Scheduling Activity on Facebook

As it gets closer to our next events which occur during the upcoming week, I decided to schedule posts to facebook relating to these events.
One is a general post about goings on in San Diego, a What -To-Do in November article, courtesy of San Diego magazine.
The second one is our email newsletter that we always publish prior to an Art Fair.
The third post will be images of some of the artwork that we are showing, in a photo album format.
I created the album, but was not able to "schedule" the album, so I had to delete the post, and hopefully keep the album.  Then I can go back in a few days and re-post.

Here is the photo album intended for after the above post goes live.

Making Strategic connections via Facebook

 I found this weeks' reading and assignments so interesting -  Lots of insight (excuse the pun) into how Facebook should be used, though there's probably at least 100 times more information to learn about FB...Kinda overwhelming.

The "EdgeRank" algorithm is amazing. A whole new way of thinking about news and marketing.  I'm trying to digest it and figure out how to best apply it to our needs.

We had already "Liked" many pages of businesses that may be relevant, such as the museums of contemporary and modern art in NY, SF, LA and San Diego, etc/

I added a few more business pages to our likes including:

-ASID San Diego where possibly some potential clients may be found through their interior designers
-Red Dot Fair
-Affordable Art Fair, Seattle
-2 of our Artists who have FB business pages: Alicia Dunn and Dani Dodge
Art Forum magazine
Artbound - an art media news publishing piece of KCET public radio that one of our competitors listed.

By making connections to these new entities who have some overlap with our business, there is the potential that buyers may find us. I would like to find out if I can access these liked-businesses' Likes...and then potentially my posts would hit some of their fans feeds, or perhaps I have to leave that to EdgeRank...I wonder.

Post Reach and Post Engagement

What a busy week, the fair in NYC meant posting to Facebook  before, during and after the event to let our followers know and see how things were going. Sorry for the late blogging on this assignment, but thanks for making me understand how the reach and engagement stats are visible on the reports that FB provides.
Our post announcing the event was read by a good number of our fans, and presumably some who are not yet our fans, (but friends of those who already have liked us.) We will need to get those people to like us as well!
And the posts also engaged quite a few, who besides reading, also may have liked, shared, commented or clicked,  according to the Insights provided by Facebook.
Reach is the first step but Engagement is really what a business wants from its audience. In order to grow a business, the Facebook page should produce responses from its readers that show interest and participation.
Facebook insights can be utilized to better serve the customer by recognizing which posts generate which type of response and to continue giving the customer the kinds of posts that elicit he favorable engagements. In addition responding to comments is always  serving the customer

Target Market for SCAA

SCAA  Sergott Contemporary Art Alliance 

Target Market

About one year ago, my husband started SCAA, a contemporary art gallery that focuses on art fairs throughout the country, and is beginning to add an on line store. 

SCAA was actually selected by Amazon.com to be part of their launch of their Fine Art department – which has been incredibly exciting and lots of work!  See:  “amazon.com/sergott”.

 I have been assisting in the administration, sales and computer areas, and lots of other loose ends, as you can imagine! We have hired an excellent web designer who created a website, “sergottart.com” based on our input and continues to work with us on our email newsletter and keeping the site up-to-date.  We started a Facebook  page and have gotten around 240 “likes”  and now hope to TARGET our efforts and communications towards the “right” market.

I am hoping that this class will help my understanding of who and how the social media marketplace works.

The demographics of the market consist of people with incomes or net worth sufficient to allow for purchases of original fine art. This could be male or female, single or married, likely in the range of 30 to 70 year olds. The psychographics  of the target group should include persons who are interested in art and prefer contemporary art, if possible….More to come…

Amazon and PBS

Two sites that I frequent regularly are amazon.com and pbs.org
I visit them for what they provide - something unique.
Besides being an amazing (number 1?) shopping website, amazon is now a big part of our business model as we have just become an amazon seller.  I am impressed with their marketing techniques as they push targeted products to the customer.  The algorithms they appear to use to analyze their customers buying habits seem to be optimized to produce higher sales all the time.  The search options always seem to find what I am looking for.  And the requests that amazon makes for customer feedback on purchases provides a community of happy customers.  The page design works well for what the products are.  Many options are given to the buyer for purchase, items that are similar seem to pop up in abundance.  It is certainly like no other website.

PBS is a station I tend to watch, and if i miss a program, I can find it on the website. All the current news  is there, plus lots of entertainment.  The design is easy for the eye to navigate,    but also has an abundance of options.  Maybe that's an area I might improve : to reduce the amount of information on the home page.

All kinds of websites out there!

http://www.richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp
Ya gotta love Chicken S--T to want to read this one.  I am a gardener and appreciate the result of raising chickens not only for the fresh eggs but also for the amazing enrichment of a veggie garden, but I would NOT want to have to use this website to navigate my way through any questions.
It is unattractive, very hoky and hard to find information.  The graphic design of the page is non-existent.  The disorganization of the site will probably not lead to many or any sales of product.
On the Good side, however, it provides a service to those who need to learn, providing lots of good info.

 http://tectorch.com/
Similarly this webpage is busy, busy with too many words and not enough organization or design.  I got a headache trying to wade through the page.  It definitely needs some menu bars across the top and some info taken off this page and moved to subsequent pages.  The home page should be simple and clean, then the user can navigate easily to wherever more indepth information is needed.

apple .com
Of course is an amazingly beautiful page.  What else would you expect from Apple?  Now introducing their latest products, the iphone 5 c and s with gorgeous rich color backgrounds inviting the viewer in.  The site changes regularly with new products - as I have been on the site over the past year, as a  Mac user. The menu bar at the top is clear, simple and complete.

toyota.com
I was hoping for more of a Japanese influence here, but for an automotive website, this one looks fairly clean and not too busy.  I like the scrolling view of the product line with attractive automotive photography. The blocks of product info are clear and easy to read.  Overall, the site works.

Websites and SM Links

Simplicity is my mantra today and feeling my last background WAY tooo Busy - I've changed it for the fourth time -
To all my regular readers (the one or two that are out there) I really appreciate your patience in my template decision making. I know it will be worth it in the end!!

The question to be addressed: 5 businesses and their corresponding SM presence

1)  Anne Reed Gallery - (a competitor with a very tasteful website)

http://www.annereedgallery.com/artists/all/
uses:    Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Plus  link to their blog on the homepage.
hmmm - interesting!


2)  "The Newsroom" is a show on HBO
www.hbo.com
http://www.hbo.com/#/the-newsroom
They show Facebook, GetGlue and Twitter links  (...seems like GetGlue is an SM for TV SM types)
 
Also, You can click on the "talk" button on their home page to get into Forums about the show,

3)  PBS, my favorite TV channel, has a wealth of online presence
www.pbs.org.
Links to the usual SM sites plus blogs, and more widgets...the clicking can go on all day long!











4.)  Amazon is almost an SM site in and of itself, though not exactly
https://www.amazon.com
Besides creating a community of customers who can talk write reviews and evaluate sellers, amazon also has a small  direct interface with the SM sites:



5.) Finally, another website lots of people can love:
 http://shop.nordstrom.com/

they actually have a small SM area at the way bottom of their home page:
Wow! 2.2Million Facebook Likes!