How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

Ideas for How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

1. Engage your CEO in social media. Social media is a great way to have a conversation with your market and make and mange connections with prospects, customers, bloggers and other influencers. But for a CEO, the typical routes to social media can be hard. Especially if you are a larger or global company. A CEO typically has little time to write a blog or answer lots of messages and friend requests on Facebook. I cannot tell you how many CEO blogs I have seen with only 1 or 2 posts because the CEO never had time to update the blog after the first couple entries. But, Twitter is limited to 140 characters per update, so it is all about short thoughts and comments. If your CEO can send a text message, they can use Twitter from anywhere in the world as a marketing and PR tool. Twitter is actually perfect for CEO or founder who is always on the road meeting with people and who has some interesting opinions on your market.;
2. Keep in touch with bloggers / media. It is really easy to follow someone on Twitter (see below). And you'll be surprised how often they decide to follow you as well. In fact, I have lots of people I consider "famous" in the marketing and PR worlds following me. In my opinion, this is a way easier way to connect with influential people in the media than calling and emailing them.

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Tips on Creating & Managing a Street Team

When promoting a concert or special event, the effectiveness of one's street team can be the difference in losing money, breaking even, or making a profit. Wikipedia defines a street team as "a term used in marketing to describe a group of people who 'hit the streets' promoting an event or a product." Their duties include: distributing promotional items and flyers, putting up posters and stickers, and a lot of word-of-mouth promotion throughout community. These foot soldiers, who are mainly volunteers, can be the single most important element to a successful promotion when adequately deployed. Here are a few tips to help you develop and manage your own street team.

The Cost of Being a Vendor at a Food Festival

My boyfriend and I made a big move at the beginning of this year from Los Angeles to Cleveland for a job promotion I received at work. He'd gotten into making ice cream while we were in California-we had even tossed around the idea of starting our own business, but the task was daunting and the costs seemed prohibitive.

Due to the move, we are currently living rent-free with his mom while he looks for employment. Given my salary bump and the lower cost of living, it seemed like a good time to take a risk, so we started Mason's Creamery, our ice cream business. We decided to target food festivals and farmer's markets because:

1. The initial costs are lower than it would be to rent a storefront or go the food truck route.
2. It's about to be summer! People love food festivals and farmer's markets in the summer, right?
3. That's pretty much it.

In March, we applied, and somehow finagled our way into an upcoming festival in Cleveland that will happen in May. We were also recently accepted to the downtown Cleveland Farmer's Market, and will continue to apply to others around the area. This way, we hope to get our name out and eventually segue into something less booth-like. For anyone curious about the costs of starting a very small business, or the costs of a festival (because you love festivals in the summer), here's the rundown:

Pre-Festival:

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How to Get Rejected by the Press

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What Event Directors Need to Know About Insurance

How to Get More Fans to Your Gigs

Are you frustrated because you aren't getting as many people to come to your gigs as you want? Getting 'new' people to come to your gigs is not even the main challenge, even most of your own friends and fans usually won't come to your gigs regularly. This fact makes it harder to get bigger and better gigs that pay more money.

If your band plays 25 gigs this year, how many of your friends/fans will come to see more than 4 of these? A very small percentage. Why?

It's not you, it's them. Let's find out how and what you can do about it.

If you ask your friends/fans to come to your next gig, what are you REALLY asking them to do? Are you asking them to listen and watch you perform your songs? Not really.

In reality, you are really asking people to travel all the way to some unclean club where they need to pay to get in the door. Then they will be surrounded by intoxicated people who yell in their ears because the music is too loud to talk, pay for overpriced drinks, stand through an opening band they probably have little or no interest in, then wait again an additional 15 minutes while the stage changes from one band to the next, then finally they get to stand through 90 minutes of your band's cool songs in a room that is booming with muddy bass frequencies because the sound man does not know how to properly mix bands in a room that was never acoustically designed to have loud music played in. After the gig they leave the club and drive home with their ears ringing and a bad headache.

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Turning Your Artistic Hobby into a Business

When Terry Speer was a struggling art student in the 60s, he put himself through college by selling his prints and paintings at local art shows. In 1979, after eight years as an art professor, Speer left academia to do the show circuit full time with his wife, Deborah Banyas, a fellow artist and quilt maker.

"I had tenure and benefits," Speer recalls, "but I was miserable. I thought, 'Why am I torturing myself as a professor when I can have more fun doing this and make more money?'"

Speer hasn't looked back once. Today, he and Banyas run a homebased business selling their whimsical mixed-media sculptures at art festivals and craft shows around the country, including the recent Coconut Grove Arts Festival in Miami where they rang up sales of several thousand dollars over the three-day Presidents' Day weekend. Despite an estimated $3,000 in travel and other miscellaneous costs, Speer and Banyas ended up making a tidy profit. Then they packed up their truck and headed home to Oberlin, Ohio, where they stayed for less than a day before traveling to another show in Baltimore.

