started to get that stressed out panicky feeling again. I had three or four deadlines coming up fast. I had gathered information for all of them and had five notebooks full of my scribbles. How would I ever make sense of all this in order to write the articles?
But then I remembered the files. I went through each notebook and ripped out the interviews, stapled them, and put them in the folder that went with the story. the whole process took less than ten minutes, but now, when I was ready to work, I could pull out a file and have everything I needed at my fingertips.
i was amazed that something so dull could be so liberating.
My first fundraising letter is going out on March 1st!
My
letter was chosen to go out March 1 as the official fundraiser letter for the
Mentoring Children of Prisoners program. This is great news because I've been working through a copywriting for the fundraising market class, and this is my first opportunity to raise money for a worthy cause.
Too old to blog - never!
I recently met a woman who said, "I'm too old to blog!"
Of course she wasn't too old. In fact, as the leader of a community organization she had enough expertise to write a great blog. The problem was that, since blogging is the "new" thing that kids are doing these days, she was intimidated and a little worried that she wouldn't be able to figure out the technology.
But when you consider all the benefits that come from keeping a regular blog (like driving traffic to your website, connecting with people with similar interests, and being able to publish articles without having to run it by an editor) it's worth it to figure it out, even if it's out of your comfort zone.
Before you even open your computer, it is helpful to just make yourself comfortable and spend a little time thinking about what you would like your blog to be all about. If you want to do it to promote your business, great! Just spend some time brainstorming what types of articles and entries you can write that would be interesting to your prospective customers. If you want to blog about a hobby, a topic of interest or your personal life, just spend a little time brainstorming.
Just jot your ideas down in a notebook.... But don't get so carried away with the notebook stage that you start writing your entries in the notebook and planning too much in detail. Blogs are ongoing things that you add to little by little. If you plan too much you might be stalling.
One important detail that you should plan out is what to call the blog. That's because you'll want a title that you can stick wth, and in most cases you'll create your URL address out of the title.
If you have a picture of yourself on file, it might be nice to have it ready beforehand so you can upload it easily.
Using a free blogging program, you can get yourself set up in less than an hour. I recommend Blogger, because I think it's very user friendly. Just go to www.blogger.com and click on the orange CREATE A BLOG button.
You'll have to type in your email address and make up a password. They'll ask you to decide on a display name. Just use your real name. It will be there to identify you when you blog, and when you post comments on other people's blogs.
From there you'll be guided through all the other steps. You'll chose from about ten templates to decide how it will look, and you can add a picture or logo to the heading to personalize it. It's helpful to have the pictures you want ready ahead of time, but you can always change it or add a picture later.
Be sure to enter your website address if you have one, because it will be a part of your profile and your readers will be able to easily find your website from your blog.
Effective Networking
As I take more and more writing classes, I'm beginning to realize that being successful is not always directly connected to the skills that you have. No matter how many things you know how to do, it doesn't matter unless you can approach another human being and tell them about what you can do for them, and convince them to pay you to do it.
No matter what your business is, you need to be able to network. For some people (including myself ...I can't tell you how many social events I've been to where I couldn't figure out how to break into a single conversation circle, and ended up wanting to hide in a corner and hyperventilate) networking can be a scary and mysterious process. How do you do it without coming off as being pushy? What do you do with the cards once you've collected them? How can you make yourself seem like a professional if you're really just a beginner?
If your have any anxiety about networking, or the book Effective Networking: the Fastest Way to Win Clients and Grow Your Business, by Ilise Benum, is a great resource. She begins by helping you think about what you do from other people's perspectives, and showing you how to discuss your work in many different situations.
By the way - Being able to your listener's point of view can make a huge difference. It made me think of what happened when I brought my husband (he was my fiancee at the time) home to meet my family. He was studying plasma physics at Columbia University, and my relatives always asked whether he studied blood plasma, or plasma TV's. It would have been much less confusing and more considerate to tell them about it in layman's terms.
Benum takes a lot of the confusion out of networking by giving you a lot of concrete ideas of how to relate to people, and make meaningful connections and follow up. I already feel much more confident about approaching strangers and potential clients!
Make an offer they can't refuse!
I just bought Bob Bly's new book How to Create Irresistible Offers; The Easiest Way on Earth to Make Your Marketing Generate More Leads, Orders and Sales. In his usual straightforward and thorough manner, he explains how to drastically improve what I consider to be the most challenging part of a sales promotion: the offer.
The offer is what the prospects get when they respond to your ad or mailing-combined with what they have to do to get it. When an offer is "irresistible" the product is so compelling or desirable that the prospect feels that they would have to be a fool to pass it up. Bly explains when to different types of offers, but shows simple techniques to turn a "no" into a "maybe later," how to use bait pieces, how to word hard offers so that people won't say no, and how to overcome price resistance.
It was full of ideas that I want to use right now. In fact, after reading the first chapter I had to stop and change the wording on my website.
Bob Bly writes some of the most useful books and articles on writing that I have come across. Before I ever published anything, and it seemed like I would be fumbling around forever, I read his book How to Make over $100,000 as a Freelance Writer, and it gave me the direction I needed to start sending out query letters and make my writing career a reality. In 2006 I started taking copywriting classes with the American Writers and Artists mainly because Bly was involved. I haven't met him yet, but based on his books I consider him to be a role model, and I strongly recommend his book to anyone who is trying to sell anything.
