Connecting With Buyers Online

image by Rafakoy

I received this email from a reader:

“What if I am someone who absolutely despises social media such as Facebook? I can tolerate blogging perhaps, and am in the process of a website, but Twitter, Facebook and the like seem to me very false forms of getting connected. I want to be authentic with my customers, and that feels the opposite to me. Do you have any suggestions as to how I turn this into something positive for people looking at my work?”

This is a very real concern for many people. Digital mediums of communication are a barrier to connection for many artists. For someone who spends all of their time in a very tactile, analog world, digital communication can seem ephemeral and fleeting.It’s tempting to abandon the medium as so much dross and go back to doing things the way that they’ve always been done: send out mailings, find an artist’s representative, and hope your gallery works out.

Several major news organizations have done stories on “Digital Natives.” These are people who have grown up always connected to Wifi and for whom Facebook, text messaging, and Twitter are how they make real connections with people. It’s obviously important to make sure that your art connects with these people. The challenge is learning to speak their language.

Of course, most of the Digital Natives are not yet old enough to be substantial art buyers. The challenge is that there are many people, perhaps even close to a majority of people, who do nearly all of their communicating via social networks and email. People read and browse the web while bored at work. There are 500 million people on Facebook and the majority of Facebook’s users log in every other day, spending nearly an hour on the site.

Social Can Be A Real Communication Channel

While someone who doesn’t use Facebook might not get it, there is obviously some emotional need being met by connecting with others on Facebook and other social networks. Real, fulfilling communication is happening there.

There’s a lot of noise out there, to be sure. I have over 2,000 Twitter followers, and nearly 900 Facebook friends. There are 400 fans of The Abundant Artist on Facebook. There’s no way that I can build a personal, one-to-one connection with every single person that I have contact with online. There’s not enough time in the day.  I can, however, conduct my business in such a way as to make others feel like I’m being genuine and that I am truly attempting to connect with them. Here’s how I do it:

1. I think about what my connections want. I may want to sell art, but my customers want something else. They want to know about the background of the art, the inspiration behind it, and your background. They want to know how it’s going to look in their home or office. They want to see it and they want to know what other people think.

2. I think about what I can provide to them. I want to give them all of the information that I can – and I want to do it in a way that is uniquely me. That could mean entertaining, honest, heart felt, controversial, or any number of other ways. The idea is that you give them what they need in a way that you feel comfortable delivering it.

3. I set aside time to interact. People get overwhelmed by the idea of marketing on social sites. It’s a never ending stream of people talking. You can’t read it all. You shouldn’t read it all. 15 – 20 minutes in the morning of dedicated time. 15 – 20 minutes in the afternoon. Start there. Stay disciplined. Share some links to your stuff, and to other stuff that’s relevant to your audience. Comment on relevant blogs. Respond to what your audience is saying to you, and respond to public conversations that they are having.

4. I personalize communication. Technology is a marvelous tool. If you subscribe to my newsletter, you know that I use name insertions to start each newsletter off with your name. In my writing I use the pronouns ‘you’ and ‘I.’ Even though the newsletter goes out to everyone, I still consistently receive replies from artists as though I sent the email to them directly.

5. I make myself as available as I can. I respond to those responses I get from my newsletter. If someone emails me, I almost always respond within the day, if not within the week, unless I’m away on vacation (and then I have an auto-responder). I’m on Twitter to chat throughout the day. I designate time to be on Facebook. There’s a contact form on my website. There’s a phone number too.

6. I cut myself some slack. You’ve probably heard this story a hundred times. Someone runs up to a celebrity on the street or after a performance and they get the cold shoulder. They go around telling everyone that celebrity is uptight, a real b***h. What they don’t know is that person was having a bad day/exhausted/found out their friend died, etc. Whenever you start to gain a little notoriety, someone is going to tear you down. You can’t smooth it over with everyone. It’s just not possible. Even Jesus, the Son of God, gets bad press.

I’d be interested to hear from other artists – how do you connect personally with your audience?