If you are an artist you most definitely deal with web sites, social media, online shops and blogs. Over a course of months and years you find more avenues to join and add to your online presence. Everything seems wonderful and what could go wrong? You become complacent with your shop and social media sites not staying up to date with the ever-changing rules. When to hashtag and when to share and how to Facebook and how to use third-party sources. Suddenly things go off course and you find yourself trying to fix things. What do you do?
You stay calm find the answers and change them quickly. I try to stay informed on what I am doing on-line and how it can benefit my business but sometimes we simply fail. I have dealt with viruses and hacking for several months. I have a person who has completely altered my system. Firewalls and security gadgets which are a bother but the alternative is far worse. During this time of ups and downs I had found I couldn’t work online promoting as I wanted to so I allowed a young person to help. It was holiday season and I did not want to be out in the proverbial cold. Things went along smoothly. So I thought. With my system back up I no longer needed his services and took over. I discovered massive tweets being sent with a third-party account. Wow how ingenious. Not so fast.
To send tweets in this way can really get you booted right off the site. How horrible. I looked at the Facebook Page and noticed all those tweets were also there. Every bell in my head started to ring. As I deleted the entries they kept coming up marked as spam. My heart sank. A short time ago I knew in my gut there was something wrong online but could not pin point it. There was and hopefully I have corrected it and I apologize to all who had to endure those posts.
But I have gotten of course. There are no short cuts in business no easy way to get great results. Hard work and long hours and knowing who to ask and when. As artists we have a tendency to do it on our own or if we can’t just ignore it and it will improve. You have no choice but to stay present in your business if you want to succeed and no one else has your back like you do. When my gut said things looked off I should have asked more questions about how he was implementing the tweets or done some investigating on my own. I failed myself and my followers and my company because I did not heed my own words. To succeed you need to know when to do the hard work.
I have learned a much needed business lesson. Always know what is being projecting online, when to take charge of the wheel and how things are implemented in your company. An artist has their heart, soul, work and name to guard and most can not afford to relaunch our name and work. It is a must you are always aware of the what, when and hows.
Between The Weeds 