Virtual Assistants Give Artists a Break

As an artist participating in Art Festivals there is a lot of clerical work to keep up with.  From applications for the art festivals, website updates, social media and other marketing materials you can find yourself spending more time on the administrative side of your business than you would like.  If you want to streamline your business and get back to what you love to do, creating the art, it is time to think about delegating some of the clerical responsibilities.  In the past hiring an assistant involved dealing with all of the headaches of employment, benefits, labor laws having a space for your assistant and paying the employee whether you had the work or not. Another option became available with the advances in communication and the internet, the virtual assistant.

A virtual assistant works out of their own home office and uses modern technology to communicate with you and share information.  You can hire them to do just the tasks that you really need help with and control your budget.  Virtual Assistants are available to help you with a wide range of tasks from accounting, social media, research, marketing and more.  To get started utilizing a virtual assistant sit down and write out the tasks that are taking up a lot of your time that you can easily outsource.  For example, you have had on your to do list to research printing companies to print out postcards for your Summer Tour, you want the best price to print 1,000 cards, then you have a bunch of receipts you want to have scanned into your computer and added to Quickbooks, and you need to follow up and make sure you paid your entry fee to the Summer Shows and you want to upload your new photos to your Facebook fan page.  Now that you have an outline of your projects you need to look for your virtual assistant.  You can research online or check out the International Virtual Assistants Association or Elance.   There are a number of virtual assistants who work with artists exclusively you can also look into Merrick Management & Media Services,  Moretimeinaday.com, A Virtual Edge. Once you find a few options make sure you check their references, and interview them on the phone.  You want to make sure they have compatible computer programs and skills to match what you need to have done.  Make sure they are a good fit and if you prefer to communicate via telephone, email or Skype that they are on the same page. Expect to pay anywhere from $10 – $50 per hour depending upon the project and work required, you can also bid the job on a project basis too.  You can try it out with one project and if you find it is a great arrangement for you establish your VA on a monthly retainer for a set number of hours. Many artists are finding this to be an ideal arrangement, they get the extra help they need to stay focused and creative.   Have any of you used a virtual assistant?  Tell us your experiences, we love to hear your stories!

 

 

3 Ways To Increase Art Sales This Summer

Step 1 Get Organized and Set Goals!

How much money are you spending on late fees, higher rates due to last minute planning or missing out on shows because you missed the deadlines?  It is time to start with a calendar, get the style you are most comfortable with, Google has a great online calendar and it is free, or if you don’t have regular  access to a computer head to the office supply store and buy a large 8 1/2 ” x 11″ pretty calendar and a pretty folder, you will be looking at it a lot so you might as well make it look good.  Sit down and write in all of the dates you are already confirmed, then look online (www.artfestival.com) to see what summer festivals you are interested in.  All Howard Alan Events Festivals do not have  deadlines but close when the show is full,  you want to apply as early as possible to secure your spot.  Jewelry is a popular medium that fills up quickly so make sure to apply early for the shows you wish to participate in. Keep all of the flyers and print applications in your pretty folder with your calendar and a pen so it is all in one place and ready to go when you receive your acceptance information.  Start researching affordable hotels in the areas.  Now it is time to brainstorm and write down a few goals you have for your upcoming shows.  Do you often linger in the back of your booth?  Make your goal to get out there and talk yourself up!  You work very hard creating your work, share it with people who want to hear about it! Engage the people who enter your booth, smile and be friendly, no need for high pressure sales but make sure to share a story or two.  When you are actively engaging your potential fans it will make step 3 much easier.

Step 2 Order Your Marketing Material!

Go online to Vistaprint, Overnight Prints or Moo and order some good looking business cards.  Use your creative artistic talent and include all of your contact information, website, Facebook, Twitter etc. as well as an image of your art.  All of these sites have the option to customize your business card with your own photos so pick a picture of one of your popular pieces that will look good on a business card size and order them.  If you want a larger image you can also order some postcards with a photo of your art and your contact information.  When you are brainstorming your booth layout make sure you include a convenient location for this marketing material to be prominently displayed.  While you are ordering your postcards, business cards and maybe even flyers consider a sign that has your name that can be displayed for all to see.

Step 3 Email List

Make it a priority to gather as many email addresses as you can.  In order to do this you must create a sign- in station in your tent that has a fabric or leather bound book, a pen, a table or stool, and a small sign that gives a Call To Action, such as “Sign Up For My Newsletter or List E-mail Address To Be Entered To Win a pack of note cards ” or whatever inexpensive “prize” you will offer.  Art Fair patrons may wish to get in touch with you after the show and you want to make it very easy to know who you are and how to get back in touch with you.  If you hand out your cards and have them sign up for your newsletters and updates you will be able to stay in touch with your potential customers.

What are your favorite tips for getting ready for a summer tour?  Check in on Facebook and let us know!

