Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

My mom set up a Facebook group for our family because there are a lot of us and it’s way easier to post “Hey, it’s so-and-so’s birthday next week. Come by at 3.” as opposed to making a dozen or more phone calls to everybody. Well, we had one such event a couple of weekends ago, my grandmother’s 91st birthday. Yes, you heard that right. She is 91 years old. That means she was alive before the first TV remote control.

You might be thinking, “Send invitations, like in the olden days. If you don’t know what an invitation is just ask your grandmother about them.” To which I’d reply, no. The group isn’t just to announce parties. With this many people (16 adults and 8 children) somebody is bound to leave something behind, which is exactly why my mom’s most recent post was about a pair of forgotten sunglasses. And who sends invites to announce a lost pair of glasses? Exactly.

Oh yeah, for this to make sense, you have to know that we all call my grandmother “Nanny”, which I am almost certain was something she came up with to sound less old.
Grandma = Wrinkly Old Lady
Nanny = Scarlett Johansson

So, my mom posted something on our family group about finding a pair of sunglasses and also mentioned that Nanny had been to the doctor, which resulted in the following comments. Please take notice of the time when I joined in.

It’s been two days and Aaron still hasn’t responded. Aaron, if you’re out there…

If you’ve been missing Claassen Gallery status updates (or any other pages you follow) you need to visit those pages, hover over the like button and choose “show in news feed” option.

That should do the trick. Please spread the word!

Go to the Claassen FB Page now to update so you don’t miss out on any news.

Thanks much!
– Jeff

I decided to experiment on Saturday. The experiment was promoting an “item of the day”, which was a print marked down 50% for one day only. I posted a link to it on my FB Fan Page. As you can see from the screenshot, only 403 people saw the post out of a potential 2,300 people that have liked my page. (This was four hours after posting. It’s Monday now and only an additional 103 have seen the post. Obviously, the first couple of hours will be the time your post gets the most views.)

In the next screenshot, which is from my Etsy stats, out of the 403 people that saw the post on FB only 18 people clicked the link to see my “item of the day”.

Out of the 18 people that looked at the actual item in my etsy shop none of them took advantage of the 50% off deal. You win some, you lose some.

Naturally, there are an enormous amount of factors to consider:
– Posting on a Saturday might not be the best day because more people are away from their computers than on a weekday.
– Time of day that I posted was possibly a time where less people are online.
– Perhaps the item I chose to promote isn’t a popular one. Then again, maybe it is, but it might be more popular in a different format like a limited edition print on wood with resin coating as opposed to the open edition that I was promoting.
– It’s the end of the month too, which could mean people aren’t spending money on artwork because they have rent due in a few days.
– With the amount of people on FB it’s highly likely that my post simply got buried on people’s home page within a minute or two.
– I only posted the link once. It would have gotten more views if I posted the link every few hours.
– And the list goes on and on.

My main point though is the number of click throughs. I have 2,300 “likes” on FB, which I think is a lot. I know it’s nowhere near the high profile “rockstar” artists, but it’s certainly more than a lot of other fan pages on Facebook. The thing is though, out of 2,300 people I only managed to get 18 of them to click on the link and to look at the item I was promoting. How many people would have had to see the item before a purchase was made…19…20…300? We may never know.

Armed with this information what is a DIY professional to do? First and foremost, it’s good practice to not let stuff like this get you down. It’s completely irrational to get upset because people don’t buy your creations. And when 18 out of a possible 2,300 click on your link you need to keep in mind that 18 is better than zero. You must forge ahead and keep at it.

Naturally, you might be asking yourself, “is it worth it?” In the big picture I would have to say yes. Simply because there are too many factors to say this particular promotion was a failure. I could try the same promotion with a different item and have totally different results. Possibly better results or maybe worse results. I could even do the same exact promotion with the same exact item and end with different results by posting on a Monday as opposed to a Saturday.

In conclusion, I think it’s best to continually experiment with promoting. Who’s to say that one of those 18 people won’t come back and make a purchase later?

Any thoughts, comments, ideas, past experience with your own FB promoting…I’d love to hear them.

The Facebook app is pretty easy to navigate for personal use. For those of us that created a Facebook Page for our business you might have had trouble with a few things. If you’re like me there’s a good chance you asked yourself, “How can I add a photo to my Facebook Page?” It seemed like the only thing possible was to add a photo to your personal page and hope that members of your business page also followed your personal page. Ahh, but what then would be the point of having a business page. One loophole I found was that you could upload a photo to Flickr using the Flickr app and then post a link to it on the wall of your business page. The problem there is that it doesn’t show up in any of your Facebook photo albums and the picture will get buried with each new wall post.

Well, I finally clicked around enough to find out how to add photos to my business page. It’s pretty easy and I’m surprised it took me this long to figure it out.

First, open the Facebook app.

Tap in the “search” bar and click on the “pages” tab.

Type the name of your page. In my case it’s “The Claassen Gallery“. Choose your page when you see it show up in the drop down menu.

Now you should be on your business page. Tap the “Share Photo” option on the left side. This is the part I can’t believe I missed before.

Pick your option. I went with “Choose From Library” because I tend to take photos of stuff before I open the app.

Choose your album.

Choose the photo you’d like on your Facebook Page.

Tap the “write a caption” option.

I highly suggest leaving a caption for all photos you put online.

Now check the spelling on your caption and tap that fancy “upload” button.

And there you go! The photo will post on the wall of your business/fan page and will also be added to the “Wall Photos” album of your page.

When you’re back on a your regular computer or on the desktop version of Facebook you can edit your photo album and move your recent “wall photo” to a more appropriate album. In my case, when I get a chance I’ll have to move this photo over to the “Art Supplies” album, but for now at least it’s on my page.

Hope this helps!
Jeff

It’s that time again! What time? Auction time!

In September 2009 I collaborated with my friends at Picking Daisies on one of a kind napkins. We made 50 and I’ve been holding on to the last four…until now!

This set of four is up for auction on The Claassen Gallery Facebook Fan Page.

For more info about this auction and how to get in on the action please visit the facebook fan page.

Thanks for looking and happy bidding!
– Jeff

Ok, if you’re an artist and you don’t have a Facebook Fan Page now is the time to set one up. This post isn’t about how to set up a fan page. You can find all you need to know about that on Facebook. So, once you have your page all set up you need to get the word out and get some fans. Somehow this “Suggest To Friends” link went unnoticed to me for months until a friend of mine pointed it out.

When you click that link this window pops up.

All of the friends you have in your personal profile will show up in this box. If you look close you’ll notice that some of the profiles are faded, those friends have already become fans or “liked” your page. Click on all the profiles that have not “liked” your page yet. Once they are all highlighted click the “send invitations” link. Obviously, the more friends you have on your personal page the more fans you’ll be able to get on your fan page. If you can get your friends and family to use the “suggest to friends” feature you’re sure to get a lot more people visiting your fan page.

When my friend first showed me this feature I had about 600 “fans”. Luckily, I had a lot of friends to suggest my page to. After I sent the invitations my number of fans jumped up to over 1,200 in a couple of days. About once a month I use the “suggest to friends” feature because I get new friends on my personal profile that might not know about my fan page.

Keep in mind it’s nice to reciprocate. If any of your friends have fan pages be sure to “suggest” their page to all your friends too. No need to be greedy. The more fans we all have the more exposure we’ll all get.

You can see the fan page for my gallery at www.facebook.com/theclaassengallery.