And what amazes me, what never changes, is that the learning curve is always ahead of me. I used to think there was a catch-up point, and I’d race for it. Took a while for me to notice that each time I got close, the curve simply… reinvented itself.

And no matter how much I learn, there are these places where I am stumbling in the dark.

1. Blog Posts – my Achilles heel. I know the rules: post at least 3 to 4 times a week. Some weeks I’m running hot and writing a post or two flows. Other weeks, I just plain put it off – nothing’s bubbling up to the surface and I hate writing boilerplate material just to cover my tail.

I’ve tried guest posts. I’ve tried creating a schedule. I’ve tried tip style posts. Personal posts…you name it. Alyson Stanfield and Joan Stewart are my blog heros and I swear there’s no way I can live up to their productivity and it makes me crazy with self criticism.

2. Data – Ouch…numbers. So Google analytics (which is great, btw) comes into my inbox every week. Do I go even look at the darn thing? (So you’re wondering how I know it’s great.)  Okay, I’ll go look – be back in a sec….

I’m back, here’s what I learned: I’m getting 1 referral from email.fatcow.com. Huh? Now I’m going to have to go check out that site. And, what do I know that is the slightest bit helpful? Thank goodness I have the world’s best marketing coach and she’s slowly getting my head around numbers and how critical they are to running this show.

3. Focus – Even as I write this I’m being exquisitely distracted by Lizz Wright’s stunning “Walk With Me” video. Which I discovered in a tweet while I was being distracted from my priority to-do list for today…and so it goes. It was suggested that I don’t actually have enough on that to-do list, that adding a really BIG project, or two, would compress the urgency to get the smaller stuff done. We’ll see. I’m ever so skeptical, but game to try.

What I have learned, thank goodness, is to be gentle with myself when things go boo in the night because I’m stumbling around. And to be grateful for what I do well, like the telesummit.

What are your stumbling blocks? What have you learned from them? I’d love to know.

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One place I know you quake just a little is finding the perfect audience for your art.

I’m hosting Molly Gordon TONIGHT (Tues, July 20) – 7pm ET – on a free 90-min, teleclass: “5 Proven Steps to Getting More Collectors and Art buyers Even if You’re Allergic to Biz.”

Register even if you can’t make it, and we’ll send you the recording.

I barely had time to brush my teeth, much less prance around a “social” site with old high school classmates-who never gave me the time of day, way-back-when, in the first place.

I admit to a glop of self-righteousness:  I (oh, no, not I) wasn’t going to fall for this latest Internet hula hoop. I was going to stay focused on the business of serving artists. (See me, with my nose in the air?)

Then, marketing guru Adam Urbanski held a series of…online classes with the incomparable Mari Smith and salsa-smart Nancy Marmolejo.

Yikes! Here was a fast moving train that was leaving me standing at the station.

Before Adam’s teleclass, I had heard the terms “social media” and gathering “friends” on Facebook – but, hey Buddy, I had a business to run.

Lingo. Ringo. Bingo.

And this is the FIRST thing about social media that makes me crazy: the lingo, ringo, bingo of it all.

I’m a word-smith – that’s my artistic calling. I love words, and I’m a freak about accuracy. Does “that” word say exactly what you want it to say?

I’m all over it when words misrepresent, or fall over themselves in a jumble, or try to make a point like a teenage boy outgrowing his shirt sleeves.

Let’s face it, “social” does not, and never has, meant “professional,” or “business,” or “in service to others,” or “creating a community of authentic relationships.”

As for “friend” - puhlease – a “friend” is in direct contrast to a “colleague” or a “business” contact.

Then Twitter flew in and I was all like… you’ve got to be kidding - I’ve got time to tweet?

Like a Birdie on A Wire

And here’s the SECOND thing that drives me crazy: how fast it all changes!

After finally putting up a blog (I was uber slow on that one too), I had just settled down, fluffing my feathers and finding my balance on the Internet wire, when I heard that blogs were dead and social networking, aka social media, was rising on the horizon.

What the #!*@~!

… yeah, I know, swearing isn’t my style. But honestly, the rise of social media, after 80-hour work weeks on the smARTist Telesummit (I told you, I’m uber slow), unglued me just the teeniest bit.

Thank goodness I learned – from Joan Stewart – that blogs were an integral part of the social media whirling world.

