Warm greetings for the new year (especially to those who spent this weekend in Florida outdoors at Cape Coral, BocaFest and Beaux Arts freezing their little tushies off). I'm back from Los Angeles and ready to work with you in making 2010 the turnaround year for this art fair business. Are you with me?
Last year at this time there were around 150 members of this site. As of today we are past 1800. (Thank you for joining!) I've been working with my 'braintrust' to come up with strategies to maximize the usefulness of this membership for everyone's good. Among us we must have a bezillion years of experience to offer one another and I need your help to make the site even better.
Here's the plan:
1. Greeters. As people join I need some official "greeters" to welcome them. Some of you have clearly taken on that role already and I was just going to ask you directly, but maybe there are some others who also would be interested. Here is what you would do: when someone posts in the "Welcome" section of the discussion area you would greet them and encourage their participation. Everyone who does this would be entered in a drawing to win prizes, books, ebooks, consulting and other ideas I'm working on.
2. Featured Member. There will be a monthly featured member to reward those who have been instrumental in the continued growth of the site. All members vote by submitting one name each month via email. There will be three winners each month. The winners will be featured at the top of the Members page, and on a special Featured Members Awards page (being created soon). More details coming on this. Would you also like to be featured artist of the month on ArtFairCalendar.com?
3. Contests: There have been some terrific blog postings, insightful comments, show reviews and helpful discussions posted. We will be featuring them and awarding Ning gifts each week for the following categories:
--Best blog of the week
--Best show review
--Best comment on a blog posting
--Best new discussion
--Best contribution to a discussion (did you see Linnea Lahlum's contribution to the "latest rejection" discussion?)
No one is eligible to win anything unless they have a smiling photo of themselves posted in their personal profile. This is a social network and we need to see who we are talking to! Please get images uploaded.
What else is new? As anyone online knows SEO (search engine optimization) is an important way to increase business opportunities on the Web. Recently I started two new Facebook fan pages, one for ArtFairInsiders.com and another one for ArtFairCalendar.com. I'd really appreciate it is you would go to those pages and click on "Become a Fan". Free to you and very helpful to me in keeping these sites alive and well and bringing you the news from Art Fair World.
These two pages will enable us all to put the force of Facebook behind us, bringing new faces to our pages and new fans to the our art fairs. Please help me help you in this endeavor.
Did I say Happy New Year?
Very best wishes,
Connie Mettler
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