As a not-for-profit organization, YES (Youth Employment Services) enriches the community by providing English-language support services to help Quebecers find employment and start and grow businesses. It offers a broad range of employment-related programs, including an Entrepreneurship Program for those looking to start or grow their own business and an Artists’ Program, which is designed to help artists find work or create their own employment opportunities. YES (Youth Employment Services) 666 Sherbrooke St. West, Suite 700 Montreal, QC H3A 1E7 Tel.: 514-878-9788 Fax: 514-878-9950 www.yesmontreal.ca info@yesmontreal.ca
Business Skills for Creative Souls The Essential Artist’s Handbook Copyright © 2015 by YES (Youth Employment Services) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published by YES (Youth Employment Services) 666 Sherbrooke St. West, Suite 700 Montreal, QC H3A 1E7 Telephone: 514-878-9788 E-mail: info@yesmontreal.ca Business Skills for Creative Souls: The Essential Artist’s Handbook seeks to assist artists by providing information which may help them establish their artistic careers and businesses. The opinions contained herein are those of the individuals expressing them only and consequently, neither the contributors nor YES (Youth Employment Services) shall be held liable for any error therein or damages resulting from the use or transmission of said information. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Business skills for creative souls : the essential artist’s handbook / YES. -- Updated edition. Includes bibliographical references. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-9681946-4-5 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-0-9681946-5-2 (epub) 1. Art--Vocational guidance--Québec (Province). 2. Art--Québec (Province)--Marketing. 3. Art--Economic aspects--Québec (Province). 4. Artists--Québec (Province)--Montréal--Interviews. I. YES Montréal, author, issuing body N8353.B88 2015
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C2015-901816-1 C2015-901817-X
Printed in Canada. Book design and typesetting by YES (Youth Employment Services)
YES acknowledges the generous support of The Counselling Foundation of Canada in the production of this book.
CHAPTERS IN THE COMPLETE HANDBOOK GETTING STARTED >> Lessons From A Career Counsellor >> Having A Game Plan – The Nuts & Bolts >> Taking Stock – Self-Assessment Exercise >> Developing a Job Search Strategy
MAKING IT HAPPEN MARKETING YOUR ART >> Creating Buzz with Traditional Media >> Creating Buzz Online >> Networking Basics for Artists MONEY MATTERS >> Pricing and Profit >> Budgeting Basics >> Financing Your Work >> Crowdfunding for Fun and Profit LEGAL BASICS FOR ARTISTS >> Artists and the Law >> Bibliography ACCOUNTING FOR YOUR ART >> Accounting Basics for Artists
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CHAPTERS IN THE COMPLETE HANDBOOK LESSONS FROM THE REAL WORLD FOR FASHION DESIGNERS FOR FILMMAKERS >> Bonus Article: Become a Better Film and TV Networker FOR MUSICIANS >> Bonus Article: 19 Ways to Make Money with Your Music FOR NEW MEDIA ARTISTS FOR PERFORMERS >> Bonus Article: The Other Side of the Casting Couch FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS FOR VISUAL ARTISTS >> Bonus Article: Building Your Etsy Empire is about Being Social FOR WRITERS >> Bonus Article: A Publisher’s Perspective
RESOURCES
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CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS BOOK ADVISORY COMMITTEE Dave Cool Jeanette Kelly Victoria LeBlanc Monika Majewski Guy Rodgers Linda Rutenberg Clare Schapiro Lori Schubert Ezra Soiferman Iris Unger
PRODUCTION TEAM Head Writer, Editor, and Interviewer Liz Ulin Writer (2004 Edition) Caralee Salomon Copy Editor May Antaki Director, Creative Design, and Digital Production Catherine Brisindi Graphic Design and Typesetting Marc Wrobel Yes would like to express its gratitude to the many people who have given generously of their time and expertise to help make this book and the original edition possible. They agreed to be interviewed or provided articles that inspired elements of this book.
