2012 January

Engaging Art: How Threyda Deliver Stunning to Social Media

January 31, 2012 By Steve Leave a Comment

Synchronicity by Peter Westermann | Threyda.com

Synchronicity by Peter Westermann - Visit Threyda.com for more

A picture is worth 1,000 words, common wisdom has it.

So social media should make it easy for artists to share their work, right? Image galleries, slideshows, done…

…except there’s much more to it than that.

Copywriters are valued for a reason and engagement, though a notorious buzz word, is widely heralded on every social media blog from New York to New Zealand.

For artists, creating a visually stunning piece is just the first step on the road to sharing.

Social Success Story

Threyda, an arts collective based in Wisconsin, is one of the first visual artwork organizations that jumps to mind when I think of in terms of social savvy.

From a simple Twitter follow early last year, I’ve been prompted to move through to their Facebook page, from which I’ve regularly checked out the gorgeously presented artwork showcased on their website. Having not yet taken the plunge to buy a piece, I’m almost certain to do so at some point this year, as soon the right deal pops into my inbox via their regular, though not annoyingly so, e-mail updates.

In summary: Threyda gets it. And they’ve got me.

The Whys & Hows

For a relatively small group of independent artists, Threyda’s army of 11,000+ fans on Facebook and thousands of Twitter followers is impressive in itself.

Digging deeper, there are a number of practices that make the company a shining example to anyone seeking a wider audience for their art.

Here are just some of those best practices:

A Competitive Streak - Regular competitions that couldn’t be easier to enter. Post a new piece, have fans ‘Like’ the post, random winner picked. Hundreds of likes (which feeds into how often fans see their posts in the ‘Top News’ stream - more on that here) and plenty of attention for new creations, even from those that don’t win. Competitions encourage participation and return visits.

Adopt & Adapt – They’ve learnt along the way that each social media channel has its own potential and limitations. Initially posting to Twitter only through Facebook automation, this tweet showed their intention to adapt to a more interactive, Twitter-friendly approach. Though they still have some work to do on interacting with followers, the adoption of Twitpic and @ mentions to friends show the importance of learning and developing…

A Place To Call Home – Despite the many outposts, the (not so) humble website is the central hub of a web presence. These folks seem to get that, with a powerful and visually striking site that is clearly the best place to check out all the creations of each artist. The outposts of Facebook, Twitter et al then feed into this, offering tantalizing thumbnails and Twitpics of the work as a draw to view more angles and full archives back on the website, where visits can be accurately measured and sales more easily driven.

Call To Action – Threyda posts always let you know what their intention is. From transactional (“Save 50% at checkout”) to inspirational (“It’s never too late, go create!”), there is a reason for what they put out there and they explicitly state it at the close of their piece. Clear calls to act drive engagement and sales.

More Than a Feeling - Other than quoting 80′s power ballads, the reason I include this intangible quality is that Threyda create an aura around their web presence. In truth, it is principally fueled by their other-wordly artwork. But their supporting content, such as this blog reflection on a night snapshot from Cleveland, feeds into the ambiance that they exude. Aligning your style to your social media makes the whole experience feel consistent for fans across multiple platforms.

There are always new, innovative steps that we can take to develop our web presence and improve social media efforts. First, however, the foundations need to be set up strongly and the platform hierarchies clear. In looking at the web presence of Threyda, I find a solid base and flexible approach to new media that I think helps them better deliver their stunning art to the world.

And your good selves? What artists or collectives do you see utilizing social media channels effectively?

What aspects of Threyda’s example do you think could be improved?

Filed Under: Case Studies, Success Stories Tagged With: art, art collective, artists, case study, email marketing, engagement, Facebook, social media, social media marketing, success stories, threyda, twitter, web presence

Papering the Cracks? Why Adele’s 2011 Album Sales Mean Nothing

January 24, 2012 By Steve Leave a Comment

We’re back!

Adele '21' Cover

Adele’s ’21′ sold more than 5.8 million last year, with 1.8 million being full digital album sales. These are sales numbers that arrest a six year downward trend in album sales, since the year Usher sold a few million more of his ‘Confessions’ album.

The record industry is dead; long live the digital record industry!

In the snarky parlance of these Twitter-ing times: #NotSoMuch.

Exceptional Exceptions

In no way am I demeaning the achievements of my homeland heroine. On the contrary, the widespread mainstream acceptance of a bona fide musical talent, at a time when Simon Cowell’s mediocrity manufacturing line dominates the pop landscape, affords me renewed hope for the future of popular music.

But it is the very fact that she’s exceptional that makes Adele the exception, rather than the new rule for the recorded music industry.

Consider the wider environment of the year in which ’21′ broke:

CD sales continued to decline, down another 6% by Sound Scan’s 2011 numbers.