"This isn't an easy way to make a living," says Banyas, who estimates that the couple exhibits at 12 shows a year. "You've got to be willing to drive a truck and get up at four in the morning."

Still, Speer and Banyas can't see themselves doing anything else. And they're not the only ones who feel that way. Though it's impossible to know how many artists and craftspeople sell their wares full or part time at shows and festivals, their numbers appear to be growing as crowds turn out by the thousands to buy paintings, sculptures, woodwork, metalwork, glasswork and jewelry and to meet the artists and craftsmen who make them. And as Speer and Banyas have discovered, there's real money to be made. Last year, the Coconut Grove festival drew more than 150,000 visitors who purchased approximately $4 million in artwork from more than 330 exhibitors over the course of the three-day show. (Figures for this year's show were not available at press time.)

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How to Label Your Portfolio Images

When you're submitting an application, an unlabeled CD may become useless without the artist's name. It may not be shown, it may not be returned. It might be thrown away.

Always label your images EXACTLY according to the instructions specified in the prospectus. Follow the instructions for labeling your digital images. Some programmers prefer all lower case letters or an application might specify an entry number as the file name. Use only periods(.) or underscore(_).

If not specified differently, digital Images should be titled with last name, first initial and a short description. If all your images start with the same letters, they will automatically organize themselves as a group every time they are loaded or reloaded on a computer or disc. For example:

• TITLE of the artwork
• Date of artwork
• Dimensions: height, width, depth
• Materials/Media (example: Type of print, acrylic, wood with decoupage, glitter)
• Sometimes "media" simply means your craft-jewelry, ceramics, etc. Better check to make sure you know how much information they want.

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Social Media "Netiquette" for Successful Artists

Are you marketing and branding your art through social media and getting the results that you desire? Have your efforts in social media so far been worthwhile? Do you feel comfortable in establishing your presence in this new medium? Are you up-to-date on the effectiveness of this media? If you said “no” to any of the above questions then it may be time for you to brush-up on your social media "netiquette" as your effectiveness may be improved by adhering to the unofficial rules social networking.

In social media try to develop connections and relationships with people rather than advertising, promoting, selling something and by spamming people. People want to be educated, engaged and informed by you, rather than being “sold” by you.

When reading an interesting post about your art share it with your followers, friends and in your networks. By doing this, your followers will remember you, follow you more closely because of your attention and begin to connect with you.

Always be upbeat, positive and helpful with your followers, friends and networks. Remember that "social networking" is a tool that is used to develop relationships and contacts that are related to you in the art business. Do not just send posts and announcements about selling your artwork to your followers as this may be considered as spam and it will cause people to drop you, unfollow or eventually block you. Send interesting posts related to the art world and people will look forward to your posts, Tweets and updates.

Do not send negative or offensive posts, Tweets and updates. You are trying to meet people and build a following. Remember, this is called social media and people want to follow an upbeat and positive person. In addition, whatever you say, write or post will follow you forever, so think twice before you post!

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What's Wrong with 'American Idol'?

It's one of the most popular TV shows of recent years, drawing tens of millions of viewers every week. Even I admit, American Idol is fun to watch. The show provides all the elements of good pop culture entertainment: passion, emotion, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, dreams attained and lost...

So, what's wrong with American Idol?

Considering it's lumped into the "reality" TV category, the show is doing a great disservice to aspiring musicians (and the public at large) by distorting perceptions of how the music business really works. It sends an outdated message of "dependence" on the industry vs. the more realistic "independence" that artists have today to control their own careers.

The Talent Discovery Myth

Instead, labels look for artists who are already developing themselves, attracting fans, and selling CDs on their own. There's less risk with an act that has a track record.

Also, the American Idol auditions, in particular, create the illusion that most aspiring musicians lack talent and are delusional, struggling and starving. In reality, there are thousands of talented performers across the country who make good money, have hundreds of devoted fans, and are steadily building careers.

Here's just one example of this modern reality: Over the past seven years, the web site CD Baby has sold more than $12 million worth of CDs (1.3 million units) by independent, unsigned acts. A tremendous amount of quality music is being produced and sold outside the mainstream.

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Important Questions to Ask When Researching Food Concession Venues

When you contact local venues and organizations about applying to be one of the food concession vendors, there are many questions to bear in mind. Below is a list of helpful questions that you will want to be sure and ask the event coordinator before you decide whether or not an event is right for your business.

The No-Brainer Questions:

These are the questions that everyone will ask. Before you begin asking about any other aspects of the event, confirm that dates and location of the event are correct. Once you have done this, you can move into more specific questions.

