Wednesday, March 25, 2009

getting the word out




Mom & best friends might know you're in some sorta arty biz, but if they are the only ones who know, you will soon be outta business.

Tell absolutely everybody who might even be remotely interested about your business and what you're selling.

Word-of mouth only a small part of a marketing plan!

A targeted way to get the word out is through electronic newsletters through websites like ConstantContact. Do status updates on FaceBook, join LinkedIn and learn to Twitter---this is advice I should follow---I'm going to join Twitter this afternoon and start tweeting!

Blast the world with news of your business. Follow up with phone calls and e-mail. Make appointment to meet with people who might be able to send biz your way.

Send serious or wacky bits of this and that--anything connected with the idea of your biz.

...oh yeah, and have fun getting the word out.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Art & biz - the 1st step.


There are a few artist who win the "Famous Artist" lottery and actually make a living making their art.

This blog is for the rest of us who make a living outside the art world. We are the artists in the material world and we don't have MBA's!

...but we do have imagination and ideas. However, the path from artist to business can be circuitous.


When I started my business, AvantGarb, I thought I was going to be a costume design studio for avant garde theater. It seems the cosmos had a slightly different idea. AvantGarb's first job was to create a large, wearable chocolate chip cookie for a very small cookie company, my second job was Captain H-P for Hewlett-Packard.

It turned out, I was in the mascot business.

The big decision is to make your art work become your business.

There will be a few twists and turns. You will probably tweak and refine your original idea. We tweak and refine our art. That's how artists do business.