Digital sales were up and passed 100 million album downloads, yet the lower price point of these sales – sometimes as low as $1 or $2 – still sees downloads struggling to compensate for falling sales of physical product.

Streaming music sites, based on a subscription, ‘all you can eat’ model, began to spring into mainstream consciousness around the middle of the year. Albums popped on and off of sites such as Spotify, as artists like Coldplay and, indeed, Adele, decided whether or not such services cannibalize album sales.

Another massive sales story, Lady GaGa’s ‘Born This Way’ release, sold millions in a first week promotion at the deep discount price of just 99 cents on Amazon.com. This further diluted the validity of digital music sales as a barometer for the course of the record industry, with Billboard revising their chart conditions as a direct result.

Beyond this, there lie also the questions of cloud storage, digital lending, matching services such as Apple’s proposition (which can be seen as legitimizing past illegal downloads in user music collections), and myriad other digital services that will straddle the increasingly gray area between legal listening and infringing copyright.

In summary, 2011 saw massive upheaval in the ways we can listen to music, with many potential business models emerging but none clearly taking the lead. Against that backdrop, a few wildly successful individual albums can be seen as more of a life jacket for record sales, rather than the rescue helicopter that some make it out to be.

The Future

Future Music? Baby with headphones

Photo Credit: [(O)] Photography

So, where are we heading?

The only concrete positive to be taken from Adele’s example, in relation to recorded music sales, is that mainstream listeners will still flock in their millions when they hear true talent and passion in pop music. When an artist truly connects on a deeply human level.

What we can’t say is that digital download sales will save the day. Or that listeners are flocking back to music purchases after a decade of litigation from the major players in the industry.

What did offer hope in 2011 is that innovation and new modes of delivering music finally started to gain some traction. From streaming subscriptions to storage in the cloud, no one can say for certain that any of the providers will win out as the successor to physical recording sales.

But after over ten years of taking one step forward, two steps back, it’s encouraging to finally start accessing legal music through channels that befit the 21st century. Let’s hope it brings still more success for the likes of Adele, not to mention the thousands of artists eagerly playing away to follow in her footsteps.

And you?

How do you feel about the state of the record industry? Do you see a new business model emerging any time soon?

I’d also love to hear who still buys physical records, who downloads, streams etc. How do you prefer to get your music?

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: artist development, artists, creators, music industry, music sales, opinion, record industry

The Paradox of Choice: Prioritize Your Web Platforms

January 20, 2012 By Steve 2 Comments

Last week I posted more in depth explanations of the first two points on my original 12 point check list for developing your web presence.

Today, we’ll look more at the third point on the list: establishing the priority of your online platforms and the key elements that you’ll need to focus on as you develop them.

Photo Credit: wockerjabby

The Paradox of Choice

There are simply more platforms than you could ever hope to maintain. Whether websites, blogs, personal social networks, fan pages, Wikipedia entries, professional directories, or any combination of those, the choice is rather overwhelming…and it keeps growing every day!

The good news is that you really only need to choose and fuel a handful of these, perhaps even just a couple, to start building a web presence that will deliver tangible results.

How?

Pick the right platforms, then use them in the most time efficient and effective ways.

What qualifies as the ‘right platform’ depends very much on your content, communication, and most importantly your end objective. Often, as in the paradox of choice, less can be more. It certainly makes sense to set out with only platforms that

For help in this area, tweet with the #CreatorQs hashtag or ask away on Facebook. Myself – or a cohort, of equal or greater value – will get back to you pronto (cowboy talk for within 24 hours).

Once your platforms have been decided upon, it’s time to move on to the key elements you choose to build into them. Identifying these will help concentrate your web presence development efforts on the factors that matter most, minimizing time and maximizing results.

In Your Element

How do you know what these key elements are?

This can be difficult to prioritize, especially if you haven’t spent a whole lot of time around social media, so here are some question sets to guide you:

Outcomes

What is the primary result that you want from your web presence?
From this, can you track back through the process of achieving it and extract secondary element goals?
At the start of that process, what inputs will a given platform need to get things rolling?

Example: You’re an artist with striking visual pieces available for purchase. The primary goal is to showcase your works and make sales. Tracking back from the sale, you’ll obviously need clear, simple transaction buttons in order to prompt and process payments. But people need to be stimulated to start that process, so you’ll also want elements that ensure prominent placement of high quality images, such as gallery sections or the ability to quickly pop images out to a larger version. And perhaps potential buyers would like to see what’s popular with others, as they make their decision, so a further element to add could be a rating system or a social network plug in that shows comments for each piece.

Tools

What flexibility do you have with your ability to edit content?
Will your ability to edit content limit the elements you can select? Do you need to enlist help to incorporate the key elements?
Have you explored the available tools (e.g. WordPress widgets, Facebook social plug ins, embedded media) so that you know what can be achieved?

