Art Career Experts » 1st Turning Point

Re-energizing your Marketing Details

ace — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:00:34 +0000

February brings semi-panic to those artists who have not created any type of business plan or course of action for the year and are just about ready to throw up their hands and say “Forget it! This is just too hard!”

Well sure it takes time to think about your career but that’s part of real life and any profession. Planning a course of action is not such an unknown that you don’t know what to do.

This challenge is one of those procrastination events that frequent our lives. We all know, that the “thinking about doing it” is always worse than the “doing it!”

I am staff columnist for a writer’s group and the link below will take you to the last 3 articles that I have written for them (as will , ahem, OUR Art Career Experts newsletters!) The title articles are conveniently labeled below that! Now see how simple it is?

http://1stturningpoint.com/?cat=2056

Artist Business Cards—Four Tips for a Powerful Marketing Tool

Artists: Learn to Sell the Sizzle First, Not the Steak!

5 Ways to Get More People Reading Your Email Newsletters

Selling virtually anywhere!

theresa — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 13:42:38 +0000

” First, I want you to know that I don’t consider myself as a salesman or a promoter. Who am I? I am an author who writes pretty good books; that’s it. When I said it was a matter of perception, I didn’t mean people’s perception of me—it’s my perception of them. When I am at a book signing, the people there aren’t there because of me; they are there because of my books. They don’t care what’s inside me. They care what’s inside my books. At a book signing, the questions have nothing to do with the author; it’s about the book, or future books….”, says John Foxglove in his excellent article on 1st Turning Point “How to sell Used Cars.”

This guy is humble, funny and has an amazing story to share…so what if he is a writer? Everything he shares pertains to artists as well! Read the entire article here: http://1stturningpoint.com/?p=4965

Browse through the many articles on 1st Turning Point where I am a columnist. Relevant materials for authors, artists and musicians!

And, hey relax! Opportunity is everywhere!

Looking Good the First Time

ace — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:53:09 +0000

LOL-There is nothing to add to this excellent article on making sure what you write is proofed before publishing on your web or blog! So whether you write, paint, sculpt or create sculptural ping pong balls, the point is to present yourself in a good light in all that you do! I have posted the entire article for you to enjoy. -Theresa

Looking Good the First Time

Posted By Eilis Flynn on September 2, 2010

Author Eilis Flynn: The Reality Beyond

If you don’t bother to sepll-cehck, nobody’s going to take you seriously

As a copy editor, the one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that everybody thinks that their spelling and grammar and punctuation are just fine. “Oh, you don’t have to do anything to my work,” they always say, sometimes with a smirk. “My mom’s always said that my writing was so good!”

Well, guess what? Your mom lied. Your work needs editing. It needs to have the spelling double-checked (and no, if you’re an American, you can’t use British spelling, and no, you can’t just randomly capitalize words because you think it looks neat), the grammar double-checked (and since grammar is no longer being taught in schools, double-double-checked), and if you can’t figure out when to use a semicolon and when to use a colon, why would you think they’re interchangeable and everyone else is wrong when they say they’re not?

Anyway, as you might have gathered, I think it’s fair to say that everyone, and I mean everyone, needs to have their work proofed and read by someone else. This needs to happen simply because your work—your writing—is the face by which you want to be known. And if your work is littered with misspellings, poor grammar choices, and illiterate attempts at punctuation, your work doesn’t come off so good. Spell-check, while it is a wonderful stopgap measure, can’t do it all. First of all, remember that the feature was designed by engineers, and engineers are notoriously poor in their spelling, grammar, and punctuation choices. And second, spell-check was designed to make sure that the words being used in the document are real. Whether the words are appropriate in the document, again, that’s not spell-check’s job; it’s yours.

Haven’t you ever looked at a website that’s littered with typos and grammatical errors and winced? Of course you have. Everyone has. And if that website’s a retail site, trying to entice you to buy something, haven’t you had second thoughts about buying? After all, if the website owner can’t be bothered to check for spelling and grammatical mistakes, who knows what else they aren’t bothering to do? That goes for your writing, too.

So do yourself a favor. Read and proofread your work. Learn the grammatical rules and apply them to your own work. Punctuation isn’t just a suggestion, it’s a given. Make your writing the best it can be by making it the easiest to read. Or I’ll hunt you down and I will use my red pen on your work. Don’t think I won’t.