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CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CONTRIBUTORS Ev Adad Norma Andreu Tony Asimakopoulos Mila Aung-Thwin John Aylen Amy Blackmore Misstress Barbara Bonfiglio Patricia Chica Karen Cho Nancy Cleman Chuck Comeau Dave Cool Simon Dardick Nathalie Dion Joey Elias Bettina Forget Steve Galluccio Jennifer Gasoi Manika Gaudet Holly Gauthier-Frankel Tali Goldstein Adad Hannah Mitch Joel Elaine Kalman Naves Morgan Kennedy Andrea Kenyon Lorraine Klaasen Sam Lackman
Tristan D. Lalla Roger Lemoyne Paul Litherland G. Scott MacLeod Anissa Marcanio Monika Majewski Marisa Minicucci Susan Molnar Katie Moore Elise Moser Marcel Mueller Jill Murray Andy Nulman Heather O’Neill Monique Polak Hilary Radley Rommel Romero Linda Rutenberg Sugar Sammy Damian Siqueiros Ezra Soiferman Rachel Stephan Jacob Tierney Kevin Tierney David Usher Kerry Williams Nikki Yanofsky
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
We have attempted to acknowledge all those involved and regret any accidental omissions. 7
CREATING BUZZ ONLINE SAMPLE CHAPTER
CREATING BUZZ ONLINE by Dave Cool, Director of Artist Relations for Bandzoogle
PART 1. WHY YOU NEED A WEBSITE Do you really need a website for your career in the arts? With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and other free platforms, you might think that owning your own .COM website isn’t necessary. However, having a proper website is still important, and it should be seen as the central hub of your online presence. Here’s why: >> You Own the Address First and foremost, you own your .COM address. As long as you renew it, it will always point to your website. This is powerful, as you are guaranteed to own that little slice of the Internet. Even if you switch companies that host your website, your .COM can be transferred, so people will always be able to find you. >> You Own the Experience With your website you also own the experience. You can control what people see, and the messaging that you send to them. You can present your story and your art however you want, with no sudden changes, no ads and distractions, and no design limits. >> Professionals Expect to Find You There If you’re serious about your art, having a well designed website with great content will make you appear professional and dedicated. When people search for you online, they’ll expect to find you at yourname.com.
PART 2. BUILDING A GREAT WEBSITE When building your website, there are a few important things to keep in mind to ensure you’re making the most impact and giving a great impression to visitors. >> Use Professional Photos The importance of using professional photos for your website cannot be overstated. Great photos can create a positive first impression, but if the images on your website look unprofessional, people might not take you or your art seriously. 11
CREATING BUZZ ONLINE >> Make a Strong Home Page Your home page is usually the first page visitors to your website will see, so it’s important to make sure that you have the right elements in place to grab their attention, make a strong first impression, and keep them on your site. Include a strong visual for your header or background image, a short bio, some latest news, and a strong call-to-action. A call-to-action is designed to direct people’s attention to something specific that you want them to do while on your website. It could be to sign up to your mailing list, check out your portfolio, buy your new album, or watch your latest video. >> Include the Best of the Basics In addition to a strong home page, you should include tabs navigating people to samples of your best work, a selection of articles you’ve been featured in or events you’ve been part of, an updated calendar of where your work can be seen or heard, and a way to contact you. >> Keep Navigation Simple Make navigating your website easy for everyone who visits your site. People have very short attention spans, and not a lot of time. If they have to think about what content *might* be in a certain section of your site because the name is fancy/cute/artsy, chances are, they’re going to skip it. Save the creativity for your art; your website is your business. >> Keep It Updated Your website shouldn’t be a static flyer online. If a returning visitor doesn’t find anything new on your website, the chances of them coming back are pretty slim. Add new content on a regular basis, which can be a blog post, photos, an update to your portfolio, new music, or a new video. If your site isn’t easy to update yourself, consider changing to a service that is. There are lots of options that make updating websites painless.
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CREATING BUZZ ONLINE PART 3. THE IMPORTANCE OF FAN ENGAGEMENT Once you’ve built your .COM real-estate, you’ll want to show it off. It’s not enough to depend on live shows and public readings to keep you in the public eye. That’s where social media comes in. Artists are busy people. Often they’re involved in several projects, have day jobs, families, or all of the above. So whenever there is talk about social media, and marketing in general, it’s understandable that it can be a little overwhelming. It takes a lot of work just for the artistic side of things, but the reality is that it’s no longer enough to write, rehearse, create, and perform to develop a sustainable career. Fan interaction has become part of the job description for today’s artists. Here are three reasons why it’s important to interact with your fans: >> Interaction Keeps Fans Aware of You The biggest reason to interact with your fans is to keep them aware of you and your art. With countless other artists out there, you can easily get lost in the noise if you aren’t interacting with your fans regularly. >> Engagement Solidifies Relationships More and more, fans want to feel a direct connection to the artists themselves. Every time a fan makes a comment or asks a question on your blog or through social media, you have the chance to respond and make them feel like they’re an active part of your career. >> Communication Creates “Super Fans” As you solidify your relationship with fans, some of them will become “super fans.” These are the fans who will buy almost everything you release. More importantly, these are the fans who are going to talk about you and promote you. Whereas marketing used to focus on finding ways to communicate the value of your art to potential fans and buyers, now the key is getting fans themselves to communicate the value of your art to other people. People are tuning out ads and giving more weight to the recommendations of their friends for what movies to watch, which books to read, and what music to listen to. Developing a relationship with your fans by interacting with them on a regular basis is one of the best ways to create that kind of word-of-mouth marketing. 13
