I'm all about the alleged social media today...
Through the 3rd annual Grown Ups Art Camp at the Del Ray Artisans gallery, I helped host a group discussion called Social Media Basics. My colleague, who is such a wealth of energy and information, put together a packet with exercises and information. I learned a lot and came away with lots to think about.
We think about the types of things people used to share with each other. Often times, misery loves company, and it is easy to share a bad experience by ranting or posting a bad review about it. Someone made a great point that, in a way, social media has brought back the positive aspect of sharing. Nowadays, we want to share things that not only appeal to emotions, but things that make us feel good. People share things that make us think and things that show our support toward someone or something. People WANT to help and promote each other more than ever.
It's crazy to think that people make a living off the language, patterns and strategies of people connecting to each other. It's so normal, but also predictable and more powerful than we realize. As an artist using social media, it is important to know who my target audience and clientele is in order to appropriately create, display, share, collaborate, and ultimately market, successfully. Growing up, I was not generally one to follow trends or do things just because everyone else was. However, I'm thankful that I have accepted and begun to embrace things like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, (and perhaps soon, Twitter) to be able to market my art and my business in a direction that commerce and culture are growing in.A couple questions came up and I want to record them:
- Is there a purpose of using a social media platform even if you have few/no followers? (such as blogging, or accounts you've opened but don't use)
- How does one get more followers? (I feel like this could be an extensive answer and vary greatly)
- What are you using social media for? To connect to others? To sell/promote something? To get 'famous'?
- How do you know you're marketing something 'correctly'?
- Where did QR codes go?