The thought occurred to me that most of you have not customized your "My Page" blog site that you have access to, on AFI. Consequently, you are not taking advantage of an additional marketing tool that lets you broadcast you opinions, etc. to the real world, or, at least to your Face Book friends. So, here is a little primer on what to do:
1) The first thing you need to do is click on that "My Page" entry at the top of the page.
2) The next thing you need to do is add a picture. It could be of your work, or you, or your pet iguana or anything. Pick something that you think defines you, or your personality. It's a good first bit of info about you that you are trying to convey to others. That orange square that says Art Fair Insider is basically a turn off. It says I don't have any personality, or creativity, or any number of bad messages.
3) Next click on the customize button under your profile picture. This leads you to a page that lets you change the appearance of your "My Page" blog site. There are 52 different design themes. Chose one, chose any of them. They are all better than the generic one that you get when you go to the AFI home page.
4) The next thing you can do is tweak the page to make it truly yours. There are 3 basic levels. Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. You can easily get by with just the basic version. It gives you the option of changing the color scheme, the text fonts, and the color of those texts. I made my sides blue-green, the body black, the headers blue and the text white. The Intermediate level lets you tweak each part separately and add images to the sides and your own logo. The most advanced level lets you tweak CSS coding.Don't worry about messing things up because to keep what you've done, you have to save it. I suggest you open up a new tab to view your changes. Just remember to refresh the page after each change to see what you did.
5) When you are satisfied with the new style, color, and font changes, save it and go back to it. Now you can do two things. The first thing you can do is edit each module on your page. Each one has it's own set of tweaks. They are mostly about how much info you want displayed on this page. The second thing you can do is move the modules around so you can show what you want to show. I dragged that annoying text box at the top of the page all the way down to the bottom. My blog posts are at the top and right underneath I have the "My Photos" module.
6) The next thing you want to do is put some photos in your "My Photos" module. The coolest thing about this module is that there is a slide show feature. Anyone visiting this page can immediately get treated to a slide show on your page. Drag that module up near the top where people can see it. There are only 11,000 photos posted on this site. That may seem like a lot, except with 6000 members, that is less than 2 per person. Considering you can put up a number of photos, the number of people using this feature is very small percentage wise.
7) One thing I didn't mention is that you can add apps to your page. There are 22 pages of them under "My Apps." I've kind of ignored these because most of them are meaningless to me, but, you may find one worthwhile for all of us. If anybody is using, or finds, a good application, please tell the rest of us.
8) Now that you've made your "My Page" blog site uniquely yours, take advantage of an often ignored feature, but, maybe the most important one. Click the "share" button and share your page on Facebook. Do this for both your personal FB page and your fan page. This will give your FB friends a link to your blog posts, forum discussions and your slideshow.
9) I don't know if you can access my fan page on FB by just clicking on this link. I am posting it here anyways. I need people to "like" my fan page on Facebook. We all should be doing this for each other, including linking web sites to each others to optimize all of our places in the search engines. After all, it may be time to start taking advantage of belonging to this group.
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I have the web site bookmarked on my I-phone and for a long time I could get the home page as it looks on my desktop. Sometime during the last upgrade, maybe, it changed and I only get the recent posts when I access AFI. Ironically, I do get the header still.
I don't know where you would stick these threads, but, over the years there have been some really good informational threads that could be "stickyed" at the top of the forum for easy access. There are others that Larry has written or Jim Parker that would help everyone.
On my iphone I get the full site with the appropriate header. I have no idea on how I happened to stumble onto that because after a year owning it I am still surprised at all the things it does, e.g., on a recent drive from Chicago to St. Louis and then home the map info was better than the Garmin.
Also, you're right, Barry. There is a lot of info on the site that is buried. On my "to do" list, ferret them out and put them in a spot together where they can be more easily accessed. Wonder if I could find some people to help me do this as like most everyone else I am flat out of time.
Dear Connie and Barry,
We just never seem to have enough time. So, I copied Barry's instruction set into a word doc. If anytime either of you sees a great tip, just copy the URL or the post and send it to my message box on AFI. I can then add it to the doc.
I just don't read everything (shocking, I know).
But I would be willing to be the depository of information that at some point in time can be organized.
Pass it on.
Thanks, Linda -- that has also been on my list and it would be great if others would send you the "best". I do not choose the blog post of the week winners, my admin Jacki and a few others do that, and sometimes I like something else better, so I already know some for that list, plus I have started a list -- its on pen and paper. Imagine that! and at my other computer ... but coming your way. Thanks for this offer.
My pleasure to help.
Not to rain on anyones parade but.........Once you share your page with your FB friends this site is no longer 'Art Fair INSIDERS'. It is now 'Art Fair ANYONE!". Im not sure I want my friends (and ESPECIALLY my customers) to come here and have access to all the comments artists make here. Just food for thought..... although I do like the nifty features this site offers. Id still love to be able to share my page, the slideshow etc. but Im just not sure all the 'insider' info is good to be sharing with just everyone!
AFI is not a private web site or forum, like some, Michelle. Anything you post here can be and is public. There are patrons contributing here, and making some good points. If you want a private "artists-only" forum, check out the Art Fair Review site on Facebook, which is invite-only, and specifically excludes non-artist participants. Otherwise, you might want to temper your comments if you're afraid of customer repercussions and blowback.
Personally, I don't think there's anything on AFI that is truly harmful to customer relationships, even if a customer did stumble onto it.
This is too funny -- I'm on a Mac - "my page" doesn't have the AFI header either! and I can't tell you how hard I worked to get that graphic together for the site...
I think I'll go to the Ning Creators Forum and see what I can find.
Thanks Barry for the tips! I'm new here, so this helps...of course I had to tweak my page, and then while I was at it, add some photos...and I couldn't forget to like your facebook page! :)
Thanks, BB!
Good Stuff!
I never knew the How, Why or Where before. You gave me all that and the motivation. When I find the next hour I will follow through and do it.
Your discussion rates in my top ten for content value.
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