Facebook: The Virus You Want to Catch for Your Business!

Facebook?  I have lots of friends who are on it and we all enjoy the spontaneous access it gives us all to our humor, insights, links, photos and whatever else we want to share with each other.  From the ones that aren't there, I get groans, moans, disgust or misinformation.  "I don't want the whole world to know what's going on in my life!"   Facebook has definitely transformed how we communicate with each other, replacing email for many of us.  It's a household name that has millions of avid fans and as many avid enemies...

I was one of the converts who joined kicking, screaming, rolling my eyes, and foaming at the mouth.  Now I have been on there for several months and I have been completely, irrevocably brainwashed into a convert, one who stands at the airports with my flowers and invites the public to join.  Facebook is a tool that you can control and tweak to match your needs.  I think it is the best network out there and it has so permeated our social fabric that as a business or artist, it's as essential as having a phone.

The problem with Facebook is that the way it is set up assumes that the users know how to use it.  Most don't.  Most figure out how to add new friends, respond to updates, add photos and links, and that's about it.  Those are all nice tools, but they just explore the tip of the iceberg.  Learning how to use it well can really help artists and businesses get the kind of exposure they long for.  This post is for those of you who use Facebook minimally or not at all.  In the end, I hope that you will also want to join in and become part of this Facebook revolution.


Yep.  Being on facebook does mean having a public persona.  Social networking is a pretty recent phenomena, but it has become such a part of life on cyber space that it's hard to remember the days before we had all these venues where we could, for better or for worse, put ourselves out there.  Social networking falls under one of the many tools we now have under the umbrella of "Social Media".  Do you look at videos on YouTube?  Have a blog?  Tweet?  These are just a few of the more popular venues that people use to connect with each other, but there are many, many more.  Wikipedia has a good history and list.  Basically, social media has replaced the face-to-face interaction we had with our neighborhood shops and hang-outs.  As these tools developed, the mainstream marketplace was forced to adapt and include customer feedback, reviews and other interactive tools.  Unbelievably, Facebook was created by a Harvard student in his dorm room in 2003.  (see Wikipedia again)  It was one of those creations that came along at the right time and place.  The market and the people were ready.  When something catches on like this, it is said to have viral qualities and that is what artists and businesses hope for when they join facebook.  How exactly does this work then?

I've taken a bunch of screen shots to walk you through the different features Facebook offers which I think are important.  Click on the images to see a larger image, or you can go to my public page, Rayela Art, to follow along, or to your own page, if you have one.

First of all: How do you get friends?  You can have Facebook check your email address book and it will tell you who is already on there.  You can then choose who you want to invite to become your friend.  Then, once you have friends, you can check their friends and see if there is anybody you know.  The search bar also brings up names and if there are too many, you can narrow the search by location, school or job.  Somehow people start finding each other and last year was marked as a wonderful reconnecting for me with friends from that past that I had lost contact with.  Mine are grouped into family, Brazilian friends, missionary kids, high school and college, peer artists, Chicago people, and so on.  A creep from the past wants to be your friend?  Just say no!  Most of my re-connections have been treasures, but there are a couple that have raised my eyebrows.  "You were such a nice boy!  What happened to make you so bitter?" Believing in diversity, I try to find the common ground we share rather than keeping my friends limited to the same code of ethics, but I've noticed that some have "unfriended" me, which is just fine.  Not everyone wants to have a bleeding heart liberal flower child type in their midst...


Everybody who joins Facebook has a profile page where you can link to another website, upload a photo or video, or make a comment.  If this person has any "friends", those friends can comment, like or share, giving a reaction to what was posted.  Comment is straightforward.  You type some kind of a response.  If you like what you read, you click on that and you will be able to follow what other activity happens on this post.  You can set your settings to receive emails whenever any action like this happens on your page.  Now, the third option, Share, is the most important as far as achieving that viral effect. When a friend clicks on that, that post goes to their Home page and all their friends see it.  The hope is that those friends will also like it, click share, and on and on.  This is the viral effect of Facebook.  In theory, one post could have thousands of viewers.  However, this only happens on links or images that have public settings.  All personal comments get deleted in the sharing and the friend can say whatever he or she wants to about that link.  If you say something silly and you have private settings, the comment cannot leave your page.  Make sense?  Hopefully, this concept will become clear as we move along.

Friends, Fans and Members
There are three kinds of pages on Facebook and each has a different relationship.

• You have your personal profile where friends are accepted or rejected.  
• Personal pages can have sub-pages that are created for the public.  These are usually small businesses, special interest, artist, or music pages.  I have three: Rayela Art (for my business), Afghan Tribal Arts (for a friend's business that I manage) and Falamos Portugues (a just-for-fun page for Portuguese speakers).  Pages are public and anyone interested in the content can join as a fan.  An icon of that page pops up on that person's profile page and they will receive updates in their home page.
• The third type of page is for groups.  Larger organizations, families, teams, museums and non-profits would normally select this option.  This is also a public page and whoever joins becomes a member and receives updates in their home page as well.  Groups joined are listed in the personal info page.
  