And from Nancy Marmolejo I learned that it doesn’t have to cheat you out of hours in a day; there are sneaky ways to set up all the social networking sites and accounts so you can just do a few clicks a day and you are all set.

So, all was not lost after all. Whew!

And you have to admit, the Fail Whale is kinda cool

The LAST thing about social media that makes me crazy is how it blew my I’m-a-serious-professional cover story right off my carefully laid out map.

You see, I was looong on work and short on play.

I was the poster child for: Serious Work Serving Serious Artists.

(Hey! Who wants to do a tongue-in-cheek poster for this? Submit it to ariane (at) smartist (dot) com and the best one wins my new Social Media Bundle of 4 smARTist Keynote Presentations-and a lifetime of free upgrades each time I add something new to this bundle.)

What finally convinced me to jump onto the Social Media train was the idea that here was a place to hang out with kindred spirits at an Internet-style coffee house.

You could talk shop, or goof around, or find out what art was showing in what city around the world… Suddenly, professional became a mixture of workPlay, where creative revelations softened marketing and selling by adding the like and trust factors.

And then, I fell in love with Twitter and its 140 character tweet limits, and the rest, as they say, is herstory.

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Don’t know what the “Fail Whale” is? Think social media is going to eat up all your studio time? Can’t see yourself tweeting & friending?

Clearly, it’s time for you to get on this train with me. I’ve made it uber easy with my THURSDAY, July 8 ONLY – 50% off Social Media Bundle sale.

It’s only too late if you don’t start now. Click here and read all about it!

Hawaii the First Time

This has been a shake-up, wake-up year for me, your normally stay-at-home-in-my-Internet-Ivory-Tower kinda gal. Oh, sure, I might wander up to Maine, or down to New York City – once in a while. But 4 trips in 4 months that all started with getting on a plane?

In the first place, I’m an introvert – which means I’m pretty darn happy toddling around in my own space, frolicking with the fairies and elves of my endless Idea Machine. It’s why I prefer being online and on the phone to, say, a keynote address where my body is in front of a bunch of other bodies – being alone keeps the external stimulation to a minimum so I can access, and cough up ideas like the smARTist Telesummit, or write books like Writing The Artist Statement.

However, something dramatically changed at……the beginning of this year.

It started with a spontaneous jump-on-the-plane and flying out to Portland, OR for New Years – where I hooked up with one artist, abstract painter Barry Mack, and visited the home of another artist, Ray Losey, whose work plays off of traditional totems.

Then, in April, I flew to the Big Island of Hawaii for a 7 day “Swim with Wild Dolphins” retreat, came home, and 4 days later was in Savannah, GA giving one of those in-the-flesh keynote presentations (that I don’t give :-) for CODA.

Hawaii the 2nd Time with Peruvian Elders

Five weeks later saw me back on the Big Island of HI for a week-long PAQO Conference of indigenous shamans and healers. And, as if that wasn’t enough for one stay-at-home introvert, I fell madly in love somewhere in-between the two trips to Hawaii.

Whew! Makes me dizzy just putting all of that in two paragraphs!

Of course you weren’t keeping up with any of this because I was still hiding underground in my mistaken smARTist Identity.

But, besides giving you a peek into my personal life, why on earth am I telling you all of this?

Because…

… Shaking It Up Loosens The Crud

Putting myself into completely unfamiliar places, without a ghost of a chance of sticking to my daily routine, netted me a few surprises. Here’s some of them:

1. Getting away from the computer (I don’t travel with a “laptop” or other digital devices – except my camera.), and not watching TV while flying (in 4 months I logged 59 hours in the air!), allowed my Idea Machine to flow freely. I came up with 6 new projects and 3 books to write – each one outlined and ready for the next step – and all on **real paper written with a real pen.

2. Meeting new people juiced up my energy flow so I was more accessible to myself, and I returned to my Internet Ivory Tower where all of this is now spilling over into my tribe (that’s you).

3. Living in a daily cauldron of the unfamiliar opened up my perspective so I could see what needed changing in my company, and what could stay the same. This led to my most commented blog post ever, and an outpouring of support I didn’t even know existed. (Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.)

