Do you feel like your Facebook page or website aren't helping your business as much as it used to? The cost of getting your posts out to your audience have skyrocketed. Website trends keep moving ahead at light speeds. eCommerce is a huge beast that takes time commitment to set up and manage. The system is not rigged against you; the system has just evolved with more competition online. The internet is capitalism in it's truest form.
It has now become a business by itself just to keep up with the rapid changes happening with Facebook, YouTube, Websites, eCommerce, and the ecosystem as a whole. (I know because that is my business.) You need one of two resources for online marketing: Time or Money.
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The year 2016 has been full of changes. This was big for our production company, Sideline Pictures. We released a feature film and have started new initiatives in the last few months to grow our audience. As an online marketer and content creator myself, I have been watching over our statistics to see what lessons I could learn from this experimentation stage in Sideline Pictures. In this post, I am going to go through the last three months of the Sideline Pictures website growth and related social media channels. Those are my primary responsibility and what I do for other businesses, so they are of the most interest to me (and probably you). Website BlogAt the beginning of December, we started posting to the blog a few times a week. This content was primarily informational and is intended to help our target audience of other filmmakers. The goal here is to increase authority and network reach. Also helping people makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Unique visitors to the site started to spike immediately after new content was being created. Not only did this give visitors more potential pages to land on, it also opened up new opportunities to share pages on social media.
Here I am again. I'm sitting in front of my computer during a late night shift at a job that I don't hate enough to quit. Paralyzed by choice. I rapidly Google online tests to tell me whether or not I should stay at this job, in this place, with my significant other. The answers are unsatisfying at best. Everything seems to point to quit, move, leave them. Yet... that doesn't feel right. On any given day my gut instinct about these three big questions sways in a totally different direction. How can you possibly make big choices like these without feeling like you're leaving another option behind? In today's world there are so many opportunities sprawled out in front of us. I've found this one simple question has gotten me on the right path when I'm really struggling to come up with the answers myself. Sitting here in front of my computer, I have long forgotten the first time I asked myself this. When I ask myself this question again, it will likely change the path I'm on for the better and I feel a huge weight being lifted from my shoulders. [Note from a year later: It did drastically change everything. I moved halfway across the country and then back again after asking the big question again!] The Million Dollar Question
Many artists and professionals occupy a domain on the web; it's an essential part of putting yourself out there for potential job and project opportunities. The portfolio site becomes a lot like your home on the web; social media is the town square, but your domain is your home (or storefront).
A few months ago, I completely overhauled this site (quietly). I changed just about everything from a 3rd person, professional tone to a more personal tone. There were a few reasons for this, but the major reason was that I am a very friendly and outgoing person. I wanted the site's tone to express that when someone visited, whether that be to view my portfolio, read my blog, or just get an overview of who I am and what I do; this way it's a little more inviting and less coldly professional. It's not just me though. When I'm searching for talent to hire for a project, a personal voice on their portfolio site always makes me more interested in reaching out to them. I can immediately see if this person sounds like someone I would want to spend long days on set with or not. I really recommend you try this with your website. I'm not going to try to convince you with statistics. I'll be honest, my site garners a very small amount of traffic daily. However, this traffic is usually people that are close or already in my network. So my goal is much different than a site raking in 100k unique views on any given day; my goal is to stay in touch with a large number of people, and usually to write posts about things that I find myself talking about over and over again. (This post being one of those things.) In addition to having a personal tone with your site, here are a few other tips I have on creating your online home and welcoming your extended network in: No matter what your career goals are, it's inevitable that you will be working towards that goal for awhile before you even get close. Chris Nolan didn't make Momento until he was 30 and Inception until he was 40. Mark Cuban didn't sell his first company until he was 32 years old! Van Gogh didn't even start painting until he was in his 30's. (Maybe a bad example... but still.) A major key to success is perseverance. The longer you work at your craft, the better you'll get; It will take quite some time before you have made it and you're work is at the level you are likely aspiring towards. That's okay! What It Means To Make ItLet's take a second and try to define making it or succeeding. This can mean a lot of different things depending on what field you're in. For the most general definition, let's say making it is the moment you can afford to live sole on work that you love doing.
I'm a filmmaker. I want to produce and sometimes write or direct films (or web series). Oh wait... I already do this. Ah! But there's a major difference here. I still can't support even a modest lifestyle off of this passion. Let's tack this phrase onto the end of that sentence: and make a living doing it. I'm not quite there yet; however, I am starting to make some income from projects I love working on and having to decide which ones to spend time with. That income is growing (very slowly) every year as my skills become more refined. It would be safe to assume that I'll be making a living doing what I love before I'm 30, and that's pretty awesome. Hold on though... how am I supposed to put food in the fridge, pay for rent, and keep up with my student loans until then? Here's 6 things I've learned about how to make do before you make it: |
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