 Well hello and welcome. One of the core challenges we face as artists and creatives is building a consistent routine where marketing is concerned. So today I'm talking you through how to create your artist's marketing calendar. I should just say it's not specifically a social media calendar is an art marketing calendar. We are covering all areas of your marketing. Now I'm going to cover the strategies you might use when, where and how often and towards the end of the video I'm going to walk you through a real example as well. So make sure to stay and watch right to the very end. So welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is Sophie and I love to help artists just like you to set up market and grow a highly successful business doing what you love. Now if you'd like more tips and tricks on exactly how to do that then you're in the right place. Don't forget to give this video a thumbs up if you enjoy the content and consider subscribing to my channel as well. All right are we ready to take a look at that artist's marketing calendar? Now I've got a few steps to walk you through. So if you're that person that likes to take notes maybe just press pause and go and get yourself a notebook and pen. Okay number one is going to be about deciding on your core marketing strategies. Now I like to suggest three to five main strategies to focus on and if you haven't watched my previous video that I'll link to up here that takes you through perhaps slightly more advanced strategies specific to what I think could be good to get into for this year but for the purposes of this video I'm just going to give you what I would call good middle-of-the-road art marketing strategies. I've got 10 for you I've got other videos on probably almost all of the 10 so I will make links below this videos to where you can expand your knowledge on the different marketing strategies that I'm going to mention. If you'd like to press pause and get that notepad and pen then don't forget to do that as well and you might want to write them down. So the last thing to talk about when choosing your strategies and I've mentioned this in other videos of course it's going to depend on who your target audience are. Who have you chosen that you would like to buy your art or join your art workshops or buy your courses? Right? It's down to you who you choose and again I've got my you know fairly well-received target market video that I will link below this video so if you're not sure who they are and where to find them watch that video because that's going to help you a little bit more. So you need to understand and you need to know who the target market are before you're going to make a decision off this list so I just want to get that sort of said right up front. So let's look at these 10. The number one email marketing so that for me it's the lifeblood of your business it's a non-negotiable art marketing strategy so that's that's one already ticked right you're going to be doing email marketing. Now the second one is blogging really really great if you know that your audience likes to read and also that you like to write right that's what's called a win-win so if you want to know more about blogging check out the links below. Number three you're watching it YouTube so obviously we know that at the moment a lot of video is being consumed if you know that your audience likes instructional videos they like to be on YouTube then it's going to be a good idea for you to use that as a core strategy. Podcasting the next one now again if you know that your audience is a podcast listener they like to listen and you'll really like to talk. A lot of people have said so if you like to talk you should have a podcast but a while ago I chose YouTube and so we stick with YouTube so podcasting great if your audience like to walk around listening to podcasts I love podcasts so I'm definitely somebody's audience. Number five Pinterest brilliant if you've got products and you've perhaps got them on a shop site and also it's very good if you've got YouTube or blogs it works really really well so again I've got other videos on Pinterest if you want to dive deeper into that. Number six Instagram you either love it or hate it you're either on it and using it already or you've said no thank you. It's a visual platform and it's a very much video driven at the moment there will be more videos I've got a few videos on Instagram but I'm going to be doing one pertinent to 2023 coming up soon as well so if you don't want to miss out on that make sure to subscribe to the channel. Number seven is Facebook so it's going to again depend on your audience some people still hang out a lot on Facebook it's still a really good platform to be on so again if you know that your audience is of that demographic that they love to hang out on Facebook and that's going to be one of your core strategies. Now there are lots of different things that you can do within Facebook the same as within Instagram of course so again you know more videos on diving deep into that below this one. Number eight networking so that's out of the digital space I mean you can network digitally online but I'm talking about traditional face-to-face networking building of your network it's how I've built my businesses in the past and I still find that this is a key marketing strategy right here right now and I did a recent video on that and I think it's a really good strategy for artists so check that one out here as well. Number nine of course is referrals what better way of marketing than asking a customer to make a referral leave a testimonial leave a great review you could also set up a referral strategy where you give people a discount code to refer to their friends etc. Number 10 of course PR is definitely last and 100% not least a really good thing to be doing when you are an artist so each one of those equally relevant some of those you might be thinking oh they're not so good for me and my audience aren't there so you're going to make a choice three to five where one of them is email marketing so go ahead and write those down before you watch the next bit of the video. Number two and things you need to do in order to create your marketing calendar and that is commit to a regular routine now before all of you go and switch the off button all right it's not as bad as it sounds and here's why having a regular routine is going to help you with your art marketing and actually your business it's going to save you time who could save you money right it's definitely going to help you to build leads and more customers and more customers equals more sales and more money in the bank which I'm pretty sure is why most of you are here watching these videos right so that said what does a marketing routine look like well the first thing you need to do is look at those key strategies and decide how often you're going to be doing them and then on what days and if relevant what time that content is going to come out so it really is as simple as that how often is it going to be