Hey guys, happy Friday. Welcome to Office Hours, let's get into it, let's get into the outline, today's session, like always, announcements, we're gonna get into this Recon Scout concept I've been knockin' about, we're gonna go over Instagram tips, tricks, hacks, and your Q&A as always.

So let's start with announcements. Again, many first timers, I know some of you guys have been on here, this is routine for you, but what are these babies? They are live webinars just for you guys, ASF customers, bi-weekly throughout the year, updates on the software and education, marketing insights, strategy, tactics, and certainly rants if I'm running 'em, and then your Q&A. More than anything else we really wanna build this into a setup that says if you have questions, marketing-related questions, hardcore tactical marketing-related questions, you need answers, throw 'em at us.

We'll do our homework, if we can't figure 'em out and answer 'em right away, we'll get to the bottom of 'em, so throw 'em in there, and you can do that at any point in time. Alright, AMC is the Art Marketing Calendar, so Art Marketing Calendar and Instagram page are both live, some of you guys might know what this is, some of you might be saying what the heck are you talkin' about? Go here to your, whatever we call this thing, our dashboard I guess, and then Education and Coaching, you can see there's the Art Marketing Calendar, down below there's the Instagram. I said before, but maybe for some of you it's the first time hearin' it, these are work-in-progress pages we launch quickly and we're gonna be makin' 'em better and better, but they're available to you now, we're gonna get into 'em more in a little bit. This is just a quick update, a Facebook comment update. And one little short aside, I was listening to a podcast this week, and it had Mark Zuckerberg on it, and one of the crazy things with Facebook is, why they're so smart, why they're so big, why he's so wealthy, is at any point in time with Facebook, they could be running up to 150, 250 different versions of Facebook at a time.

Testing new features, in new areas, sometimes it's other countries, sometimes it's localized just in the state of California, and so a new one popped up this week that I think is really interesting, I wanted to show you guys quickly. I won't get into it too long. They've essentially, if your Instagram account is linked to your Facebook page, they've put all three of their products, why is this not loading, so weird.

They've put all three of their, let's call it messaging/commenting products in one dashboard. It's Facebook Messenger, which is huge, I wanna get into that. Oh that's lame, that is lame. Okay, I can't show it to you, I gotta keep movin'. It'll end up killin' the whole thing. I'll circle back with that thing that's uploading, but it's a really cool update, if you go to your Facebook page it has your Instagram messages and comments, and your Facebook messages and comments, and then everything that's in Facebook Messenger, all in one dashboard. And so you can just respond to each of 'em, I can just tell that thing's derping.

Anyway, there's a really cool update there, I recommend you guys check it out. Customer success, not sure what to do next, want to make sure you're on the right track? Schedule a call with our Customer Success team. This is not for tech support, this is, what am I doin', am I on the right path, where am I, what's goin' on, and so you can use this link. Taylor will you copy this link and then just shoot it into the question thing so they can click on it if they need to, and you can schedule a call with the Customer Success team. Also, this month only, I guess we have free domain pointing, don't know if there's a side of fries with that, but free domain pointing. Email cs@artstorefronts.com to get that started, so if you're on a subdomain, whatever.artstorefronts.com, and you want to be your domain, you need help with that, I guess they will help you do that. Quickly, your questions, we want 'em, both live and ahead of time, I always put this in there, you guys don't ask enough questions, I want you to ask enough questions, there are no stupid questions, only stupid people. I'm one of 'em, anyway. The big picture. Look at this guy, nice little scout on a horse. I run Chrome as a browser, and so my additional tab is this, it's this thing called Momentum.

And it's kinda cool, it puts a quote down there every day, and so I saw this quote, and it just smacked me across the face, it says, "The world is moving so fast these days "the man who says it can't be done "is generally interrupted by someone doing it." And I saw that and I was like, wow, that was profound, that is so true. What year do you think that quote's from? Don't look at the bottom of the screen 'cause I show it. That's from 1914 this guy said this, 1914.

And I just, I was just like, wow, wow, when I saw that. Things move so fast, and where I rationalized it is the advice that we were giving you guys six months ago is crazy different than the advice than we're giving you today. The focus has really, in so many ways, shifted from Facebook to Instagram, and the storytelling in this platform is different, how you go about things, and it's just, I don't know, the quote was just profound to me, it's just crazy how it all works. And it's kinda where I got on this, this is not centered, where we got on this, you need a scout, right? So fundamentally, marketing at the end of the day, is about attention arbitrage. You go to somewhere where the attention is, and you get there quickly, and then every day it gets worse, and worse, and worse, but if you get there quickly you have a great opportunity.

So you guys are busy, you're artists, you need a scout, this is literally how I rationalize and how I think about it, you need a scout that's gonna go out, find the spot where the attention is, where the eyeballs is, and then come back and say, hey, that's where it is, I've already checked it out, I found it, here's how we're gonna start storytelling in that place, and we wanna be your scout, as Art Storefronts, we wanna get to these places before you, or the same time as you, whatever, figure out the best way to storytell in there, the best way to market in there, and teach you how to do it, and try and get there before everyone else. And I think when you come on board with Art Storefronts that's what you pay for, and so we're stoked you're on this webinar, and we really hope that you're gonna take advantage of it.

