My Experience with Social Media & Lessons Learned

Twitter – is easy to use and most of my news comes from here.  My followers have grown from 28 to 495 in 3 months.

• Lesson 1: Start a new account dedicated to your art/business instead of changing your personal account.
• Lesson 2: Crowdfire is a good way to be able to manage new followers and unfollow people who follow, then unfollow you.
• Lesson 3: *Watch for # (hashtags) pertinent to your interests. Found #artisthour sent two tweets and got many retweets; the next day had the highest number of visitors to my site. 
• Lesson 4: Don’t just tweet about yourself, retweeting and favouriting is a good way to make friends.

Twitter is my favourite social media site; though I’m not convinced it’s the best way to get blog followers. Even though I had the second highest number of visits to my blog from Twitter, Google + was no 1 with only 1/5th the followers.

Google + - changed an old account, which was very difficult to do… not even sure it's done right. Can’t stress this enough, from Lesson 1, have a separate personal account. Google + has all the bells and whistles and even though half of the functions are over my head...I’m managing. With google+….you get results on the Google search engine. Only 118 followers and the largest number of visitors to my blog come from Google.

Pinterest - didn’t change my personal account, just added my blog details and after three months with only 29 followers, had 1 visitor in 3 months. It could be because I’m not that active... probably need to re-think that.

Facebook – can’t get on with it. It’s hard to use my AMS-OnArt page from my personal page. A lot of people use Facebook and I know I should be more active.  Only 17 followers, mostly friends... did manage to get 2 visits to my blog.

Tumblr – is a new addition to my social media network; this time I have a separate AMS-OnArt account. In 1 ½ months managed to get 3 visits to my blog, which is good since there were only 5 followers… this may be a worthwhile social media account!

Instagram – is also new and so far no blog visitors. I have only been able to use this site from my iPad, which is not ideal.  Not sure it's worth the trouble but will keep trying…for now.

You Tube - added two very novice videos on Youtube and found other members to be very positive and friendly. The problem is, I’m camera shy and it’s a lot of work making a video. I think this might be the best platform; if you are willing to spend time with videos… but for now I’ll give it a miss.

My social media ranking to attract blog site visitors are: Google +, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, & Instagram. My top user friendly sites are Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest(although a little slow at times). YouTube(linked with Google) is probably the best social media site…if you can make videos. 

The most important advice and final lesson is; if you’re not active you won’t get results.

Cherry Painting From Will Kemp Art School on Youtube

My father gave me a GoPro for my birthday and not being active, I've used it to video a Cherry painting. What seemed like a good idea was awkward and difficult. There is no view finder, so the iPad needed to be linked via WiFi to control the GoPro. Then after filming there was LOTS and LOTS of editing.

Cherry Painting Part 1 was done in GoPro editing software, but somehow the program got lost on my computer.  So...Cherry Painting Part 2 was edited using Microsoft Movie Maker, which was filmed and edited 6 months later. It’s my first try at YouTube so you’ll have to forgive me for the results.

The painting is from a cherry tutorial created by Will Kemp Art School. There are free videos on his website along with written instructions, a picture to download and list of all materials needed. Once again, I had to go and buy some new colours. The only acrylic paint not purchased was the green gold; made that myself. The painting took me a long time but I am satisfied with the outcome.

The background isn’t perfect because the area around the stem had to be redone. Note to self… find another way of filming. The camera kept getting in the way of my hand and the last part didn’t get filmed because the painting had to lay flat.

Perfect frame from Home Sense

The learning, painting, filming, editing process was long and tedious; must find an easier way. The experience was worth it and someday I'll be more organized to do it again. Hope you like the speed painting and I dare you to try filming for YouTube. Much respect for those artists who can create, teach film and edit...it's not easy.