Facebook Live Video is a fun way to reach out to your followers on social media. It's a great way to bring your fans in to your own world at any time. And it's live!
I will be using Facebook Live myself. I will be hosting "Morning Coffee with Leslie" segments from my home, the beach house and my studio. I hope you will join me as I look forward to answering your questions live. Plus I look forward to inviting you in to my home and studio for some fun via the live feed! To start a live broadcast from your personal Timeline:
During your broadcast, you'll see the number of live viewers, the names of friends who are watching and a real-time stream of comments. Your broadcast can be no longer than 30 minutes. When you end your broadcast, it'll stay on your Timeline like any other video. If you decide to do a live Facebook video Facebook provides some great tips to help. 1. Tell fans ahead of time you are going to broadcast. Build anticipation by letting your fans know when you'll be broadcasting live. 2. Ask your viewers to subscribe to receive notifications when you go live. Call out that fans can tap on the subscribe button on live videos and videos that were live to get notifications the next time you go live. 3. Write a compelling description before going live. A great description will capture fans' attention and help them understand what your broadcast is about. 4. Go live when you have a strong connection. Check the app to make sure that you have a strong signal before going live. If your signal is weak, the 'Go Live' button will be grayed out. Try to find a location where you're on wifi or have at least a 4G connection. 5. Say hello to your fans by name and respond to their comments live. Your fans will be thrilled to hear you mention their name and answer their questions when you are live. 6. If you lose connection while live, find a place with a better signal. If you lose connection while live, don't panic! Go to a place with better signal and your app will automatically try to re-connect. If you are unable to re-connect, your existing broadcast will still be saved to your Page. Think about whether you want to delete it before starting a new broadcast. 7. Broadcast for longer periods of time to reach fans. The longer you broadcast, the more likely fans are to discover and share your video with their friends on Facebook. We recommend that you go live for at least 5 minutes and we've seen some public figures broadcast for over an hour. 8. Finally, be creative and go live often! Try different types of broadcasts - and go live frequently - to keep fans engaged. I look forward to having coffee with you all soon!
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"Warm Afternoon" Abstract Acrylic, 30" x 48" Available. Learn how to paint this painting in my online class. Today I want to share a pretty simple tip about how you can engage your fans on social media. It is simple. Just use a "call to action". A social media "call to action" is often an overlooked element of an effective social media campaign. Social media sites (such as Facebook and Instagram) get prospects, customers and the public primed to want to find out more about your art or to engage with you further. However, you always need to remember to lead them to the next step in your sales process.
Regardless of the platform - blog, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. - posts will receive better success rates if they contain calls to action, compared to ones without them. So all the more reason to use them! On Facebook, posts that include calls to action "to share" one of your posts receive more shares, likes and comments. So head on over to one of your sites (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) and write a post. But this time include a call to action. Ask them to "share your post" or "leave a comment". Or, ask a question to all of your readers as to what they think you should paint tomorrow. Sometimes just the act of inviting someone to share your post will be the encouragement your fan needs to take your suggestion. Once they share the post, it will travel on further to their colleagues, friends, and family, thus expanding your reach. This is truly one of the great benefits of social media! I have a new favorite app. I know I say this every month. But it's true. And this one is awesome.
A lot of artists don't have a separate phone line for their art business. For many it's too expensive and not practical. But having a published phone number for potential collectors or workshop students is something every artist needs. I have, on occasion, given out my cell phone number. But in a perfect world it would be great to have a cell phone number for just my business. I have one now. And it's free. There is an app called sideline. It's wonderful and you just download it to your iphone. (I know it works for iPhone and Android but I haven't checked for other phones) If you have unlimited calls and texting with your mobile carrier then there are no costs to add the line. Of course I need to add a claim here that I am not an expert so you need to check with your own mobile carrier to make sure there are no hidden costs. You start out by entering your area code and you get to pick a number from about 10 suggestions. Some area codes aren't available (including mine) which is no big deal. Just pick one of the options and set it up on your phone. Now when my cell phone rings it will say "sideline call" so I will know it's a business call. You can also record a different greeting for your new business line. I am so thrilled to have my own free business line on my cell phone. You need to use your phone at least once every 30 days to continue to reserve your line. Otherwise you can spend $2.99 a month to save your phone number. The small fee also removes the ads you will see on your phone when you use the sideline app. The extra line is practically free. About ten cents a day. Totally worth it. Today (or this weekend) is a perfect day to get out of the studio and head in to town to talk to someone local about your art.