Now let's look at some of the features in each of these structures.



Personal Pages
Whenever I start using a new site or software, I click around on the tabs and links and look at what happens.  Usually, I can figure out what they mean and if I don't get it, I will ask friends or use the search or help functions.  I numbered the most important parts of a profile page:

1.  Your latest comment or post shows up here.
2. The space where a new comment can be posted.  The small icons under it mean that you can attach a photo, video or link.  Videos have to be ones that you made.  If you post a youtube video, use the regular link option with the video's url as the address.
3. The all-important Share button.
4. Recent activity.  This shows up differently to different viewers depending on your privacy settings.
5. At that bottom, left-hand corner, some little icons lead to applications and other functions.
6. Chat function.

The home page is the one you will check and your profile is what others will look at when they want to see more info about you.  I normally check my home page in the morning and at night.  I do a quick scroll down and screech to a quick stop if something interesting catches my eye and then I'll banter with a friend, watch a video, or give feedback on something that was posted.  One could spend hours and hours doing this, but I try to limit how much time I spend here, even though I do enjoy it.  Most of my friends are actual people I know, family,peer artists, and the organizations or pages that I follow are ones that I am truly interested in, so the content does interest me.
Those who have videos have a special page for them, too.  I'm just learning how to do this, but have a couple.  Business pages and groups also have these features.

Facebook has hit on the most interesting and vibrant way of sharing news and information.  I am terrible at making phone calls, often do this non-business stuff late at night, so I can browse and comment when the rest of the world is asleep.



Business Pages

Business pages have many of the same functions as a profile page plus a few others.  You can include photos, videos, discussions, and events.



You can set up your pages to allow fan photos, one more way to encourage networking among peer businesses and customers.  If someone posts something you think is inappropriate, you can delete it.




A great tool for artists who do a lot of shows is the events page.  Your customers and fan base can keep track of you and try to attend a live performance, sale or opening.  I use it to post an occasional event that is happening locally in Paducah or a festival that I wish I could go to.


The one big complaint that I have of the business pages so far is that you cannot become a fan using your business.  So, when I fan people that have similar businesses, I show up as Rachel Biel instead of Rayela Art.  I would much rather drive people that I do not know to my Rayela Art page than to my personal one.  In the same way, I would like to know if my fans have businesses that I can interact with professionally, but if I click on their icon, it will go to their personal page.  It would be nice if Facebook would give you options of how you become a fan or how you join a group.


Groups



Applications

Applications are little independent programs that interface on facebook.  Some have to do with business, family or school connections, many with general silliness brought to life by people with too much time on their hands.  It's important to understand how to find and use applications as they can be useful tools.  The first icon at the bottom left-hand corner is where you will find them.  Click on it and a box pops up:






Settings
One of the greatest fears many people have about Facebook is whether their privacy will be protected.  This is a legitimate concern according to the Wikipedia article I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  Hopefully, they will continue to improve this, but meanwhile, just make sure that you will not post things that might shame you later and check your settings so that they reflect the level of privacy you want to have.  I keep my updates so that only my friends can see them, but allow my photos to be seen by friends of friends.  If you have friends on your photos, you can tag them and that photo will show up in their photo page as well, so I figure that it's nice for their friends to be able to see them as well.  You might want to make an art album public to anyone.  The settings options can be accessed on the top bar, next to the search box.


Linked accounts and privacy are the two important settings to check whenever you have doubts about who is seeing what.  Many of my friends kids are on Facebook and they revel in silliness.  I think about how it will be for them, if they still have the same accounts in 10 years, where they will have mountains of records of how they behaved as teens...  Will they want to delete it or look back on these times with a smile?  Who knows where the world will be then, but never before has our private life become so public.

Pages also have settings that should be monitored.  You can decide how much fan input you want to have: whether they can submit comments, post photos, participate in discussions and so on.


Interfacing
As if all of the above is not enough to convince you that Facebook can be a powerful promotional tool for your business, there is one more feature that I really like.  Increasingly, Facebook is linking with other social media so that updates and information can be shared back and forth.  As an Etsy seller, I was thrilled when they became linked to each other.  There is an Etsy application that pulls items from your shop on an Etsy page that has its own tab in your profile page.  Click on an item and it takes you to the Etsy shop.

 


I have my Etsy shop application on both my personal profile page and on Rayela Art and Falamos Portugues.  I created one for Afghan Tribal Arts which is on the Afghan Tribal Arts page on Facebook.


When you post something on Etsy, there is a Facebook icon which you can click and send that item to your Home Page's stream.  Again, I wish this went to my business page instead of my personal one, but in time, maybe it will.

Twitter is also linked in.  I don't have the patience to post on Twitter, but know that I have to be there, too, so I was relieved to find that I could set up my Rayela Art Facebook posts to go there, too.  And, they go to my Linked In page.  All of it helps, all of it has viral potential, the sneeze we all want for our businesses!

