Social Media / Social Networking -- my consultant formula

I have been getting more and more requests to do consults to businesses on setting up social media plans.

I'm not advertising, but it seems many businesses are in dire need of this type of knowledge currently and word of mouth spreads quickly. 2010, if you ask me, will be the year of the Facebook business Fan Page! And Twitter, too, looks to have a promising year yet again.

Here is my formula for focal consideration points for the initial setup across the main 3 social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube):

• Brand consistency - all three leaders have different specs for the way your companies' brand is represented (i.e. thumbnails, background images, profile images, etc.). This is important so your business looks legitimate across all vested venues.
• Tracking - recommend tools to track the effectiveness of your efforts. For if no ROI tracking, then why do it to begin with?
• Privacy and account setting configuration - this is a big point! Initially if these aren't set right you and your company are asking for problems and potentially huge headaches.
• Usability - initial training on how best to utilize all three while doing as little work as possible.

Then, just before launch of these branded social media outlets, I sit down with administrators (I can set up multiple admins on most of these accounts) to demonstrate my recommended strategies and give a couple successful examples.

Brilliant imagery — slime videos — well done Nic!

I can't exactly put my finger on why, but these new station identification advertisements from Nickelodeon definitely amuse me. I find the organic shapes created by the flying slime, the timing, and the erratic adjustments in motion very successful!

And it is painless to watch them when they are inevitably shown again and again. So I have to ask why? Most ads annoy me enough to make me change the channel. Either I'm easily amused at the moment or there is some genius juxtaposition happening here that is grabbing my attention.

Maybe the overall success has something to do with the contrasting elements: the way the shiny, heavy, opaque slime slams against the clean, alert, bright faces of Nic's current TV stars.

The repetition of phonics in the audio also helps the success in entirety.

Funny thing is... the actors know the slime is coming... yet they open their mouths and smile — great additional components! The white background of the scenes echo the clean/dirty contrast too. I'm curious how many takes it took to complete the ads?

Whatever the answer, simple or not, the fact is that these are really well done advertisements for the station. Very memorable, maybe even nostalgic; back to the original days of getting slimmed on Double Dare (side-note: Marc Summers, host of Double Dare had OCD).

Well done Nickelodeon! And it looks like you all had fun creating these ads.

R U a Twitter Quitter?

Even for a fine artist, social media and social networking are important. With that said, I find that traditional fine artists -- the ones that still know how to hold a paint brush -- are the slowest to climb aboard a newer technology like twitter.com

But why? You CAN teach an old dog new tricks! And I recommend you do, because now is the BEST time to be a fine artist. Now is the most favorable time to have your art seen by huge audiences across the world. I challenge you to find a better time in history when an artist's artwork could be seen so quickly, by so many, on a global scale! And Twitter is just one way to help it happen. For more on social media for fine artists.

With respect to Twitter, which is essentially a micro blog, it mostly comes down to fame. I find there are at least 5 types of users:

1. The famous ones... you know the "Ashtons" of the world that want to stay in the public eye at all costs, so they now need to tweet. They tweet about huge happenings like when their famous wife bends over in a white bikini. It evidently works though -- he leads the pack with millions of followers.
   
   
2. Of course, if you have leaders (as in famous tweeters) then you will have followers. The followers are the people that have the time in their day to actually look at tweets about a famous wife bent over in a white bikini. This type of user usually has more follows than followers.
   
   
3. Then you have the people that want to be famous. [Mostly they are the "me" followers - explained here: Most Twitter Users Tweet Only About Themselves -- But Few Follow] They are embracing the said social media craze. They sometimes play the numbers game and just follow people in hopes of getting followers in return. They tweet about miscellaneous things like what they are eating, working too much, jokes, horoscopes and once and a while they will actually tweet about the relevant information they want to be followed or famous for.
   
   
4. Oh, and then there are those that use twitter.com as another gear in the big resyndication machine of social media. For example, it is pretty simple, yet effective, to set up an automated option to take a blog post (such as this) and automatically post a link to Twitter, Facebook, etc., on "publish".
   
   
5. Then you have the Twitter Quitters, or should I say "Twitter Qwitters". They are the ones that may be initially in one of the categories above, but then they just quit. I know... how dare they!
   

Read about a Nielsen study here (with nice charts and everything): Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth: over 60% join then quit

They quit as they realize it actually takes thought and effort to fill a field of 140 characters, time and time again. They quit as they realize it takes time to maintain a micro blog with a growing fan base. They quit because the rewards for their efforts are usually not instantaneous. They quit because their tweets seem to fall on deaf ears at times; their fans don't always reply and sometimes even unfollow -- gasp, not that!!