CREATING BUZZ ONLINE PART 4. DEVELOPING AN ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY But how often should this be done? Can managers, agents, or interns handle fan engagement for you? Here are a few things to keep in mind when developing a strategy for fan engagement: >> Be Authentic First and foremost, communication with your fans must come from you, the artist, in your voice. People aren’t interested in hearing generic updates from your manager, an intern, or your sister-in-law. They want to get to know your personality, hear about your experiences. Essentially, fans want to feel like they’re on the journey of your career along with you. >> Be Consistent Consistency is key when it comes to engaging with your fans. You can’t post an update on Facebook and then disappear for several weeks. People will likely stop paying attention if you don’t have a consistent presence. There are tons of distractions out there, so to truly break through the clutter, you have to be consistent. Take some time every day to check your social media profiles, respond to fans, ask questions, and start conversations. >> Sustain It! Finally, when it comes to fan engagement, you have to sustain it over the long- term. Don’t expect immediate results. It might take months of being consistent to start seeing more quality interactions with your fans, which in turn could lead to new fans. If you engage with your fans in some way every day, and you sustain that over months and years, you will no doubt develop a solid fan base. >> Never Leave Your Fans Hanging One last important thing to keep in mind when it comes to fan engagement: never leave a fan hanging. If they email you, email back. If they leave a comment on Facebook, respond, or at least “Like” it. If they reply or ask a question on Twitter, reply back. A short answer or a quick thank you can go a long way in making that fan feel special.
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CREATING BUZZ ONLINE PART 5. USE A FACEBOOK PAGE NOT A PROFILE Facebook is the biggest social media site out there. We love to hate it, but the reality is that Facebook is an essential marketing tool for artists, as it’s likely where you’ll find most of your fans. But before you start planning a Facebook strategy, make sure you’re using a Facebook Page, not a personal profile. Here’s why: >> No “Friend” Limit Facebook Pages don’t have a limit on the amount of fans you can have. Personal profiles have a limit of 5000 “friends.” >> Separates Personal and Professional Having a page is a great way to keep your personal and professional lives separate. As you become successful this will become more important. >> Analytics and Insights Offered Page Insights can be a powerful tool to let you know where your fans are from, who are the most engaged, and what kind of content is working best (photos, videos, text, etc). >> Promoted Posts With Pages, you can “promote” a post so that it reaches more people. >> Ads Available Having a Page allows you to use Facebook Ads. You can use ads to promote your page and increase “likes,” as well as promote products and events. You can even target specific geographic regions, demographics, and interests.
PART 6. FIVE THINGS YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE SHOULD HAVE When setting up your Facebook page, there are a few things you’ll want to have in place before inviting people to “Like” the page: >> A Custom URL The first thing you should do is customize the URL for your page: www.facebook.com/ username/.
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CREATING BUZZ ONLINE >> Your Branding Your cover photo and profile photo should have a consistent look that matches your other social media profiles. >> Your Bio Include a short bio in the main “About” box that people see right away when landing on your page. Then add a full bio in the “Biography” section. >> Link(s) to Your Website Make sure to include a link to your website after your bio in the About box, in your Bio, and in the Contact Info section. >> Career Highlights Use the Timeline feature to tell the story of your career. Add significant highlights and events from when you first started until the present.
PART 7. FACEBOOK POSTING QUICK TIPS Another reason Facebook is great for fan engagement is because it’s free. But as we all know, free is rarely ever truly free, and Facebook is no different. There are lots of ads and distractions vying to grab people’s attention. More importantly, due to Facebook’s algorithms, only a small percent of your fans see your posts. Here are a few tips that will help increase the engagement and visibility of your posts: >> Spread Your Posts Out When posting updates on your Page, be sure to spread them out. Updates don’t necessarily appear right away in the newsfeed, as the Facebook algorithm needs time to measure engagement of each post. So if you post too many updates close to one another, Facebook will likely ignore the ones with less engagement. You should leave at least a few hours between posts. >> Use Images Images get much more engagement (likes, comments, and shares) than simple text posts. So whenever you’re posting an update, try to use some kind of image or photo along with it.
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CREATING BUZZ ONLINE >> Highlight Important Posts Use Facebook’s “highlight” function to give more visibility for important posts on your page. >> Promote Big Events For big career highlights, you can consider promoting the post. Spending money on promoting posts can add up quickly, so save this only for really important announcements.
