Succeed with Social Media Like a Creative Genius

A Guide for Artists, Entrepreneurs, and Kindred Spirits

Brainard Carey

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781621537038
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

How to Build a Following, Make Authentic Connections, and Promote Your Work
Whether you're an artist or craftsman selling your work, the owner of a small start-up hoping to network, or just looking for a more meaningful social media experience, this is the book for you. Brainard Carey draws from his experience and interviews with others to show creative people how to make the most of their time on outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Readers will learn how to develop social media campaigns that reflect their personalities, share their unique offerings, and achieve their goals. Chapter topics include:

• Building a following
• Maintaining an authentic image
• Creative ways to share information
• Using social media to earn a living
• And much more
• 
  With chapters focusing on practical how-tos and real-world examples, Succeed with Social Media Like a Creative Genius™ provides readers with both instructive and demonstrative lessons in making the most of their online presence. Everyone can do it with the right tools, and Carey offers an insider's guide to an otherwise daunting process. This book will awaken and nurture the creative genius in everyone.

Chapter 1

VIRAL GARBAGE AND YOUR MESSAGE

The love-hate relationship with social media comes from the huge glut of what can be perceived as viral garbage. There are things we want to read and see on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, but there are many things we do not want to see that pollute our stream of information and can alter our mood for the worse. Think of political ads, no matter what party or country they are coming from; they are propaganda designed to sway you with the most vulgar techniques. You have seen inflammatory headlines on which you know you shouldn’t click, but you do it anyway because you can’t help it. That is called “clickbait,” of course, and you and I are the fish that click on it. They have titles like “She’s a liar, this video is proof!” or “It’s us or him, impeach now!” or even nonpolitical ones, like “Photos that were taken seconds before tragedy struck” or “Ten ways to live a longer life.” These are all examples of viral garbage and clickbait, and as abhorrent as this may be, you are competing with them in the vast world of images and text.

We have to begin by thinking about viral garbage, because that trash is the context we are in when we send out our message to the world, be it a product, service, or work of art.

YOUR MESSAGE

The first step in a campaign, about which we will get into detail in every chapter of this book, is to decide on your essential message that will be shared in many different ways.

This may seem obvious, but what most creative people think of as their essential message is in fact often too general and not specific and focused. Here are two examples.

CASE 1: INVENTOR

If you are inventing a new case to cover a mobile phone, it would be easy to think your market is all mobile phone users that have a phone that fits your design. That might be true, but in reality, there are many mobile phone users, and many of them have different tastes. While you think your target market is all phone users, there is only a fraction of those within that market that are your actual buyers. Let’s say that you have a cover design that is made out of leather, and users can have it personalized with a monogram if they wish. This type of case can now have a more specific audience—the luxury market for one, because it is more expensive than the average case. Because it can be monogrammed, it is also targeted to a certain class of people, like business executives who might want a monogram. Another unique factor is that the customers who might buy this phone case cannot be vegan, because it is leather. Without going too much further, we already have a focus within a larger market that looks like this: Mobile phone users > Specific model of phone > Luxury market > Business executives > Not vegan. That is now a niche within a niche, one that will be much better in helping you look for customers. So if you are about to launch a Kickstarter project based on that user profile, you now know whom to target in any ads during the campaign, which will save you money and increase sales.

CASE 2: THE ARTIST

If you are an artist trying to sell your art, you might think that the market is very wide—it is anyone that can afford your work and likes it. That is a very broad market indeed, which is not an advantage, because you want to focus on the specific group or groups that will be interested particularly in your art. Let’s say your art consists of figurative oil paintings on canvas, and it is often political, satirizing current events. The images tend to be of political figures that are painted to look like crosses between cartoons and animals of various kinds. Sometimes words are added to the paintings. The work tends to satirize conservative causes, like immigration laws and tax benefits for the wealthy. Without going further, let’s see what the market is that can be dialed into. It could look like this: Liberal or Democratic voters > Involved in an art organization > Reads the New York Times or Washington Post > Lives in a major city. Now two of those categories you might think are cutting off too many people (what they read and where they live), but narrowing in those two categories will allow you to spend less money reaching a targeted market that you can then widen in the future.

In short, the best practice is to start with a sharp focus and slowly widen it. I will explain more details of that process throughout the book. Before you move on to the next chapter, please answer the questions on the next page to begin focusing on the demographics of your audience.

CHAPTER 1 TAKEAWAYS

1. What is your product, service, or art?

2. What is your message?

a. If you are selling a leather case for a phone, it is a luxury message, a lifestyle image that conveys a type of situation and look.

b. If you are an artist, the message might be your personal story, something specific about the environment, a political issue, or something you are drawn to, like an object or an idea.

3. What is the widest possible audience that would be interested? Think gender, age, and political or organizational affiliations.

4. What does your product, service, or art do for people? (A product usually aids lifestyle; art usually is either decorative or message oriented.)

5. What is the contextual setting for your work? (Products are often used within a specific environment, and art often in the context of a gallery or home.)

The best practice is to start with a sharp focus and slowly widen it.

Chapter 2

LEADERS IN ADVERTISING—GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, AND AMAZON

At the moment, the top ad platforms in the world are Google, Facebook, and Amazon, in that order. The most money is spent on Google, with Facebook coming in second. Amazon comes in a distant third. It is on those top two where you are competing with almost all the viral media on the Internet. Those are also the two places where you can get the most attention and spend money to promote your product or art.

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA

In 2018, when Cambridge Analytica was exposed for manipulating Facebook user information for the benefit of advertisers, it provided a case study for advertising and persuading the public to follow a new message. The case was an example of how some of the biggest advertisers (politicians with active campaigns) use social media to send a message and influence behavior. It w...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 | Viral Garbage and Your Message
• Chapter 2 | Leaders in Advertising—Google, Facebook, and Amazon
• Chapter 3 | Facebook Live Videos
• Chapter 4 | YouTube
• Chapter 5 | Running Ads to Promote Your Live Videos
• Chapter 6 | Designing a Social Media Campaign
• Chapter 7 | Automating Cross-Platform Campaigns
• Chapter 8 | Building Relationships
• Chapter 9 | Writing Content for Generating New Customers
• Afterword: Why Friends Matter
• Suggested Reading
• Index