Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

Continuing my review of this ebook, “Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook” by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo…

This book does a great job of introducing you to many of the ways that you can use the new social media aspects of the web. This includes blogs (writing your own and participating in those of others), social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etcetera), microblogs (such as Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku), wikis (and Wikipedia in particular), virtual worlds (such as Second Life), and more. Much of the focus is on blogs (about half the book) and I think rightly so because blogs are still the most prominent form of social media out there and have the most options for anyone involved in marketing (or just communicating).

There is a section on risks or things that could go wrong and they address what I think is the biggest issue: It Doesn’t Get Off the Ground. So many of us have tried to make an impression on the web and have supposedly done everything right and have done the blog, Facebook profile, photos, videos, etcetera; only to find that nothing happens. We even contact other bloggers, join various groups, and have tons of friends on our Facebook account and nothing much happens. This section of the book addresses that and gives some useful suggestions.

My overall impression is that this book is a great start. I highly recommend it because so many of us simply do not have a good grasp of what has been going on with online social networking and how to get started using it. I immediately saw a need for a second book, one that gives you even more specific tools and ideas. For example, what are the all the different kinds of posts you can try on your blog (contests, top 10 lists, and so on), what sorts of things do you put on there, what additional plugins and features can you add… the list becomes very long. [I am currently putting together a toolbox of all the various online marketing tools you can use and this will become part of my upcoming paid membership site. Just the section on blogs alone is expansive.] I look forward to the next book from these two!

(Question for Darren and Julie: do you have an affiliate program set up for selling this book? Have you looked into ClickBank?)

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

This book was impossible to just plow through because they kept giving so many interesting examples and websites that I was constantly setting it down to go check things out (damn Baitcar.com!). My first “oh, yeah” moment was when I read the section “Get Linkable”. I have been designing websites for artists for a couple of years, now, and almost everyone wants one of those pretty Flash-based gallery sites. The problem is that you cannot send someone a link to just one of those pictures and say, “hey, I really like this one.” The best you can do is say, “go to this page and then click on the 12th thumbnail over and that is the picture that I really like.” In this new age where more is happening online rather than offline it is vital that you make everything on your website linkable. How does a blogger send someone to their favorite painting of yours if they have to explain it in terms of navigating a Flash site. They don’t. They will end up not even bothering because you’ve made it so difficult. So in addition to my motto of “make it easy to buy from you”, I add a new one: “make it easy to link to you!”

Along these same lines, they suggest that you make it easy for people to embed your images into their website. A great way to do this is to upload your images to Flickr. (I am already picturing a remake of one of my websites where all of the art images are only in Flicker and I simply use their code to embed them into my website.) Another great benefit of this method is that you can tag your images in Flicker which makes it even easier for people to find YOUR picture! (For those unfamiliar with the term, a “tag” is simply a “keyword”.)

My next post will wrap up the review and give you my final recommendations.

The website for this book by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo is www.socialmediaready.com. They are also run the company Capulet Communications where they offer web marketing services and truly walk the walk. From Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, they now live in an old farmhouse on the island state of Malta (south of Sicily).

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

Boy, that sounds bad. But actually “Getting to First Base” is the name of a book by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo on social media marketing. I just requested a review copy, so hopefully I’ll get that and can give you a detailed review so you can decide if you want it for yourself. It sounds like a great addition for what we do! I’ll keep you posted.

Update:
Within mere minutes of my request, I had heard from Darren and received my review copy. He even subscribed to this blog! I just printed it out and should have a review up for you in the next few days.

P.S.
Their website is at www.socialmediaready.com.

Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com

I have been teaching artists for some time, now, that they need their own website. I have also built several of those websites myself (and continue to do so), but this can be more of an expense than most artists are willing or able to afford. Several months ago I came up with a brilliant idea. Create a way for artists to easily maintain their own websites. Allow them to easily add pictures at random, put up their own biographical information, create a blog, send out newsletters, etc. Just in case, I did a Google search to see if anyone else was doing something similar. And guess what? Somebody was!

Clint Watson and his company have a website called FineArtStudioOnline that does everything I was thinking about and more. He makes it extremely easy to put up the typical pages and features (Bio, Contact, Links, Articles, Galleries, Portfolio, Books, Exhibits, Workshops), plus allows easy uploading and resizing of pictures. You can then arrange these into galleries and the number of pictures you can upload is determined by which monthly plan you are on. Even better (in my opinion) are all the marketing tools available. You can integrate a blog, have a signup for your own newsletter, view your site’s analytics, and, well, tons more that you have to see to believe.

Normally, you get a free 30-day trial period when you sign up. If you are reading this post, I have a special deal for you that I arranged directly with Clint. If you click on this link to go directly to FineArtStudioOnline, you will receive a 120-day free trial period AND he will throw in a copy of a teleseminar he did with Alyson Stanfield called “How to Be an Online Art Magnet” which also includes a 19-page ebook that goes into even more detail than what was covered on the teleseminar. I listened to this seminar live and it was worth every penny I paid for it. Now, just by signing up for a free 120-day trial of FineArtStudioOnline, you can get it for free.

Check it out!

Chris O’Byrne
http://OnlineArtsMarketing.com/blog