And yeah, it gets back to the focus, right? I get that you guys have to create art, that's a full-time job in it of itself, and then you already have side jobs, so I know all of that is difficult. So I think the key, the crux, the essential element that we're coming at is you guys have to devote a certain period, a certain portion, of your daily hustle, let's call it, to marketing. Our key is to make sure you don't waste any of that time that you have devoted to marketing. Call it 10%, 15%, 25% of your day, 35% of your day, whatever it is, towards marketing your business, we wanna make sure that it is laser-focused, that there is absolutely no waste, you're on the right spot, you're where you need to be, and we believe that Instagram offers that ROI right now, so we're gonna continue to pound that until things change, and guess what?

Once it does, then we're gonna go find the next spot that you need to be in, and teach you to storytell in there, and it really, it's never gonna end. And I love that, and I love this, because this whole concept, you guys are on board with Art Storefronts, this is not some flash-in-the-pan operation, we're in this for the long term, and I wanna be having this same conversation literally five years from now, breaking down how to best storytell on some new platform.

We are very good at finding out where the attention is, you guys all need the attention, you need the eyeballs, you need the traffic, you need the buyers. I don't care where it moves, we're gonna get there before everyone else and we're gonna teach you about it. If five years from now it's virtual reality, then everybody get their headset on, we're gonna figure out how you could storytell in there and how you'd grow your art following.

So imagine where it'll be if five years from now you've done the incremental work, you're listening to what we're sayin', and you're rollin' with it, right? It's literally the daily incremental work and small wins for the big win, and I love that concept. Let's talk about the numbers. Instagram is now at 700 million monthly users, 400 million daily users, and 200 million daily Stories users. You guys, it's where the attention is, it's exploded, it's outta control. I still love Facebook, I still advocate for Facebook, we're still heavy on Facebook, but I got limited bandwidth, limited things to be able to teach you guys, and so I have to put you on Instagram. We believe it's the highest ROI channel you can be in right now, so we want you in there, we want you workin' it.

Let's take a look at a quick Story, I like to always give you guys the context, the why, not just go and do this, like the why, right? And so here's an Instagram Story that we did recently, and it says, do you see the news? And this was a headline that I saw, Revenge: Couldn't Buy Snapchat, So Chose to Destroy It. And so Mark Zuckerberg, Snapchat was on the ascendancy, Mark Zuckerberg went in and he completely stole their number one feature, and this is important. What was the number one feature, my head, Dr. Evil. So how did he crush 'em, right, he stole their best feature, yeah I said all that, I love this little raccoon taking the food, look at how guilty he looks. Anyway, what does this mean for you, it means get your Story on, and the point in all this was he stole their number one feature, it was Stories, and as a result of it, now Snapchat is getting crushed. And so the bigger picture is I really do believe that these Instagram Stories, I've harped on this for awhile now with podcasts and previous Office Hours, I believe they're the future. There's a reason that Instagram has just crushed Snapchat and destroyed their stock prices, because they stole their best feature verbatim. But I believe that this Instagram Story, whatever you wanna call it, it's much bigger than anyone can imagine, so let's talk about it. I want you to be aware, both what it is, and I want you in there and workin' on it, but we gotta understand the why. So we know already, and so just gonna mention it again, the entire world is on Instagram, we start there. Everyone says, yeah, but Instagram's been around for years, and years, and years, and I'm just gettin' started, this, that, and the other, I get that, and you're right, it has, but guess what, Instagram Stories are completely new.

Let's talk about a concept, it's called above the fold. Many of you guys remember when newspapers used to be sold in those boxes, and you would look through the little window after you put your quarters in, and what you would see, which is this, and I'll do my fancy little drawing, all of this is above the fold, and that's where this concept comes from, above the fold, and so everything from there to there, you're gonna see that, everybody that walks by that newspaper machine is gonna see that, this is your opportunity to hook somebody, but it's also, it's the highest level of attention, the above the fold, that it gets it, so it's a term that's been stolen from newspapers. Let me flip it and take it another way.

It applies digitally just as much, this is Google, I threw in a term, I said mortgage advice. The top two results, in this case, are ads, you see you can say ads, I'm sure everybody knows this, but the top two results, guess which ad is the most expensive on this page. That one, guess which one is the second most expensive, that one, why? Because above the fold is the place to be, it is the beachfront real estate. It's the single solitary greatest place that you could be, it's where the attention is. So, I think it's important to understand that, and then when you get to the example of Instagram, here we are, an Instagram feed. How it's important to think about this Instagram feed. This is the feed, you can scroll up, scroll down, that's your feed, let's just think noisy up here at the top, less noisy, like this right here is what everybody sees every time that they come into Instagram. Their whole world is on Instagram, stands to reason that this is probably a pretty valuable place to be, right? So, get outta that thing. So the other crazy thing is it's free. It's free to get to the top of the fold, it's a free trip. I don't think for a minute that that's not gonna change long-term, but for right now, just by creating a story, you can get to the top of this thing for free, for free, where everyone that's coming onto Instagram is gonna see, so that's a big deal, I want you guys to start taking advantage of it, it's just critically important. Let's talk about something else, what do you notice here? What do I notice here all the time?