4. Working offsite once a month (that new love I mentioned, who doesn’t live close by…) was the real eye opener. Away from my homey work space, I discovered I could write blog posts – a task that, before, felt tedious and uninspired. On the other hand, I could not complete the to-do stuff that dominates my time back at the office.

Beyond The Valley of Discomfort

Shaking up a comfortable routine feels… well, uncomfortable. I enjoy operating on automatic pilot where certain habits and pathways are well worn across familiar territory – so I can use my active mind for other tasks. And now I see just how seductive this comfort can be, and that it is not the most effective way of operating for me, my tribe, or my business.

Discomfort is valuable. It gives me a chance to pay attention to what actually happens when I shake things up – to look over the edge and align my behavior with what works best instead of sticking to my easy chair.

What can you do to shake up your routine? I’d love to hear what you discover when you step away from your comfort zone.

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**A complete aside: Did you know that hand writing activates different neural pathways in the brain from typing on a keyboard? Next time you are having trouble writing, mix up the process.

Which reminds me, are you having trouble writing your artist statement – that extra chance you have of bonding with your collectors? I’ve written a whole book just for you. Click here to check it out.

NOTE: This post, for those of you keeping up, is a re-post from last year. Why? Because, the problem isn’t going away and I’m the drumbeat in the lost artist jungle….

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Artists love black. Love, love, love it. It has class. It engages. It draws you in.

Black is classy. It fairly screams “high end.” It dominates and holds our attention. Let’s face it: black has power.

And for years and years and years it has been the color of choice to lay the crown jewels on, as the backdrop for a brochure, in framing… the list goes on.

But let me tell you the one place where everything black does, and stands for, works completely against you.

And against your…art.

On your website or blog

I know. It’s so hard to realize that the Old Order has given way to a New Virtual Reality. In fact, it’s so hard that a good many of us haven’t caught on to the differences that decide our online fate.

And the traditional sacredness of black is positively trance inducing.

So here’s the question I’d like you to ask yourself:

What is the most important thing on my website or blog?

A. My domain name

B. A picture of me working on my art

C. My art

D. My artist statement

E. The background color

Of course, each of these is important in it’s own way. But without “C,” none of the rest matters, right?

Which brings us to the First Law

Nothing should upstage your art. That’s the first law of an artist’s website or blog.

Your art is center stage, first and last. Nothing should detract, draw attention away from, or usurp your viewer’s focus on your art. Period.

If black is engaging, dominant, holds our attention and draws us in, doesn’t it go without saying that a black background trumps your art?

It seems so simple, so logical. But whenever you tread on sacred ground that is also visually emotional, “simple” and “logical” hardly register.

“But my art looks so good against a black background,” you might wail.

Now, I ask you…have you ever been in a gallery with black walls?

And anyway, what do you want people to think is “classy”: your website background or your art?

You can’t have both.

The Second Law

Unlike gallery walls, a website needs words to deepen your viewer’s connection to you and your art (hard to shake hands and make eye contact on a web page).

You also need words to a) keep your visitor on your website and b) moving in the direction of taking action to sign up for something (newsletter, a free offer, a short article, etc.) so you can follow up and stay in touch.

But how can you read words on a black background. Ah… yes… thundering in, stage left: the White Font!

Which brings me to the Second Law: Do not make anything hard for your visitor!

And nothing, but nothing is harder than reading white words on a black background.

Nothing. (Except, maybe, slow loading images.)

In small doses, say a tag line or a headline, you can get away with white on black. It might even be classy.  (Heck, I even do it here…just look up.)

But once you start piling up sentences, never mind paragraphs, you are asking the human eye to do an inhuman task. It hurts…so, naturally, people don’t read, or don’t read much. Or don’t read enough.

Me, I just click off as fast as I can. Your art doesn’t stand a chance.

I have a theory

Why would something, like black, work so well on printed paper, but not on a computer monitor?

I suspect it’s biology. The human eye was never designed for the static light of a computer monitor.

Our eyes are designed to adjust to incremental, discrete changes in light from the minute we open our eyes in the morning until we close them at night.

Plunk down in front of the static, unchanging light of a monitor screen, then stare at it for minutes, if not hours, and you are suddenly holding your eyes hostage.

It’s a hostile environment, and anything you do that even subtly increases the hostility shortens the life span of a single visitor staying on your website long enough to engage and enjoy the creative work you so lovingly and passionately share.