I might have confused you. Get out of the studio? Huh? And what do I mean when I say "talk to someone local"? Ideally you could go to a local store, restaurant, furniture store or interior designer. Grab some business cards, your iPad and some photos of your art and walk right on in. Tell them about your art and tell them you would like to sell your art at their business. Expalin to them you are going to help them make money. Just be prepared to pay them a commission (of course) which you can negotiate. It will probably need to range between 20% and 50%. I am going to do it. Seriously, I am. And so are you! And ... I hope we will all come back to this blog post and leave a comment about our experiences. The good and the bad. The serious and the funny. Don't be shy. Just go out there and do it. What do you have to lose? I am very excited about my art mentoring group. There are five of us and we are finally getting started with our monthly calls. This group was inspired by the AHA show titled How to Be Part of a Successful Artist's Mentoring Group. The show featured artist and AHA co-host Carrie Waller and her four art friends who shared how the fun and success of their art mentoring group.
Our mentoring group has been committed for a while and we had our first call last week! We used a free conference call service and have set up a private Facebook page to use for daily communication. Wow. The call was fabulous! I am honored to be a part of this group. It's the perfect size and I love that each of us is at a different stage in our careers. The ideas and inspiration just from one call is amazing. And by the way, we already are making big plans ... If you are looking to start or join an artist mentoring group there is a great thread on the AHA forum here. This thread is a place for artists who are looking to join an art mentoring group to meet one another. You can add your name or better yet, reach out to some of these artists and start a group! It doesn't matter where they are located as most groups meet online or by phone. Don't wait to get started! I get asked all of the time, "Where do you get your inspiration for your abstract paintings?". It's pretty much the same answer as to where I find inspiration for all of my paintings.
The answer is "in my everyday life". Many of my abstract paintings are inspired by the colors of the beach. I love the gorgeous teal and aqua colors of the ocean water. And the magical orange skies in the sunset are fascinating. I recently discovered the stunning green and blues in the seaglass found in the sand and rocks on the coastline. If you glance at my abstract paintings you can see how these colors inspired so many of them. I am also inspired by gorgeous rooms created by interior designers that I find on Pinterest, Instagram and in the small mountain of decorating magazines that get delivered to my house every month. I also find many of these beautiful rooms on blogs that I follow everyday. So open your eyes. Look around. You will be amazed at where you can find inspiration for your paintings. I don't mean this in a creepy way. I promise.
What I really mean is "do you know who is following your blog"? Many of you, like me, set up a blog on Blogger many years ago. In order to have our followers recieve our blog posts in their inbox, we subscribed to a service called Feedburner. I have good and bad news. The bad news is that there are very strong rumors that Google is about to discontinue Feedburner. The good news is you can go to Feedburner and find and save all of the email addresses of your followers. This is my favorite article that shows you where and how to find your followers on feedburner. Read it and save a copy of your blog followers. Why? Because if the rumors are true that Feedburner may disappear any day, you don't want to lose your followers list. So don't wait until it's too late! When I moved my blog to weebly I decided to use Constant Contact to update my blog followers with my daily blog post. That turned out to be a terrible idea. For two reasons. First, it's a manual process and I kept forgetting to send it out. (Yes, I am human.) Secondly, the step to pull the post from my blog had html errors every time which required a lot of really annoying steps and attempts to fix it. So I just changed it to over to MailChimp. The process is fully automated. You only have to set it up once (like Feedburner) and the daily post is sent out automatically every time you publish a blog post. There is a cost involved (based on how many emails are on your list). But it's not much so it looks like I am going to move all of my mailing lists over to Mail Chimp. It will be easier and cheaper in the long run. Yippee. |
Leslie
Mom. Wife. Artist. Marketer. Teacher. Radio Show Host. Archives
July 2017
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