Extra Tip: Researching other sites in your field will allow you to draw out the best and worst of what can be done with your web presence. It may also make clear an area that has been critically overlooked by your industry, giving you a clear priority to exploit as you plan out your key elements.

Photo Credit: Vitamin Sea

The big picture here: be present in as many of the online locales inhabited by your audience as time allows, as long as you can put enough into the platform to offer that audience some value.

If you can’t commit the required level of work to any given platform, better to have no profile there at all than an out of date one that leaves fans feeling abandoned. Concentrate your efforts on growing the core platforms that you select, using the key elements that drive towards your long term web presence objectives. By having a clear understanding of what moves you in the right direction and what is simply window dressing, you’ll be making the most of the time investment that goes into your online world.

Filed Under: Web Presence Development Tagged With: #creatorQs, artists, audience, blog, content, content creation, elements, Facebook, platforms, tools, web presence development, web presence elements, wordpress

Complete Control: Owning & Scaling Your Web Presence

January 14, 2012 By Steve 1 Comment

Earlier this week I posted my 12 point check list for those of you seeking to develop your web presence this year. The list itself was drawn from a guest post I wrote some months ago, the 12 Most Crucial Web Presence Considerations.

As promised, we’ll start to dive into more detail for each point

Today, we’ll kick things off with ownership and the ‘span’ of your online platforms.

Own It

Ownership boils down to the simple need to control the hub of your online existence. This will usually be a traditional website, though it can also apply to blogs, photo galleries that form your online portfolio, or anything else that you consider your central base of operations on the web.

In a hub & spoke approach to building your online presence, elements like social network pages and third party platforms branch out from the aforementioned hub, adding value and functionality without detracting from the allure of your main platform.

But these are all third party players.

Your hub should be under your ownership and control.

This means registering your domain name of choice, directing any previous and related sites through to this domain, and plugging in analytics tools that give you visibility of what’s happening. It also allows you greater control over end goals such as building a contact list and selling your wares.

Every site will have limitations, except your own. Being able to change design elements, content, and structure, as well as using deep analytics to measure what your site is delivering, are all key reasons to not put your most valuable eggs (you know, the organic, cage-free, reared-on-a-diet-of-truffles hen eggs) in someone else’s potentially rickety basket. A Tumblr site is great, until it goes down for maintenance and someone important can’t find your contact details the one time they visit. A Facebook page is certainly important, but your ability to influence people to take action there is limited, as is its design flexibility.

Width & Depth

I summarized this one into the following two questions:

How widely will you spread your web presence?

How much time can you set aside for each element?

If you’ve ever seen those bands that have a presence on every social network, you’ll probably have wondered when they find the time to actually, you know, write music. Chances are that either: a) they’ve neglected a large proportion of those sites, or b) the music is appalling, so they’re focusing on every marketing channel to make up for it. Possibly both.

The reality is that we all have limited time in the day, so tough decisions need to be made in terms of where you commit your resources. How much time and effort you can invest in your web presence will vary according to many factors, from whether you are a solo creator to the requirements of what you need to set up.

The crucial consideration? Don’t over extend yourself from the outset.

Decide roughly how much time you can devote each week to the following activities, many of which will apply to each platform:

Creating and posting content
Curating content
Design and structure tweaks
Interactions with fans and community
Monitoring key metrics (& making improvements based upon them)
Basic maintenance and admin

Once you understand the time requirements, you can apportion the duties accordingly to other creative members, assistants, employees, and anyone that helps you share your creative wares. Assign appropriate tasks to those most suited, such as the ever-gregarious drummer taking up starting conversations on Facebook, or that detail-obsessed assistant digging into the numbers and trends of your website traffic. The more natural a fit the duty is to someone’s existing skills and interests, the more likely they’ll be to keep it up.

A series of abandoned or barely maintained platforms in your web presence can mean a bad first impression, frustrated potential fan, or even lost sales/business opportunities, if the visitor can’t quickly find the information they’re looking for. By all means experiment with new platforms, but ensure you have a plan for them or close them down if they don’t elicit the results you desire.

The next post will naturally flow from this point, focusing more detail on prioritizing your various platforms and understanding which are best for engaging your audience.

Photo Credit: The Angel of the North (Christine Matthews) / CC BY-SA 2.0

How much time a week do you dedicate to your web presence?

Please, share your tips and tricks below!

Filed Under: Web Presence Development Tagged With: social media, social networks, time management, web design, web presence development

Better Blogging: To Serve & Respect

January 6, 2012 By Steve Leave a Comment

After taking a look at my three words for 2012, it struck me that we could all benefit from a closer inspection of what they will mean for this site.

Today, let’s examine the first and most important to this arena: SERVE.

Superior Service

My objective with Above The Static is to provide you artists and creative types with the information that you need to build a web presence that stands out and gets you noticed.