There is much more, I am sure, but hopefully, this tutorial has helped you understand how to make use of Facebook your tool to fit your needs.  As a final tip, I would like to point to the Search box.  This is such a great tool in itself!  Once you become friends with someone or join a page or group, start typing the name and it pops up.  This is how I travel between my pages.  You can also search using any key word and all related pages and entries will pop up, giving preference to the ones your friends have created or posted.  Here is an example using the keyword "textile":



Topics show up, grouped into pages, groups, or posts and you can enter anyone of them to see more results.  You will certainly find more information than you ever imagined!  Facebook can be addictive and I even had one friend who was kicked off the site because she was accused of spamming.  She is an incredibly talented artist who was just enjoying the site and networking with other artists.  All of her information was lost and she had to start over from scratch.  There are definitely improvements that need to be made, but you can be that when things like that happen, the people start screaming and Facebook listens.

It's free and interesting.  I advertised there over the Holidays and got a couple thousand hits on my Etsy store.  It's not cheap and I don't know if it generated any extra sales, but my Google Analytics tells me that both my Etsy store and my blog are getting more and more traffic from my presence on Facebook.  As my fan base grows, it can only help my other endeavors.


Of all the social media efforts I engage in, I find Facebook to be the most valuable use of my time.  Get on there and expand your base.  You never know who will want to be your friend!

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Setting New Year's Resolutions for Your Art Business

The end of a year always brings a time of reflection for me.  What happened during these past twelve months?  Did I accomplish anything?  What worked?  What didn't?  Where do I need to improve?  I think about these things, as many of us do, both in terms of my personal life and in thinking about my business.  And, that leads to those resolutions that may or may not become concrete in the upcoming year.

My business has been evolving.  This past year was the worst one, in terms of sales, that I have ever had.  The recession hit the whole world and I was not surprised to see activity dwindle.  Fortunately, I had a good commission with Sidney's Ties and was able to work with other peers on technical work they needed done on their online profiles.  Doors open and close, new opportunities appear and over time, these become defined into new directions.  Rayela Art now has three arms: my own sewing creations, the product I sell on Etsy, and increasingly, as a technical assistance provider.  I've worked hard at learning how to promote my business online and that has translated into developing skills that many artists and small importers balk at.  So, I can help them look at how they can improve their business and then set up the structures they need and train them on how to keep them up.  The challenge then becomes how to juggle these three interests as they all demand time and continued attention in order to grow.

Resolutions?  Yes, I have some.  For the purpose of this post, I will list ten:

1. Time management.  I have to make better use of my time, especially for my own art work.
2. Learn photoshop.  Right now I use photoshop elements.  I have the software for Photoshop, but just haven't taken the time to learn it.
3. Make little documentaries.  I started learning how to edit videos this past fall, but haven't followed through on it.  The goal: one short a month.
4. Increase my web building abilities.  I can build simple ones, but need to fill in some gaps to have more design control.
5. Get back on eBay.  I closed my eBay shop and have to get back on there.  I moved a bunch of things around between stores and never got back to redoing my eBay store.
6. Write more posts here.  I have been slacking off and just need to get into the groove again.  The goal: three meaningful posts a week.
7. Re-do my logo.  I love my snake, but not how I drew it.  I need to re-work it so that it looks like I want it to.
8. Network locally with small businesses.  There are meetings I can attend.  I have been too much of a recluse and need to get out there and interact with the business community where I live.
9. Increase my products on 1000 Markets.  There I can only sell things that I make, so I have to just do it!  It means sitting down and doing several runs of bags, hats, pillows and other things that I make.  I have lots of new ideas and just have to focus on getting them made.
10. Stay healthy.  Too much sitting has been taking its toll on me.  This may seem like a personal resolution, but not feeling well affects how well I can focus on the business.

If I can look back at the end of 2010 and see that these ten goals were tackled with consistency, I will pat myself on the back.  You may notice that I did not have a financial goal.  I have found that it is terribly hard to predict how my business will grow or suffer from year to year, but believe that I am doing all I can to bring in customers and if I can keep focusing on the bones of the business, the money will follow.

Interested in learning more about what I do?  I just re-did my website to reflect more of my role as a technical assistance provider.  Hop over there to learn more and to see my sewing projects as well.

How about you?  Any resolutions for 2010?  Self-employed artists have a tough time managing their talent and their purse.  Would love to hear about how you balance all of this out!

20% Off on Textile Stamps!

The stamps are my best selling item on Etsy.  I buy them from a friend who imports from Afghanistan, sight unseen, and normally offer them here and on my website at 10% off before I start listing them.  This time, several factors led me to increase the offer to 20% off:

• The stamps in this batch are more worn than usual.
• Many of them have wax and dye residue that will demand extra cleaning.
• I have a new camera and the photos I took are crappy.
• Most artists prefer the smaller stamps and this batch was mostly large sizes.

So, in hopes that I won't have to re-photograph all of them and that they might move faster with the added discount, I'll lower my profit margin.