Only The Strong May Survive

I do not think there are any plots. I think these are all tools. You make what you will of your tools.

Dave

Dave, changing guidelines and rules, not plots or conspiracies.

I'm pretty clear on what "no longer works" in SM. I'm a lot less clear on what, if anything, still does. At this point, building a following on Twitter or FB would take a huge, long term effort; for many of us, it's a non starter. Flickr, well maybe... pretty doubtful IMHO Maybe Pinterest is where the action is for photographers; it's not quite obvious how to play that game, and maybe that's a good thing, if it's not totally saturated yet and still evolving.

I think we've now seen the complete life cycle of Social Media 1.0; Twitter and FB had their rocket ride, they're now aging, looking creaky, and flooded with "noise". I don't pay any attention to them except as a way of staying in touch with friends.

IMHO we're in a low point, a trough between peaks; waiting for new SM concepts to show up, better ones built on the lessons of 1.0, built for the long haul. This is always the arc of new technology - the first introduction is a comet across the sky, big money is made, wild enthusiasm; it's all overhyped, there's a crash, we ridicule it; then it returns in a better form, taking longer, but driving down deep roots and eventually becoming ubiquitous.

My last three photos were only marketed on Instagram. Not one person clicked on the link to my website. I have very few views on my work on FAA/Pixels because I haven't been marketing, so it's easy for me to tell what's working and what isn't. Instagram seems to be a waste of time for me. Yes, that's where everyone is. But that might be part of the problem. I appreciate these kind of threads because I find it interesting to see what works for other artists, and why.

Kevin,
I recall doing a show in northern California over 20 years ago and a fellow artist was telling me to learn what a meta tag was...that would be the future for selling art!

Brilliant Marlene, 20 years ago? Have you checked to see how that artist is doing these days. That's kind of like picking a great stock.

Meta tags were the big thing for about 3 months, then the scammers piled on, Google adapted, now I think they're just ignored.

"So it goes." - Kurt Vonnegut

twitter stopped working because the people you friend have to also turn on your tweets, or they won't see it. pinterest was new and now its boring. facebook i think is getting better but its hard to tell. right now i think many are simply distracted. instagram was never really set up for business.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Your right Kevin, online the only certainty is change.The good news is that art still has grand appeal in person and I doubt that will change any time soon.

Agreed about meta tags not used in Google anymore. Just another thing that was abused.

Sadly, no....but she did get me started using a computer!

It's important to understand that social media was never developed as a 'selling' platform but rather as a relationship building tool. The sales and ROI are what happen as a result of relationship building, not random, non-personal posting and spamming.

The S in SM doesn't stand for Selling or Store. It stands for Social. When you try and bypass the Social you're using the tool the wrong way. Sort of like trying to shave with a hacksaw blade. You can do it, but why put yourself through the agony?


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

Dan, my experience on social media is very limited. But I'm finding that no body wants to talk to me. So sad. They'd rather click on a "like" or "fav" button and be done with it. Everyone is busy. And considering that they're "liking" and "favoring" hundreds and hundreds of other accounts, it's no wonder. No one has the time to talk.Their goal is to be "popular."

The trouble, it seems to me, with all the "art sites" , is that they all want to do everything, not just sell art or fine art prints - but the rest of the gobbledegook of mugs, tee shirts, bed coverings, pillow cases, pillows, I'm surprised no one is selling underwear - but maybe I just don't know about that. And as far as I can see - there is not one of them that is helpful in marketing their art site, most have grown too big for anyone now starting out to succeed because they are now a very little minnow in a see full of fish. A few months back there was a new artist came on board here, they already had an audience and capitalized on it so that every day there were multiple sales of their work - it almost appears now as if they are sold out - just an occasional sale.

There is this little mom and pop sort of cafe in town - they serve up a scrumptious breakfast, served all day and into the evening, and their deserts with a plain old cup of coffee in one of those old fashioned restaurant cups is just perfect in the evening for after dinner. There is no chain restaurant or fast food place that can touch them and no bakery left that can deliver up the pie and cake for desert - the coffee - is just good coffee. They've no desire to expand and serve up hamburgers and fries nor to tempt customers with lattes and little fried pies.

Dan, that's all true up to a point; I'd say the real purpose was to push ads. The 'social network' thing was the hook. Now those systems are being steadily modified with the goal of "them" selling to "us" rather than us selling to each other. While we can still sell peer-to-peer, what they're pushing now is the idea of the individual seller (i.e. an artist) buying ads just like the big boys. Increasingly, paid ads will be the only way to be heard above the noise.