Do you see how often this doggone thing is popping? New, new, new, new, new. There's a reason they're pouring all of their resources into these Instagram Stories, it's still the crazy early days on these things, in terms of Instagram you're only like six months old or so, whatever, I think we came in, I can't remember, maybe it's a little bit longer than that now, but anyway there's a reason, I'm not just havin' a laugh about this. We're in the early days, there is so much that's goin' on with this, it's just outta control, and I think one of the things that very few people are talkin' about. Obviously I'm on the cutting edge of this. I always talk about Gary Vaynerchuk, because this guy's, he's like the Michael Jordan of marketing right now, there's just no getting around it, and if you look at how this guy's tellin' stories, and let me go to the beginning of this. This is something that's so profound that I can, I can barely wrap my head around it, and obviously it's conjecture on my part, but this has turned into, and this is a little bit buggy, I don't know if you're seein' it, this has turned into a television channel. This guy is using this thing as an individual television channel. He's got videos goin' on, he's promoting his this, his that, he's selling things, he's saying go to his shop, he's providing value in terms of little different content snippets, he's asking you to turn on notifications, how much interactive stuff does this guy have goin on here?

It's literally, and look at how many of 'em he's got, he's got audio goin' on, so he has little snippets from his podcasts in here, and it's when you follow a guy like him on here, and I highly recommend that all of you do it, 'cause literally he's the Michael Jordan of marketing right now, I'm not kidding, he's that impressive of a talent. It's turning into a television channel, literally the world is being disrupted right in front of our eyes, and it's happening in these Instagram Stories. I mean, you go and you click this Watch All, and you can just go through it person by person, and this is some sort of hybrid of television and little movie trailers all baked into one, it's absolutely profound what's going on in here. It's gonna take time for you guys to get good at storytelling in here. What's the bottom line? I believe Stories are the future, it's the top of the fold where all the attention is, it's free trip to get there, it's still the early days, it's gonna take time for you guys to get good at storytelling in there, it's literally being reinvented by the minute, and there are just entirely too many reasons that I want every single solitary one of you in there, it's where you can get your art in so many different places, it's crazy. So that's my rant about it, let's get into some tips, let's get into some tricks, let's get into some hacks. Now, where are you, that's the question. Some of you might just be getting started, and maybe you haven't even started an account yet. Some of you, you might be rollin' already, thousands of followers, whatever, some of you might even be killin' it, you might have 100,000 followers. I want these webinars to be able to provide advice no matter where you are on your journey, and I think we're equipped in a unique position to do so.

Now granted, we were late to this party, like way late to this party, but we're kickin' butt in it right now, so I think we can teach you guys all something. And what I love about it is just there's no gatekeepers, there's no barriers, I don't care if you start with, those aren't supposed to be dollar signs, they're supposed to be zeros, just numbers, but if you start with zero followers or 100,000 followers it doesn't matter, you can be deadly. Oh boom Taylor, that's what I'm talkin' about. You can be deadly, it just doesn't matter, it's the one-to-one interactions where it happens, and followers, and buyers, and collectors, and influencers are all built one-to-one. It's built one follower at a time, one human being at a time, one connection at a time, so it's just about gettin' in there and doin' the work. And again, I think it's right now, the highest ROI on your marketing efforts, there's other venues you could be marketing in, I'm not saying ignore 'em, it's a blanket statement, but these webinars have to be about blanket statements, right? So it's why we created that resource page, it's why we're updating that thing on the regular, I'm gonna go over that in a second again, but let's just go over it, let's go over things again and again, and just nonstop banging the drum on Instagram until I find out that it's not producing like it is, 'cause it is. And when I say this I love this, everybody says you should eat your own dog food, let me tell you, we're eatin' it by the bowl, the bowlful, I mean we're in there advertising, and doing Stories, and getting followers, and punching above our weight every single solitary day, so this is not some sort of thing, like esoteric, that I'm tellin' you to do because I read it on a blog post. We're in the trenches same as you every day, just hammering it. Now then Insta Page, oh yes, so let's go to this thing. So what I wanna say about this is, I talk about these incremental wins, and stacking small wins, and doing the work bit, by bit, by bit, you guys, our best stuff is on this page. I know you're busy, I know you got a lotta things goin' on in your life, I do too, I got a wife, a pregnant wife, a kid, a dog, we all do, okay? Come in here, invest time, and learn. We've got the best videos, the podcasts, we're doin' our best to stitch together so it's as cogent an argument as it can be, we have the old Office Hour webinars, you can hop around from time.

The time that you throw into this page and learn and get better at something. Come in here, spend 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, go learn something, go try it for a week, come back. We are gonna continue to be updating this thing, we're updating it like crazy. In terms of the Stories, we are banking, we are banking Stories, and these things expire in 24 hours, which is why I love this, and so for you guys we're just going and grabbing and recording all the ones that we think were good, we're gonna tell you why we think they're good, and then we're gonna make a huge, what's goin' on here, they loadin' slow or somethin'? Oh yeah, there it is. So you can come in here to get your creative ideas, you have no excuses, we are dropping a sandbox in your living room here. Come in here, learn, figure out something to do, and get your Story on. But honestly, I really do believe that if you invest in here, and by the way, every time you log in here something's gonna change, we're throwin' stuff in here like mad. So I want you to hit this page, I want you to come back here, I want you to learn little bits, it just doesn't matter, incrementally, spend the work, spend the time, you're going to do incredible if you do.

Alright, where am I?