every day every week every month twice a month twice a week how often is it going to be what time is it going to come out so if it's daily is that something you need to do in the morning in the middle of the day in the afternoon in the evening when is that going to happen and again just remember when you publish content usually again linked when your audience are around by the way this is something I teach as part of my little mini training art marketing 101 I teach you how to put together and you put together your very own marketing routine planner and you also create a marketing plan as well so if you're interested in that make sure to look at the details below this video so number three it's time to get super organized so my suggestion is we're going to go digital we're going to look for a digital organizational platform now before you go I don't like the digital stuff I like my notebook and pen there's a lot of times a notebook and pen is just perfect this is not one of those alright you need to use a bit of sort of project management type of software but I've got a few simple suggestions for you okay so as you can see here we are on a really simple marketing calendar spreadsheet so I've simply put dates down the side you can alter that whether it's day by day or just a general week overview and then you could write so for this week my YouTube video is going to be this particular title it's going to be my blog is going to be that color palette blog my email is going to be talking about the blog and you could put the subject title of the email here the three Instagram posts so this kind of completely depends on whether you decide okay I'm going to make more rows down this left-hand side you could put different rows for different days if you're going to have lots of things that are daily tasks so you might say okay Monday Tuesday Wednesday you might put Monday to Friday down here and then for example your YouTube just ends up on the Wednesday if you do it on a Wednesday or the Thursday and then you could write in the different Instagram down here if you're going to networking events so that particular week that you're in you could write what networking event that you aim to go to and if you're doing PR as another example you might write down some PR tasks on those dates alright you can make this as simple or as complicated as you want to you can do it all different colors and you can alter that so that would be super simple the next thing I would probably look at is perhaps making a calendar so I typically use iCal but might looks very complicated so I've just set up a simple example over here in Google and if you like to do all things Google this might make some sense so I've just literally made a marketing calendar social media calendar I've got some reminders tasks and just a plain calendar so then what I've done is I've said okay on the Monday and this is date specific so the thing about this you'd need to put in the dates if you're good with spreadsheets then you can probably do that in a slightly more advanced way if you use a calendar then you've got the actual dates that you can fill in so all I've done is I've said okay Instagram story to go out at that particular time Monday to Friday I've said here on a Monday time to plan out the posts and in this case I've just put video because you know that I do video and then when and this is real this is when I tend to do it Tuesday morning is when I shoot my video and then if you're doing three posts you probably roughly put out when they might happen and then everything happens around when you publish your video or your blog or your podcast those big items so you publish the item whichever one you're doing and by the way not every marketing strategy is going to use one of these big ones but if you do and you have something like this then you're going to want make sure that all the things are happening at the same time and then you might publish the blog the next day that links back the email would go on the same day for example and then there's a networking event in there so you can see it's pretty simple you can tailor it completely up to you if you don't do any social media you'd lose the social media you know if you're going to do PR events then you're going to just change it that suits your business and then the other piece of software that's quite nice you can do this on a free version is Trello and again you can use this on your phone as you can the other two of course easily adapt to your phone as well as your computer and this just works really simply you're just making a really simple card at the top here and then I've just literally put see YouTube emails Instagram Pinterest and networking and this particular example I've just put across okay so it's really simple I can just go add a card and then I and I can just write in the subject line whatever that's going to be and then if I wanted to make the second week I would make the second week if I wanted to make another one I'd make another one and then if I want to edit this I'm going to hit the pencil and I could click open card and then I can literally put whatever that is I can put a description and add what I'm going to write in the email I can do so many different things and I can do that I can put a sign it for a date I might say oh it's ready by tomorrow and I can do all of that and then it's going to say oh it's it's actually due and I've done that for this one so on YouTube I've put the title of the video we're making right now there is it's due tomorrow I've also colored it for YouTube like there's a different ways that you can do this you can and then you can add a second card like I said for the next week and the next week and so on and then there are lots of other software that you can use as well so for example I also like to use Evernote so I've actually got a note in my Evernote in my marketing content notebook and I've just used a template that they've given me and I've just changed actually this one to become a social media marketing calendar but you can change that going actually it's just going to be a marketing calendar you can change the date some weekly things that you do each week key things that are happening this week and then I haven't I've just used their template I haven't done any of that so you could get rid of all of this you can put literally put what you're doing the time you're doing it you see you could remind yourself with hashtags you put more notes and things that you want to do under there so this is a simple template literally on Evernote and you could create a new book that is your marketing book and then this is a note within that book and you literally can do whatever you like with this you can say okay I'm just going to get rid of all of that you can just delete it away and just make it your own right this is the description that I need to write the time is going out at 5 p.m. like completely change it you can press this little button and add all sorts of pretty things if you want to really lose a lot of