by Natasha Wescoat

As an artist or creative business, one of your main goals is to connect with your audience and collectors. Social media allows us to connect and collaborate on a level we otherwise would’ve never known outside of the web. It allows collectors and fans to connect more intimately with the artist and allows for a stronger relationship with the art itself.

As an artist, I’ve found that Twitter is an excellent place for self promotion and connecting with my audience. The trick is knowing how to use it. As simple as it seems, there are things you should and should not do. To summarize, being relevant, open, sharing, and giving are the best policies for Twitter. Here are 10 ways  artists can better connect with their followers on Twitter.

1. Share your work in progress

Jeremiah Ketner (@smallandround) of SmallandRound.com, a gallery artist, tweets the progress of his work in text and photos, incorporating pictures from Twitpic and Flickr.

2. Share announcements

Anne Leuck Feldhaus (@annesart), an urban pop artist tweets announcements of upcoming art shows and exhibits weeks or months ahead. You will also find Anne live tweeting from the events she shows in.

3. Find and connect

After connecting with their team on Twitter, I formed a business partnership with Black Card Circle and their foundation. As a result of that relationship I am showing my art in exclusive BCC events and donating my work to charities through their company.

4. Share Yourself

5. Research your followers

Use Search.twitter.com to survey what people are thinking about art, or what you do. Answer questions or tweets. Share. I’ve used search to find people who are interested in fine art and pop art. Simply search by keyword for a topic you like or would want to discuss and you will find other people to follow and connect with. Use keywords to find out who their favorite artists are, their favorite colors, or what their lifestyles are like. This gives you an opportunity to analyze the possible audience you can have or do have on Twitter.

6. Offer a collector club

7. Announce site/shop issues

8. Hold Twitter contests

I held a “Twitter Treats” Trivia contest where I broadcasted myself asking trivia questions via Ustream.tv and had my followers answer them on Twitter. Chrysti (@ArtByChrysti), a collage artist, uses Twitter to share her giveaways.

9. Collaborate with other artists or businesses

Artists like Maura McGovern (@mmcgovern and myself) are collaborating on a poster design with other artists for the Social Media For Social Change event this April. Without Twitter, this would have been pretty unlikely.

10. Offer instant commissions and orders

Source: Mashable

Natasha Wescoat is a licensed artist and social media creative at NatashasArtCandy.com utilizing the web to promote her art and connect with her audience. You can follow her on Twitter.

In 1992 I felt far more like John Denver than Rocky. His song about “Some days are diamonds, some days are stones; some days the hard times won’t leave me alone” rang true. I felt burned out, and the whole self employment thing felt like a trap. The grind never stopped. There were calls every day to be returned, estimates to be arranged, clients that wanted changes and additions to the original contract, flawed material from the manufacturer that needed to be replaced, clients that reserved time in my schedule and then cancelled the day before the start date. The worst of all was hanging wall paper that was flawed, and the flaw didn’t show until it was up on the wall and dry. Under those circumstances, the manufacturer’s representative would invariably tell the client that I didn’t know what I was doing.

I thought I could be content with going back to basically punching in at 8:00 in the morning and punching out at 5:00 in the evening, letting the buck stop with someone else, and have the weekend off. I tried being a car salesman, a delivery driver for a snack company, and a salesman for specialized health insurance, among other things. None of it worked, because I wasn’t invested in any of those things. Being self employed was, and still is who I am, even when I’m not working. Why? Because the rules are mine, and reflect my values. I can do whatever is necessary to satisfy my clients. No one is going to keep me from succeeding except me. Even when there were problems and the company reps were bad mouthing me, my clients trusted me. I always did whatever was necessary to complete a job to the clients’ satisfaction. I never worried about lay offs, or outsourcing, or company politics, and I had the authority to modify the grind. There’s nothing more heady, than being responsible and free.

As a popular country song reminds us, “Life is a dance, you learn as you go; sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow.” What I gave the older couple, in the bedroom of their Victorian style home, was exactly what they asked for, which was new wallpaper (Blog #10). What I didn’t give them was an overall view of what else might need to be done so as not to detract from the beauty of new wallpaper. Everything ‘old’ that isn’t redone at the time the new wallpaper is installed will show its age. Then sequence of projects has to be established. Removal of everything old that is going to be updated, then install new carpet, paint ceiling, paint trim, install new wallpaper, install new window treatments, and lastly bring the furniture and accessories back in.