Okay, so that's the Insta Page learning, yeah, the learning never stops, just get in there, the learning never stops. Okay, so number one, and I'm just gonna go through hodgepodge, willy-nilly, some quick tips, techniques, tactics, and everything else, there's no rhyme or reason to it depending on where you're at. So I wanna come at it though if you're a beginner, or if you're advanced, and everything in between, so number one, Story technique. This is for beginners, this is for the lazy types, do I like it? No, I don't. It is easy? Yes it is. There's no excuse not to at least, at the very minimum, do this. Now granted, I see this, it absolutely infuriates me, because these people are so damn lazy, and yet it's just so damn effective. So what do I mean by that? You realize that if somebody follows you on Instagram they throttle you now. If I follow you, and I'm lookin' at the chat box and there's Claudia, if I follow Claudia, I don't see 100% of Claudia's posts, I just don't. They throttle it, they show me some, they don't show me others, that's how they do it, that's how they decide.

So here's an Instagram Story technique, again, I hate this, but all of you guys can do this, do you see this? He puts this giant 1 and says new post, and what happens is this new post ends up at the top of here, and so everybody that comes in Instagram that's following this guy is gonna see it, it's up there. Now does this provide any value? No, it's just sayin' hey, I have a new post. But again, it's just because it gets to the top of the fold, it's just so damn effective, they're gonna see it now. So if you're lazy and you're tellin' me you literally have 30 seconds, then just do this, take your phone, screenshot the doggone thing, type new post on it, give it that thing, and then post it, it just works. You're lazy if you do this, but it's effective, doggone it, it's effective. Bump your story, so Taylor went over this in a webinar a couple of weeks ago, but it really is smart. So what happens is, is that, and why, let's just go to Gary, why he's so smart about this, where is it? Your Story, after you put it up, starts decaying after 24 hours, right? So what Gary does is constantly, throughout the day, he's throwing more stuff into it, so what happens is, is let's just say, I gotta use my little screenshot, let's say your Story decays, so it started here, and then time goes by, and so now it's moving down here, and then eventually it's gonna fall off the page, right? It's gonna really just be like, let's see if I can do this, hold on, come on. It's gonna be all the way down there, which some people might not see it. If you give the Story fresh content, and so if you upload something new to it, boom, you just get right back to the front of the line.

So that's a really, really effective technique, and that's just something, if you get good at this, you're gonna wanna do that all time, throw somethin' else in there, throw another vignette in there, whatever the case may be, it's gonna bump you to the front of the line, and it's gonna be quite impressive. Alright, the 24-hour rule. So the way that Instagram is set up is it only allows you to pull the media from your phone that's 24 hours old or less. So if you took a photo 48 hours ago, you try to go add it to your story, not gonna work, so there's a 24-hour rule. So how are you supposed to get around to that? There's only two kinds of people in this world, right? Lifters and leaners really, but, the other two kinds are Mac people and IBM people.

If you're a Mac person you probably have an iPhone, if you have an iPhone there's that AirDrop feature, which is absolutely amazing. Save somethin' on your computer, AirDrop it to your phone, it takes like two seconds, that's amazing. If you're a PC user, I highly recommend that you go and get a DropBox account, if you don't have one already, and use the DropBox one. What do I mean by that, let's walk through it. This is experimental, so let me see if I can do this. So here we have Paul Kileen Photography, this guy from Belfast, hashtag lazy, and what I'm gonna do is I'm in Photoshop, I'm gonna save this thing, I'm gonna save it directly to my DropBox, is it here, I think it's in here, so there's my DropBox, right? And let's just say Lazy Dude, which I think he is, I'm gonna go ahead and save that. Okay, so now that file is saved in my DropBox, and hold on, I'm gonna try something highly experimental here. You guys gotta just bear with me for a second, this could work or this could be a complete dumpster fire, but I got this thing that allows me to stream my phone, alright, let's just see if it works, I'm 50/50 on this. Scan the QR code, boom, alright let's see if this works, Now I can close that. Oh man, that's just impressive. So, here's my cell phone, and let's see, so I'm actually, this is pretty cool, I'm actually driving my cell phone here. So I just saved that file in Photoshop that I was working at, remember, 24-hour rule. Saved that thing, let's go back here, and so it's in my DropBox, so I go to my DropBox, and you'll notice down at the bottom of the DropBox, if you have this app it gives you these tabs, and so on Recent, whatever you saved most recently will pop in here. And so boom, Lazy Dude, you see that? I click on Lazy Dude, here he is, and there's this image. And so what I would do is I would hold my finger on it, just for a second, and click Save to Camera Roll.

Boom, it's exporting. It's doing it's thing, take your time. Only two kinds of people in the world, lifters and leaners, look at that, love that, alright, Saved to Photos. So now I go back to Instagram, and Instagram you are not gonna outsmart me, I'm gonna outsmart you, so let's just see, so basically you go to your camera and you swipe up to grab existing assets. And here I am, I defeated, you are lazy, right? Done, done. So I could go next, next, next, and post that to my Story. It works with video just as well as it works with the images, and so that's how you defeat the 24-hour rule. And I really like that DropBox workflow, if you're on a PC by the way, I highly recommend you do that. So give that a shot, and that's how you can defeat it, that's how I do it every single solitary time, I mean you look, what was the Art Storefront Story that I showed you? There it is, right? Surprise, surprise, I have to do this on my phone. So look, here's all the assets for the Story, and I just did the exact same thing, boom. So it's just a good, simple way to defeat it, and I recommend you guys use that, so I like that hack a lot. No Photoshop skills? Fine, learn to use your phone, use emojis, draw, be witty, execute, and learn, so let me move my phone back here. And I think Claudia, you were asking how you screenshot on an iPhone, so let's just do this for instance. And I guess I'll use, let me use a different image, I'll use this one for whatever.