Actual social networking changed, too. Originally it was more real-time. "I'm here, doing this. " "Where are you?" "I'm with so-and-so, come on over." "We're at this bar right now". And over time, people turned it into more of a broadcast medium, with everyone blasting out newsletters. Here's 10 pictures of our kid, here's our dog (again), "I'm starting a new job - so excited." And the big thing, the thing that wrecked it: RE-POSTS. I'm mad about politics, so here's 9 click-bait posts I saw today, please share them if you agree.

Social 'networking' is dead - the new thing is social broadcasting. "Following" isn't "networking". Clicking "like" isn't communicating.

Good post, Jim. I'm continually amazed at how long artists will spend (years!!!) "doing social media" with so little to show for it. If SM was the only path to art sales I would decide in seconds that art sales were not important to me.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

Talk about identity theft, I think Facebook started the whole thing. Maybe you thought it was just a tool to socialize with old friends, but that was just there strategy. Now they have your personal info and every single person you have almost ever known.

Right Kevin - the site is basically a tool that 'harvests' the interpersonal networks grown by users, and sells them to advertisers. I'd call it "contact farming".

Back to the topic: many of us thought Google+ would be the Next Big Thing. Obviously it wasn't, but I think the reasons it failed are less than clear. The idea of circles of interest, extending and overlapping, still seems to me like the right idea.

Maybe it was just too soon, and not enough people were sufficiently disenchanted with FB. What if it were being introduced today? Would it take off?

Linkedin works those circles.

FB sees so many rants form me that the advertisers probably run in the opposite direction. LOL Anyone who friends me knows.

Besides getting blood from a rock wont happen.

Twitter can not get out of its way. I think Twitter may have some upside if the news agencies all sign on, but woe be to the Twitter users as the ads get more and more common. Bloomberg signed up with Twitter for nothing less than its own channel about two weeks ago. How the ad revenue will be split is not public knowledge, yet.

I like Pinterest. Always have. Not that it is doing much for me. It seems straight forward to me. I have begun to follow more people. I like that we produce images and that is the main mode of operations there.

G+ collections I have get about one new follower per week or two. At that rate I will go nowhere fast. Some photographers here are having massive success with G+. I think subject by subject city by city G+ runs hot and cold.

Dave

Yes, LinkedIn surprised everyone; somehow it was the right model. But it still has a 'business' image.

Twitter is a way for celebrities (including politicians) to work their fan base directly, in real time, without needing a publicist or a crowd of reporters. And today's news media are reduced to reprinting what comes up on Twitter; it's like the ticker tapes of a previous era. So Twitter is just another broadcast medium.

I sort of agree about Pinterest. At least it's visual, and uses the whole screen, unlike Facebook and it's pathetic vertical strip of text.

Aren't we at the point where we could start to envision something better than any of these?

It sure would be nice to see something new come out. Time will tell.

As far as Google+, It worked in a different way for me. It's what helped my local search work for my Photo Workshops on my website. Actually it helped dramatically. Never could figure out how to use it efficiently for print sales though.

Kevin,

I am not privy to their exact numbers, but there are two NYC photographers who have sales because of G+.

A study done by an MIT intern at Tumblr, reported that there is really almost nothing that goes viral.....that the public search is across massive numbers of things.

We have not discussed Google search yet.

Dave

Google Search is a black box. Like Churchill said about the Russia: "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Everything Google does has one purpose: make money for Google. We'll never know what really goes on in their search and indexing code. And if we did they'd change it the next week.

Went to a seminar on marketing to millennials last night. Very depressing on every level. Unless time and experience changes the way they think eventually, no one who's not a millennial is relatable to them
.

Yes, that is for active users. People that actually long on and make posts.

Floyd, it wasn't an analogy, it's what happened. For eight years people had a desirable that, then FB switched everyone to an undesirable this. No options, take it or leave it. From a no assault platform designed to gain members to total assault. And of course they planned it that way. Bait and Switch.

No one is forcing it on you.

And I certainly don't use it :-) However, I'm in the graphic design/advertising/marketing business. Have been for 40 years. My clients pay me to know how best to use all manner of advertising, from broadcast to direct mail to print to SM.

I love advertising. The business has been and continues to be very good to me. I don't like bad, poorly-executed, intrusive advertising and every survey ever conducted says I'm not alone.