The Basic Questions:

These are questions that will give you answers that are important to know such as attendance, fees and other charges.

• What is the expected attendance? This is quite possibly the most important question to ask as this will give you an idea of how many customers you can expect to visit the event. If you are speaking with a event that is having its first season, ask for a reasonable estimate based on the organization’s research.
• How many other food vendors are participating? You will need to know how many competitors you are up against. If there are too many vendors, your profits will not be worth the time you invested. However, if there are too few, you run the risk of being inundated with customers and running out of supplies.
• What are the event’s hours? Finding out what the event’s hours are will tell you whether the event is right for your concession business or not. If the event is held in the earlier hours of the day and ends before lunch, it is best not to book that venue if your primary menu items are served in the afternoon.
• Will admission be charged? If the organization behind the event is charging admission, attendees will be slightly less likely to spend money on concession food because they feel as though they have already spent enough just by entering the event.
• What is the space fee and how is it charged? Even moderately small events will charge a space fee, and it is critical to find out how much it is, whether it is a flat fee or a percentage of total sales. If it is a flat fee, find out how the fee is calculated. If the fee is based on a percentage of sales, obtain the percentage and the deposit required to book the space.

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The Basics of Promoting

• Create a Contest: Offer your attendees a chance to win something by attending your event. You can easily start this competition online, and announce the winners with a ceremony at your event.
• Cross-Market: The more audiences you can reach, the better. Find someone that has an event or business that is related to yours, but not in direct competition, and cross-promote between the two organizations. This is a relationship you can both benefit from.

Networking with Artists

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The Refund Policy Showdown

Refund policies. The very words are enough to instigate eye-rolling, heavy sighing and, occasionally, verbal boxing matches. In one corner stands the artist. He's over-applied to shows, and has laid out a huge amount of "due-on-application" money. Once he gets his acceptances back, he's going to lose hundreds of dollars in non-refundable booth fees for some of the shows he won't be able to do. But, without over-applying, he won't have enough shows. He wants his money back when he has to turn down acceptances in some of the fairs.

In the other corner stands the promoter. He's invested time and money finding the show location, printing his applications and mailing them, assembling the jury, and sending out acceptances. Once an artist fills a booth space, the promoter doesn't want that spot to be empty. And, he wants his time and labor costs covered.

Can there ever be a winner in this sparring match? Or can we at least come to some sort of acceptable compromise?

We posed this issue on the online forum for the National Association of Independent Artists (NAIA), an artist-run organization that focuses on issues regarding art and craft shows, asking artists and promoters to comment. Artists voiced various opinions, but everyone agreed that some sort of refund was appropriate and right. Only two show promoters responded, and both were committed to being "artist-friendly." No one came forth to justify -- or explain -- the practice of non-refundable booth fees.

In fact, a number of show promoters have made a concerted effort to honor their half of the monetary equation. For example, Carla Fox, a Portland, Ore., metalsmith, is the director of the 32-year-old show of the Lake Oswego Arts and Crafts Guild, and a management partner in two other shows; she says, "Never have any of these three shows asked for booth fees up front. It would be a bookkeeping nightmare to hold and sort, and return fees. There are always good and valid reasons for artists to not do a show after they've been accepted. If we can fill the spot, we always try to give the artist a reasonable refund of his booth fee."

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Food Carts, Food Trucks, and Food Concessions Serve Different Markets

Not long ago food trucks were called "roach coaches" and served quick snacks to industrial site workers. Now, food trucks and food carts seem to be on every street corner and discussed on every form of media. In fact, just today I was listening to Here and Now on NPR, while the host, Robin Young was discussing mobile food trucks with Richard Myrick, editor of Mobile-Cuisine Magazine.

Myrick pointed out that many carts and trucks are opened by chefs and culinary entrepreneurs because they are less expensive to start and run than a traditional restaurant. It seems, as a result, many mobile food businesses are becoming known for the unique quality of the dishes they serve. This makes me wonder about the difference between street food, served from food carts and trucks, and so called, fair food, served from food concessions.

Whereas, many street food vendors are making a name for their selves based on the quality of their menus, concessionaires at festivals and fairs are known more for serving outrageous junk food. In fact, last summer, food booths selling deep fried sticks of butter and deep fried Twinkies were winning awards for the best food at many state fairs. Can you imagine street food carts having the same success with such a menu? At first glance, it sounds like only street food vendors serve good food because that is where all the good cooks are. But, that"s not it.

Food sold on the street is different from food sold at fairs because the market is different. Like restaurants, street food businesses are generally open full-time, and depend on a steady clientele of repeat customers for their success. Food concession businesses, on the other hand, are open part-time in a variety of markets, and therefore, must serve hundreds or thousands of customers within a very short window of time. Food sold from a concession business must also have a higher profit margin to offset high operating costs.

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