Having streamlined (demolished?!) this site, I now need to build a platform that delivers on that goal. It needs to be easy to navigate, regularly updated and, most importantly, consistently packed with relevant, practical advice that you can act upon immediately to improve your online presence.

This is how I will serve you better this year, by systematically and reliably helping you to develop a superior web presence.

Width & Depth

Of course, the three words concept extends further and deeper than just blogging.

Woven into the fabric of ‘Serve’ will be all manner of other applications of the word, from more finely honed content curation across my social media channels to more one-to-one contact (Skype me [stebirkett], G+ me, send me a carrier pigeon…) with those that are in the most need. It will guide work prioritization, decision making, and plenty of miscellaneous items in between.

The beauty I find in this is the simplicity it allows right from the start. Every relevant action can be quickly filtered through an easy to remember, yet deeply meaningful system. The word ‘Serve’ will be at the forefront of my mind as I make choices for this site, content, investments of time and money…all sense-checked against a term that is anchored in my overall objectives.

In Your Own Words?

What will be the language of your year? Can you pin it down to just three guiding words?

Nick Kellett made me aware of hundreds of people who are doing just that with this list of My Three Words posts. It makes interesting reading, with plenty of smart perspectives and insights, but mostly it provides a catalyst for thinking about your own direction.

Which words matter the most to you this year?

Photo Credit: trp

Filed Under: Concepts Tagged With: 3words, blog, blogging, direction, serve, service, web presence development

Words As Ways to Win the New Year

January 2, 2012 By Steve 1 Comment

Original photo by: Elena Martinello

The turn of the year is a paradoxical time, filled to varying degrees with the relaxation of a quiet week packed with holidays, alongside the feverish preparation for a running start to the New Year.

We excitedly plan out resolutions for everything from better health to increased productivity. Yet often our own enthusiasm proves to be our downfall, so heavily do we pile on the new practices in what amounts to a few days of preparation.

In short, our intentions are well placed, but our application is often found wanting.

Words Influence Ways

One practice that I’ve found useful in recent years is to focus more on new guide markers rather than wholesale direction changes. To that end, adopting Chris Brogan’s ‘Three Words’ concept has been helpful.

As with most things, its power lies in its simplicity: just pick three words that you’ll use as an overriding guide for your decision making and actions in the year to come. You can take this to a deeper level by loading the words with varied synonyms and imagery. The main goal though is to choose meaningful words that have the power to inspire you to think and act.

My Words For 2012

In addition to guiding my actions this year, I hope my words provide you insight into the direction I intend to take with both this site and my extended work through Above The Static.

My three words for 2012 are:

Serve: At the forefront of everything I do here, I’ll question whether it adds value to you, the reader. My aim is to help creators develop a stronger web presence and get noticed. My articles, posts, videos, and e-mails should each deliver that in some way.

Tackle: Multi-tasking is overrated. The more we focus on the million and one potential things we could be doing and divide that time down, the less anything truly significant can be achieved on any one activity. This year I’ll get to grips with individual tasks that are high priority and put everything into the tackle.

Dispatch: I spent plenty of time on brainstorming, conceptualizing, and all kinds of other ‘ideas work’ in 2011. No bad thing, unless it dominates the landscape to the detriment of actually moving on those ideas. This year I’ll focus on balancing this out, moving ideas through more quickly and dispatching results for those that have legs.

From this base of three, I feel confidently rooted to guide my decisions for this site (and more…I need to be organized for a new arrival this Spring!). I’ll build these out into concrete advice and actions, in a coherent manner that moves everything towards my end objective.

And You?

Are you on board with this style of moving into a New Year?

Or do the old resolutions work just fine for you, thanks very much?

Either way, I’d love to hear how you’re sizing up 2012 and what your hopes are for the coming year. Spill the beans in the comments, on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever else you’d like to connect with me.

It’s going to be an outstanding year for you, just wait and see

Filed Under: Concepts Tagged With: 3words, direction, guidance, new year, new year resolutions, words

New Beginnings

January 1, 2012 By Steve Leave a Comment

First and foremost, Happy New Year!

My wish is that 2012 holds all that you’ve contemplated in the last few days and much more besides.

If you’ve noticed all manner of chicanery on the site recently, it’s down to the fact that I’m ringing the changes at Above The Static for 2012.

I’ll explain more in the coming days but the overall objective is to focus on fresh, relevant content that delivers on our tag line promise to deliver web presence development advice for creators. If you’re new to the site, this means everyone from authors to artists, songsmiths to screenwriters, and many other types of creative individual. As I tinker away with the redesign, I’ll endeavor to post insights, opinions, and advice that I think will be beneficial to you in taking your own web presence to the next level.

Thankfully, no web presence is an island, so you can still find me in the more familiar waters of Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, should you have any questions that require immediate attention.

Stay tuned for more updates this week….it’s going to be an exciting year!

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: Miscellaneous

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