So you can be in your iPhone, either take a photo, you can screenshot something, you can screenshot your website, do whatever the heck you want, but get a photo, get into Instagram, pick it, and you know what, draw on it, draw on it, it's not that difficult, it's so easy to storytell on here, and they've got all these stickers. And I think maybe some of you guys know this, but Undo, let's see, Done. They've got all these little stickers that you can put in, ooo, there's the watermelon, turn it around. There's about a million bajillion different things that you can do on your phone to storytell in a really, really easy fashion, so don't think, my point in that is that you don't necessarily need Photoshop to do it, although I know a lotta you guys do know Photoshop. So just give it a shot, execute and learn.

We're doin' the same thing, look at that stupid watermelon thing here, how could I tell a story with an image, some text, a watermelon, a screenshot, a shot of your daily life, whatever the heck it might be. Storytelling in this venue is just a new deal. Now, number five, and this is gonna, we're gonna come outta the Stories for a second and just stalk about normal Instagram, which is also super important. And number five is, oh Patrick, I know video is so important, but I also suck at video. And I say tough excrement, video's really hot right now, you need to be good at it, that's it. And let me tell you, ♫ It's not hard It's so easy, technology is such a beautiful thing, so unfortunately, in this case, this doggone program that I'm about to introduce to you guys does not like Chrome, which really infuriates me, but it's called Animoto, and to make a point, sorry, I gotta move this window over here. To make a point, I just wanna show you what I'm talkin' about, how quickly I can do this. And just as an aside, we advertise, Art Storefronts advertises quite a bit on Instagram.

Why? Because that's where the attention is, that's where all the action is. I've been making videos that are doing quite well, videos that look like this. Nice text, I'm throwin' in some gifs, I'm thrownin' in a funny dog, how is that going, there's a little mouse, there's a cat, ooo, 11,900 views, and this one's doin' pretty well, 12 comments. That's really hard, we're a big company with a big marketing budget, really easy for us to make these videos. Yeah, easy for us too. I'm gonna start makin' this video, this program is called Animoto, watch this. I'm gonna start from scratch, I'm gonna go, eh Glamor, no, I feel like Standout, so I'm gonna do Standout. I'm gonna do a square video, I'm gonna choose Video, and in just a second, why I'm doing this, why I show you how quickly I'm doing this, I'm gonna have Taylor talk about what the pricing costs were on this. And so I saw, earlier I saw the webinar attendee list, and I saw that Jamie was on, and so we went to Jamie's site, stole some images from Jamie, and so I'm uploading these right now, and why I'm making this, Taylor, go ahead and tell 'em what the pricing is on Animoto.

- [Taylor] Yeah, so they have three plans, I think everyone watching this would be interested in the lowest plan or the middle plan. The lowest one is eight bucks a month, and the middle one is 22. And that's paid annually, so all 12 months at once, but if you were to switch to month-to-month payments, then those prices double. The difference between the two, the lower one, the eight bucks a month, that's gonna export at 720p resolution, while the middle one gives you 1008p resolution. But considering that these are going to Instagram, not sure that it's such a big deal one way or the other. What might be a bigger deal though, is that the lower package does include an Animoto logo watermarked on all of your exports, while the middle package lets you use your own logo, or have no logo at all, so that might be a big deal to you. And then the other thing is that the packages include different selections of royalty-free music you can use, with the eight bucks a month package giving you 500 tracks and the middle package bumping that all the way up to 2,000 tracks.

- [Patrick] What is their baseline package? Their cheap one? 16 a month, got it. So that's literally what this thing costs, and I don't know, did my gif make it up there? I can't see if it did or not. Yeah it did. And so this is a gif, so there's this site called Giphy, which is basically like a search engine for gifs. And Taylor, will you put the Animoto and the Giphy link in the chat box so these guys can get this? And so you can just come in here, and I don't know if you saw how quickly I just made that, now I just grab the gif, and I'm gonna throw the Georgia gif in there.

The sunsets, the water, Georgia, dut, dut, dut, dut, duh, whatever. Do you see how quickly I just did this, we're generating the preview right now so we can all take a look at it. And video is on a second renaissance of sorts right now, it is just so doggone effective for marketing. And I know a bunch of you guys are out there saying, ugh, video's so hard, I can't do it. Maybe some of you aren't, maybe some of you have great chops, you know how to use Final Cut or Premiere, I don't care if you know how to use all of 'em or none of 'em, with this Animoto it just makes it stupid simple, and everybody that got in early on the Facebook and Instagram advertising party has been using this software. Why is my internet so slow today, there we go. So you get the example, how long did that take me? I could download that thing right now, I could use that same DropBox hack, and I could have that thing up on Instagram in about two seconds, so.

Another hack for you guys, I highly recommend you check out Animoto, you can start cranking out videos so quickly, it's mind-boggling. And yeah, there is good free music on there, or you can upload your own music too. And let me tell you, we live in, how could I say it, I'm morally a little bit conflicted by it, but we live in a very charcoal gray world, let's just put it that way. And if you're creating content and you're putting it on Instagram, and you're not advertising, and you're just doin' it to be cool, you can use any music you want, no one's gonna come after you, and that's just the bottom line. Maybe some of you have ethical moral issues with that, I kinda sorta do in the back of my head, but I kinda sorta understand the way the world works right now, and it's like you can do anything. If you're using an ad, yes, then you need to use the licensed music, that's for sure. Alright, let's keep rolling. Vignettes, again, I think this concept is so doggone powerful.