91% of people say ads are more intrusive today than 2-3 years ago. And they are not afraid to do something about it, as mentioned in my previous posts. Every smart marketing department knows that and are searching for ways to get their message across without alienating the very people they are trying to sell.

I understand your passion, Floyd, but I don't think you fully appreciate how the advertising landscape has changed since your heyday. For instance, TV advertising still only garners a 9% disapproval rate. Not bad.

But direct mail ads or promotions (mailers, "junk" mail) have a 48% disapproval rate.
Pop up online advertisements, 70% disapproval.
Telemarketing calls, 81% disapproval.

Perhaps the 19% of people who are okay with telemarketers excite you. Well, okay.

In order to make smart marketing decisions — from what media to use to what to say to who you're associating your brand with — it pays to know what's going on in the marketplace.

The antidote to bad marketing: Striking up conversations, asking questions, listening and responding, and having the courage to find your unique voice in that conversation.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

TV gives us a nice historical perspective on how people feel about in-line advertising.

When I was a kid, in the 50s and 60s, TVs didn't have remote controls [gasp!]. We just sat there and took it, as commercials blared out for minutes on end, uninterrupted. They were louder than the shows (until the FCC stepped in and forbade that practice). We heard those jingles a thousand times - that's why we can sing them all today. Everyone hated it.

Near the end of the 60s the first affordable, mass market remote controls appeared and it was a bombshell - you could MUTE THE COMMERCIALS. Soon, everyone had a remote. The networks hated it.

Then VCRs. Yes, time-shifting was huge; but besides that, you could SKIP THE COMMERCIALS. Everyone bought VCRs. The networks REALLY hated it.

Then cable TV - a subscription service promising no ads. People signed up in droves.

DVRs made skipping the ads even quicker.

Today, people have come to hate the cable companies, and are going to online streaming. There's a problem - they CAN'T skip the ads in the network shows. But Netflix and Amazon are producing ad-free shows for paid subscribers. And some networks (CBS) are about to offer paid streaming services - which may not contain ads, remains to be seen.

So YES advertising has always been with us. And YES, people have always bitterly hated intrusive ads. And been willing to pay to escape them.

The antidote to bad marketing: Striking up conversations, asking questions, listening and responding, and having the courage to find your unique voice in that conversation.


Dan,

Was plop plop fizz fizz good marketing? Or just successful quirky marketing?

The problem is pointing to one or two ads etc....or pointing to all ads.....the logic wont add up. The logic is fallacious from either the specific or the general, but you are making generalizations.

I can start with all ads are bogus. But what brand of razor do I use? What brand of soap that I was allergic to did I use for two decades? What off the shelf pair of socks do I have on? What Starbucks do I frequent? How much money is on my Starbucks gold card?

Telling us you and everyone else does not like ads......so.....how will that ever change anything? Listing generalities about calling for better ads? Well almost none of those ads are our's to begin with, so we can not effect any change. Not shopping them wont change anything either.

Dave

"Listing generalities..."

Bridburg, I've listed specific numbers and links to back them up. You, unlike me, do not have a 40 year career in the advertising industry, is that correct?


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

Those specific numbers were easy to debunk. Stats always are. A stat or average by its definition is a generality. Please seek a better dictionary than the one you are using.

Do not tell me I need to worry about you being around for 40 years.

What have you done for me lately?

Dave

There's an old adage in the ad business.

Only 10% of advertising works.
No one knows which 10%.

David S., I heard 50% for years, but with the current noise level I think 10% is closer to what it actually is. Certainly something to consider when one commits to an ad program.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

I was never one to use paid ads for my digital art, photographs because of what is stated above. Your really not sure what your getting, or if most of it is fake to make you think its great. Maybe thats why it seems cheap at first. $30 in ads over a five day period seems like, hmmm, let me try it once. I'm sure millions have and still do. I would love to know stats on this because it pertains more to us (Artist - Photogs), not TV commercials or ads from big business.

DS,

I do occasionally buy into a stat. I would not be surprised if only 10% or less of internet marketing was successful.

Would not surprise me at all. There is so much across each screen that most of it becomes a sharply focused blur.

Dave

Dan

I adjusted for inflation. ;-)

Kevin and DS,

I will be putting up work in the Smoothie store after all. I visited the store today. Got in touch there with the owner who deals with the art sales. She gave the price point to hit. I asked her about my age and location, she said she was happy to work with me, age is no problem.