But Alas, not all is lost on the Twitter Quitters' efforts... as they have the benefit of squatting on their "twitter.com/name" -- and space in Twitter history.

We can all learn something from Michael Jackson

I think we can all learn one thing from Michael Jackson, besides the Moonwalk, and that is: to not let our inner-demons get the best of us.

It is a bit obvious that what happened on June 25th, 2009 was the end result of a slippery slope that began many, many years ago — probably with "A, B, C".

You can't outsource creativity!

"But as he points out, you can't outsource creativity." Daniel Pink author of A Whole New Mind
Full story here: Why right-brainers will rule this century

It is good to hear that I have job security.

Creativity IS a huge headache to try to outsource.

Not to mention outsourcing creativity is also far from efficient and cost effective. Don't believe me? Try it! By the time you go back and forth with "Leroy" and his team from India a few dozen times (trying to communicate your idea), and then re-do (what feels like) a few hundred design proofs/submissions, you'll find you could have completed 10 different campaigns in-house.

I've always said that there is no such thing as "job security" in today's global economy. Every job I can think of can be affected or replaced by advances in technology. So the closest thing there is to real "job security" is to stay on top of technology — AND be creative at it.

Fine Art — trim the fat!

Fine art has tremendous value, BUT...

"the days of the $300 million dollar sale are over"
And I say they should be! I've always believed globalization will determine true value for all things: labor, commodities, materials and even the fine art market. In a recession true value is determined very quickly.

NY art auction market in "free fall" for spring
This article suggests this fine art slow-down is because the sellers are holding their fine art, and not because there are a lack of buyers. Or maybe it is easier for the fine art investors to hold than to admit they overpaid to begin with.

...Allow me to step up on my soapbox...

$300 million at a single auction is a bit exorbitant. And remember, this is coming from the mouth of a fine artist.

Think about it – and it may sound cliché but – that amount of money COULD do so much for so many. That amount of money could change many, many lives. Yet it switches hands in exchange for a few paintings (at a cool $100 million each).

One things is for sure, in a global recession, possibly heading for a global depression, the fat gets trimmed from EVERYTHING! The true value of fine art is being realized.

Shameless self-promotion: For much more reasonably priced original fine art

Technophobia is not a phobia!

Technophobia is no psychological disorder... no phobia... just unwillingness to learn! Let's call it what it is.

It is a bit of malaise! A bit of just plain laziness! A bit of the old proverbial "towel" being thrown in and admitting that you are old!

Stevie Nicks is a self-proclaimed technophobe, but I say she has no phobia:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/09/entertainment/e055214D27.DTL&type=music

No doubt, learning most new technologies is hard work.

Technophobia is the strong dislike or fear of advanced technology or complex devices, especially computers. This "phobia" is far from the normal class of phobias associated with psychological disorders, like a germ-a-phob. See, the germ-a-phob has not the luxury of choice, and unusually has very little control over this mentally substantiated phobia.

The term technophobia was most likely coined back in the industrial revolution, but I'd say there were so-called "technophobes" as early as the invention of the wheel.

Being a technophobic and saying you wont use new technologies because you believe it is destroying todays youth is a bit like saying that Nintendo was destroying the youth of the 80s (that would include me)with Super Mario Brothers - ha! And the evolution went on from there, as it always has, with the Atari 2600, Atari computer, ColecoVision, Commodore 64 and so on, all the way up to the iPhone today.

Face it when you refuse to pick up on the new technologies you might as well get out the old rockin chair and plop down on the old front porch with your old newspaper (while you can still get a newspaper) and just be old.

"Digital Fine Art" is an OXYMORON!

Part of what makes fine art fine art lies in its creation process

First allow me to define oxymoron and fine art:

An oxymoron is basically a set of expressions with stark contradictions in the, usually two, terms. Commonly these oxymoron (paradoxes) serve a kind of rhetorical effect. Typical examples are:

• act naturally
• deafening silence
• jumbo shrimp

Further definition of the word oxymoron: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron

Fine art's function (another oxymoron?) is mostly for aesthetics and concept, not utility.

Further definition on the words fine art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_art

The main problem with "digital fine art" (or "DFA"), for me, is in its creation process. Its artistic process is not real. You see, in the creation of fine art there are naturally accidents, albeit happy accidents, nonetheless things that happen that are not planned. These "not plannings" become part of the fine art itself! They are actually part of the process of what makes the art fine art. Now, within the digital realm you have tools like Ctrl-Z (or Command-Z on a Macintosh - for which most graphic designers use). This digital erase-erase kills the authenticity of the creation process, as it leaves NO trace.