PART 8. TWITTER BASICS FOR ARTISTS Twitter is a social media platform that is all about short-form communication. With a maximum of 140 characters per tweet, it’s a great way to quickly promote your career and interact with your fans. Here’s how you can set up your Twitter profile in four essential steps: >> Select a Consistent Username Your Twitter username should be consistent with your other online profiles. If your Facebook page is Facebook.com/Artistname, then your Twitter handle should be @ Artistname. >> Upload a Profile Image The default profile image when you create a Twitter account is an egg. People generally don’t follow accounts with the egg as the profile image. You likely won’t be taken seriously, or people will think your account is spam. Upload your own profile image before starting to use Twitter. >> Add Your Bio Twitter gives you 160 characters for your profile’s bio. It might not seem like a lot of space, but you can make someone curious about your career and give them a real sense of your personality within those 160 characters. >> Include a Link to Your Website Twitter allows you to enter a link that will appear under your bio. There is only one link you should have, which is to your own website. Send people to your site where they can sign up to your mailing list, read your blog, watch your videos, and shop at your online store. 17
CREATING BUZZ ONLINE PART 9. USING TWITTER Twitter allows up to 140 characters per tweet, and should be used for shorter, more frequent updates. How often should you tweet? Whereas on Facebook you can get away with one update per day or every couple of days, tweeting several times a day is not only okay, it’s almost expected. Some artists tweet six to ten times throughout the day, others only once or twice. Just be sure to spread your tweets out and mix it up between personal and promotional tweets. >> Talk the Talk Twitter also has its own language and etiquette. Here are some actions you’ll be taking on Twitter that are important to understand: >> Reply If you hit “Reply,” you’ll be responding directly to someone on Twitter. The tweet will start with their Twitter @username, and only people who follow both you and that other person will be able to see that tweet in their stream. >> Mention If you want to mention another Twitter user and have everyone who follows you see it, make sure that your tweet doesn’t start with their Twitter @username. You can simply add a “.” before their username, or include their username somewhere later in the tweet. >> Retweet (RT) To “Retweet” someone is similar to forwarding an email; you’re sharing someone’s tweet with your followers. You can simply hit Retweet so that the person’s tweet appears exactly as it is to your followers. On the mobile Twitter app, they give you the option to “Quote Tweet,” which puts the original tweet in quotations and you can add your own comment after. On other Twitter applications like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, and Echofon, you can Retweet (RT) and add your own comment before the original tweet. >> Use #hashtags A hashtag is the pound # sign followed by a word or group of words. The hashtag is automatically hyperlinked, creating a new search stream if you click on it. That stream will include all tweets using that hashtag. It’s a great way to be found on Twitter, start conversations, and join in other conversations with users who don’t follow you. 18
CREATING BUZZ ONLINE >> Favourite You can click to “Favourite” a tweet, which in some applications is done by clicking a star. This has become similar to the “Like” button on Facebook. This can be a great way to quickly acknowledge a fan who compliments you on Twitter.
PART 10. USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO DIRECT TRAFFIC Social media sites come and go (remember Myspace?), so it’s important to still drive fans back to your own website. With your website, you own that slice of the Internet. You also control the experience fans have on your site (no ads or distractions), as well as the data you collect from it. Here are some ideas on how to drive traffic back to your own website: >> Link to Your Bio Make sure to at least include a link to your website in the About box, in the Bio section of your Twitter profile, and in the Contact Info section of your Facebook page. >> Direct Traffic with Photos Do you have a lot of great photos from your last event? Instead of uploading them all to Facebook, post one or two, and then provide a link to the full gallery on your website. And provide a link to the gallery for your Twitter followers. >> Use Blog Post Teasers Whenever you have a new blog post, post a brief description to your Facebook page with a link to drive fans back to your site to read it. And tweet a link and invite your followers to read the post. >> Entice with New Creative Content Have some new merchandise or a new creative work? Tweet a link to your online store. And post an image on Facebook with a link taking fans away from that noisy environment to shop in peace and quiet. >> Don’t Forget: Social Media is a Conversation Tool The most important thing to remember when using Twitter or Facebook (or any social media platform), is that it’s a tool for conversation. Use it to show fans who you are and what you’re all about, not simply to promote to them. A big part of conversation is actively interacting with fans. Answer their questions, “like” their comments, and thank them for compliments. Facebook, for instance, gives priority to updates 19
CREATING BUZZ ONLINE that have a lot of engagement, so the more you do this, the more fans will see your updates. If used properly on a consistent basis, social media can help you build a following of loyal and engaged fans. Dave Cool is Director of Artist Relations for musician website and marketing platform Bandzoogle. Find more of his writing at: www.bandzoogle.com/blog and at www.davecool.ca.
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