Helping artists, getting publicity and making vlogs
I spent a good 20 minutes thinking about what I should write today and I've come up with 8 subjects, though I imagine they'll finish quickly. I think it's got the point where I need to start planning ahead for what I should write on a particular day. Say Monday is an Artist dedication, Tuesday is a round up of recent activities, Wednesday is a Top 10 post. Etc. I think something like that to add some variety to what I post will make things a lot more interesting!
Especially the artist dedication and top 10 ideas. The artist dedication basically being a blog post written by an artist which we will publish, allowing them to share their story and artwork. And the top 10 being the top 10 artists that I have discovered that week with a short message on what I thought, whilst including a couple pieces of artwork from each. I see so many incredible things and the Artist of the day only shows a really small portion of what I see! So I'm all for that idea, plus it's not as much work on my end when it comes to writing the blogs = More sleep!
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| It takes me a surprisingly large amount of time to write these blogs at the end of the day! |
Even if it doesn't catch on, I'm all too happy to help out artists who would want it.
Moving onto the 1st of 8 subjects though, here's the first! I got an article written about me! This is a really cool moment for me and got instant smiles! Somewhat of a landmark achievement both personally and for the company, we're becoming newsworthy! The first step into publicity, and it feels good. I'm new to journalism but perhaps I can use this article to help in my future attempts at journalism. If I can show that I've already been written about, it gives credibility and journalists will see that and think this is something worth writing about. More and more articles are written and it gets the ball rolling. That's the theory anyway!
Talking about articles and writing though, I'm also in touch with someone who's putting together a book about entrepreneurs and businesses. It's early days but it's looking like I may be able to contribute a chapter to a book that will be published sometime in 2015. Just one more place where I can make my mark on this world! Helps to get some publicity and draw attention to myself as an entrepreneur and to my business, plus, my work will be in a book! That's incredible in itself. Fingers crossed for this.
Next, I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I attempted to get in touch with Made in Leeds to see if I could be featured in some news, which would have been a mere mention or a full interview. Unfortunately it's been 8 days and no reply. Maybe I'm being impatient? Maybe the email didn't go through? I'm considering making a phone call sometime and seeing where I can get with that. If it's a brick wall though I'll back off, don't want to alienate them by being persistent! I can mention to them that I've already had an article written about me too, let's put that theory to the test and see if it helps!
In other news the marketing plan being produced by my marketing partner is in progress. I don't know how fast he works but the quicker the better! I did have somewhat or a marketing plan but it's outdated now, the only salvageable info which we can use is the basic method and principle (Google adwords to bring in clients for example). I've left the responsibility of planning how we market the company to the marketing student! It's a bit of a personal struggle for me to delegate responsibility, mainly because I've gotten so used to doing things myself and thinking (Or knowing in most cases) I can do the job better. This is gladly a situation where I'm leaving responsibility of a job to someone who's got the perfect expertise for it; it only makes sense that a marketing student makes a marketing plan.
So while I don't necessarily like leaving things for other people to do, I can take comfort it's something I'm leaving to someone who's best for the job, not me!
In terms of daily tasks, I didn't do my daily round of promoting to artists today, which deflates my mood! Why I today didn't do the greatest thing about starting Hire an Artist is beyond me, I feign stupidity!
Something I actually do a lot; Feigning stupidity. Never liked people knowing I'm one of the smartest people in the room, everyone always asks for help for things they don't even put effort in! Don't get me wrong, I like helping people, hell I'm starting a company that helps artists, people and something that can really make it's mark on this world, but sooner or later people will always ask for help, becoming dependent, with the littlest of things which they could easily resolve themselves. Yet if you say "No, do it yourself", you'll become a bad guy because it's such a small task, so word of advice, don't show people how clever you truly are!
Moving onto the next point, I mentioned I'm considering a vlog. I'm expecting the home to be empty tomorrow morning, if so that is when I'll make the attempt! In theory all I need it the tripod, iPad, lights and a microphone. But I tried all this trying to achieve an overexposed white background before, which was a failure. This doesn't involve such a complicated lighting system, just needs to light up my face. The problem that I bet will occur is the camera focusing! It needs to focus on me and blur out the background, does an iPad do this? I don't know, let us hope!
All goes well with production, I just need to get the video onto live movie maker, cut it up and make into a vlogger style video. Along with pulling out the audio, cleaning it up and enhancing it, maybe add some music and voila! The editing is easy for me (In most cases anyway), it just takes a lot of time. I think a video of this kind would take less than 5 hours though, for a 5 minute video, just an estimate.
Lastly, getting feedback from the survey! I'm getting responses but not as many as I'd like, I'm trying to figure out why and how I can improve. I hope I can improve it because over time this will become an incredibly powerful resource of information for us to use!