May

05/18-05/20	The Downtown Art Annual…Downtown Kansas City Art Fair (5th Annual)
05/26-05/27	4th Annual Hilton Head Island Art Festival (Hilton Head, SC)

June

06/02-06/03	22nd Annual Art in The Village (Cleveland, OH.)
06/09-06/10	5th Annual Louisville Festival of the Arts at the Summit (Louisville, KY)
06/23-06/24	51st Annual Grand Haven Art Festival (Grand Haven, MI)
06/30-07/01	5th Annual Boulder Festival of the Arts on 29th Street (Boulder, Colorado)

July

07/06-07/08	21st Annual Chicago Tribune North Michigan Avenue Art Festival (Chicago, IL)
07/07-07/08	4th Annual Downtown Frisco Art Festival in Frisco, CO
07/21-07/22	3rd Annual Redstone Art Fair (Park City, Utah)
07/28-07/29	10th Anniversary Downtown Aspen Art Festival (Aspen, Colorado)

August

08/04-08/05	25th Anniversary Beaver Creek Art Festival (Vail, Colorado)
08/11-08/12	6th Annual Main Street to the Rockies Art Festival (Frisco, Colorado)
08/18-08/19	4th Annual Inner Harbor Art Festival (Baltimore, Maryland)
08/25-08/26	15th Annual Shadyside…The Art Festival on Walnut Street (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

September

09/08-09/09

10th Anniversary Alexandria Festival of the Arts (Alexandria, Virginia)

Artist Marketing Tip – Engage Your Fans on Facebook

Create a Facebook Business Page for your Art.

Facebook gives artists a chance to engage and communicate with their fans like never before.  If you do not have a lot of experience with Facebook personally don’t worry, personal pages are set up to communicate with friends and family, you will want to create a business page and it is handled differently than a personal page. Here are some tips for using your Facebook Business Page to engage your fans.

•   Set up your Business Fan Page to showcase your art.  The new timeline format is very visual, take advantage of the larger image sizes.  You will need a main image sized 851 x 315, your profile 180 x 180 and your tabs are 111 x 74.

• When you begin posting sometimes it helps to create an editorial calender or a list of ideas to post about. You will want to include a mix of the types of things you post, ask questions, share stories about creating your art, post pieces that are in progress, maybe share a funny story from an art festival.  There are many ways to share little pieces throughout the week and engage with your fans. 

• Let everyone know about  your Facebook page, include it on your business cards, in your monthly Newsletter emails, on flyers, everywhere you post your contact information include your Facebook page. 

• Remember you want to use the page as a community, not a soapbox to tell people to buy your art.  It is a place of sharing images and ideas and also include  that you have art for sale but that should be secondary.  You should develop your “online voice” be friendly and communicate as you would in person but still remain professional.

•  List your upcoming shows and post reminders prior to the event.  When you comment on other Facebook pages, Tag your page, you do this by typing the @ symbol before your page name (example @howardalanevents) and then a list will appear, select your name.  Make sure you tag  your page on Howard Alan’s Facebook page so we can then “Like” your page and add you to our list of artists to promote on our Facebook page!  If you need help with getting your page setup you can contact Nicole at nicole@artfestival.com, www.fb.com/HowardAlanEvents

For inspiration check out some of these HAE artists Fan Pages:

Sushique

Janet Mokher

Todd Babb

Steve Vaughn

 

Canopy by Steve Vaughn

 

 

 

 

Wordle, Mad Mimi, Yola…Free Online Marketing tools.

Wordle, Mad Mimi and Yola, sound like characters in a movie but they are all tools artists can use to reach out to potential fans and customers.  There are a lot of tools available for free online to help small business owners.  Wordle is really just for fun but it can be used to make an interesting graphic for your website.  You enter the words and it creates a graphic you can save and use on  your website, blog or facebook.  You can enter your show dates, or names of your work and Wordle does the rest and arranges the words.  You can change the arrangement style, color and size too.  See our sample above.

Mad Mimi is

“Mad Mimi is a simple, intelligent and powerful email marketing utility that anyone can use. Mad Mimi makes email marketing easy for the creator, and easier on the eyes for the receiver. With ground-breaking technology, Mad Mimi is the simplest way to create branded, well-designed newsletters and promotions. Sign up free today and get started with simple, lovely email marketing.”

Check out Mad Mimi for your email marketing needs.  Send your customer list your show schedule, updates on projects you are working on, Facebook Fan Page link and other information to keep them updated.  Your first 100 contacts are free but after that you can choose a plan that fits  your needs, starting at $8 per month.

Finally, Yola gets your business online.  According to their website Yola is:

Create and post your website in minutes! It’s as easy as 1-2-3.

1. Choose a website type.
2. Answer a few questions about your website.
3. Choose a look and feel.

And you’re ready to publish your website!

Express yourself and choose from hundreds of different free styles, navigations, widgets and images. All Yola websites come with our powerful blogging platform so you can stay in touch with your audience.

Customize your free website easily with our drag and drop sitebuilder. Or let Yola do it for you. Yola features and editors provide infinite possibilities. No experience necessary.

Stay online with Yola’s powerful hosting platform. With 99.9% up-time, easy-to-add plug-ins and social integrations, your website will work hard so you don’t have to.

Yola has many easy to follow templates, you simply upload your photos and you have a nice website for an affordable price.  A free website will have Yola in the name but you can pay to register your own domain name, all the info for that is on the website.

Happy marketing and as always send us an email and let us know if you have any questions or need help with any of the information we provided, nicole@artfestival.com.