Give up black and you will gain an audience.

Here’s what you get. Remember, I’ll be adding to this list until May 19th:

• #1 - Find Out Exactly How Geoffrey Gorman Became Such A Successful Artist -with my first release of our interview for my brand-new, “Successful Artist Series” of podcasts.
• #2 – Have People Dying To Know Even More About Your Art With This Simple Sentence with my digital worksheet on “How To Write A Descriptive Sentence of Your Art”
• #3 - Will be posted on Sunday, May 16th.

For more information and to grab yours today visit:

http://smartist.com/exclusives/resources/

Remember to check back through May 19th for the next FREE Art Career Resource.

Is your art career sitting on the fence because you are?

Register for the smARTist Telesummit 2010. (It starts in 2 days!)

Your art career will thank you—and that’s a promise!

Over the years, as I’ve listened to hundreds of artists, I began to understand that finding and nurturing collectors had to do with making a paradigm shift from “me” to “them.”

Mosaic artist, George Fishman, talked with me on his “Mosaic of Art Radio Show” about just this topic: “Who is Your Audience: Making the shift from me to them.”

You can listen to our 30 minute broadcast right here!

And, I have to remind myself that it is just a “story,” and as long as I keep telling myself the same plot over and over, that’s exactly where… I’m also telling my brain to stay focused.

Waverly’s, one of my presenters in 2008, offered all the artists who had registered for my 2nd annual art career conference, this bite-sized list approach can turn this story around. See what you think.

A Season For Marketing

by Waverly Fitzgerald

Throughout May of 2007 I kept putting off doing my marketing (I was in the throes of a creative project) and felt dissatisfied because I could not point to any publications at the end of the previous year.

Then I was talking to a fellow writer and writing teacher, Priscilla Long, and she told me that her goal was to send out a submission a day.

She’s a poet, as well as an essayist, and has built up quite a body of work. Sending a poem a day to a literary journal (there are hundreds of them) seemed easier to accomplish than my marketing efforts, for instance, querying a magazine editor about an article or sending out a book proposal. But Priscilla’s commitment inspired me to adopt a more regular approach to marketing.

Now my goal is to do a submission weekly. I began a list of possible marketing efforts, which includes everything from creating a Listmania on Amazon, featuring books on time, to sending a query to Real Simple for an article on organic time management, to writing a guest blog for Ariane (Ok, that wasn’t on my list but it counts).

The list has been helpful in many ways. Once a week, I look it over and choose the task that seems easiest to accomplish, given my current energy and other commitments.

Whenever I come up with a new idea, I add it to the list. There are more than 52 ideas on my list at present, enough to keep me busy all year.  I also use the list as a checklist, marking off the tasks I complete.

I’m not really strict about my weekly deadline but when I miss a week, I try to catch up. Counting up my checkmarks as I reviewed my list for this article, I see I completed 12 tasks by the end of March.

It amazes me that I was able to meet my goal so easily and with so little stress. I also notice that I’ve received three rejections, but these don’t seem as painful as they would have in the past, because I know I have other irons in the fire.

I can also look at my list and see that there are many more opportunities to explore.

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As an artist, what kind of lists have you used? Have these worked for you? Why? Why not?

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It’s not to late to get on my Early Notification List for the 4th annual smARTist Telesummit 2010–with 11 more art career experts working hard to bring you the best ways to move your career forward!

It hides in the sites where you network, using tweets or updates, videos or photos to increase your followers/friends/hits.

These are great sites, and, if you work them, they will definitely work for you.

BUT they can easily consume a precious hour or more every day, cutting into the your studio time. That would be the beast part.

At the 2009 smARtist telesummit, networking visibility expert Nancy Marmolejo gave some fabulous tips for taming it.

Here’s one:

Feed your tweets into your Facebook page using the “Twitter” application within Facebook.

1. You’ll find Facebook applications on your home page, in the very bottom left corner.

2. Click on it and a menu pops up.

3. Pick “Browse more applications.”

4. On the next page, type “Twitter” into the search box.

5. On the results page, find the Twitter application. Make sure it’s the application by Twitter–there are some imposters.

6. Click on it. On the page that appears, click on “Go to application.”

7. Enter your Twitter username and password. [It's OK, you're giving these to Twitter. They own and run this application.]