I'm tellin' you, you guys, this medium is literally being reinvented right before our very eyes, and it's happening on a daily basis, and there's some others that are doin' a great job of it, but, again, Michael Jordan here, let me just see. I want to explain to you this vignette concept, where did it go? Get over here, buggy, buggy, buggy. Alright hold on, I'll find him, there he is. Okay, so let me go back to the beginning. So when I say vignette you see how many different slides he has in here, and so, that's not him doin' it, he actually has a whole team doin' it, but it's his idea. He's creating three to five-slide mini little vignettes, so this one is selling his shirts, this next one is talking about his tour dates, it can just be thought of almost like changing the channel, it's a new vignette, it's a new subject, it's a new whatever, right? So here he is, he's back to sellin' the clothes again, and so okay, let's just call that one a five-second one. Now we're at the 60 Second Club, which is another one of his vignettes, it's another thing that he does, it's a little trick that he gets everybody to turn on notifications, so this guy's next level, it just doesn't even make sense. Win prizes, join the 60 Second Club, right, so how many slides was that? That was two-slide vignette, here's a quote, "Put in the work," that was a vignette in of itself, here's another one which is the podcast, so now he's hypin' his podcast.

And you can actually hear it, there's that visualization, he's droppin' his thing. Here it is again, listen on iTunes, now he's moved on to just, hey, just a normal selfie, but the point in all of this is each one of these things is just an individual little vignette, that's how it should be thought of, as an individual little vignette. So you can make one, to two, to three, to five, so if you're on a shoot, and you're a photographer, show your tripod, show what gear you're rockin', show the bag gettin' clipped up, show a shot. If you're a painter, show a couple of progress shots, and then show yourself out gettin' a cup of coffee, it doesn't matter, it's just storytelling, and man, it's just so powerful. The only thing I would say, and I've seen some of you guys doin' this already, stop goin' for the sale every single solitary doggone time. I know it's difficult, you can't help yourself, but stop tryin' to sleep with women on the first date, you cads. Do some storytellin', give, provide some value, then when the time is right, ask for sales, and we'll tell you when the time is right, but if you wanna decide for yourself that's cool too. So number seven, are you already rolling? Are you on this thing and you're like, everything that I just told you was not new to you, you already knew all of it, okay. Look at Mateo here, and is it Mateo, I have not talked to him on the phone and I feel embarrassed, we've had little chats. If I'm hackin' your name, I'm just callin' you Matt, I'm callin' you Matt, deal with it. He started advertising, and guess what happened?

He's been killin' it, he's been absolutely killin' it, read this blog post, it's a case study, Taylor put the link in there, will ya? And somebody tell me how to pronounce his doggone name. But I think one of the things that makes me so happy about what he's achieved, now granted, his work's insane, it's totally unique, this guy's next level in terms of what he's been able to produce, when you look at the detail shots. But I go back, I go back to my handy Instagram where I'm tellin' you guys to send Direct Messages and do so many different things, and if I find him, and I scroll up all the way to the top, the original first part of whatever our messaging history is, which is quite significant, it's goin' down in the DMs, Gary Vee always says, it truly is. So he's asking me some questions, and then just look at this. Here's the detail of his painting that was shared on Hi-Fructose Magazine. "Hi-Fructose has reposted my image, "and now my phone is burning, "50 new followers every 5 minutes, "thanks to Instagram ads." And so as I opened this up today and I was getting rid of the thing, it's like look, "It continues." So now there's some sort of friend of his, as a result of the blog post, where he was running his Instagram ads, is now gonna share, oh that wasn't it, that wasn't it, it's down here at the bottom. It doesn't matter, the point of the argument is he just got another opportunity as a result of his Instagram ads, and so if you're rollin' already, if you're an artist that's selling already, you should think about Instagram ads, they're just so powerful. Again, as I went through his chat history, in Matt's case he, I feel bad calling you Matt now, is it Mateo, I'm just gonna call you Mateo. He started advertising on Instagram. Guess what happened? He probably wasted some money, probably screwed up a bunch of times, but guess what, he learned some lessons. He took some nicks, he got up off the floor, and he went at it again, and again, and again. Oh my goodness, what happened, an opportunity popped. What happened as a result of the opportunity pop? More followers, he made a couple of sales, he was emboldened, he started advertising more, guess what happened? More opportunities happened, momentum, he gets momentum, you start rolling, and opportunities create opportunities.

