Ah, Facebook.
This is the social media that we all love to hate, complaining about how people are replacing face to face contact with the electronic buzz. I resisted for years but finally caved in, to the chorus of my youngest teenager crowing, "I'm the one who got you started on Facebook!"
Thanks, honey.
Unlike my daughter, however, I plunged into Facebook less for the experience of typing inane comments to my friends and family as I did for the opportunity to publicize Steve's original oil paintings to a broader audience, and I find that Facebook has its unique and valuable place in the overall marketing plan.
First of all, understand that there is your personal Facebook account (in which you have the option to type inane comments to your friends and family) and your business Facebook page (in which you decidedly do NOT post inane comments) -- the two are different, and should remain so. (By the way, in order to set up a Page for business, you do need a personal account already in place.)
I advise that you not use your personal account, or a variation thereof, as your business presence, but that you set up a specific Page for your art business. There are two primary reasons for this:
1) On your personal account, people can post all over your wall about anything; on your business Page, you alone post on your wall. Others are relegated to the Others section.
2) On your personal account, people send you Friend Requests which you either accept, reject, or ignore. On your business Page, people hit a one-stop Like button to join, and do not have to wait for you to notice them and respond to their requests (I had one business sit on my Friend Request for six months; guess how that made me feel?).
Okay. So you've set up your Page and sent out Friend Requests to everyone in your personal friend list. That gives you a base of fans. As your friends tell their friends, or as people discover you on your website, through exhibits and shows, via newspaper articles, from your business card, from the Facebook icon link that you append to your website -- there are myriad ways to get your name out there -- then some will join your page as fans. We have fans who check Steve's Facebook on a daily, semi-weekly, and weekly basis, and we always want to make sure that they have something to read.
Now what?
When I first set up the Steve Henderson Fine Art Facebook page, it was difficult to know what to post beyond floating a recent painting and saying something about it:
"Morningtide -- rich in detail and brushstrokes -- a piece of the Oregon Coast adds to a Tuesday." Then the image, the link.
This is good -- keeping your fan base up to date with your latest work.
But you can easily take this a step further, again, with the idea of providing more complete information as to what you are up to:
1) Have you been accepted into a show? Then post it on Facebook. As I prefer to limit my posts to once per day, so as to not inundate followers or overwhelm me, I will post an image of one of the paintings that will be in the show, with a link either back to the website or to the show itself, if a webpage has been set up for it. The next day, I'll post an image of another painting that will be in the show. And so on, until every painting to be in the show has been posted. This way, each work gets its day in the sun.
2) Have you been accepted into a gallery? Same thing, one at a time, with links back to the gallery. When Steve was first accepted into Rive Gauche Galleries in Scottsdale, AZ, I posted daily through his Norwegian Artist site the paintings that were to debut his gallery entrance and a brief story about each.
3) How about your latest blog? Post the link, along with an image of your work.
4) Do you teach or conduct workshops? Post it -- before the event, during, after, along with photos and that ubiquitous link.
5) Traveling for reference photos? Post some photos, and link back to your site. If you paint something from the references later, post an image of the painting along with the story.
6) Do you put out a newsletter? Let your Facebook fans know, along with a link back to your website E-mail Newsletter Sign-up Form.
Think of Facebook fans as the people that they are, and tell them what you're up to.
And while we're at it, a few things you might want to avoid posting:
1) Anything embarrassing or that makes you look foolish or unbusinesslike. This includes questionable photos from that studio party, which, incidentally, would be best not to post AT ALL, including on your personal site.
2) Whining. "How come more people don't sign up for my Facebook page?" "Sales are really down." "I'm discouraged and don't feel like painting today." These are all valid thoughts that you can share with your manager, therapist, or mother, but not your Facebook business fan base.
3) Verbal detritus. "Gonna paint!" "Gettin' ready to paint!" "Thinkin' about painting!" Well, duh. If you're an artist, you're probably going to paint. If you are going to take the time to write something, then take the time to write something: "Spent last week pumping out the basement after that freak flash flood that caused the leather sofa to split into two. This week it's time to paint!"
Facebook is a huge social media phenomenon, but it is not the alpha and omega of your marketing strategy. It's a part of the whole, kind of like somebody's eyebrow or ear lobe -- important, unique, distinctive, useful, and worth looking at.
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