Improve the Visual Impact of Your Email, Blog, and Website
Your emails, blog and website have the potential to engage readers or turn them off.
How can you design your content so that people keep reading and look forward to hearing from you?
You’re creating a composition not only with your art, but also with words and design elements.
It’s an empty wall on which you showcase your work. Let me emphasize that: The focus should be on your art, not on a decorative font, logo, or the colors you choose.
Every decision you make when creating online content should be about elevating the art.
Having said that, you can elevate the art and retain readers’ interest with these tips.
Images Make An Impact
You are so lucky. You sell something that is visually interesting to look at. This is a big plus in today’s world of online marketing because images have become paramount.
Exploit this advantage!
Where and How Do You Retreat? (Curious Monday)
It’s well proven that we need rest and relaxation for peak performance.
Artists need to get away or get out of their heads in order to be refreshed and newly inspired.
Enter the artist’s retreat.
You might have official getaways planned in the form of retreats. I often refer to Art Biz Breakthrough as a retreat because it allows you to get away from the daily grind and focus on business-building.
How do you get away from it all?
Do you have regular retreats planned? Where do you go? What do you see and do?
Do you plan weekly or monthly retreats?
What do those look like?
Please share in a comment below.
5 Ways to Follow Up with Students in Your Art Classes
The follow-up process for students is different than that for buyers and collectors.
Once someone has studied with you, they are likely to take additional classes from you, which means it’s just as important to follow up with students as it is with your collectors – if you want to grow your class sizes and offerings.
You have to show students that you care before, during, and after the program they enroll in.
Here are five ways to do that.
1. Ask for Evaluations and Testimonials
Evaluations can help you improve your offerings while showing students that you care about the experiences they’ve had with you. You’re asking to hear their opinions.
Evaluations can also be a source of testimonials for your programs – if you ask the questions the right way.
Keep your evaluation short. I suggest some variation of these three questions:
What did you most enjoy about this class?
What was your
Do You Reveal Your Politics? (Curious Monday)
Things are heating up in the presidential race and online.
And it’s getting nasty. One client asked me how I deal with reading about it all in my Facebook feed and I said, I don’t. I really don’t read my feed much. It’s too upsetting. I can connect with my students and clients through our private groups, where the energy is much more positive.
What’s right for you?
Do you take a stand publicly for your political opinions? (You don’t have to tell us what they are.)
Where do you draw the line?
Do you find yourself getting trapped in political conversations on social media?
Opening Lines at Art Openings: Starting a Conversation
It’s easy to meet people when you’re at an opening of your own art because you’re the host or hostess. Your job is to meet everyone and to introduce your guests to one another.
Not true when you’re the guest at someone else’s opening. When you don’t have a role to play, it’s uncomfortable to force yourself to meet people.
And, yet, you know it’s important.
Students in my Art Career Success System understand how critical it is to meet more people. New relationships might lead to opportunities, sales, and lifelong fans.
So what do you do? How do you start a conversation with a stranger without getting sick to your stomach?
Alyson to the rescue! Below is a list of conversation starters that you can start practicing immediately.
You don’t even have to be at an opening to begin. Try talking to
Should My Hometown Deaccession Public Sculpture of Lesser Quality? (Curious Monday)
There’s an art controversy in my sleepy little hometown of Golden, Colorado.
Six bronze sculptures have been recommended for deaccession from the City’s collection. The reasoning:
– They were mass produced in China.
– They are judged to be of lesser quality.
– They are signed by “fake” artists. No one can find an artist by these names.
And, yet, many people love these pieces.
I’m curious about what you think.