So I'd suggest a new term for digital fine art. And that term would be...

...wait for it...

...graphic design!

Really, as soon as a photo or image hits the fully controlled realm of the computer it loses its fineness; it may even be a stretch to call it art, but I won't go out on that limb. Once images or objects can be moved around the page without a trace of their original existence, cloned, cut, pasted and Gaussian blurred, they become a process of design. This type of design, as in moving objects around to create an aesthetically pleasing environment, is more for utility.

Lancaster, PA – Amish or Fine Art?

Could the city of Lancaster be the next Soho?

I read an article in the local newspaper this past Sunday that suggested that Fine Artists are leaving the exorbitant, high-cost-of-living areas of New York City, Boston and Philadelphia to settle in areas around Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The article suggested that artists that normally show their work in places like Soho will now show in Lancaster.

Although the article could have been mostly a sales push for the galleries, the shift could be taking place, anything is possible (in theory anyway).

Come to think of it, on warm summer evenings, on the first Friday of every month elbow to elbow crowds are not out of the ordinary. Galleries and museums extend their hours on these Friday nights mainly for the many artist receptions and exhibit openings. The main walk on Prince Street is packed.

The city has a pretty successful annual Art Walk also. So the interest is here!

But is the demand?

The supply of the artists is definitely here. This area has seemingly tons of art schools churning out artists every semester at an endless pace. Talent is abound.

Is it possible that someday Lancaster will be known more for its Fine Art than for its Amish?

Nadya... did OCD make you have those babies?

Hands down, for me, this is the most interesting thought the media echoed all week. Honestly, I have never thought of OCD in this context. I know Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can make suffers do things they really don't want to, do things they really don't feel good about doing, do things they really don't think are logical, but could it make a mom have more kids?

The obsessive logic here (or lack there of) might be simply obsessiveness about being a mother. The logic might be to have more babies to fill some kind or perceptive void in the mind. I don't think it has anything to do with counting or trying to hit a certain number. But could it? She did control the number of embryos?

Both of Nayda's parents are now publicly questioning her mental-health state. Of course Nadya's current actions may not be OCD actions at all, but may be relative to the cascade of flooding brain chemicals that can be brought on after giving birth to a child, or two, or even 8! In fact, hormone imbalance with respect to the levels of estrogen, progesterone, and cortisol in women can end up causing a state of postpartum psychosis; a serious mental disorder that can require medications or even being institutionalized.

Anyway... on NBC Today Nadya Suleman's mother, Angela, actually said that "...it seems as if she's obsessive compulsive and she needs to keep doing this and I hope she is not. I mean is 14 enough?". This quote happens about three minutes into the embedded video below.

OCD or not, I don't think a mental evaluation for Nadya would hurt anything at this point.

Worry box - how to stop obsessive worrying

Occasionally I'll offer advice from my experience dealing with people with OCD. This is such a time.

I find the mind of an obsessive compulsive disorder sufferer can wreak havoc on their body. Yes, mental stress and worrying about the "what ifs" of life can actually manifest to real physical and medical problems – IF YOU LET THEM!

So my advice for those of you suffering from obsessive worrying and thought cycles that seem to circulate endlessly in your mind: is to create a worry box and place the worry in it. The worry box is not an actual physical box, but more of a metaphor or a mental container for storage. If you can set a time, date or place when to think about this thing you are obsessively worrying about, then you can actually break the cycle and make a plan for addressing it later. Yes the plan is the box. You essentially wrap your plan around the worry and tie it up and break it free from your mind.

For example: Say you have a health concern... something that you are worried about that is abnormally happening to your body. The worrying becomes compulsive. It gets so bad that the thoughts start to invade and interfere with your everyday life. Then, the worry actually starts to manifest itself into other problems like high levels of acid in your stomach that can cause ulcers. So now you're worried that if you don't stop worrying, then you'll develop chronic stomach problems. You start worrying about worrying! The worrying snowballs into more of a worry and consumes more of your time and thoughts. The cycle could go on and on... getting worse and worse...

...but you can stop it!

Make a worry box - in this case, a planned time somewhere in the near future when you will see your doctor or physician about your concern. Then every time the worry or obsessive thought enters back into your head, you just say to yourself "I'm putting it in the worry box" and go on about your business. The important part is that you ARE addressing the concern, but not making matters worse by obsessing over the problems which potentially cause more problems.

OCD Dress Up - wear one today!

How about this blue suit as the official uniform for obsessive compulsive disorder sufferers? The ones who are phobic about germs anyway.