time in your week make it all colored listen if your visual I get it you want to have a little bit more color in your life so there we have it some super simple ways that you can put together your own artist marketing calendar so I think out of those you should find something that works for you number four now we're going to look at getting some content together because otherwise you're going to sit there thinking well that's great so if you have chosen my platforms and I've got myself up a spreadsheet or I'm using some software but now what do I put in there so let's find an easy way for you to come up with some cool content this is something I teach in my membership and around having nine core topics now you might say why nine Sophie and not 10 well that's maybe information for another day or you'll have to send me a DM on Instagram and say why nine topics alright so we're going to look at finding nine what I would call high level topics areas that you can talk about and you can break down into smaller topics as well so for example your process your materials your inspiration where you work right these are high level topics and they can all be broken down into something smaller so go ahead press pause and just write down what your nine core topics could be and then once you've done that you could break them down a little bit so for example materials you could say okay acrylic paints these different colors this brand that I like using these particular brushes these extra scrapers and markmakers like you can fill it really out so that you've got lots and lots of ideas to talk about look out for another video coming shortly because it occurred to me you might quite like another video on actually how to break that down and how to come up with many many many more content ideas give me a thumbs up in the comments below this video if you would like me to make that one how to actually expand and come up with loads of content in a really short period of time number five step number five we want to plan ahead as much as possible yes this is about organization this is about saving your time this is about not really overthinking things as well keeping things quite light and simple so in terms of actual content you probably want to think a week ahead but in terms of higher level ideas general topics you might want to plan out as far as a quarter or longer if you're that person that really likes planning now me I like me a bit of planning but I'm not into the detail planning for months ahead because I like to be a little bit flexible I like to respond to somebody who asks me could you make a video about that I look at my planner I think well it wasn't in the plan but you know what it would fit in there quite okay so there's an element of staying flexible of course as well so let's just go ahead and look at a bit of an example that I've put together for you and I'm up here on my iPad so for example if we chose that let's go back to the beginning and let's choose the key marketing strategies so in this example you might say obviously your email because that's the non-negotiable number one then you might choose blogging Pinterest and say Instagram right so now you've made and made those choices and you've made those choices based on who your target audience are and also to a level you know what you're prepared to do right and hopefully you're looking for a nice win-win situation there so your routine your simple routine could be like this you're going to blog every week you're going to write an email every week you're going to pin daily on Pinterest three to five pins a day you're going to post three times a week on Instagram and one of those at least one of those is aimed to be a real and you're going to do daily stories on Instagram as well so those are the simple decisions that's it you make the decision you commit you put it in the planner so here's how that might look when we dive a little bit deeper okay so when we think about that blog you perhaps have chosen one of your topics you say okay I'm going to write a blog on a new color palette that's inspired me recently there's your blog topic it's come from one of your high-level content ideas right then you're going to write an email to your list talking a little bit about why they should read that blog and then of course a link to where they can read the blog so you talk about before and why that's inspired you how you found this this color palette what you're going to do the color palette so you build out a nice email link it across for people to look at the blog then you create those 25 pins based of color and inspiration and again it sounds like oh my god so if you're going to make 25 pins but we've just said there's a new color palette that's what you're blogging about color palette is going to give you lots of different colors pretty simple to start getting out on something like canva and making some simple pins around that color palette and again maybe you things you talked about in your email you don't want to have to keep coming up with new things you want to kind of think about repurposing there's the blog i'm writing the email about the blog i'm creating the pins have come directly from the content in the blog all right and now i've got three instagram posts one of them could be a carousel of the key pieces of the color palette and a bit about the inspiration one of them could be a reel where you're in the studio kind of using the colors or you can come up with something creative and one could simply be a post about the blog that you've just published on your color palette inspiration see how that all just works together and that's one week's content made now if you want to do the daily stories you can make the stories really simply about here i am just i'm just sitting in the cafe writing this blog i've gone back to the studio to edit the blog you know here's the color palette that i'm working on here's a couple i'm making some pins for Pinterest here i am doing that right again don't ever think it keep it simple so there you have one week's content done how long did it take us to do not long of course you've got to write the blog obviously but if that's your core marketing strategy then you're going to allow yourself perhaps a morning in the week to get that done right so i hope you found that useful i hope you've loved the content like i say let me know in the comments that you found it helpful and if you'd like me to dive a bit deeper into content creation how to come up with more ideas then give me the thumbs up in the comments and i will definitely do that and as i mentioned at the beginning if you're really into the marketing and you really want to find it a little bit more about what i talked about specific to 2023 check out the video that's on screen right now that is the latest video prior to this one that's the seven strategies to be looking at for this year now i've a little bit deeper offers something a little bit more advanced but enjoy it okay and i'll see you on the next one bye bye everybody