To Blog or not to Blog

Last night I attended the AGM of our co-operative. A discussion ensued about the merits of Social Media as a means of marketing and selling.

For what it is worth these are my own views which are based on experience.

You need to know what you are trying to achieve when you undertake anything. What is your objective? How are you going to measure it and how do you know if you have achieved it?

If you take out an advert online or in a magazine how do you know if it has been a success. Have you had more visitors to your site, store, more sales? Could the money have been used more effectively?
Just sticking a finger in the air and thinking this is a good idea is not good enough and frankly unprofessional.

If you spend time on social media how much does it cost you. If you spend 40 hrs a year how many paintings or widgets could you have made in that 40 hours and what value would they be?

All this may sound like a lot of work but really if you are in business you should have this information to hand in any case. How much is a days painting worth? What do you sell? Where do the sales come from, online, gallery, exhibition, private...With a spreadsheet this is all pretty simple.

Now I have found adverts in papers, magazines have virtually no impact on my sales. My website does bring in sales. My Daily Blog has been invaluable over the years and along with exhibitions has been my biggest source of enquiries and sales. Twitter has and no significant impact but I still tweet because it is not time consuming. Selling cards has minimal profit itself, but it does generate sales up to 10% .

The painting above was the painting I used on my first Blog over 7 years ago. If you are tempted to blog I would suggest it is daily or at least weekly and make it interesting otherwise readers get bored quickly. It is a commitment and doing a few blogs now and then will be most likely a waste of effort.