Could help ease their pain, no?

Really though if it were socialably acceptable to walk around in one of these - without freaking other people out - then maybe OCD(ers) would have more social freedom.

I've been toying and adding the third dimension to several of my paintings through the use of soap dispensers, dish soap nipple caps and rubber gloves.

I'd like to get my hands on one of these suits too - hmmmm...

Dennis Ryan - Communication Art studies from Millersville University

After graduating from PSA&D I transferred all my credits to Millersville University, Millersville, PA to get my bachelors in the arts. PSA&D is now called PCA&D as they became accredited and shifted from a 3-year degree program to a college (a year or two after I graduated - argh).

My advice - from my experience - is NOT to transfer from one school to another or switch majors unless absolutely necessary. Because by the time I graduated from MU I had between 150-160 total credits. It took me about 7 years, part-time on and off, but I stuck with it. So I should have my masters by credit amount alone - but only have a bachelors. **Shrug** The experience, other than not having another degree to go on my degree wall, was not a loss by far. The many credits and 'major' switch has helped to develop me in to the well rounded, diverse-minded individual that I am. Don't get me wrong, it would be great to have an MFA, and may do it down the road.

I originally enrolled in MU for its well known art education program. Mostly did this knowing that there is not a big job market for the fine arts in Lancaster County - and need to eat and have a place to sleep. A few semesters into the art ed. program I got a chance to student teach; then consequently started to look at a new majors.
Maybe it was:

1. the school I taught at, Wheatland in Lancaster City, a bit too urban for my country-dwelling tastes
2. or just the fact that I was teaching Science as a subject to middle schoolers (remember... artist here people!)
3. or the public school system's premix remedies of 'no child left behind' and 'inclusion' were too initially stark for me and seemed to be failing miserably.

In any case, at that very point, I found it not to be my calling.

Meanwhile... back at Millersville I took an interest, minor so-to-say, in psychology & philosophy. These two fields of study had always interested me, never got exposed to them at PSA&D, and if I had to build 60 credits to get the MU stamp on my degree then I would do it while studying subjects that would enhance concepts that I was painting about already.

Ok then, out of art ed., so what could I major in that would be a good career and keep my creative edge sharp to keep momentum going on my fine art interests?

Enter — communication arts!

I can tell you right now that one of the first things I learned about my artistic tastes upon entering this program was how very little I enjoyed graphic design. Mostly I blame my dislike on my struggles to dumb down my concepts in the hopes of creating a simplified logo or good coupon magazine ad. And I'd say that graphic design is one of the furthest forms of artistic expression away from the fine arts. Basically graphic design is just layout, copying off other successful layouts (folks, it's all been done before) and moving objects around a page (oh yeah, that's layout too). Graphic design is a major part of communication arts though.

So speed bump in my art career road again...

...but, for some reason there were other classes in the comm. arts program that I rather enjoyed. They were any classes that dealt with web design, web development, Flash, actionscript & search engine optimization (actually a couple of those I taught myself for lack of curriculum opportunities). And lucky me because those job areas pay well too! I think my interest in these forms of multimedia design have something to do with the analytical and numerical/math challenges (e.g. actionscript programing & web development) associated with them.

At MU, I had a couple of great influences on how I communicate commercially through art. Jeri Robinson-Lawrence, Art Chair, Professor and all around fantastic human being, really had a sincere interest in students succeeding and put in a great effort. Paul Manlove was just starting to teach at the time I was graduating, but had a fantastic teaching style that went far above and beyond what I expected. Another great influence/experience was a Seymour Chwast 3-day visit, show and lecture. He also spent a couple hours critiquing our individual poster artwork (a rare opportunity by most measures). Seymour Chwast is a celebrated graphic artist and co-founder of Push Pin Studios.

Photoshop knowledge is necessary for today's Fine Artists, right?

Let's get one thing straight, I do think that a fine artist can be successful in today's artworld without the knowledge of any computer software programs. It happens all the time! But, I would say it to be factual that it definitely helps to know a super-duper pixel manipulation tool like Photoshop (even if only to market the fine art that is being created elsewhere). I realize that there are Photoshop artists out there that make hyper-realistic Photoshop (.psd) files that have about 42 million layers and the file size is near a terabyte. But that is far from fine art and why not just take a picture and save the time?

I'm really saying that: as a fine artist in this day and age I struggle to budget time between hours on the canvas (or wood panel in my case) and learning SEO tactics or the latest Photoshop tutorial that can help me add a slight professional edge to my web design marketing plan.