8. Voila! All your tweets will also appear as Facebook updates.

Now that’s pretty neat. But there’s a drawback.

If you’re one of the people who tweet a lot, you’re going to have a lot of Facebook updates. Everything you tweet shows up on your Facebook page. Whether or not it makes sense. This can annoy some people so much they hide you on their Facebook page.

But there’s another nifty Facebook application that fixes this. It’s called “Selective Twitter Status.” If you use this application instead when you get to step #5 above, you can choose which tweets go to your Facebook page. When you tweet, just add #fb to the end of the ones you want to show up in Facebook.

Voila!

The beast, tamed two ways.

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When it comes to tips and tricks for your art career, nothing’s better than those 7 days of the smARTist Telesummit 2009!

Here’s how to make Twitter both productive and fun:

Treat it like a cocktail party.

If you were going to a cocktail party, you wouldn’t walk in the door and start trying to sell your art to the first person you met. Unless your goals were to a) never get to know anyone interesting, b) never sell art, and c) never get invited to another cocktail party.

Instead, you’d find something you were both interested in and talk about THAT. You’d disclose something about yourself and respond to what the other person said.

That’s the way to Tweet, too.

Last time, I suggested that you look for potential buyers by using the Twitter search box to find shared interests. I used the example of searching for ‘dog owners’ if you paint pet portraits.

So the first things you’d tweet might be about what you love about your own pet. Or the best pet you ever painted. Or the funniest thing that happened to you while painting a pet.

Or what you think about painting pets. Or what you think pets think about while you’re painting them.

Then listen. Read other people’s tweets. Respond–but not with sales pitches. With cocktail party conversation.

Sales happen as a result of creating connections that are genuine and grounded in your interest in your potential collector. It’s all about the relationship first, the sale is the last sip in the glass.
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When it comes to moving your art career into the center of social media buzz, nothing’s better than those 7-days of the smARTist Telesummit 2009!

Twitter works like this for lots of people:

1. You sign up and start tweeting enthusiastically.

2. Your list of followers grows slllooooowwwly. You wonder how all those other people got to 3000–or 300–followers. Isn’t Twitter supposed to be social networking magic?

3. You tweet less and less frequently. Eventually, you stop altogether.

If this is you, don’t despair. At the 2009 Smartist telesummit, Joan Stewart, the social networking maven, had a great suggestion about how to find your tweeps.

Use the search box.

Let’s say you’re a painter–and you paint dog portraits. Dog owners would make great clients for you. So you type ‘dog owners’ or ‘dogs’ or even ‘I love my dog’ into the search box–and voila! You have a bunch of potential clients. Chances are, if you follow them, they’ll follow you back.

But–and here’s the key–don’t say hello with a sales pitch. Next time, we’ll talk about how to keep people reading your tweets.

_____________________________________

When it comes to tips and tricks for your art career, nothing’s better than those 7-days of the smARTist Telesummit 2009!

Hypothetically.

Finding out whether or not they went is another matter.

If it’s your website you’re driving them to, you could use Google analytics to find out if your tweets bump your traffic up. (What? You don’t have Google analytics installed? It just takes pasting a little code into one of your pages and you really can’t afford to be without them. Go now. I beg you.)

But it takes 24 hours to get analytics data–and you can’t tell exactly when someone visited. So that alone won’t  help you know how effective your tweet was about your fabulous new show/sale/commission/medium/press coverage.

BudURL to the rescue. This nifty free service does two things at once:

1. It converts long URLs to short ones that take up fewer characters

2. It also tracks hits–and continuously updates them.

Post your tweet, then go back to your BudURL account page. Watch, in real time, as people hit the URL you posted.

This is pretty useful for a couple of reasons. You can…

re-tweet the same thing a couple of times and find out if you get the same number of hits. If so, then it makes sense to periodically post the BudURL to get the most exposure.

You can also edit your tweet to see if you can increase the number of hits. Introduce the URL differently three or four times and see what gets the best response rate.

This little tool will be your new best budURLdie.

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When it comes to even more smARTness to move your art career forward, nothing’s better than those 7-days of the smARTist Telesummit 2009 where the artists who attended learned specific ways to succeed even in today’s challenging markets. And now you can too!