She looked over some of my work on the AW. She would take anything I want to hang in her shop. I decided because of the price point and size involved that I would come back when my Political Sgrog art is up and show that to her. The smoothie shop is more hippy dippy younger people. The price point allows me to make about $70 per canvas print. She is out selling the two galleries next to her easily.

Dave

"I understand your passion, Floyd, but I don't think you fully appreciate how the advertising landscape has changed since your heyday"

Turner, can you ever have a decent discussion with a person without being condescending?

"But direct mail ads or promotions (mailers, "junk" mail) have a 48% disapproval rate.
Pop up online advertisements, 70% disapproval.
Telemarketing calls, 81% disapproval. "

Who cares!!?? Actually, I would have guessed that the number would have been much closer to 100%! Who in their right mind is going to tell anyone on a blind survey that they love advertising? And for that survey or those figures to have any meaning to me, I would have to see the source and entire program under which they were gathered.

I don't care what people like, it is what they respond to that counts. People will tell you all day long they hate advertising, but those same people are responding to it and buying products they see in those ads all the time.

This is like baseball. You can carry a 250 average and make million and millions of dollars, failing 75% of the time.

Advertising is how much it DOES work, how many people respond to it not how many hate it or don't respond.

"Perhaps the 19% of people who are okay with telemarketers excite you. Well, okay. '

Let me ask you, Turner, have you ever run a telemarketing program that sold millions of dollars in products per year? I have. And I will take a 19% closing rate on ANY product that is priced right and make a ton of money with 19% closing.

Same thing with direct mail advertising.

I could go back to some of the same clients and have them back in a heartbeat and be successful. Advertising has NOT changed all that much since my "heyday" or in the last 100 years for the most part. ROFLMAO

Floyd, the numbers are what they are. You're fine (elated!) with ticking off 81 people to get 16 maybes and 3 sales. That's exactly the way spammers think. As long as their relative trickle of sales turns a profit, screw the millions of people who are turned off.

That works for you. It doesn't work for me. Different strokes.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

"You're fine (elated!) with ticking off 81 people to get 16 maybes and 3 sales. That's exactly the way spammers think. As long as their relative trickle of sales turns a profit, screw the millions of people who are turned off "

There you go again, condescending and insulting. Do you want to talk about a trickle of sales? How is it that you have a total of only 51,653 views in over 7 years on FAA? Are you not applying your own methods of promoting your own gallery? Let me know when you design and manage a program that includes 13 successful selling websites selling your art or anyone else's art. Or when your ad agency designs and runs the marketing campaign that lead the industry in selling a specific product three year's in a row with millions of one of a kind product sales.


Turner, you talk like you have some sort of personal insight or relationship to each one the so-called "screw the millions of people who are turned off", which of course you do not.

Business is, to a great degree, setting goals and achieving success by building a clientele or having a product with broad-based appeal to tons of impulse and or one time buyers.

No one in their right mind would deliberately go about "turning off" huge numbers of people. On the other hand, no one in their right mind would be silly enough to suggest they can devise an effective advertising plan that is going to be all things to all people and please all people at all times. That is just ignorance if anyone believes that can be done.

So what it boils down to is, you do what works. You do what allows you to meet your goals, to build that loyal clientele or find that number of impulse buyers or one time buyers that bring about the financial success you or your clients are looking for.

As long as you do that in an honest and ethical manner, the few that get turned off are of no concern to me. And my track record with hundreds of local and dozens of national clients have benefited from that.

As the old saying goes, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.”

Contrary to what you seem to be implying, you are not above that, Turner.

In a nutshell, if I can produce the results that I need and do it in an honest and ethical fashion, I don't really care how many overly sensitive, unreasonable Dan Turners get turned off. They would never buy anything anyway. I am not going to go out of my way to tick them off. But I am not going to jeopardize my program or my client's success to avoid it either.

"I don't really care how many overly sensitive, unreasonable Dan Turners get turned off."

And therein lies our topic, which is: Old school advertising methods are falling on deaf ears. You've had a successful career and can afford not to care, I understand that, but any modern marketing program that ignores how today's consumers interact with sellers will fail. That is, unless you have something so compelling that the normal rules of engagement do not apply.

The focus of this conversation is about buyers; how do we reach them? Today's consumers are actively blocking access to carnival barker tactics. That has never happened in your lifetime, Floyd. It's critical to understand this new wrinkle.

