The new president of the International Society of Caricature Artists of which I belong recently posted this helpful article about promoting your business.


Promoting your business 
 
Hello everyone, I am asked a lot about how I secure
the gigs that I do and how can I help others who want more live gig
work.

Well I though I would put a headline response here in this post
that I hope will be of help to anyone who is wanting to promote their
business!

So lets start by understanding that what you need to do is
promote and share the services you are offering for hire to
customers.

Try not to see it as getting more work as you will always be
looking for results immediately and will no doubt be disappointed very
quickly.

The good news is that many promotional opportunities are
internet based and often free of charge!

So you are looking to to achieve
the goal of creating a shop window for your services on the internet. How? Well
here are the places you should be:

Facebook - Create a personal
page that your customers can connect to you with, it works and is great fun! You
can also go on from there to create a group or fanpage if you want to but start
with the personal page first.

Twitter - get yourself on Twitter
and use it! How? Here is the secret, you want to build an audience that follows
your tweets and who will be happy to click through on any links you tweet. This
is powerful and can really help push traffic to your website! Look out for a
future article on Twitter in the EF later this year!

Website - How
is yours? When was the last time you updated it? Moving on from that, have you
got your website plastered all over the internet, if not why not? You should
look at websites that allow you to get listed for free, for example some
directory sites for wedding services offer a free listing! Get listed and then
add a link back to them on your website as well!

LinkedIn - Again,
get yourself listed here for free and create the profile page. Use it and
connect to people, ISCA members and many others!

Blog - Run a blog
and use it regularly!

Now I hear you say, "I am already on these but they
don't seem to work?"

OK, let me give you some thoughts to
consider.

Build an audience on these websites. With your facebook page
you need to either request a friendship connection to someone or receive and
accept a friendship request. SO how do you get people to connect to you on
FB?

First you will want two groups of people to make friends
with:

1. Family and close friends
2. Customers, old current and
new!

Group 1 you can do by talking to them direct and connect on
FB.

Group 2 is by telling them you want to connect on FB, so on all your
correspondence with your customers, make sure you have it printed that you are
on FB and would like to make friends with them!

Next step is once you
start to make friends you need to add content to your page that will be
interesting and of use to people.

So posting stuff should look like....:
post about how you draw (tutorial type posts), what is coming up in your diary
and where you are going (profile type posts), what you like and recommend to
people (review type posts), the area where you live, whats it like? (General
stuff)

Stay away from the hard sell stuff that just turns people off.
Keep it interesting and soon you will find it working but keep in mind this is a
marketing tool and a way to promote your services over the long haul, so be
realistic and do not expect overnight results, do not give up, instead keep
building your audience.

The above applies to Twitter, LinedIn and a
blog.

Use these tools that are also FREE to build your audience. It
simply requires some of your time and you can spend as little or as much time as
you wish. Remember that the more you invest to this the more you can get
back.

If you have not already done so, add me on these sites as I am
there already!

Build an audience, connect to them with interesting
information, do not hard sell to them, be a positive contributor and become
trusted which leads onto people wanting to click through to links you post and
there you have the magic, the click through is where your next customer could
come from!

When posting links, post them on the subjects you are posting,
not just your own website (remember to keep away from the hard sell), build your
website into the process by using a blog, how? Well...

On your blog post
a subject like the nature trail that is in your county. Interesting information
about something that appeals to a lot of people and many shall want to read all
about that! That is the blog post but on your blog you will be able to add on a
sidebar, adverts about your business and services that visitors can click on. SO
they click to your blog from say FB as you post that you have a blog post on
this subject, the friend reading the FB post will click through to your blog and
read the post there, then if you build your blog in a clever way, they will have
a peek around and possibly click on other links on your blog!

So I hope
you can get a feel for how this works and how powerful it can prove to be! As I
said earlier, it takes time and dedication to do this over the long haul but it
is worth it.

So get cracking and set up your free pages on all these
sites and if you have them already, use them smarter and connect to me
too!

Have fun!


__________________
Steve Hearn
 

Currently I'm busy with a Captain America painting set in WWII, practicing my watercolors and working with sculpture.  We'll see how that pans out.  Now that I take major credit cards you can order more easily on the Contact page.  I look forward to hearing from you!

This is my Captain America painting (of Chris Evans) pre-costume.  I wanted to capture the WWII feel and not the flashy superhero business.  I hope you enjoy it

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