So that's the majority of my rant, I want you guys in there, I want you hittin' it, and I want to get into Q&A first, I know I see a bunch that got popped in, I don't know if any of these didn't get answered. Bob uses the Pro version of Animoto, good for you Bob, I love it, we do too. What program do you use for videos? Claudia, it doesn't matter, you can use that Animoto, you can use iMovie, you can use your phone, you can use anything, but video is legit, it's a real deal. Adding lazy music is doing as much as possible from my phone, so I don't have to go to the computer and edit videos. Yeah, literally there are no rules to this whole entire operation, like I said, it's just unfolding right in front of our eyes, and I think the only thing that you need to do is you need to be in there and you need to be hittin' it, and you need to be doin' it. And yeah, there's time lapse apps, I see a bunch of you asking that question. I don't know, we have to go in there and figure out which one's the best time lapse app, if somebody knows. And I see Oscar's sayin' that there's a hyper lapse app that Instagram created, you can check that out and see how that goes. Claudia, to screenshot on your iPhone you hold the bottom button with the thumb and the side button at the same time, and that's screenshots, and any time you have a question like that fire up the Google on the internet machine and it'll tell ya. Okay, what is the status of the ASF version of MailChimp, that's a doggone good question. Chris, will you find out what the status is of the Art Storefronts' version of MailChimp, will you ping somebody internally and find out? Bob, we'll get back to you on that question, we'll try to get an answer for you on that. Let me get into the rest of the Q&A. So Christina, "Do you recommend signing on "with a social media marketing company "to market our work on Facebook and Instagram "by putting you in front of a primary audience, "ensuring you get seen by at least 1,000 to 1500 people "within your targeted audiences?"

That's such a tough one, that's just such a tough one, do you go with an agency or do you not go with an agency, and look, there's, the answer to this question is the same as the answer to every question; yes but, right? If you get a good agency it can be successful, have I seen many people with great success stories about them hiring an agency and doing well? No, I don't. But here is what I would say, I think you need to have a minimum understanding the level of acumen before you partner with an agency, otherwise I feel like you can get taken to the cleaners very quickly, and it might not even be a malicious taking to the cleaners, what ends up happening is is because they don't truly understand your business, and the fundamentals of your business, what they end up going and doing is using messaging, and using creative, and using this, that, and the other. How they know how to do it, and how they know how to get attention, and there's usually a disconnect there. I guess is is that how many people do you guys know, had a conversation with recently, that said, I've signed up with an agency, and I don't care if it's social media, or if it's SEO, or if it's, whatever it is, and I had a great experience. Don't worry, I'll wait. It's just there's not that many, it's hard, it's hard. And I say that very generally because my wife is outside the door and she works for one of those agencies. Don't tell her I said that. So, yes but, you can have some success, tread cautiously, definitely get reference checks on 'em if you do, and one thing I would say, as just a more overarching picture is, you don't win at your first at-bat, it takes time, and I think, God, I learned this lesson when I was so young. I had a trade show booth, I'm goin' on a side tangent. I had a clothing company, I exhibited a trade show, this gal sold me on a magazine advertisement, I went and did the magazine advertisement, it was super expensive, and I barely got the ROI on it, I think maybe I broke even a little bit less. My other buddy did the same thing, except he did it for a year, and he blew up. Advertising, especially social media advertising, you can't just say, I'm gonna give it 60 days and give it a shot, you have to be invested for a term, and it's gotta be six months to a year. So you can learn some mistakes, you can stub your toes, you can get better, you can optimize, and then you can see whether or not you're in a good place.

Christina, good luck, I hope that helps. Rick London, "How do you feel about buying "a list of interior designers for email marketing? "Organic lists are best but take a long time "to develop and grow." Yeah, so, I'm torn on this one too, this is just a tough one. So if you could buy a good list of interior designers, there's a price at which the ROI makes sense. If you do it, I would highly recommend this technique, which I think is intelligent, and I hope you do this, is I hope you've started running Facebook and/or Instagram techniques. If I did this, I had this list, let's just say you were sellin' it to me Rick, and you said, here's this list for 50 bucks, it's awesome. I take the list, I get my email ready, I would upload the list to Facebook, I would create an audience out of those people, I would create an ad introducing yourself, and I would say in the ad, I'm gonna be emailing you in a couple of days, I hope you'll see it. I would run that ad for 48 hours, and then I would email the list, that's gonna strongly increase your efficiency. But on the flip side, let's just say I was in your shoes Rick London, what I would do is if the list was cheap, yeah, I'll give it a shot, why not, give it a test. If the list is 10,000, and let's just say they're charging you 250 bucks for the list, let's just say, and it's 10,000 people, and you would say, oh, that's fantastic, that's fantastic, I think I really wanna do this. But you know what I would love to do, is I'd love to test the list first. Tell you what, why don't I give you 25 bucks for 500 email addresses to see how we do with that. If that goes well, I'll gladly buy the whole entire list, no problem, see if you can get away with that. But what I would do instead, and I think I highlighted this in, if this was me, I think I highlighted this in a earlier episode.

Every interior designer you could hope and dream to work with is on Instagram or Houzz, one of the two. I would spend hours every single solitary day for a couple of weeks getting the list of 5,000 interior designers that have shared work that looks kinda like mine, and then I would pound the pavement sending every single solitary one of 'em an Instagram Direct Message saying, I love what you do as an interior designer, I'm not trying to pitch you, I just wanna let you know that here's my stuff, I know you're lookin' for new, great stuff, I would do any kinda deal with you that you could possibly imagine, I'm just lookin' to break into the interior designer world. Why does that technique work? You're not lookin' for 500 interior designers, you're lookin for one, you're lookin' for one. That's it, if you can get one that could potentially change your career, because they're gonna constantly start putting you in all these places, because your art represents the style that they like to decorate in. So that's how I would go about it, I wouldn't buy a list from anyone else, a gatekeeper, gimmie a break, I don't need your list, pound sand.

They're all on Instagram, I can Direct Message every single solitary one of 'em, and we've got webinars on that technique, so that's my rant. Rebecca, "I've successfully ran Facebook ads "using the Office Hours 10 tutorial," awesome, "but I can't figure out how to make an Instagram ad," I think I've gone into depth on this in an Office Hours webinar, but I also think that I've seen your Instagram ad, so I know you've pretty much already crossed this, I think it was like a water fountain thing that you took at a museum, that you took a photo of and then turned into a print.