In the end I was a de facto interior decorator (not designer), project manager, quality control agent, salesman and much more. It started simply with hanging wall paper. A wise man once said “Wisdom is vindicated by her children. ”When I began the process of applying to universities for admittance in the fall of 2005, my first choice was the University of Virginia in Charlottesville where my grand epic adventure of becoming a wallpaper hanger began. I took a day off to return my application in person. I wanted to visit some of the paint and wallpaper outlets that had recommended me to their clients, and just leisurely reminisce.

One of my fondest memories of all time took place that very day. When I stopped at Pittsburg Paint Store, Bruce still owned the store. I hadn’t seen him in 15 years. As we chatted about my new direction, he said that if I wound up at U.Va., and wanted to work during the summer he would be more than happy to hand out my business card to clients. Then he told me about Mrs. Williams. I had done her wallpaper 17 years ago. She had stopped in to talk with Bruce about redoing much of the wallpaper that I had hung so long ago, two hours before I showed up. The wallpaper was showing its age. Bruce said that she asked if he had someone “…as good as Randy Pepin to recommend” for her new project. Folks, it doesn’t get any better than that. Customer service isn’t solving gripes, it’s part and parcel of how we treat others in our day to day lives.

I had no idea that I would love to hang wall paper. It just seemed that I stumbled into it. After I had been doing it for a couple of years the story about my ‘stamping’ episode surfaced. My mom had wall paper installed in the living room of my parents first home. So the story goes, I got hold of a really large roll of postal stamps, and was licking and meticulously pasting said stamps in a very careful line just above and in line with the back of the living room couch. On top of the newly hung wall paper of course. I don’t remember, but I think I probably watched the wall paper being hung and was trying to emulate what I had seen. My mother said she really loved the paper, and I might have thought that my stamp routine would get the same favorable response. Of course the reaction couldn’t possibly have been what I had hoped.

Back to the question ‘what do you love to do’? I didn’t set out to affect other peoples’ lives with my craft, I just liked the checks. Early on, in the first couple months of striking out on my own, I hung a really large bedroom in a Victorian style house for an older couple that had lived in their house for a very long time. When I announced I was done with the room, they came to look at the finished product. Standing in the doorway, they said they loved the new paper. He looked at her and said now they needed new carpet, and she said now they needed to paint the trim and ceiling, and he said now they needed new drapes, and she said…” Brand new, clean, fresh wall paper installed reveals the wear and tear of everything else in the room. I couldn’t just hang wall paper, I needed to become a consultant.

Next: what customer service is and isn’t.

If you missed this:

This form is for U. S. people who have outstanding student loans and are permanently disabled. If approved, their loans can be forgiven, which would wipe out their student loan debt, without it hurting their credit. This is a real gem for those who need it. It’s worthy of a bookmark.https://www2.eac-easci.org/resources/totaldisCan.pdf

WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval on Wednesday to a major civil rights bill, expanding protections for people with disabilities and overturning several recent Supreme Court decisions.

The voice vote in the House, following Senate passage by unanimous consent last week, clears the bill for President Bush.

The White House said Mr. Bush would sign the bill, just as his father signed the original Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.

The bill expands the definition of disability and makes it easier for workers to prove discrimination. It explicitly rejects the strict standards used by the Supreme Court to determine who is disabled.

The bill declares that the court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law.

Read more

While incredibly helpful, one of the biggest drawbacks to screen readers is they are loaded onto the machine locally which limits a person with a visual impairment to accessing his or her own computer only. Most libraries don’t have readers loaded onto them and nearly all readers are unable to read  Java-script.  Unless a friend has a reader loaded onto their machine, popping on to check e-mail or a movie time is not possible. That’s about to change.

Well, here’s a new totally accessible screen reader called WebAnywhere. Developed by University of Washington computer science graduate student, Jeffrey Bigham, WebAnywhere is unlike software that has to be installed on PCs. WebAnywhere is an Internet application that can make Internet access available on almost any Web enabled device or computer. It is also an OpenSource project so it can be tweaked and modified freely.

For more details you can visit the WebAnywhere site.

Way cool!

Many thaks to DJB for pointing this out to me.