High ticket audiences are blocking. Reaching them and selling them requires a more sophisticated approach.

Low ticket audiences not so much -- they can't afford the technology. If you use old school marketing methods, they are your audience. They will buy low ticket items. And as you have stated, you have to sell a LOT of low-priced merchandise to make a profit.

I've always preferred to concentrate on making one sale for $100 rather than 10,000 sales at a penny each. Again, different strokes.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

So now I am a carnival barker? You need to stop with the insults! And stop pretending to know what I need to understand!

"Today's consumers are actively blocking access to carnival barker tactics. That has never happened in your lifetime, Floyd. It's critical to understand this new wrinkle."

Why do you feel it necessary to continue to attack and mischaracterize my results and my methods and try to suggest they are ineffective when I am still producing sales at a significant rate? Once again, I point to your poor view count and if that is any example of your effectiveness, well it speaks for itself.

You have no idea what I am doing with specific advertising programs.

In fact, my 'old school" methods are working so good that I have not downsized by much at all since I joined FAA with the intent of cutting back about 75%. I have just left a lot of those "old school" ad campaigns running thinking that sooner or later they would fade away and I would pull them down. Not happening at anywhere near the rate I thought they would.

I am not criticizing your methods, I am just saying you are wrong to think that people that do not agree with yours are not doing it right or suggesting they are "out of touch" and doing something wrong. That is what you are saying.


You make comments like you know everything I am doing and everything I am selling. I sell art that is priced well into the thousands. The key word here is "SELL". How many thousand dollar, limited editions a year do you sell Turner?

The basis of even YOUR methods of advertising is deeply embedded in old school because the key to ALL successful advertising is understanding human behavior and the basic Abraham Maslow talked about back in the 1950s. And most of his research was actually based on the work of anthropologist and psychologist going back hundreds before him.

You think just because you make up a fee buzz words and catch phrases and quote a few studies that are full of those buzzwords that you have changed an industry. All you are really doing is using the same old school tactics with a little refinement that anyone that is going to successful will have to make. Of course there on considerations and adjustments that have to be made for the net and for new applications like SM. But those adjustments are going to most effective when based on what the advertising industry has known and has been successful with for a whole hell of a lot of years before the net, before TV before Radio and before the printing press even. Because human nature has not changed near as much as you seem to think.

To continue to mischaracterize what I am doing and its effectiveness when you have NO idea what it is, reeks of petty jealousy.

To continue to present the idea that there is some sort of "secret understanding" of modern marketing that only you have clicked into is disingenuous.

You are taking all of this too personally, Floyd. Chill. It's not about you.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

That works for you. It doesn't work for me. Different strokes.


Then why do you endlessly knock the next guy?

Dave

Then maybe you need to quit addresses me and my "heydays" and methods.... duh!!!

Not to change the subject, but what do most artists that sell a piece for millions have in common?

They're dead.

Even the strong don't survive. I think I like being small.

There are between 3 and a hundred artists still alive selling some of their art at over $1 million.

Koons and Hirst are not alone.

Addition there are Chinese artists coming into the market with $1 million pieces.

Dave

Oh true enough!

Those two are sculpture artists. They tend to do better than painters anyway.

Dave, that's interesting you say that. I have also noticed a lot of Chinese artists taking really the art world by storm, making a name for themselves and money as well.

Yep the month of April's highest priced painting or art work went for $18 million. I thought it was shockingly poor. That was in the Hong Kong market.
Dave

Dave, another thing I've noticed is that the most expensive living artists produce art that looks "shockingly poor."

Correct me if I'm wrong. I love being corrected.

Lisa,

It is all full of paradoxes. Koons' work is basically proofs, like proof coins. If they get a single finger print on them they are ruined completely. Next to worthless.

Koons early in his production of these sculptures had a blemish on a steel eggshell. He spent $35k on buffing it out to no avail. The works individually go for over $1 million and are made in sets of different colors.

He literally is coining money.

His work is impressive. Will it be worth anything 200 years from now? Possibly not. The Contemporary movement is in its waning days market wise. The prices have begun to drop in the NYC and London markets. People with all sorts of stuff now call themselves contemporary artists the way others called themselves modern artists, hoping the money will rub off.

I just posted an ArtNet link about a week ago on the forgotten later Romantic period. Now totally forgotten because the impressionists took over in the history books. Getting in late in the game means getting forgotten.

JMO

Dave