The following is a very small example to help illustrate my point. I wanted to add a blog button to my fine art website kickthefaucet.com ... but I wanted it to be consistent with the theme of the site. Besides the fact that most of the site is in Flash (I'll save the flash knowledge argument for another post entirely) and its loaded thru FTP by Dreamweaver and graphics are edited highly in Photoshop - damn, I should by stock in ADBE; side note if you bought 100 shares of Adobe in the mid 1980(s) you would probably be a millionaire now... anyway, what was I talking about... oh yeah, Photoshop, so I had to make something (quick and fun) to support the OCD, obsessive compulsive theme consistent across the website. A bar of soap will do!! But the typical bar of soap that sits in my bathroom closet does not say blog on it -- hence, where Photoshop comes in:

1. I took a quick snapshot of a fresh, new bar (ahhhh... the fresh sent - oh baby!!) of soap with a 2 mega-pixel phone camera:


2. Notice the bar says Dial... ehh not really interested in advertising for them (yet) so that had to change, but with a similar font:


3. After using the "Dial" as a place holder/guide, it had to go. Thanks Mr. Clone-Tool:


4. Finally, I had to make the new type "blog" look like the Dial original type and also the ANTIBACTERIAL sub tag line. So with the help of some layer transparency styles in Photoshop (I didn't need to get too technical as I new the final .jpeg would be small) I got the highlight and color close enough:


5. And below is the final with the gray background to match the background of the website. This is to avoid using a .png24 with alpha channel support; which leads to higher than necessary file size in this case:

So, essentially, if I were to pay a web designer to help me look professional when represented globally on the internet, then I wouldn't need to know Photoshop. But I do know Photoshop, and the money I save on not paying a web designer... maybe I'll invest in ADBE and retire rich - as I believe that many categories of artists, even fine artists, will be buying, learning and using these programs for decades to come.

Mental illness can help create great art, no?

Psychological disorders are important to the content of my art. I say that these same disorders or mental illnesses, that I use as concepts, actually have helped artists in the past create successful fine art.

So I ask these two questions as illustrative examples:

1. Would Vincent Van Gogh be as famous as he is without a cloud of psychological disorders surrounding his life?
2. Would Pablo Picasso's 'blue period' painting - The Old Guitarist - be as interesting as it in fact is if it were not painted when Picasso was "blue" with depression?
   

The extra-ordinary states of the mind of someone who suffers from OCD, depression, bipolar disorder, etc., may have something to do with the extraordinary paintings, prints and drawings that come from the artists that suffer from them. It's not to say that artists with normal mental thoughts cannot produce arts of wonder... it is to say that many, many artworks from the past and present have been created by people who are not in a normal state of mind. Very successful, very highly valued fine art has been done by artists that suffer from mental incapacitation. It may be the disorder that creates a neurotic passion that in turn, in addition to talent of course, affords the art. And it may be as a result of these mental disorder that these extremely great works happen at all.

When one looks at the world through the glasses of the mentally ill... things look different! So to say that when someone like Van Gogh self chastises himself by sleeping on the hard wood floor instead of the empty bed next to him (because of thoughts of other human beings in the world not having a bed) potentially hinges the state of the mind to a higher, more romantic level that can see views, perspectives, textures and colors that normal everyday states of mind can not.

I've often found it interesting how many of the great artists and fine artists from the past have been associated with some form of mental illness. Two examples for this post are: Vincent Willem van Gogh - any number of his pieces; and Pablo Picasso - specifically his Blue Period.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Gogh
"Van Gogh cut off the lobe of his left ear during some sort of seizure on 24 December 1888. Mental problems afflicted him, particularly in the last few years of his life...There has been much debate over the years as to the source of Van Gogh's mental illness and its effect on his work. Over 150 psychiatrists have attempted to label his illness, and some 30 different diagnoses have been suggested. Diagnoses which have been put forward include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, syphilis, poisoning from swallowed paints, temporal lobe epilepsy and acute intermittent porphyria. Any of these could have been the culprit and been aggravated by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia, and a fondness for alcohol, and absinthe in particular."

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso's_Blue_Period
"The Old Guitarist is a painting by Pablo Picasso, painted in 1903, just after the suicide death of Picasso's close friend, Casagemas."

Let's think about these artists/artworks for a moment.

Now think about what these artworks would have looked like if these respective artists were on an SSRI (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) or other class of antidepressants. Would the artists/artworks be as interesting or successful if they had been dulled by a brain balancing chemical like Zoloft. What would the art look like without the contribution of the disorderly, unbalanced mental state at the time of creation? Without these mental attributions, would these pieces even be worth blogging about?