Unless I'm crazy, I've seen your Instagram ad so I know you've sorted this out. The one thing that I would say is, I definitely saw you going right for the right hook on those ads, and that might work, and I love that you're experimenting, and you're learning, but if they don't know you and you're goin' right for the jugular, I think you probably are advertising to your remarketing audience, 'cause that's how I would've seen it, 'cause I've been to your website. But yeah, I love that you're doin' it, I love that you're learning. Give it a shot, see how it goes, just step by step, that's how you have to do it. Alright, Mediah. "My ASF site is almost complete, "and I had previously decided," oh God, the launching, I love the launching. Where is my Reid Hoffman quote? Oh, this is just so good, look at my beautiful thing. If you're not embarrassed by your first version, images, oh yeah, there's the one that I like right there. I mean, that's just gospel, that's just gospel. "If you're not embarrassed "by the first version of your product, "you've launched too late." I just, it's gospel. You don't know what you don't know, and the only way you can find out what you don't know is you launch, launch, don't worry. "My main concern is that if I launch the store "before October people will buy from the online store "and not come out to the show." Right, so what you're saying is that you think you're smarter than the market, and I don't mean to say this to be condescending, you think you're smarter than the market, and so as a result of some belief that you hold, you think something's gonna happen. You don't know until you test, turn the site on, see if it happens.

What if it doesn't happen, what if something other, better, happens? You don't know until you launch, and so you gotta launch, no one cares, everyone, and when I say everyone, myself included, has these perfectionist tendencies where you're so worried about just getting this thing up, and getting it ready, and getting it ready to roll, and I can't launch it until it's perfect. And the reality is it'll never be perfect, no one's gonna care, no one's gonna remember what your first couple of versions are, launch the damn thing, get the lessons. Charlie Rubin, "When is the best time of day and week "to send an email blast selling my art, "promoting my website?" Again, same type of question, Charlie, the best time of day is when you can send it, send an email. After you've sent the email, send 50 of 'em, after you've sent 50 of 'em, then worry about what time of day it is. But the real answer is that you don't know until you test, everybody's list is actually a little bit different, sometimes it's morning, sometimes it could be Sunday, sometimes it could be Thursdays, you just don't know, every single solitary list is different, but I can't tell from your question you're not sending enough email to know in the first place. So send more email. Alright, we're ranting today. Teresa Wilson, "How can I best use SEO for my blog posts?" Yeah, that's a good one.

I think step one is properly SEO'ing 'em in the first place, I've gotta qualify that, I've gotta qualify that, let me qualify it, alright hold on, oh, I've got one open, I've got one open here. So what am I using here, this thing is called the Mozbar, and when I say step one is properly SEO'ing 'em in the first place, so if I click this thing, when I say properly SEO'ing 'em... Give 'em a relevant page title, don't overthink it, do the best you can, give 'em a proper meta description, that's step one, that's the most important thing that you can do, so at the very least, do that. But if you're doin' a case study about Instagram ads, you could spend some time, Instagram as for artists, let's just say, maybe that's what I'd be looking for. And I would see some of these results that are on this page, I might go down here and see what these results say, and get an idea of what's the best way to do it, and you can do it that way too. But I think there's such a tendency to overthink and wanna get so stuck in the weeds with SEO, SEO takes a long time to kick in and really start kickin' butt. So more important, again, I'm a highly opinionated individual, as you can tell, more important in my estimation is continuing to crank out content, doing the basics, and then seeing what works later on down the line, rather than overthinking, okay, what is this, let me do seven hours of homework.

You do seven hours of homework figuring out what the best SEO terms is, I'm gonna put out seven pieces of content, we're gonna do that 30 different times throughout the year, at the end of the year I'm gonna look and see what worked, I'm gonna go drill into why it worked, I'm gonna do similar stuff that's just like it, and meanwhile you're gonna be researching SEO. I'm opinionated, that's my two cents. Kevin Blackburn, "What's the best email campaign "to send to my brick and mortar list "to announce that I've launched my ASF site?" Any email campaign will do. What I would do is I would send, well, if you run Facebook ads, I don't know if you run Facebook ads, I would warm 'em up with Facebook ads, then I would send the email campaign, but I would definitely do an Instagram Story saying, guess what, we're about to launch, I would do an Instagram post that says we're about to launch. I would then send 'em an email that says we're about to launch, I would give them a reason why they should come in, free cookies, free this, a t-shirt, a signed autograph copy of Kevin Blackburn, the memo, somethin' along those lines, something along those lines. So that's how I would do it, but there is no best, it's just try to be real in the email and not be too spammy. Thank you guys all for spending your Friday with us, thanks Randy, hello, hi to you too brotha. And yeah, just, you guys, invest in Instagram, and just understand we're in the same boat. Literally the way that I see it is it is a rowboat, Art Storefronts is in the right hand side, you guys are in the left, get in it, start rowin' in our direction, 'cause that's literally what it comes down to. It's just so new, and there is just so much invention and new things happening, and there's literally nobody that has the book on all of it right now, because it's just so new, and so I don't know, we just live in fantastic, interesting times, great time to be an artist, you guys. Thank you so much for being on the webinar, and I hope to see you guys in the next one.